Pancit

I asked Steph to pick up some Mama Sitas Achuete at the Pike Place market during her last trip to the Seattle area. It’s a key ingredient to my Chicken Adobo creation, so she did. Ten packs to be exact. Considering this recipe feeds a lot more than just the two of us, I guess we’re set for a while.

Achuete (Annatto Powder) is a Filipino seasoning you just can’t get around here and it’s important to the Adobo taste. Pancit is the noodle dish that accompanies it and everything came out great yesterday.

Below is the Pancit, Adobo and Achuete, in that order. You can also use the new Search routine to see my other Adobo attempts.

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Search

I started this blog back on June 6, 2011. 974 posts, 3,974 photos, and 126 videos later, here we are. I’ve just created a new Blog Post Search function, available here!

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Stuffid

Here’s the latest original creation from BusDriverJim Productions.

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First Dusting

Here we go again. Snow has been hitting our foothills for the last couple of days. You would think we live in the Rockies, down the road from a ski resort. Oh yeah.

It won’t last long, just a reminder of where we are…

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Pond Drive

The Ponds started out as an ambitious housing subdivision northeast of Victor. The entrances were built, along with a few ponds, and then everything stopped with the crash. The homes would have had these gorgeous Victor foothills to enjoy.

Pond Drive (map) would have been the subdivision’s main connection to Stateline Rd off to the east, but now it’s just a cool green wide path heading towards the foothills.

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Crumbs

While cleaning last summer’s photo folders off my desktop I encountered a few shots that never made the blog.

The first two are Seattle, shot from Alki Beach, followed by Saltwater State Park, Pike Market and the Green River. The last two are eclectic photos from around the house.

Some of them have map coordinates so click the button lower right to see their maps, and of course, enjoy the SlideShow.

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Realligned

After installing my new digital antenna a while back, I lost four channels. These were important to my off the grid lineup, ABC and CW primarily, so I took a shot and emailed the engineer responsible for them and he got back to me.

Gary informed me that Teton Valley is broadcasting most channels from Fred’s Mountain which is where my antenna has been pointed the last few years. The ones I was now missing were coming from an antenna south of Driggs. That’s apparently always been the case but my old antenna didn’t seem to mind that the corner of our house was blocking line-of sight to the tower.

The antenna was sitting right in front of the bush by our propane tank so yesterday Steph and I moved it back about 20 feet so it could see around the house. We got our lost channels back but the damned tree in front is now blocking some public TV channels.

The obvious solution is to add another length of cable and move it out into the back forty, but I’ve got ABC now, Steph’s got her stupid Dancing With The Stars and all’s tranquil around the house. Next spring, out to the field it goes…

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Winter Ready

My new ice-scraper has found it’s home for the winter. Those sweet snow tires will get rock cleaned and re-mounted on our three vehicles as soon as the snow gets serious around here, and the street tires will replace the stacks.

That electrical box provides current to my buses engine block heater to offset the -30s and -40s that are sure to come. Looks like I’m ready!

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Puyallup 2013

I gave Steph my previous Canon point & shoot a while back and she got some nice shots from her trip to the Puyallup Fair last week. This is the Washington State Fair and is billed as the largest single attraction held annually in the state of Washington.

I took Riley to many of these fairs as he was growing up and I can attest to it’s size. You could probably cram about ten of our local Eastern Idaho State Fair‘s into the Puyallup.

Click the photo below to show all 42 shots or run the SlideShow

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Ice Scraper

I was in the Idaho Falls Super WalMart today with a mission in mind. I wanted to buy the biggest and baddest vehicle ice-scraper I could find since the ones at our local outlets are lame, which is surprising considering we live in snow country.

Their top of the line was this $15 beast. It expands out to about three mushrooms, which is the perfect length for my big old bus window. I also have a one mushroom length scraper for my truck, which works great on the smaller window.

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Clear Blue

I’ve been taking some very coarse photos of cracked aggregate rock lately so to refresh my photography soul, here’s what our totally cloudless sky looks like today.

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Clean Crack

• Weed: Dead!

• Crack: Clean!

• Next: Crack stuffed!

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Crack Weed

Rocky Mountain winters are rough on everything and each spring I’m amazed at what survives. As we approach another winter it appears I’ve missed a casualty from last year.

I really didn’t pay much attention to this crack in our driveway but some damned weed sure has. It’s really got me pissed off so as soon as I finish this post I’m going out to kill it with the strongest stuff I can find in the garage. I’ll keep you posted



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Bike Path

The bike path between Driggs and Victor is a straight and level shot that runs right down the valley between Hwy 33 and the frontage road.

It’s now got a fresh coat of asphalt on it, just in time for the snow tire bikes this winter.

Update: Sorry about the lighting difference, sometimes you’re facing the sun, sometimes you’re not. The lead photo is the last leg into Victor and it’s just as paved as it’s northern counterpart…

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