Saturday, February 14, 2009

Lobster Day


I went to Kroger's to buy some beef for a pot roast, and the nice man behind the counter told me I had to sign up to win a free lobster. I filled out the slip not wanting to hurt the man's feelings. The next day Clay sent me an email telling me that he had a voice mail from some man saying "Congratulations you won the lobster!" I had accidently put Clay's number down on the form and he had no idea what was going on. I went by Krogers after work to find out the details. I hadn't paid any attention to the lobster tank at all, since I was a kid and was fascinated by living creatures being at a grocery store. The man chuckled as he told me our lobster was the big one with the white bands around the claws. It was over 5 lbs! He assured me that they could steam the lobster if we didn't want to tackle it at home. So I planned to pick it up the next day.
We did have it steamed at Krogers, although Clay and I agreed that it would have been better if we would have tried it at home, so it was hot and fresh out of the pot. We did put it back in some warm water just to heat him up and we were lucky to find a pot that was big enough. We read that a 5lb lobster could cook for 23-25 min. and he was only steamed for 20 at Krogers so we also thought it was good to give him a couple more minutes.


Dave, our cat was terrified of the thing, as you can see here. It was easily as big as the cat. Clay was wishing we would have brought him home alive to watch Dave's reaction to it crawling around on the floor.
So here is the final set up. We had no proper lobster eating tools, so we had to go to the toolbox. We also used a regular nut cracker, which worked fine for me. The claws were so big that you could just pull chunks of the meat out with a fork, once you twisted the legs off. We decided that 5lbs is just too big. By the time we got to the tail it was getting cold and was actually a little tough. Older lobsters are probably not the best for good eating. We certainly had fun trying something we never would have purchased on our own, but we just couldn't finish it off. Dave was more than happy to help us clean our plates.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Cedar Run


Today I had a chance to explore a little nature trail with a couple of my co-workers. We were trying to scout out the area to see if it would be a good hike for our Wildlife Club kids. It most likely would not be a great area to take the kids. There is a ton to see, but it is not really a long enough hike to allow them to use up a lot of energy. Plus there was very limited parking and several areas where monitoring even a small group of kids would be challenging. It is difficult to find a good spot to take 15-20 kids (with parents) on a hike where you do not risk having a negative impact on the surrounding area. The hike is just off of Ellett Road across from Buckskin Road. There are a couple stoned in areas where people collected water from springs and then several buildings that were used for storing the water for the people that settled in the valley. The trail runs right along Cedar Creek, which is surrounded by Northern White Cedar trees. Here are a couple of shots from our walk.


This was taken through a small hole in a huge water tank. A few musicians decided to put some stools down there and take advantage of the acoustics.

The roof of this old building collapsed, making a nice reflecting pool, with some cool colors.