Strawberries

Sorry for the delay in posting I have been visiting my folks down NC and some family things. I will be back posting again. In the mean time I harvested my first strawberries of the season this morning. Just a few and simply rinsed and eaten.

Rambutan Rum Drink -Tropical Sand

So whenever I go to the Asian market I make a point of buying some random ingredient usually a fruit of vegetable and working it into the menu for the week. This week I saw this:

They are called Rambutans and look like a cross between something from Dr Seuss and a Tribble from Star Trek. Either way neat looking. Here is a close up of one. Pretty red fuchsia colored and then with lime green spikes.

Rambutan

They are a tropical fruit and when you cut into then have a pearly inside which is the fruit you eat and it has a woody almost almond like pit which you do not eat.

See the pearly inside of the rambutan

Upon tasting one I decided it would be excellent in a rum drink. Side note: My spell check keeps thinking Rambutan is not a word and that I am trying to spell ambulant, which means mobile which you certainly will not be if you drink too many of these. 

How to make Rambutan Rum Drink I am calling Tropic Sand

Tropic Sand  makes two 

3oz Goslings Black Seal Rum 

4 Rambutan 

1 cardamon pod 

10 oz ginger beer

1 teaspoon honey

For garnish 

1 Rambutan per drink 

brown sugar 

How to make a Tropical Sand:

1. Pour 3 oz of Goslings Black Seal Rum into a heavy glass that your immersion blender fits into.

2. Smash cardamon pod and place in rum. Let extract for 5 or so minutes.

3. Harvest the flesh but not the woody seed of the rambutans and place directly into the rum.

4. When all rambutans peeled remove the cardamon pod. 

5. Add the honey and then blend with the immersion blender until the rambutans are totally pureed.

6. Rim two martini glasses with brown sugar and then pour the fruit and rum mixture between the two glasses. 

7. Add ice cold ginger beer on top and garnish with a fresh rambutan.

8. Serve. For fun I took a bit of rambutan peel and twined it around the stem of the glass. 

Wednesday Night Racing- 1st night

This means summer is officially here. Last night was the first night of Wednesday night racing. Thursday night racing has been going on for several weeks but this means my summer schedule is now set. My Wednesday night boat indulges in a swig each of Mt Gay Extra Old at the end of every race if we win. Someone that taste of Extra Old last night sealed it. First night and summer sailing season has begun, and tastes like good rum.

Running Aground:What happened and what to do

So I was sailing on a friends boat today. She just bought into a boat share which is nice but she does not have much experience running this boat nor in the area that her new marina is. She is good crew but normally does not skipper. She made a mistake which was novice and ran aground. Her novice mistake was failing to keep the green channel marker on her right while leaving the channel and thus going into a shallow area. Remember the saying is
"Green when going
Red right return"
That means you need the green markers on your right when going out and red markers on the right when returning back to the dock. This rule applies in North America but not Europe.

So what to do when you run aground? Well it is a lot better when you ground on muck like we did.
If you ground
1. Assess to make sure no crew hurt themselves and that no water is coming in the hull. If good then:
2. Figure out where the deeper water is.
3. If lightly aground you may be able to slowly go in reverse and unground. Be careful to not overheat your engine and gun it reversing can bring muck into the engine and cause overheating.
4. You can in a sailboat move the boat weight  to heeling on one side to allow the keel to raise up and not drag and thus get off the ground as in sailboats the keel is usually the lowest part.
5. You can kedge ie throw the anchor off in direction of deep water and use it to pull yourself in that direction and then do this again and again until you are in deep water.
6. You can wait for the tide to rise.
7. If you have a dingy you can use the dingy to pull or to get the anchor out further for kedging.
8. Hail a friendly boat to help you tow out or call SeaTow or Towboat US.

We used a combo of 1-4 to get off this time and then continued on for a nice remaining sail.
But the best thing is to avoid running aground all together as you are much safer. I know friends who have been in  serious accidents and done major boat damage when their vessels ran aground.

Tres de mayo potluck sailing club party.

I try and keep notes on how parties I organize go. This was not my personal party but one I organized for social part of sailing club.
People :

47 at max about 60 total

Food:
Taco theme. 

20lbs taco meat,

150oz worth bean and onion vegetarian taco mix

6 heads lettuce shredded

case of 200 taco shells

40 oz sour cream

1 lb shredded cheese

16 oz salsa

Potluck for drinks desserts and sides. 

Tons of sombreros

Weather 

mid 60's high winds. High winds under pavillion were an issue but we found out that a truck jack thing will lower the sides of the pavillion after everything on the tables were blowing away the first time.

Next time/lessons:
More taco meat more beans more lettuce we had more people then expected. 
Thia was a huge success and we actually had a great time the music provided by Chris was fantastic! Overall I would've if I could do it again had much more taco meat even though the prior year we'd only gone through 15 pounds of taco meat. This year we had a much better showing the weather was better and this contributed to a much larger number of people coming.

Mustache Cookies with Nutella Frosting

So tonight I am helping organize the first monthly social of the year at one of the sailing clubs I am involved with. We are having a Cinco de Mayo theme and one of the other guys on the social committee made a joke about getting those hipster mustaches on sticks.  So this led to my thinking of cookies because cookies are always better then cardboard. I had a mustache cookie cutter from honestly I have no idea where. But you can get one here. I used the rich roll cookie dough from Joy of Cooking. This is my go to recipe for cut out cookies I follow it exactly except triple the vanilla. Roll the cookies out thick and then put on parchment lined cookie sheet and stick a lollipop stick in the middle. Make sure stick is not exposed. Bake as normal 350 degree 10-12 min till barely gold on edges and dry in center.
Now comes the awesome part. Normally I decorate cookies with a royal icing but honestly royal icing does not taste the best and I wanted brown and black so I could start with a darker colored icing and much more tasty. Enter Nutella cookie icing !!!!

Nutella Cookie icing recipe
1 cup nutella
1 cup powdered sugar
2 oz frangellico

How to
In your stand mixer mix together the nutella and powdered sugar. Scrape down the bowl a few times so everything mixed in. Should now look like this.

Then add in 2oz of frangelico (a tasty hazelnut liquor) while blending. Keep blending and scrapping down the sides until smooth. It will be a bit thicker then normally used for royal icing decorating but you want that in this case since you want the frosting to look like facial hair. Put in a piping bag with a grass tip. Pipe on mustaches.  I found piping in symmetry hard so they are not fantastic but still look really cute.

Then when piped about half  your cookies put frosting back in bowl and add black food coloring and mi. It takes much more black food coloring then you may expect.
Frost more cookies now with black. Let all the cookies dry flat to harden the icing.

Someone a bit more artistic could probably done a better job with the piping. But the frosting tastes so so good and is a tasty change from royal icing.
Bring to sailor party.