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Froyo

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 EDT

Continuing on with season six, I set out to make the Lemon-Ginger Frozen Yogurt this weekend. It started with making some Yogurt Cheese to use as the base of the froyo. To begin, I poured two containers of store-bought low fat (1.5% yogurt) in a colander over two bowls.

I got it into the fridge around 8pm, and it immediately started draining. I checked it around midnight and there was already a cup or so of liquid. The next day around 1pm I removed it from the fridge and there was another ~2 cups of liquid in the bowl. That means 3/8 of the total original yogurt was liquid.

It tasted fine. I mean, it was plain yogurt, so it wasn’t fantastic. But it was definitely a creamy consistency much like Greek yogurt. I then broke out all of the frozen yogurt ingredients and got everything mixed together in a bowl.

Note that I grated the ginger with the microplane (just like I did with the lemon zest) rather than mincing it with a knife like the recipe suggests. Once everything was mixed, into the icecream maker it went.

I gave it about 25 minutes to churn, then transferred it to a plastic quart container and put it into the freezer overnight. Oh yeah, I did not add the crystallized ginger to the churned froyo because it’s kind of spicy and I wanted this to have wider appeal.

The next evening after dinner we tried it. I put a sprinkle of the crystallized ginger on top of mine because I enjoy the spice.

The frozen yogurt was delightful. It’s tart, tangy, sour, and sweet all at once. The comments on the Food Network recipe say it’s “summer in a bowl” and I can totally see eating this on a hot day. Gemma gave it a 5 and I gave it a 4, so I’ll take the 5 when we get them. We also really liked the crystallized ginger. Next time, I would definitely mix it into the froyo, as well as try using monk fruit or Swerve to reduce the sugar content.

Homebrew!

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 EDT

In the past I’ve done a lot of home brewing, so I’ve been looking forward to brewing Season Six’s Good Brew.

In the show Alton understandably takes a bare-bones, limited equipment approach to brewing, which is certainly the best way to make it approachable to someone who’s never brewed before. I have a lot more equipment and experience, so rather than trying to replicate his exact process I set out to brew his recipe using my own brewing approach that I have honed over a few dozen batches.

Recipe

So, here’s what I used to recreate Alton’s Good Brew recipe:

1/2 pound 60L crystal malt
5.75 pounds Light DME
Wyeast 1098 (British Ale Yeast)
1.75oz East Kent Goldings hops
1oz Cascade hops

Note that I used dry malt extract instead of the liquid extract that he used in the show. This is just a preference – one I’ve developed over time. To go from a LME to a DME measurement, you can use any number of converters online.

Now let’s get into the brew!

Yeast Starter

Prep started about 24 hours before brew day. I began by creating a yeast starter with the yeast pack.

He didn’t do this in the show, but again I have the equipment and I’ve found that starting the yeast before the pitch makes for more vigorous fermentation (less “lag” period) which helps protect against things like infection.

Brew Day

The following afternoon was brew day. I cut out of work a little early and started brewing at about 3:30pm. First I pulled out all my equipment and inspected, cleaned, and sanitized it.

In the show, AB steeps his specialty grains in the brew kettle itself. I’ve found that doing this in a smaller pot with a grain bag helps with temperature control and reduces mess.

After the grains steeped for 30m at 150 degrees (I needed to kick on the heat two or three times to keep the water temp up), I sparged the grains in a colander over the brew kettle, using 1/2 gallon of 150 degree water.

I then topped off the kettle to 3 gallons and kicked on the heat. While the kettle was heating, I added all of the remaining dry malt extract (DME). It was a touch more than the 5.75lb, but I had that little extra so I figured I’d use it. It took about 35m, but then I had a nice rolling boil.

At the boil, I added 1oz of cascade hops, and 0.75oz of the UK Kent Goldings. Here’s another departure from the show – Alton only boils for 10 or 15 minutes, which is sort of out of the ordinary. Common wisdom is that a longer boil results in better hop utilization. So, I did the “normal” thing here, and boiled for 45m.

Meanwhile, I mixed up some sanitizer (rather than water plus bleach like they do in the show) and got to work sanitizing everything: the fermenter, its lid, the airlock, thermowell, strainer – everything that could come into contact with the wort after it comes off the stove.

After 45 minutes, I added some whirlfloc. In the show, he uses Irish Moss, which is similar. I let the boil go for another 15m, then added the remaining 1oz of Kent Goldings and killed the heat. (Side note: in the show he calls this dry hopping, which isn’t correct – this is just flameout hopping.) I then let the hops steep for 10m (called a “hop stand”) before getting started with the cooling process.

In the show, Alton dumps the wort into the ice-filled fermenter at this point. In my case, I wanted to use my wort chiller and pump setup. So I brought the kettle over to my sink, dumped a cold gallon of water into it, and started the pump.

It took about 30m and two 7 pound bags of ice in addition to all the ice in my freezer (I should have gotten a third bag of ice) but I got the wort down to about 70 degrees. Once it was cool I could then strain it into the sanitized fermenter.

From there, I tossed in my sanitized Tilt hydrometer. This is another departure from the show, where he didn’t bother to do a gravity reading (or tell you the final ABV %). But I have the device, and at the very least it’s helpful for knowing exactly when fermentation is complete. It also monitors temperature, which is huge – good homebrew is all about temperature control. My original gravity (OG) was 1.044.

Fermentation

After straining, tossing in the hydrometer, and pitching the yeast, I was ready to close it up and put it into my fermentation chamber. The chamber is just a chest freezer with the addition of a temperature controller.

The temperature controller is hooked to the freezer on the cold side, and a little space heater on the hot side. I put the probe into the thermowell and set the target temperature to 66 degrees – the controller will then keep the wort between 64 and 68, which is a great range for this yeast strain. I then sat back and waited for fermentation to begin. The next morning I saw some great activity on the airlock:

Fermentation was in full force. Over the next couple days I monitored the temperature and the specific gravity using the Tilt. By Monday morning, approximately 65 hours after pitching the yeast, the airlock activity was very slight (maybe one bubble every 45-60s) and the gravity reading from the Tilt had been constant for 12 hours or so. The next move was to kick the beer temperature up to 71 degrees for a diacetyl rest to help clean up any off flavors.

I set the new temp on Monday afternoon, and let it go for a few days at 71 degrees. By Friday afternoon, the diacetyl rest was done, so I moved it back to about 68 degrees. There the beer sat for another seven days to condition. My planned bottling date was Monday April 27th, so on Saturday April 25th, I started to bring the beer’s temperature down to 40 degrees for a cold crash. By Sunday morning it was at 40 so I didn’t touch the temperature again.

Bottling

Monday was bottling day (well, bottling night). Before work I set about making sure all of my bottles were clean. I first went to the garage and grabbed my tub of bottles.

In previous brews, I would meticulously rinse out every bottle after pouring it, so I wasn’t too worried about caked-on crud. I grabbed 16 22oz bottles, and 24 12oz bottles, mixed up some PBW, and then sent each through the bottle rinser just to make extra sure there’s no gunk in them. After that, I loaded all the bottles up into the dishwasher and sent them through the “sanitize” cycle. This does a few things: rinses out any leftover detergent, gets the bottles hot enough to kill off any lingering nasties, and (since they sit upside down all day) dries them out inside.

In the evening, it was time to bottle. The first thing I did was take the bottles out of the dish washer, where they’d been sitting all day to dry/cool, and run them through the rinser one more time, this time with Star San, and put them on the bottle tree. I then used a priming sugar calculator to figure out that I wanted to boil 4.5oz of dextrose (corn sugar) in 2 cups of water in order to prime the beer for carbonation.

Once the sugar was boiled and the bottling bucket was sanitized, I dumped the primer into the bottling bucket, and then transferred the beer from the fermenter into it.

It was then time to bottle! One great thing about bottling day is that you get to taste your “finished” beer for the first time. Before I started in on filling bottles, I grabbed a sample and tried it – it was delicious. Crisp, dry, clear, nicely malty without being too hoppy, just like an English Pub Ale should be. It’s going to get even better in the next couple weeks while it bottle conditions and carbonates, too.

The other thing you do on bottling day is take your final gravity (FG) reading, which you can use to compare with the original gravity (OG) reading in order to find your total alcohol by volume (ABV) using an online calculator. My FG was 1.006, and plugging that in gives me a final ABV of 4.99%, a nice target for this style of beer.

Bottling was then just a matter of using my filling wand over the open dishwasher, filling the bottles, and capping them. This didn’t take too long, and soon I had 34 bottles full. Between the fermenter and the bottling bucket, there was about a 6-pack left behind, but getting at it would have required tipping the buckets, which would have pulled sediment along with the beer, so I didn’t mind leaving it behind.

Conditioning

After filling the bottles, I put them all into a tub in a closet that stays about 68-72 degrees to bottle condition for the next two weeks. Two Mondays later, on the 11th of May, I put one of the 12oz bottles in the fridge and tried it in the evening.

The flavor of the beer was great, but the carbonation wasn’t enough. It was bubbly but it flattened out really fast, with little to no head. This is OK though, sometimes bottle conditioning takes more than two weeks, especially after cold crashing and taking a bunch of yeast out of suspension. So, I went bottle by bottle and carefully tipped each one over and then back to get any settled yeast back into suspension and wake them up. This is called “rousing” the yeast.

Final Tasting

I gave it about another two weeks and then on the morning of May 22nd, I put another couple of bottles into the fridge. In the evening, I popped one open and saw/heard what I wanted – that tiny pop of the bottle opening, and the little vapor cloud you see due to the drop in pressure that comes with opening the bottle. Both of those signs told me that these were carbonated and ready to drink. So I poured a glass.

The beer is, in a word, delicious. It’s crisp and light, with a mouth feel on the thin side. There is a pop of bitterness at the beginning and it goes down smooth on the finish. The hops are present but not overwhelming. And at just under 5% ABV it’s completely crushable. In my opinion it’s a mighty fine example of an English bitter, or a pub ale as some may call it, kind of on the same page as a Fuller’s.

Home brewing is really fun, and I’d encourage anyone to give it a try. There are plenty of rabbit holes one can go down in this hobby, which keeps it always interesting. I hadn’t brewed for a really long time before this, and I was reminded how fun I find it. Hopefully this will motivate me to get a couple more brews done this year.

Cheers!

Tarragon Sauce

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 EDT

Was planning on pan roasting some salmon tonight for dinner so I thought they would go well with some Tarragon Yogurt Sauce. I started by getting my onions and garlic sweating in some olive oil. The online recipe says to then add 2Tb of stock + 2Tb of cornstarch, but in the episode he mixes the cornstarch in a jar with the full cup of stock, so that is what I did. Another difference from the online recipe is that in the show he adds the tarragon at this point, too, which is also what I did. After adding the slurry, I let it cook until it was thickened.

Then, another difference between the two – in the show he makes a big deal about tempering the yogurt while the online recipe says to just add it. I did the show version and slowly tempered the yogurt in a separate bowl before adding it all back to the pan with some salt and pepper.

After turning the heat back on (low) and stirring the sauce for a bit, I plated the salmon and spooned on the sauce.

Of course, we added a bit of sauce on the side, too. It was delicious – creamy, herby, and a little bit cool. Would definitely make this sauce again, especially if I am trying to impress some dinner guests.

Some Weekend Entertaining

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 EDT

Lots of people coming over this weekend between Friday night and Sunday afternoon, so I thought it’d be a good chance to try out a few more recipes from season six.

On Friday evening I made some Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip to serve to the family coming over to celebrate Vivian’s birthday. Reading through the comments on the Food Network site, lots of folks pointed out that it was a bit too mayonnaise-y, so I halved the mayo, only using 2Tb instead of the 4 that recipe called for.

I think that was a good call, since the dip came out wonderfully. Even folks that don’t normally like that dip really like it. Great reviews all around, I will definitely be making this one again.

Now let’s back up to Friday afternoon, when I started to prep some Fresh Yogurt. I collected all the ingredients, including some Fage Total 2% plain yogurt to use for its live cultures.

Many of the comments, and most sites found by Googling for yogurt making, say that 120 degrees is not enough for the initial heating of the milk. Most commenters and other recipes say 180 is correct, so that’s what I did.

After heating to 180, I took everything off the heat, moved a half cup into another container, and then waited maybe 30m for things to come down to about 115 before mixing the starter into the cooled half cup. When the larger portion was cool, I mixed it all together and put together my fermentation contraption.

I had to keep my heating pad on high for this, and it was still only able to get the milk to about 110 degrees tops. Plus, the safety controls kept turning it off so I’d come back and the yogurt would be like 95-100 when I turned it back on. This went on for about 12 hours, but over that time it got noticeably thicker and around 1am I put the container in the fridge.

On Saturday morning I opened it up and lo and behold we had a quart+ of fresh plain yogurt. Now, plain yogurt is very… plain. We don’t prefer the taste of it by itself, but of course we tried it and as far as plain yogurt goes it was pretty good.

The first thing I decided to do with the my new yogurt windfall was to make some Herb Spread. I started by roasting a head of garlic, picking some thyme leaves, and mixing them into some of the plain yogurt.

Two interesting things about this one, first he never actually makes it in the show, just shows the end result. Second, the recipe in the show is completely different from the online recipe, which I didn’t catch until after I had made it – in the show he gives the cumin/parsley recipe, which online is listed as an alternative to try. Oh well, so then I mixed everything together and let it drain overnight in the fridge.

On Sunday, I took it out of the fridge and moved to a container to try.

I thought it was alright, but like one of the commenters said, I probably could have doubled the garlic and made it a really good garlic spread. As it was, it was just kind of… plain. My guests didn’t really eat it either. So I’d call this one a bust, which is too bad because I had high hopes for a flavorful, lower calorie spread/dip.

Artichokes

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 EDT

Had the day to myself today, so I decided I’d look down the recipe list and pick something to try. I discovered that artichokes are actually in season, so I decided I’d go through the various recipes in the season six episode “The Choke’s on You”.

Essentially, Alton builds up to making marinated artichokes to use in a pasta salad. It begins by creating some Herb Oil to use for marinating. Making it couldn’t be easier. First, I gathered up the ingredients.

Then, after stuffing all the herbs in the jar (side note, I used lemon zest instead of orange zest) and heating up the oil, you just pour it all together and let it sit overnight.

Then it was on to prepping some Broiled Chokes. I started by gathering up all of the artichokes, some lemonized water, and a few tools.

I then set off on removing all the leaves, splitting the hearts in half, cutting out the choke, and scraping out all of the little nettles inside. In the episode, Alton uses a peeler but I found that a paring knife worked way better for me. Even so, preparing six artichokes for broiling was very labor intensive, not to mention incredibly messy. I am not sure I really would ever do that again. Also, even with the lemon water, dipping my tools, and so forth, I could not for the life of me keep them from browning.

I then tossed the artichokes in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put them under the broiler. The comments on the recipe say they come out very tough, so I decided I’d really roast them up good. I left them for 10 minutes cut side up, then turned them and gave them another 5 minutes under high broil. They came out looking like they were grilled, but they were for sure cooked and tender.

We tried a few, and they were fine. Nice and tender, tasted like your average grilled or roasted veggie. I then cut the rest up and put them into another jar, ready to receive some herb oil marinade tomorrow morning.

In the morning, I strained the jar of herb oil into the jar of cut up chokes, and left that to sit all day. I had plenty of herb oil, enough to marinate the broiled chokes and leave another little jar left over.

Six or seven hours later, I turned to using them in Artichoke Pasta Salad. Preparing it was simple. Rather than farfale, I used Kaizen pasta because it’s gluten free, and high in fiber/protein.

Side note, rather than cut up and mix in some chicken, I served this as a side dish to some grilled chicken thighs. It was delicious, the herb oil dressing was a fantastic, earthy background, the marinated artichokes were a tasty addition, and it complimented the chicken perfectly.

Onion Dip

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 EDT

We were going up to a game night on Saturday, so Friday night I decided to prep some Onion Dip from Scratch to bring along with us. I started by dicing up a cup and a half of onion real fine and getting into a pan with some olive oil to caramelize.

By the way, a cup and a half of diced onion turned out to be just under 8oz. It took about 30 minutes to caramelize, versus the 20m that recipe says.

I then mixed it all up with the sour cream, mayo, etc. as the recipe says. I put it in the fridge overnight for the flavors to meld, which from the recipe comments sounds like a really important step.

The next morning I tried it and thought it could use a little more onion flavor, so I added a quarter teaspoon of onion powder. We then opened it up at game night, served with some crinkle cut chips.

The dip was alright. In my opinion, and consistent with the comments, it was a bit too mayo-y. Next time, I’d back the mayo out by a quarter cup and replace that with with an extra quarter cup of sour cream. I’d also use more onion. Probably 10-12oz total, because the onion is the real star of the show. I’d keep the extra quarter teaspoon of onion powder, and maybe even try a shake of Worcestershire, like people in the comments suggest.

Marinated Slaw

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 EDT

Saw a napa cabbage at the supermarket this morning so I decided to use it make some Marinated Slaw. I started by halving the ~4lb cabbage, cutting out the core, and thinly slicing it. In the episode, AB used a box grater contraption for this, but a sharp knife and thin slices seemed to do the trick. After thinly slicing a large green and red bell pepper, I put everything in a colander to drain.

There’s a difference between the episode and the online recipe here – in the episode, he specifically calls out not salting the veggies, and in the online recipe it says to salt them. After sitting for two hours unsalted, I got zero liquid in the bowl, so I tried a pinch of salt and left it for another couple hours. After that I only had like a teaspoon of liquid in the bowl.

Meanwhile, I made the brine. Another difference from the episode recipe, the online recipe does not add salt to the brine, whereas in the episode AB adds 2Tb of salt. So, for mine I split the difference and added 1Tb of salt. I then packed all of the cabbage and bell pepper into a jar and filled it with the brine.

I was able to get all of the veggies and all of the brine into the jar. Then I popped it into the fridge for three days.

Fast forward to Saturday April 4. We were going up to Gemma’s sisters so I figured I’d bring this up for folks to try. The recipe and the episode were kind of unclear about how to actually eat this, so I just kind of winged it. I started by draining it in a colander.

Then I used tongs to put a bit in bowls.

Overall, the slaw was crunchy and flavorful. The flavor was very much in the “bread and butter” pickles arena, which many people did not like. Not that it was bad, I just think that’s a flavor profile that folks in my family aren’t terribly fond of. For that reason, plus because it’s got SO much salt and sugar in it, I probably won’t make this again. But, I can totally see using this to top BBQ sliders or something of that nature.

Beets, Part 1

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 EDT

Lots of the Season 6 recipes depend on fresh produce, so for those I really want to wait until they’re in season. That won’t be long from now, so until then it looks like you can get beets pretty much year round. So, this is what I decided to tackle this weekend.

I bought a few bunches of smallish beets. Not baby ones, I didn’t see anything like that, but these ones were definitely way smaller than normal.

I started out by cutting the stems off, leaving just the beets and the greens. I set the beet roots aside for now, then sauteed up the greens along with some mushrooms to start the Beet Green Gratin The recipe was a little confusing, it said to use a pound of greens but a pound is a lot of greens. I wonder if he included the stems with that measure? I’m not sure, so I used 6.5oz of just the greens (after coarse stems were removed) and I roughly chopped them instead of keeping them whole (something else I wasn’t clear on via the recipe and episode). Since I used just 6.5oz of greens, I halved the recipe and put it all in a 1.5 quart baking dish.

I then covered it with crushed up gluten free crackers and baked for 30m, with the first 15 covered. I completely forgot to get a photo of the finished product, though. Anyway, reviews on this were mixed. Some of our guests (I know, as a general rule I don’t serve a recipe to guests that I’ve never done) completely loved it. One said that on a scale from 1 to 5 it was a 7! Personally, I thought it was just alright. I did have seconds though. Gemma didn’t like it at all. So, I took all of those ratings into consideration and called it a 3.

The next day, I turned to the roots to make some Glazed Baby Beets. I started by scrubbing them and trimming them down.

You can see that I didn’t really have baby beets, more like toddlers I guess. They were definitely way smaller than the huge beets you usually see, though. I put them into a large sauce pot in a single layer, then added the apricot juice. After 10m I added the honey and white balsamic. Ten minutes later some were done, but not all, so I gave it another ten minutes, which did the trick. At that point, there was still a ton of liquid in the pot, so I pulled the beets into a bowl and let the liquid cook down until it became a glaze-like consistency. I let them cool a bit and we ate them cut up in bowls, with a little extra glaze drizzled on top.

The first taste was good, but something was a little “weird” as Gemma described it. We decided to put them in a container and let them chill overnight so all the flavors could meld and get to know each other. The second day we pulled some out of the fridge, gave them about 30s in the microwave to take the chill off, and this time they were much better! Sweet and tangy, just how you’d expect beets to be.

Season Six Begins

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 EST

We had this Saturday afternoon/evening free so what better opportunity to jump right into Season Six?

The first recipe I wanted to try was the Curry Chicken Pot Pie. I love chicken pot pie, and I’ve been wanting to try out some gluten free puff pastry.

Reading the comments on the recipe, folks said it helps to use more liquid, so given that the recipe calls for 12oz of chicken broth, I figured I’d just use a whole 14.5oz can, and then add another 9.5oz of milk for a total of 3 cups liquid. I used 2% milk, and I adjusted the flour and butter up by 1 Tb each. That finished up the prep for all my ingredients.

For the flour, I used Bob’s Red Mill measure-for-measure flour. I followed the recipe from here exactly, and I put it all in a glass 9x13 baking dish.

Once that was done I set it aside, and turned my focus to dessert – chocolate eclairs. Now, these obviously rely on gluten and I needed to figure out how to adapt the recipe. Turns out that King Arthur has a recipe for gluten free pate a choux on their web site. Looking at that recipe, it’s pretty close to the Sweet or Savory Pate a Choux that Alton does in the episode. So, after reading it, I decided I’d just go for the Good Eats version but just substituting the King Arthur 1:1 flour. I did the boil and then added the result to the mixing bowl to cool.

It actually took about 20min to cool. The King Arthur recipe helpfully says that the dough ball should be about 125 degrees before adding the eggs. So I waited, then added egg by egg. When it was done I put it in the piping bag and then… attempted to pipe them into eclair shapes.

So you can see they did not turn out very well. I figured out later that the piping set I have doesn’t have a big enough tip for this. I should have just used the set without a tip, and it would have turned out way better. Oh well. Another difference that King Arthur has in their recipe is cooking time, which I figured may have something to do with the lack of gluten, so I followed their timing: 15 min at 400 then another 25 at 325. When they were done, I turned back to the pot pie. I have been looking forward to using this gluten free puff pastry for a while.

I rolled it out and cut 6 circles out, placed them on top of the casserole, and got it all in the oven.

It took about 30m to cook.

The puff pastry didn’t puff as much as I’d hoped it would, but it was cooked and the whole dish was really good. We all agreed, though, that the curry powder was a bit too present, and while it does add a really good dimension to the dish, perhaps halving it would be a better way. We also lamented the small amount of pastry crust. Next time I do this, I’ll probably just put a whole sheet over the top and let it be the crust.

Once the pot pie was done and eaten, I turned my attention to finishing off the eclairs for dessert. I started off by making some Ganache to top them off with. Then, I grabbed the Jello vanilla pudding I had made earlier from the fridge. I put the pudding in a piping bag, and filled a few of the pate a choux shells. Finally, I covered them with the ganache and we had beautiful looking eclairs.

Just kidding. That picture was, uh, enhanced. The eclairs actually looked like this.

Yeah, not winning any beauty contests. Actually the photo makes them look kind of gross. But, I’ll tell you, they were pretty darn good. Not as light and fluffy as gluten eclairs, but they were definitely passable. I think next time I make pate a choux I’ll do them as little dumplings and make profiteroles – that would be a perfect application for this gluten free adaptation.

All in all, a great way to begin Season Six!

A note on gluten free modifications

This will be the first season where we start out with the mission of trying to make every recipe gluten free. We need to be real about this, though – modifying recipes to remove gluten many times results in something very different from the original. Therefore, the ratings for some of those recipes may be skewed a bit by how the results of modification turn out. This is especially true for stuff like pastries, desserts, and breads.

So starting now, I’ll be tagging recipes where we made significant modifications for gluten removal. Significant modifications would be substituting gluten free flour for baked goods, for example. An insignificant modification might be using gluten free breadcrumbs as a topping. Beware if we rate one of those recipes low – it might be due to fact that gluten free recipes sometimes just don’t translate well. For example, I suspect that the pate a choux might have been a 4 if we were able to use regular gluten flour. If we ever rate a GF recipe a 1 or 2, I’ll probably try the full gluten version just to be sure.

A little Season Six preview

There’s a lot to look forward to and be excited about in Season Six. I’m looking forward to artichokes, which I’ve never cooked before, and doing the chimney starter tuna loin. Lots of good dips, a cheese souffle, and making home made yogurt. I’m also looking forward to a return to home brewing, something I haven’t done in a long time.

There’s a few in this season giving me a bit of a pause, though. Ravioli and tortellini will be interesting to try out gluten free. There’s the funnel cake and golden cake, too. We’ll give our best GF efforts on those, though I may need to adjust the recipes a bit to account for it.

Anyway, it took me almost 3 years to get through season five, let’s hope it’s way less for season six!

Season Five Grand Finale

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 EST

Since we were having some friends over on Saturday, which is Valentine’s Day, I figured why not do a special dinner that also wraps up Season Five?

Let’s start with dessert

It hasn’t happened for a while that my first attempt at a Good Eats recipe was a total, throw-it-away-and-try-again disaster, but it happened on Sunday. I’ve never made a cheesecake before, but I thought I had been doing a good job on it – my crust looked good and blind baked, my batter was smooth and not chunky, I had the water bath perfect. Well, I followed the Sour Cream Cheesecake recipe to a T, and when I finally turned the cake out onto a plate, it basically fell apart, looking more like cheesecake pudding than an actual cake. The flavor was really good though – we each had a piece (or two!) but I threw the rest away and vowed to come back and figure out what I did wrong.

I spent the rest of that evening scrolling through the 200+ comments on the recipe. Come to find out, what most likely went wrong was the cooking time – on the web, it says to cook it for 1 hour and then let it sit in the oven for another hour. Most folks who did that ended up in the same situation as me. Well, if you then go and look in the Good Eats: The Early Years book, it says to cook it for two hours, and then let it rest in the “off” oven for another hour and a half. People in the comments who did this all reported great success. So. This is what I did on my second attempt.

On Friday night, I prepared the cheesecake second attempt. I began like I did the last one, with a blind baked crust:

In the episode he used “33 graham cracker squares” but as you know we do things gluten free around here, so I used two 7oz boxes of Pamela’s Honey Grahams. I then got all my ingredients laid out for mixing.

Once the batter was finished and the crust was cool to the touch, I poured it into the pan and put it in a roasting pan to make a water bath.

This time, I cooked it for two hours, then turned the oven off after opening the door for a minute, and left it there for another hour before moving into the fridge to set overnight.

And now for the beef

I had always planned to make the Dry Aged Standing Rib Roast with Sage Jus my last recipe of Season Five, and it just so happened that it was perfect timing that we were planning to have 10 people here. I have to say this one made me nervous – rib roasts are very expensive so I did not want to screw this up like I did with the first cheesecake attempt. This time, I sat down and read almost all of the comments in the online recipe to see if there’s any gotchas I needed to look out for. More on that later.

I started by going out and buying an 8.75 pound three-bone prime rib roast.

This was on Monday. After unwrapping it I dried it off, wrapped it up in some cheese cloth, then popped it into the fridge to dry age.

There I left it until Saturday morning. A few times during the week I unwrapped it and changed the cheese cloth out, just to keep things as dry as possible. Saturday morning I took the roast out of the fridge around 9:30am, to let it start getting to room temp.

It had gotten much darker as it aged, but I didn’t really see any of the “gross” looking parts that folks often talk about on dry aged beef. So I didn’t bother trimming or cutting anything off of it.

Now, this recipe’s episode makes a big deal about oven cleanliness and AB uses a huge terra cotta planter as a safety mechanism to guard against dirty or inefficient ovens. I did try and find one at my local Lowe’s and Home Depot, but they had nothing like the one he uses in the episode. Going back to the comments on the online recipe, I saw that most people didn’t use the planter, instead opting for a roasting pan with a rack, lightly tented with foil. So, that’s what I did too. But first, I oiled the roast with canola oil, mixed up some salt and pepper (0.5 tsp salt per bone is what he said in the episode), rubbed it all over the roast, then put in my probe thermometers. I put the roast in the rack – bone side up – and was ready to go.

I figured I’d use two probes both because I had them, and because I wanted a bit of insurance in case I put one too close to a bone and got wild readings – it looks like there’s more than a few folks in the comments that did this, pulling their roast out when it looked done only to find it extremely rare. I’m going for a perfect medium rare here.

Again from the comments, on average people reported it takes about 45min per pound at 200 degrees. Figuring after dry aging that it was about 8 pounds (I wish I had thought to weigh it), that means it would take 6 hours to get to the ~124 degrees that folks recommend cooking it to. Again, this is another little difference from the original recipe – in the episode he cooks it to 118 and it carries over to 130, but folks observed that it doesn’t carry over anywhere close to 12 degrees, more like 5 or 6. Hence, the 124 target.

Back to the cheesecake

Once I got the roast situated, I turned my attention to the cheesecake, which had been in the fridge all night. I took it out, pulled the parchment from the sides, then put it in a shallow bath of hot water to help loosen up the bottom. Once I did that, I put a piece of parchment on top of the cake, put a sheet pan over it, and flipped it over. It took a few whacks to get to going, but the cake then fell right out of the pan, upside down, onto the parchment. I put a big glass plate on the bottom of the cake (currently on top) and flipped it one more time. It worked WAY better this time than it did on Sunday – perfectly set, a bit springy, and it all stayed together nicely. Finally, I grabbed the left over graham cracker crumbs and spread them over the sides of the cake. This part was a bit of a pain, and if I did it again I would crush up the ones for the cake sides way finer – the large chunks might be good for the bottom, but they don’t work well for the sides, and it would look way better with smaller pieces there.

Once that was done, we had to cut a slice to test it, then it was back in the fridge to wait for tonight.

Cooking the roast

I put the roast in the oven at exactly 11:45am, meaning my calculated finish time to 124 would be about 5:45pm, leaving enough time for resting and searing to get us to my 6:30pm dinner time target. During the cook I wanted to watch the meat’s temperature carefully, as some folks reported that they needed to bump the oven to 225 or even 250 in order to get it cooked in a reasonable time. So I checked both temperature probes every hour. Here’s the log.

Time	Probe 1	Probe 2	Notes
11:45am	37	37	After two hours out of the fridge
12:45pm	43	42
1:45pm	55	53
2:45pm	73	69
3:45pm	89	84	Turned oven up to 225
4:45pm	104	99
5:45pm	120	-	Second probe crapped out
6:15pm	127	-

So you can see a few things here. First, about 4 hours into the cook I decided it was going a bit too slowly, and I pushed the oven up to 225. This is something that was suggested in the recipe comments, so I felt OK doing that.

Second, you see that one of my probes kicked the bucket in the middle of the cook. That was unfortunate, but also it was lucky I had the second one in there. The second probe was always behind the first, so when I pulled the meat out, I waited until it showed 127, because the second probe would have been about 122. The other thing you can see is that I was about 30m off – I had originally thought it would take 6 hours, but it was more like 6.5 hours. It’s funny because if you take the original weight of the roast (8.75) and figure 45min per pound, you ger 6.5 hours.

I rested the roast while the oven was heating to 500, and it peaked at 133, which is one degree above the top of medium rare. The second probe probably would have peaked at about 128, so I feel like I hit my target. Once the oven was 500, I put the roast back in, this time uncovered, and let it go for another 10 minutes to crust up. The result was a beautiful crusty prime rib.

I let that rest while I made the sage au jus that is part of the recipe. Also, AB notes in the episode that you can add a few pats of butter to thicken it up, so I did that, too. While it rested I also finished up some roasted carrots and some instant pot baby potatoes, and once those were done I got to slicing.

The meat was perfectly medium rare. The au jus was amazing. This recipe was a huge winner, and I was so relieved because of the time and expense put into it. After the steak we then had cheesecake for dessert, and that was a huge crowd pleaser as well.

All in all, this was an awesome way of wrapping up season five, and I was so happy to be able to share that with some close friends. Now, on to season six! I love the start of a new season – the world is wide open with the recipe choices, and I really enjoy planning out when and where to make them.

Squid Stir Fry

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:00:00 EST

What better thing to do on a snowed-in day than try out some Good Eats recipes?

Today I decided for a late lunch we’d have some squid stir fry aka. Squid Vicious. It started with some frozen squid that I ran under the tap to thaw. I took the bodies apart, cut, scraped, scored, and quartered them.

It’s worth noting that the online recipe leaves out the scraping part, so I don’t know how important that actually is. After prepping the bodies, I then got all the rest of the ingredients prepped and ready for a very quick cook.

I went back and watched the episode, and I realized that it’s very much about using a wok, and even a turkey fryer burner to get it tremendously hot. Well, I have a turkey fryer but I don’t have a wok, so this would have to be done in a pan, at the highest heat my stove could put out.

After a quick cook, we plated it over some sushi rice and sat down to lunch.

This recipe was surprisingly delicious. The squid was perfect. It rolled up into little ribbons, and it was tender, flavorful, and not in the least bit rubbery. The flavor of the stir fry itself was fantastic, my guess due in no small part to the miso broth stir fry sauce. This is one of the Good Eats recipes I’d been dreading and putting off because I thought it’d be bleh. But fortunately, I was wrong.

My hunch is that this recipe would be great for just any general stir fry. Using shrimp or chicken marinated the same way in soy sauce and corn starch would make any protein perfect for this. Will most likely reach for this recipe any time I want to make a stir fry. Maybe next time I’ll even try a wok!

Eggplant Pasta

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 EST

Between holiday parties and entertaining I thought I’d slip in a dinner of Eggplant Pasta. I started by purging a couple of eggplants.

Then sliced them up thin to look like strands of pasta.

Finally, I finished off the recipe in the pan as instructed.

The result was underwhelming. We really though it’d be better, but it’s still just sort of bland eggplant. The sauce was great though, and I’d use this again along with some actual pasta, and then some protein like grilled chicken or shrimp.

Probably won’t do this one again.

Crepe Quiche

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 EST

This morning I started my day by making some savory crepes so later I could make Crepe Quiche Lorraine for lunch. I’ve made crepes a couple of times already for Season 5, and I think this time I really had it dialed in.

I discovered that the heat on the pan should be much lower than I’d usually think. I used a quarter tablespoon of unsalted butter per crepe in my 8” nonstick pan, and 1.5oz of batter per crepe.

After making the crepes, sauteing the onions, crumbling the bacon, and shredding the cheese, I was ready to put them together.

Then I poured them:

And it was into the oven. I had a ton of left over eggs and cheese so I took the rest of it and made a little frittata. The recipe said to cook at 350 for 15m until the egg is set, but I found that it needed more like 25m.

The quiches were OK. It’s funny because you’d think that because each individual ingredient is great, that the combination of them all would be fantastic, but they were basically underwhelming. With the amount of work it took to put this recipe together, I probably won’t make this one again.

Raw Clams

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 EST

Figured I’d go buy some fresh littlenecks this afternoon to have a bit of an appetizer of Clams on the Half Shell with Fresh Mayonnaise. Earlier in the day, though, I broke out the stick blender and some avocado oil to make some homemade mayo using a recipe I found online. It was super easy and the mayo is delicious.

Then it was time to get into the clams.

I tried using my oyster knife and then a butter knife but both were way too big to get into the shell. So, instead I used an old paring knife while wearing an anti-cut glove.

This was the way, and soon I had about a dozen clams open.

To accompany them, I took the mayo from earlier and divided it up. One third was the original mayo. Another third I added a finely minced garlic clove, some pepper, and a bit more lemon juice to make an aioli. The last third I mixed in some Sambal Olek to make a spicy mayo.

All in all, the clams were fine. We absolutely love oysters on the half shell, but clams on the half shell are simply OK. The mayos as an accoutrement is an amazing idea. Can’t wait to try the spicy mayo on some oysters.

Butternut Squash Dumplings

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 EST

For a Sunday afternoon project I decided to tackle the first half of Butternut Dumplings with Brown Butter and Sage by making the dumplings and freezing them for later. I had been sort of dreading this one, because reading through the comments on the Food Network recipe page, I saw that tons of people had a lot of trouble with it and ended up with wet, sticky dough that couldn’t be worked. So, I figured I’d halve the recipe and see what I could come up with.

The recipe on the site leaves a lot to be desired, especially because it doesn’t give any weights to the ingredients. It calls for one and half butternut squashes, and four russet potatoes. After weighing a few squashes and potatoes at the supermarket, I determined that half of this recipe would be 1.5 pounds of butternut squash, and 1.5 pounds of potato. So, equal proportions.

I went ahead and roasted the butternut squash (oh, by the way I used pre-cubed pieces, which makes it so much easier) and the potatoes for about an hour at 375. When they came out I mashed them all together and mixed in an egg (I didn’t halve that part of the recipe) plus 2 teaspoons of kosher salt and a pinch of nutmeg.

Since we’re halving the recipe I then added 3/4 cups of Bob’s Red Mill All Purpose Gluten Free Flour and mixed it with a spoon. The dough looked like it was coming together but it wasn’t quite the consistency I thought I was looking for, so I added another quarter cup of flour for a total of 1 cup altogether, plus a quarter teaspoon of xanthan gum. At this point, the dough was the consistency of the cookie dough you buy in the tube at the grocery store, which seemed exactly right to me.

Rolling it out on the counter, I used only a little more flour. This part was time consuming but not terribly difficult. As I made rope after rope, I cut them up with a butter knife and put them on parchment-lined sheet pans.

Then it was into the freezer. A few hours later I took all of them out and put them into a plastic bag for cooking later.

The next Saturday was when I decided to give these a try for lunch. I started by boiling a large stock pot full of water, then dumping 2 cups of dumplings into the water. The recipe said they’d float when they were done, but I didn’t find tha to be true. I checked them frequently and when they were thawed through and cooked to al dente I removed them from the water and added them to an ice batch (a strainer in a bowl of ice water). I then drained them, tossed them in a little olive oil, and added them to a pan with some butter and sage.

When they started to get a nice browned crust I plated them and grated some fresh Parmesan cheese on top, plus a pinch of sea salt.

Then we ate! They were good. Not mind-blowing, but a really nice snack. The texture was very light, and the flavor mild. They were a little dry and we concluded that a bit of a light cream sauce or brown butter sauce would really take them up a notch. I might try that with the ones I still have in the fridge. Overall, though, this was a decent project with a pretty delicious result.

Roesti and Radicchio

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 00:00:00 EST

For dinner tonight I thought I’d do a couple of Season 5 recipes that seemed like they’d go well together when combined with some grilled chicken.

In the morning, I started by cooking up a one of the packs of homemade bacon I made a few weeks ago and saving off the resulting drippings. This would be the base of the dressing for Bacon Vinaigrette with Grilled Radicchio.

When it was time to start dinner, I first shredded up a pound of yukon gold potatoes and 4oz of onion. After all the shredding was done I then put it all into some cheese cloth and squeezed as much liquid from it that I could. This was the base for the Potato Roesti.

While the grill was heating, I started the roesti. I had two 8-inch pans so I could do two at a time.

To flip them I used the lid trick that AB used in the show, and it went pretty smooth.

I continued doing roestis and putting them in a 200-degree oven to keep warm.

Meanwhile, I had some chicken on the grill and put the radicchio on there as the chicken was finishing up. I microwaved the now-congealed bacon grease and whisked up the dressing. It was dark out and my grill area isn’t super well lit, so I didn’t notice that grilling the radicchio took more of the color out of it. It looked pretty sad when I got it back inside.

However, both dishes were delicious. This salad dressing is really great, though not terribly good for you, with the bacon grease and the sugar, but it would be a good one to make for dinner guests with a green salad, tomatoes, croutons, and bacon crumbles.

The roestis were a huge hit, too. We ate them with a little sour cream, and we wer all sad when all four were gone. Cooking them is a bit of a pain, so next time I think I would try using my electric griddle and making smaller ones, kind of like I do with pancakes.

Bacon!

Rusty Geldmacher — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 EDT

Creating Scrap Iron Chef’s Bacon is more of a project than a recipe, and I’ve been looking forward to this one. The prospect of making my own bacon, completely from scratch, has always interested me.

It started with the pork belly. I was able to find a 3.5lb one in the freezer at my local butcher, so I thawed that out, and cut it down to 2.5lb for ease of recipe adaptation. I then rubbed it with coarse ground black pepper:

And then popped it into a container with the cooled curing liquid:

I weighed down the pork with some pickle pepples that we had, and that worked well for keeping it submerged in the cure for the next three days.

After three days, it was go time. I pulled the pork belly out of the cure and put it on a sheet pan with a rack, in front of a fan, for a little over an hour to develop a nice pellicle on top.

After that, it was time to get it smoking. For cold smoking, I used a setup that I’ve been successful with in the past for making smoked cheese. Rather than rigging up a hot zone/cold zone smoker like AB does in the episode, I used a smoke tube together with some apple wood smoking pellets, right on my regular grill with the burners off.

After smoking for about 6 hours (I needed to refill the tube twice), I pulled the pork belly, or should I say the bacon.

After pulling from the “smoker” I vacuum sealed the whole thing and put it in the fridge for a few days. The recipe doesn’t say to do this, but when I do smoked cheese I let it rest for a while to let the smoke “sink in”. Figured it wouldn’t hurt with the bacon.

A couple days later, I borrowed a friend’s deli slicer to get to work. First, though, I put the whole belly into the freezer for about an hour to help with the cutting. After that, it was slicing time.

Since the slicer can fit ~8 inches left to right, I had to slice the short way a bit, leaving me with a few shorter pieces, but then I was able to get a whole bunch of normal long cuts. I also ended up with a chunk of bacon ends, which I’ll eventually render down to use for making clam chowder.

Finally, I divided up the cut bacon into vacuum-sealed packages about about 6oz each.

I froze most of it, but left two packs out – one to cook, and the other to give to Stan, who lent me the slicer.

At last came time to cook the bacon. I used my regular technique, which is similar to the one AB uses on the show – I lay the strips out on a sheet pan and pop it into a cold oven that I then set to 350. It takes 25-30m and the bacon comes out crispy and crunchy, just the way we like it.

– cooked bacon

Picking it Back Up

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 00:00:00 EDT

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been back into this project, and a lot has happened in the mean time. Shortly after the last recipe I made, Gemma was officially diagnosed with Celiac. Then in the summer of 2025, Vivian was diagnosed Celiac as well. So now 2/3 of the family is gluten free, which has been quite an adjustment.

It will have its effect on this project – from here on out I am going to try to make each recipe gluten free if at all possible. Some recipes of course will need to be adjusted, and there will be some that I won’t be able to share with the girls. I’m going to try and keep the number of those to a minimum. When there’s a Good Eats recipe that requires ingredients that contain gluten, I may completely stray from AB’s original guidance and just do my best to make a gluten free version of whatever’s being made.

To get back into the swing of things, on Friday night I put some ingredients together into the little 2.5 quart slow cooker for some Overnight Oatmeal. Thankfully Bob’s makes gluten free steel cut oats which were perfect for this.

The show’s recipe called for using dried figs and dried cranberries, but we tried it with dried cherries and dried apricots. The cherries were a great addition, but the apricots really overpowered everything else.

Then on Sunday I decided to make us a dessert treat for later in the evening by putting together two gelatin recipes: Sparkling Gingered Face and Cinnamon Cherry Heart. I had bought these small heart and brain molds to use for this, so instead of a face I used brains for the sparkling ginger gelatin.

I did notice that on the online recipe for the ginger face, there’s a single comment saying it’s all wrong and in the wrong order. I went back to the episode to verify this, and sure enough the comment is right. The real recipe should be more like:

Pour 1 cup ginger ale into a bowl
Sprinkle 2 packets gelatin over the ginger ale
Let bloom for 3-5 minutes
Microwave on high, stirring every minute until temperature reaches 150°F (no higher)
Slowly pour 1 cup champagne into the warm gelatin mixture, stirring constantly
Refrigerate for about 1 hour until it reaches egg-white consistency
Pour into mold and refrigerate until set

The gelatin itself came out perfectly – completely clear, very well set. However, the flavor of both was just… gross. We couldn’t figure out why these flavor combinations would be used. We figured maybe this is something like they’d do in the 1940’s or something, but anyway we’ll never make these particular flavors again.

Later that night I put in some oats using only dried cherries for additions. Monday morning we tried it again and still were underwhelmed. The fruit just seems to take over and really detract from the oat’s flavors. I didn’t get a photo of that one.

Monday evening we were planning to do a sausage and root vegetable bake for dinner, so as a little appetizer I decided to make some Squash Soup. The recipe calls for using two large butternut squash, but I only used a single squash and halved the rest of the recipe.

It came out great. A wonderful belly warmer as the weather is starting to get a bit colder this time of year. I think this will be added to my go-to rotation. In my version I only used a pinch of white pepper, and way less than the half a tablespoon of salt that the recipe calls for. I used a couple pinches on the squash itself, and then a couple pinches in the soup. By the way, I think next time I’ll cut the squash up before roasting it – trying to scrape it out of the hot peel was a pain, and I think by cutting it up I’d get a bit more even cooking.

And finally, since the two previous overnight oats attempts were both mediocre, I decided that I’d try one more time, this time without fruit additions. I followed the recipe exactly, just leaving out the fruit, and this time the family did enjoy them. Something about adding the dried fruit was just too reminiscent of fruit cake I guess…

Mushroom Crepe Cake

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 EDT

Made Mushroom Crepe Cake as a side dish tonight to go along with some salmon and asparagus. It’s a fantastic dinner addition!

It started yesterday when I made a batch of savory crepes. This batch turned out way better than the batch I made for crepes suzette. I followed the savory crepe recipe that goes along with the cake recipe, and I used about 2 teaspoons of dried rosemary for herbs. Also, this time as an experiment I made the crepes gluten free by using a cup of Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour, along with a quarter teaspoon of xanthan gum. Each crepe took about 1.5 ounces of batter in my 8-inch nonstick pan. After letting them cool I popped them in fridge overnight.

Then tonight I started by dicing up a pound of mushrooms and making the filling as instructed in the recipe. I used shredded mozzarella instead of provolone, because that’s what I could find.

I then stacked crepe-filling combos until I used all of the mushroom mixture. I ended up using 6 crepes total.

Now, the recipe says to throw it all under the broiler, but since the crepes were out of the fridge, I popped it into the 350 degree own alongside the asparagus, giving the cake about 10 minutes to warm through. Topped it with some chives, cut it into 8 pieces and we had an amazing side dish.

This one is delicious, yet involved, and doesn’t yield a crowd-serving portion, so I’ll save this for small gatherings, but definitely do it again some time!

Clam Chowder

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 EDT

I knew going into this one that it wasn’t going to be great chowder. I knew that because I made this Clam Chowder a long time ago while I was creating my own recipe. I did end up using a lot of the ideas from this one in mine, such as steaming whole clams and using the resulting juices in the chowder.

The thing that struck me right away about this one is that it’s very heavy on the potatoes. Six cups is a lot – I only used a bit more than 4 cups and it was still too much.

Even after using the stick blender: too many potatoes in the chowder. I stopped blending when I thought I might be starting to make clam-flavored mashed potatoes.

Also, I forgot to get a photo of the soup in bowls. Anyway, the chowder is fine. It’s passable and we ate the whole batch over the weekend, but I wouldn’t make this recipe again.

Crepes Suzette

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 00:00:00 EDT

I’ve been looking forward to the crepes recipes in this season, and what better way to begin than to make some Crepes Suzette for Saturday night dessert?

It starts with making up a whole mess of sweet Crepes. This was the first time I’ve ever made them, and there’s definitely a learning curve here. Flipping was the hardest part. I also needed to get a feel for how much batter was the right amount, and when they were done. I landed on: about an ounce and a half of better for my 8-inch pan, and deciding they’re done when there’s just a little bit of browning going on.

When the stacks of crepes were done, it was time to make the sauce and cook them in it. I used Cointreau for the orange liqueur, and a full stick of butter. Together with the sugar it creates a kind of caramel sauce which is delicious but very sweet. I think next time I’ll use half the amount of sugar for the sauce (the recipe called for 2.5 Tb, I think I will try 1Tb).

I topped them with some vanilla ice cream, but it melted really fast so the pictures of the finished product are… pretty bad. Thankfully, the whole thing put together was fantastic. We still have a few left over sweet crepes, which we might just heat up and top with chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

Baba Ghannouj

Rusty Geldmacher — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:00:00 EDT

Spent a couple weeks with the folks in Florida and wanted to get at least one recipe in while we were there. Since we usually start the evening with cocktails and apps, I figured that Baba Ghannouj would be a good one to try.

I started by grilling a medium-sized eggplant, kept on the grill for the full 30 minutes recommended by the recipe.

After that it was a matter of getting everything into the food processor. Instead of a half-bunch of parsley, I used about a handful, and am glad I did – a half bunch would have been overwhelming. Once everything was mixed, I let it hang in the fridge for an hour or so.

It came out great – my parents absolutely loved it. We rated it a 3, because while it was good, I’m not sure we’ll make it again.

Pumpkin Muffins

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 02 Mar 2024 00:00:00 EST

I had meant to do the Pumpkin Bread in the fall when there were plenty of fresh pumpkins around, but things just got way too busy. Now is as good a time as any, so I went for it even though you can’t get pumpkins this time of year.

That’s OK though – the comments on the recipe page were full of folks that used canned pumpkin as a substitute (note: NOT pumpkin pie filling, just pure unsweetened pumpkin puree). People also mentioned that including the pumpkin seeds was gross, so I left those out as well.

The recipe was easy and the muffins came our great! Some people in the comments also said they added a little nutmeg so I added a pinch or so. Also, the recipe says 30 minutes for muffins but it took these about 45 to cook through. Now that I have this under my belt I’ll make a point to get a pumpkin in the fall and make these again with the fresh shredded pumpkin.

Back at it!

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 00:00:00 EST

After a long hiatus, I’m back at it on the Good Eats project.

The project has been on hold while we moved and other projects have taken precedence as we’ve settled into the new place.

When I finally got the time and attention to return to cooking Good Eats, I decided that Tuesday’s snow day would be a good chance for use to try some Stove Top Mac-n-Cheese for lunch.

The family thought it was delicious, even Vivian who claims not to like mac & cheese gobbled it up. One point they made was that it tasted a little “too cheddary” – this is probably due to the sharp cheddar I used. Maybe next time I’ll try a less sharp cheddar. One thing to note about this mac & cheese – it’s very calorie dense at 65 calories per ounce. The recipe makes 40 ounces, so assuming even 5 servings means we’re looking at more than 500 calories per serving.

Then on Wednesday night, I made Panna Cotta Brain with Cranberry Glaze as a special Valentine’s Day dessert. Only, in my version I left out the brain and used ramekins instead.

I made a half-batch, and since some of the amounts in the original recipe are weird to half (since they’re used in various places) here are the proportions I used for the panna cotta itself:

18oz evaporated milk (1.5 cans) – use half a can to bloom gelatin
2 packs of gelatin (I used Gelatine brand)
3/4 Cup heavy cream
6 Tablespoons of sugar
Half of a vanilla bean, split
0.5 teaspoon salt

I served it by inverting it onto a plate, covering with chocolate sauce, and topping with whipped cream.

Everyone loved it. It kind of tastes like a cross between ice cream and Jello. It’s a super easy dessert that’s also very rich and elegant.

By the way, I did make the cranberry glaze, but it never really set up before it was time to eat. We did try it on the panna cotta though, and it’s a really good combination – the tartness is a great contrast with the sweetness/richness of the pudding. Perhaps next time I’ll make the cranberry way earlier and let it hang at room temp to set.

Beware of parmesan

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 EDT

A couple of recent updates for some Season 5 recipes. Not a ton to say about each, hence why they didn’t warrant their own posts.

Last week I made some Leftover Baked Potato Soup for dinner.

I found it to be quite tasty, but I used a particular brand of parmesan cheese high in butyric acid which some folks react harshly too, causing Gemma to be physically unable to eat it. So, this might be one to try again some other time.

Then last night I made Eggplant Steaks as a side dish for grilled burgers.

Again, these were quite tasty, but even though I used a different brand of parmesan for the topping, Gemma found them hard to eat. Needless to say, the ratings for these two recipes are just my own. Next time I need to make sure to remember that when I make stuff with cooked parmesan that I should do some with and some without!

Potato Salad

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 00:00:00 EDT

Vivian’s family birthday celebration was Saturday and we held a little cookout for it. Along with hot dogs, grilled chicken, and sausages I decided to make Cold-Fashioned Potato Salad as a side dish.

It was great, and some people went back for seconds and thirds. It was a bit of a pain to make though – there’s a ton of ingredients and you need to do the potatoes the night before. It’s delicious though, so if there’s another occasion to make a fancy potato salad, this will be my go-to.

Oats & Cocoa

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 00:00:00 EDT

Saturday morning was a perfect time to make Steel Cut Oatmeal for breakfast, since weekends are when you can afford to spend 40 minutes on breakfast.

I was a bit nervous about not stirring for 25 minutes, but in the end it worked out well and the cinnamon and brown sugar was a great addition!

In the evening I made up some Hot Cocoa mix, and we tried it out with hot water, which was good but not great. On Sunday we made some more for dessert, this time mixing it with hot milk, and that was amazing. Milk is definitely the way to go for this.

I think I might mix up a whole bunch of this around Christmas and give it away.

Sunday Snacks

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 00:00:00 EDT

While Gemma is laid-up on the couch recovering from foot surgery, I thought it would be a good day to just crank out a bunch of snacks from season five.

Since we did the baked mac and cheese the previous day, it was only natural to start with some Next Day Mac and Cheese “Toast”. Deep frying is a bit of a production, so I started by getting my fry station going.

The recipe didn’t have much info as to how long to fry them, so I checked and poked them periodically until I felt they were done. The smaller pieces took about 2 minutes, and the larger pieces took 30-60 seconds more.

In the end they were absolutely amazing. We ate them with a little jarred marinara we had left over in the fridge. I’m glad I only made half a dozen or so because we could have eaten these all day non stop.

Later in the afternoon I set out to make Granola, which is something I’ve always wanted to try out. It couldn’t have been easier to just mix a bunch of stuff together and pop it in the oven.

The comments online suggested not to stir it as often as the recipe says, and that way you’ll end up with more chunks. So I only stirred it three or four times while it cooked.

This made a TON of granola. So much that I bagged up a bunch and gave it away to everyone I saw that day. It is really, really good. We ate it by itself and on yogurt. Will definitely be making this again some day.

The final snack of the day was Radonsky for the New Millenium, which I sort of think of as “easier clams casino” maybe? It’s weird because a Google search for “Radonsky” brings up basically nothing, and Alton didn’t even say this recipe’s name in the episode. Anyway, I started out by opening a dozen clams and sprinkling them with the “stuffing” mix. Then I got some bacon grease hot and popped them face-down into the pan to cook.

We served them up with a little parsley and some malt vinegar and they were delicious.

These were really easy and delicious – I can see doing this for company as a classy appetizer.

Season Five Kickoff

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:00 EDT

It took me a while to start on Season 5, but this weekend I got things going. For dinner I began with the Baked Macaroni and Cheese.

This is definitely a “grown up” mac n cheese – the onion and bay give it a real savory background of flavor that works really well. I didn’t have any mustard powder so I left it out of the recipe, but would really like to give it a try next time.

For dessert we went with brownie sundaes, so into the oven went a batch of Cocoa Brownies.

To go with the brownies I made up some Cocoa Syrup, and put it all together with some ice cream.

The brownies were alright, but not that much better than boxed mix ones. They were very fudgy, with a dark chocolate flavor, and not overly sweet. The syrup was good as well, also not overly sweet.

Pot Roast

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 00:00:00 EST

We’ve reached the end of Season 4, finishing up at the Pot Roast recipe from “A Chuck for Chuck”. The final recipe for other seasons has usually been one that I kept putting off, and usually they turn out fantastically. This time was different, though, but I think it’s more of my mistake than the recipe’s.

I mentioned before that I was having a heck of a time finding bone-in chuck, but then I remembered Roxie’s in Quincy, and of course not only did they have bone-in chuck, they have seven-bone cuts, just like AB used in the episode.

Alton’s recipe called for a 2lb cut, but I picked up one almost 3.5 pounds, so I thought I’d cook it for the upper time limit of the recipe, 3.5 hours.

Pictured above: cooked pot roast, “chunkies”, and the a jus before blending chunkies into it.

The meat was tasty but definitely overdone. I really should have checked it at 2.5 and 3 hours, which is my bad. The crowd didn’t think it was great, and we didn’t even save the leftovers because we wouldn’t have eaten them. The one shining light though was the cooking juice left in the foil that I drained and put in a bowl. It was really good – salty, sweet, savory. I portioned off half of it and blended in some of the “chunkies” from cooking, and that was pretty good as well.

If I ever get a chance to do another one, I’ll definitely try this again but cook it for much less time.

And that ends Season 4! I wish I could say it was a grand finale like some of the other seasons (fish n chips from Season 2, the fish in a salt dome in season 1, etc.) but these last two recipes of Season 4 were quite a disappointment. I went into this season saying that I wouldn’t leave the smoked salmon for last but maybe I should have – it was one of two 5-star recipes from this one.

On to Season 5! This one has homemade cold-smoked bacon, which I’m really looking forward to.

Country Ham

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 00:00:00 EST

Back to the Good Eats project after a brief holiday + dieting hiatus. Originally I had planned to make Country Ham the finale to the season, but I’ve been having a tough time getting a bone-in chuck roast, so I thought we should get things moving again and do the ham now and the chuck roast last.

Getting a cured and smoked country ham here in Massachusetts appears to be next to impossible, so I ended up ordering one from Benton’s Country Hams. The smallest I could get was a 16.5 pound ham, which I have to say was way bigger than I ever thought I’d need from a country ham.

It arrived wrapped in paper, in a mesh bag:

I began by cutting off the hock with a hack saw like Alton did in the episode.

After that I popped the ham into the cooler. I began this on Thursday morning, and up until I prepared it for cooking on Saturday, I changed the water once in the morning and once again in the early evening.

On cooking day, I put the ham in a disposable roasting pan, filled it up about half-way up the met with Dr. Pepper, then added some sweet pickle juice to top it all off.

Like the recipe said to, I started it for the first 30m at 400 degrees, then put it down to 325 for the next 1h 30m. After this, I turned the ham and let it go for another 1h 30m. After that, the temperature at the thickest part was about 120 degrees, so I bumped the oven up to 350 and gave it another 30m to get to temp.

I then got the ham out of its Dr. Pepper bath and used my brand new electric knife to start slicing thin pieces off the ham.

Once it was sliced we gave it a try and … it was 100% inedible. It was like eating a piece of salt water. It was so bad I spit it out. I have no idea what went wrong with this, but it was a complete and absolute failure. I don’t know if it’s just what to expect with country ham, or if for a 16 pound ham you have to soak it for days longer, but there was no way were going to eat this. I had planned a whole dinner around the ham, and instead I ran out and grabbed a rotisserie chicken. It was just unspeakably horrid.

It’s too bad, and I can’t really say what went wrong. Usually my last recipe of each season had gone well, so I’m glad this on wasn’t to finish off season 4. Now I’m on the hunt for that bone-in chuck roast…

Smoked Salmon

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 27 Nov 2022 00:00:00 EST

Well, I didn’t leave this for last, but pretty close. I’ve had smoked salmon before but I have to admit I’ve never really liked it all that much and so I wasn’t very excited for this one. The other thing holding me back was Alton’s whole homemade smoker rig, which I had been considering how to make. But, I had my smoker out after doing a smoked turkey for Thanksgiving, so I figured if I had a smoker already, why not use it instead of making something with a cardboard box and hot plate like he did in the episode?

Since I wasn’t terribly excited for this, I simply did a 1 pound fillet rather than the book-ended giant ones he did in the show. I estimated that each of those things was about four pounds, so I cut the cure recipe by 1/8. I sprinkled the fillet back and front, and wrapped it up in plastic and foil.

After putting some weight on top and sticking it in the fridge for 24 hours, I then washed it off and set up a little fan to dry it for a couple hours.

While it was drying I got the smoker going and when it was ready I put the fish on.

The recipe online says to keep the smoker to about 150/160 but I could really only control the heat to somewhere between 200-220. I’m not sure this made a huge difference in the end, but it’s worth noting. I tested the fish after 20m and took it off the smoker after 30m.

Finally, I let it come to room temperature before the whole family gathered around to give it a try. Here’s where I have to say I wasn’t just surprised, I was blown away. It was SO good. Smoky and sweet, and not fishy at all. The three of us stood at the counter with forks and just crushed this thing. Besides just straight up, we also ate it on crackers with a little bit of cream cheese too. It was marvelous, and I kind of regretted not doing more. However, with Christmas coming up, I’m planning to do this again as a gift.

Stuffed Lobster

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 26 Nov 2022 00:00:00 EST

As a born-and-bred New Englander, I have to say I’ve been really skeptical about AB’s Stuffed Lobster recipe. I grew up believing that the only way to cook lobster is to just steam it and crack it at the table. So, even though this felt like blasphemy, I gave it a go anyway. I started by chilling the lobsters in the freezer while prepping the steaming pot.

In the episode, Alton used some river rocks to steam the lobsters. For my version, I collected up some rocks from the nearby beach to use as the base for the steaming part of the recipe.

Extracting the leg meat, cutting up the lobsters, and cleaning out the bodies was a real pain, and again sort of felt like something I shouldn’t be doing. So after making the stuffing and baking the lobster halves, we sat down to eat and … it was incredible.

The claw and tail meat was both flavorful and moist. The stuffing was buttery and crispy, which was a perfect complement to a bite of meat. We were really surprised by how amazing this lobster was, and absolutely make this again. We were bummed that we only did one lobster per person. Can’t wait to do this again.

Garlic Chicken

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 00:00:00 EST

As garlic lovers, we were looking forward to 40 Cloves and a Chicken. I started out by quartering a chicken – something that we’ve done a few times so far in this project and I’m starting to get a little better at.

The recipe was pretty easy, just browning up the chicken and tossing it with a bunch of garlic and olive oil. For the garlic, I used a package of pre-peeled cloves from Whole Foods, which might be cheating but… really didn’t want to peel 40 fresh cloves.

After roasting for 1.5hr, it looked amazing. The garlic cloves were perfectly cooked, and the legs and thighs were perfect. However, the breasts were almost inedibly dry. The reviews on the Food Network site mentioned this, but surprisingly only some of them. One thing we loved though, was eating the roasted garlic on toasts. I put them in a bowl along with the oil from the pan. It was amazing.

So even though the breasts were a 2, the dark meat was a definite 4. If I did this again, I would only use legs and thighs, and would probably only cook it for 45 minutes or so.

Fried Chicken

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 00:00:00 EDT

Tonight was Fried Chicken night! I’d been looking forward to this one.

I started last night by cutting up a 6-pound boiler/fryer and marinating it in buttermilk.

Then this afternoon I created my spice shake and set up my left-to-right frying stations. One thing I noticed in the Food Network recipe comments were people saying the recipe is way too salty. The shake in the recipe, though, isn’t for using 100% for one chicken! It’s for using a bit now and saving the rest for next fry. I dusted the chicken pieces with the shake until them seemed “well seasoned” but there was a ton left over. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to use all of it for this one recipe.

I let the dredge dry for a bit while I got the shortening to temperature. There seems to be a shortage of Crisco so I had to use what I found – in this case Spectrum Organic shortening.

Once it was up to 350 degrees, I loaded up the pan. Problem was that not everything fit in at once – I has to leave the legs out for a second batch.

I did each side for 10 minutes, testing the oil temperature every now and then. The pieces came out at just under 180 degrees, like AB recommends. After taking those out, I started the second batch of legs only. For round two, though, I let the oil get a little too hot and the legs came out a bit blackened. I let them cool to room temperature while making the rest of our dinner.

Regardless of being slightly burned, the chicken was amazing. Crispy on the outside and warm and moist on the inside. To serve, I made up a little Sriracha mayo for dipping, which was also fantastic!

Halloween Cake

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 00:00:00 EDT

Two things happened on Saturday:

We were invited to a Halloween Party
I had some time to make an Angel Food Cake

Turns out we were able to combine these things by making it into a Halloween-themed cake to bring to the party!

I gathered all the ingredients together, including the pan I borrowed from my Mom. This pan has clearly been through some stuff in its lifetime:

Next it was time to make the foam. I started whisking, then switched to the hand mixer. It took 15 minutes before I achieved medium peaks.

My Mom’s pan isn’t one of the two-part deals, so I thought it might be a good idea to line the bottom with parchment. After the cake came out of the oven (it took about 40 minutes until getting a clean skewer), I turned it upside down to cool and set.

After about 20 minutes of cooling, the cake fell out of the pan, and I think it could have used a little more upside down time because the cake was a bit denser than I expected.

However, even though it was dense it was really delicious. I took some store-bought lemon frosting and added some food coloring to it to make a pumpkin orange color. Gemma then cut out some eyes, a mouth and a stem to finish the cake!

The cake was a hit!

Beef Broth

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 22 Oct 2022 00:00:00 EDT

I’ve been looking for an excuse to get an Instant Pot, and the Pressure episode was the final push I needed, so I got a deal on one and set out to make AB’s Beefy Broth.

I started by salting and oiling 2 pounds of beef shank and 1 pound of oxtail, then using the Instant Pot’s saute mode to give them a nice sear.

I then added the veggies and the water. This filled the pot right up to it’s max fill line. I kept the pot on saute and waited for it to boil, but taking its temp for a bit told me it probably wasn’t boiling any time soon, so I decided to just skip that step. I don’t think it made much difference in the end, though.

I set it to pressure cook for the full 50 minutes as listed in the recipe.

When it was done, I first strained the big stuff out directly through a colander, and then used a potato masher to squeeze what liquid I could from those solids. After dumping the colander, I lined it with 2 layers of cheese cloth, and strained the broth through it again two times.

The initial broth needed seasoning so I added salt bit by bit and tasted until it all seemed right. I should have measured, but I estimate I added about a teaspoon of salt total to the finished broth.

In the end, it was delicious. We ended up simply drinking it in mugs over the next few days, which is a warm and fantastic little snack – tt’s a great time of year for broth, and a mug of it really hits the spot. I had originally planned to make soup or something with it, but we never ended up doing that. We did freeze the rest for later use in gravies and stuff, so I look forward to having that in the toolbox.

Puff Pastry Weekend

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 00:00:00 EDT

Did a lot of work with puff pastry this weekend. On Saturday I made the Stacked Puff Pastry with Cherries. Measuring and cutting the pieces for the walls was fun.

After the walls came the filling. I had accidentally bought “cherry filling” rather than “pie cherries” but dumping the can into a colander and rinsing it down produced enough whole cherries to be salvageable. Also, I didn’t have cake crumbs around but we did have some glazed donut holes in the freezer than I was able to crush up into crumbs to use for the filling – it turned out really tasty!

And finally the top. I brushed the top with egg wash and then, as one of the recipe comments suggested, I sprinkled a bit of sugar over the top.

After 30m at 400 degrees, the crust was a deep golden brown, and not wanting to risk burning it I did the second 30m at 300 degrees, which worked out fine.

We didn’t get a chance to eat it right away so I stashed it in a gallon freezer bag to serve on Sunday night. For Sunday afternoon, I decided to do the Salmon Turnovers but make them appetizer size. Instead of making four from a sheet of puff pastry, I made 12. Putting them together was delicate work, and I thought it was going to be a disaster – check out my handiwork:

But, sloppy as they were, they came out looking just great.

However, we weren’t really big fans. I think trying the appetizer size caused the puff pastry to overwhelm the filling, but even so, the filling itself wasn’t that great. I think I’d really like to try a meat filling (AB suggests Manwich) or maybe steak bomb filling.

For dessert, I served up the cherry pastry, with Sweet and Sour Dessert Sauce on top plus a little vanilla ice cream. Rather than cook the honey over the burner in the metal bowl, I microwaved it then dumped that into the bowl and added the sour cream. So easy!

The dessert sauce added a little extra zing to the pastry, and was a nice touch. It’s so easy to make, and would probably be really good with some fruit, like pears or peaches.

Honey Plums

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 09 Oct 2022 00:00:00 EDT

What a quick, easy, and delicious dessert topping. Tonight I whipped up some Honey Plums to serve over vanilla ice cream, and they did not disappoint!

I cut them a bit smaller than the recipe listing called for, and I think I might have used too much honey in the pan because they didn’t really brown.

In the end, though, they were SO good on top of ice cream. This is one I’ll definitely make again, since we usually have various fruit around and we always have honey, too.

Tea & Cake

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 00:00:00 EDT

I had read in the reviews of Aunt Verna’s Orange Cake that it was dry and not very good, so I figured I’d pair it with a Perfect Cup of Tea to provide a little bit of extra moisture and flavor.

I started out by making the orange cake batter and pouring it into a greased loaf pan:

I cooked that for 30 minutes at 350, and a skewer came out clean. So I let it cool and then when I went to dump it onto a cutting board, a bunch of uncooked batter spilled out of the cake and the whole thing basically fell apart into a huge half cooked lump. I wish I had taken a picture of that, but I didn’t, and instead regrouped a bit.

For my second attempt, I made half as much batter and poured that into a 6-cup muffin tin:

I popped this in at 350 and checked it after 25 minutes. This time I didn’t trust the skewer and cut into a muffin instead. Indeed they were done.

To pair with the orange cake muffins, I made a batch of English Black Tea.

When all was done, I sat down to a snack that could only be described as fairly OK. The cake is not great, just like the comments say. And as a coffee drinker, the tea was pretty much what I’d expect.

Ham Dinner

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EDT

I’d been looking forward to making the City Ham ever since I read the reviews on the recipe page. People rave about this one so I wanted to see for myself. I started with an 8lb shank-end grocery store ham, and had fun cutting some diamond shapes into it. If you look closely you can see them:

Cooked it for just over 3 hours before taking it out and peeling off the skin and the layer of fat as best I could. I probably could have cut the diamonds a bit deeper, because I had to do some serious peeling. I then brushed it with mustard, patted on brown sugar, sprayed with apple juice (lots of people in the comments used apple juice instead of bourbon), then packed with food-processed ginger snap crumbs.

It was then into a 400 degree oven (I bumped it up 50 degrees because I saw in the comments that people had trouble keeping the crust on at 350). Another 45 minutes and it was done.

I forgot to take photos of it sliced, but it was fantastic. The crust was sweet and crunchy, and it largely stayed on the ham. The meat was moist and flavorful. Great method for ham!

With the ham we had some of Vlad’s Very Garlicky Greens made with kale. I opted for “medium” garlicky but using 5 large smashed cloves plus a large sliced up clove.

Once again, in the ham-induced excitement of the moment, I forgot to photograph the kale in the pan. Instead here it is plated:

Fruit Tart

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 24 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EDT

First time working with puff pastry, and these were easier to make than I thought they’d be. We cut each Fruit Tart and served them with a scoop of ice cream and some whipped cream.

Thinking I might try making every smaller, bite sized ones at some point.

Spicy

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EDT

Was planning on doing some tacos tonight and figured it would be the perfect opportunity to make the Salsa from season four. Because I was out shopping anyway, I also figured that pairing the tacos with some Spicy Pineapple Sauce for dessert.

The salsa started with finely chopping a bunch of ingredients.

The fun part was scorching the jalepenos over the burner. In the episode, AB used his metal steamer insert over the burner, so I tried that myself.

They turned out well, but I think it ruined my steamer. It’s all discolored now, though it does seem to work still. Anyway, once I removed the skins and chopped them up, the salsa was done.

Alton says to let it sit for 24 hours or so, but it was still really good on the tacos – it had a nice fresh taste that went really well with the rest. You can taste a little hint of the roasted jalepenos. They have a nice combination of spicy and sweet. Looking forward to seeing how it tastes once it’s had time to meld together!

After the tacos I tried out some spicy pineapple over ice cream, complete with fried up corn tortillas.

While the salsa was good, the dessert left a little to be desired. I could see how maybe it would be good with really fresh pineapple, but I found it to be a little flavorless. I’d make more salsa in the future, but I doubt I’d do the spicy pineapple again.

Honey Mustard

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EDT

Had some friends over tonight so I thought it would be a good opportunity to whip up some Honey Mustard Dressing to go along with some (store bought) pigs in a blanket.

The dressing was good, and it went really well with the piggies. It is thin, so I guess if you really want a dip or a spread you could leave out the vinegar.

Mayo Battle

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EDT

In season 4, Alton presents two mayo recipes: Mayonnaise and Party Mayonnaise – both of them mayo, but with some slight differences.

The first – Mayonnaise – seems like the “traditional” mayo completely whisked by hand and adding oil in drop by drop for a good portion of it. I started with this, and once I was done it felt like my whisking arm was going to fall off.

The second one – Party Mayonnaise – was much easier since it was done in a food processor. While the first recipe had lemon juice and all safflower oil, party mayonnaise called for lime juice and a few tablespoons chile oil. I didn’t have chile oil so I made some by heating oil in a skillet and pouring it into a bowl with a couple tablespoons of red chile flakes.

From there it was just a couple seconds in the food processor and done.

The question was how to taste mayonnaise – what recipes feature mayo? My first thought was egg salad, so we went with that first.

They tasted basically the same, so the second plan was BLTs. I didn’t get a picture of the side-by-side tasting BLTs but that did the trick – we were able to taste the difference. They are both really good, but of course the one that’s a huge pain to make (literally) was the winner. I’m digging the idea of homemade mayo so maybe next time I’ll try the first recipe in the food processor. Best of both worlds maybe?

Sweet Tea

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EDT

Time to launch into Season 4! Pretty excited about this season as there looks to be a bunch of great mains that I’m looking forward to trying (stuff lobster anyone?). I’m going to have to do the Smoked Salmon early, because if I save it to the end I’ll just procrastinate like I did with the catfish in Season 3. We’ll see.

I actually started Season 4 the other day making both mayo recipes, but we haven’t tried them yet. So, it’s Sweet Tea that will start us off.

This was a pretty easy one. I started off making the simple syrup (halved the recipe) with 3 lemons and a few springs of mint.

The tea couldn’t have been simpler – I bloomed it in a sauce pan and then strained it into a pitcher.

When everything was cool, we poured some glasses with ice and everyone could sweeten theirs the way they liked it. It’s a great version of iced tea that is so easy to make. Glad we got this in before the summer completely goes away on us!

Duck

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 00:00:00 EDT

As I mentioned last time, I saved Mighty Duck for the last Season 3 recipe. I had to special-order a 6 pound Long Island duck, but it only came in at about $5/pound so that wasn’t too bad.

I planned to cook it up for Friday dinner, so Thursday night I took the time to quarter it. I’m not the greatest butcher in the world, but I eventually ended up with 4 pieces, even though I’m positive I wasted a bunch. It wasn’t until later as I was re-watching the episode that I noticed I should have kept the drumstick part of the wing attached to the breast, so I definitely messed that part up.

Friday night I started by preparing my brine and getting the duck in there. I had a bit of a late start, so I only brined it for about an hour and 45 minutes. Around 5pm I started the steaming.

I steamed the parts for the 45 minutes recommended in the show, then added the leg portions followed by the breast portions to a hot cast iron. When they were done they looked absolutely beautiful.

After they came I out I did the greens in the rendered fat. AB uses chard in the show but I used kale, followed by a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar.

In the end, the duck was really flavorful and delicious. Our favorite parts were the thigh and legs. The skin too was crunchy and amazing. The breast portions, though, were a bit too dry – I think perhaps they could have steamed a little less. The kale was awesome as well – the little hint of balsamic made it.

I think next time I see duck breast at the butcher counter I won’t hesitate to try this again. I’ll definitely steam them a little less, though.

And so ends my journey through Season 3. I’m a little disappointed that it took me so long to get through it – for example between the striper and the catfish was more than a month. I really shouldn’t let that happen again, so I hope to remedy this in Season 4. By far my highlight for Season 3 was pickles. I’ve made pickles over and over recently – both the kosher ones and the sweet ones. Whenever I bring them places they are a huge hit. I’m really glad I got a chance to learn how to make them!

Now I’m looking forward to Season 4 and all the great recipes in store!

Poached Catfish

Rusty Geldmacher — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 EDT

What have I been doing for the last month? Looking for catfish. Seems like it’s really tough to get here in New England in the summer. See, I have two recipes to go in Season 3 and I wanted to do the Catfish au Lait before the duck, so we can end the season with a little flair.

Anyway, after striking out on finding catfish locally – which is odd given the large amount of fishmongers here on the coast – I finally bit the bullet and had some shipped overnight to my house, to the tune of about $100. Was not thrilled about that, but, progress must be made!

To tell you the truth, I was not excited about this at all. I’ve eaten catfish before and thought it was kinda blech. But I vowed to keep an open mind, and I went ahead creating the poaching liquid and preparing my fillets. The recipe calls for using an electric skillet, but directly after finishing and serving the onion soup I gave it away. So instead, I brought the liquid to a bare simmer, popped on the cover, and turned off the heat for 9 minutes.

After nine minutes I opened the cover and tested the liquid temperature out of curiosity. It was still in the mid-140’s so not bad. Since I was doing this during lunch (so as not to risk ruining an entire dinner if it went poorly), we just put the fish out on the cutting board and went at it with a couple forks.

The fish was… fine. I mean, not terrible but also not amazing either. I don’t think I would really take the trouble to source catfish and do this again, that’s for sure. But at the same time we don’t regret eating it. Maybe my opinion is a little colored by the hoops I needed to jump through.

My goal of not leaving recipes that I’m not excited for to the end did not quite play out the way I’d hoped. One more to go in the season, though, and I have the duck on order already…

Poached Striper

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EDT

This is a two-for-one recipe, where we make the GE Court Bouillon first, and then use it as an ingredient to make something else. So we start with the court bouillon:

Once it was finished I strained it out to use as my poaching liquid.

I then brought it to a simmer and added a halved one-pound filet of striped bass. Even though the recipe for The Frenchman’s Bass didn’t call for it, I prepped the filets by seasoning them with salt and pepper first.

I brought the liquid back down to a bare simmer, covered the pan, and gave it 7 minutes to do its thing. I have to admit I was skeptical on this one, and so rather than making dinner, I did this up for lunch, alongside a simple Boston lettuce salad prepared by Gemma.

The fish was awesome. It came out really flaky and not dry at all. Poaching cooked it absolutely perfectly. Would definitely do this one again.

Grilled leg of lamb

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 00:00:00 EDT

I’ve been looking forward to the Silence of the Leg O’ Lamb for a while, but for some reason had felt a little intimidated by it. Turns out that it was super easy and extremely delicious! I first started by making the seasoning paste, spreading it all over the inside of the roast, and trussing it all up into a nice little package:

Now in the show he uses a charcoal grill and makes a big deal about that. I’ve been game for obtaining lots of new gear during this project, but I couldn’t justify a charcoal grill for this one so I used my gas grill. To simulate what he did in this episode, I heated up my three-burner grill, then turned off the middle burner and set the side burners to about half power. This got me some nice indirect heat. To top it off, I wet a few rosemary sprigs, wrapped them in tin foil, poked a couple holes in it, and put the package on a burner towards the back of the grill. This created a nice rosemary smoke, which filled my porch as the lamb grilled.

I used a 2 pound boneless leg from Trader Joe’s. I flipped it after 20 minutes at which point the roast was about 95 degrees internal. After another 13 minutes, it hit 122 and I took it off the heat. Letting it rest for 10 minutes brought the leg up to about 138 – a few degrees past my target of 135, but that’s OK.

We sliced it up and served it simply with some roasted broccoli and rice pilaf. It was a hit! Very tender, juicy, and flavorful. Would definitely do this one again.

Turkey Hash

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 21 May 2022 00:00:00 EDT

This one was a little annoying because I had to make a bunch of other stuff first so I had leftovers to make the hash with. So one evening I roasted up a couple of turkey tenderloins over red potatoes. This got me a few of the leftovers. I also needed to make a batch of cornbread pudding to go along with it.

I was a big fan of the pudding, and I might make it again some day. Once I had all of the leftovers, I could then make the hash this morning for breakfast:

This made a ton of hash, and it was pretty good. I gave the rest of it to my mother in law, and she really enjoyed it too.

Cranberry Jam

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 19 May 2022 00:00:00 EDT

As part of making a turkey dinner in order to make leftover hash (see next post), I figured I’d make In a Cranberry Jam to go along with the turkey.

It started by first making Tart Cranberry Dipping Sauce:

Once the sauce was done (I saved some off for my turkey dinner), you then add more ginger ale and sugar and keep reducing it. The result is a tasty cranberry jam that was really good on leftover turkey sandwiches.

Pizzas

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EDT

I had been waiting Pizza Pizzas, but since it takes some planning ahead to get the dough in the fridge about 24 hours before cooking, I’d been putting it off. But on Thursday I borrowed my neighbor’s Kitchenaid mixer complete with dough hook, and went to work. Dough always seems to complicated, and I never know if I’m doing it right, but I think it came together pretty well.

I left it in the fridge for about 24 hours, took it out, split it, rolled both balls again, and left them for an hour or so to come to temperature. I may have even been able to leave them out a little longer, but the dough was easy enough to work with (which is always something that frustrates me about making pizza at home – the dough springing back after you shape it).

I got two approximately 11” x 8” oval shaped pizzas. The first one I did with just cheese and the second one I topped with sauteed mushrooms and onions. I then cooked them on my baking steel rather than a stone like in the show. I don’t think that makes much difference.

I the end, the second one with the toppings was definitely our favorite (sorry AB). If I ever get myself a new mixer with a dough hook, I’ll be using this as my go-to pizza dough recipe from now on.

Pickled Fruit

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EDT

About a week ago I mixed up some Summer Fruits as my last foray into Season 3 pickling. I actually made it a week and a day ago, and today we cracked it open from the fridge.

Have to say I was skeptical about pickled fruit – but this recipe works. They are a little sweet, and a little tart, and quite tasty. I don’t think we’ll be craving them any time soon (“I really want some of those pickled plums!”) but they were an interesting flavor combo and a cool thing to try.

Cookie Bake-Off

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 17 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EDT

The other day I decided that I’d have a one-person cookie bake-off, trying all three cookie recipes from Season Three’s “Three Chips for Sister Marsha”: The Thin, The Puffy, and The Chewy.

I started by making the dough for each batch and chilling them all together in the fridge for an hour or so. When it was time to bake, I took all three out of the fridge and cooked two types at once (I have 2 sheet pans), using a #20 scoop.

Cooking all those batches took hours, but I ended up with a ton of delicious cookies and the house smelled amazing.

So who won? Well they are all fantastic, but we definitely enjoyed The Puffy most of all. They are like little cakes. The Thin was second, followed by The Chewy. Not to say the chewy was bad – they are all wonderful cookies – it’s just the other two are that good.

Red Cabbage

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EDT

Almost a month since I’ve gotten back to a Season 3 recipe – lots in between then and now, like a 2 week vacation in Florida, and a new puppy.

Started back into it with Home of the Braise, a red cabbage dish. We were not really big fans of this one either (both cabbage recipes from Season 3 have been disappointing). We won’t be making this one again.

Shredded Cabbage

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 EST

I had high hopes for Shred, Head, Butter and Bread, but unfortunately it was a bit underwhelming. We do like cabbage generally, and this was OK (I went back for seconds) but I doubt we’d ever make this again.

Black Beans & Rice

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 EST

I’d had the ingredients for Black Bean Salad for a while and I was running out of time before the parsley and cilantro spoiled. So, I thought I’d whip this up after dinner last night.

It was a pretty easy recipe to make, and while it was cooking I also prepared some Chipotle-style cilantro lime rice to eat along with the beans.

Once the beans were done, I added the oil, cilantro, lime juice, etc. and let them cool for a while before putting them in the fridge. To serve, I heat up some of the rice, then add the beans, then give it another minute or so in the microwave. Top with some sour cream and hot sauce and it’s one great meal!

When I want to have a bunch of black beans around, this is how I’ll prepare them.

Pickles, Round Two

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 00:00:00 EST

Like the last round of pickles, I made both AB’s B and B’s and Hurry Curry Cauliflower about a week ago and left them in fridge to pickle for a while before trying them.

I’ve never been a fan of bread and butter pickles, but I have to say, these were really good – probably the best B&B’s we’ve ever had, for what that’s worth. It might have to do with using only 2/3 the amount of sugar called for. I usually find B&B’s way too sweet, and these were just right. I found that they were particularly good on tuna fish sandwiches.

The curry cauliflower on the other hand… were not so good. The curry spices didn’t really come through, and they ended up tasting like vinegary cauliflower. We tried a few of them, and dumped the rest (forgot to get a pic until I was almost done dumping them, whoops!). I’m not sure if it was my error on this, but they were just… blah.

Quiche

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 27 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

Made some quiche (oops, Refrigerator Pie) for brunch today and it turned out great! I used a gluten-free frozen pie crust, some spinach, shredded cheddar, and some diced up ham steak.

One thing I’ll do differently next time is squeeze out the spinach a lot more. I squeezed it in some paper towels, but probably not enough since it was a little bit watery.

I cooked it for 35 minutes, checked it, and then popped it back in for another 10.

This was so easy, and delicious. I will definitely be experimenting around with different types of quiches in the future.

Long Weekend Eats

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

Over the long weekend I got a few more season three recipes in. On Saturday I whipped up some Turbo Hummus as a snack. It was OK, tastes a bit like store-bought hummus. We gave it a 2 because we’ll eat it but probably won’t make it again.

For a Sunday pre-dinner snack I cooked up some Mojo Moulies, served with some sliced French bread. They were really good – a wonderful way to whip up some quick (and cheap!) shellfish. The sauce was awesome to dip bread into.

Finally (not here yet) I put together the Hurry Curry Cauliflower and got them into the fridge to pickle for a week before trying them.

Pickles, Round One

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

Excited to make home-made pickles, I started with Kinda Sorta Sours and Firecrackers. I made them both on Thursday afternoon, put them in fridge, and tried them on Saturday.

I like the sours the best – I threw some dill into the jar like the comments on the recipe page suggested – and Gemma liked the firecrackers the best. Both are delicious and I’m looking forward to devouring both jars.

Mooless Pie

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

Finishing off the season three tofu recipes, I put together the Moo-Less Chocolate Pie for Friday night dessert.

It was super easy to put together, the texture is great, and it was super chocolatey. But… the inclusion of coffee liqueur (I used Kaluha) kind of ruined it for us. There’s a kind of “burn” from it. Were I to make it again, I’d use coffee or espresso instead, like was used in the chocolate mousse.

A Tofu Day

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

Now that we’re rolling off of the New Year’s diet break, it’s time to get back into this Good Eats project for real. We’ve recently taken up a liking for tofu, so we decided to start with a few more the recipes from the Tofuworld episode, beginning with Tall & Tangy Tofu Thangy.

Not a great start. The drink was just… blah. I mean, it wasn’t gross or disgusting, just not good, and besides the fact that it’s certainly a dairy-free frozen drink, we just didn’t see the point. This one went unfinished, even though it pains me to throw food away. Swing and miss, Alton.

For dinner, our main entree was Fillet O’Fu with some veggies on the sde.

Overall it was good, but a little dry and bland. We ended up dipping it in some hoisin sauce, which was delicious. Ultimately though, we like our usual method of frying tofu better: cubed, tossed with salt/pepper/corn starch, then pan fried and eaten over stir-fry.

Compound Butter

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

I actually made this a week ago on Jan 11, but wanted to try it on a few things before giving it a rating. One cool thing about this recipe is that it was the first time I used the old stand mixer my sister gave me years ago. I started out trying to use the hand mixer with the whisk attachment but that failed miserably, so out came the stand mixer and things went swimmingly from there.

I ended up with a lot, so I left some for use now, and some to freeze log-style like in the show (mine didn’t come out as neat and tidy).

This stuff is fantastic. Among other things we’ve tried it on:

“Bread”
Steak
Green beans
Cauliflower
“Pasta” and sauce

A great flavor boost for any of these. Looking forward to being off the low carb thing and trying it on some fresh, warm dinner rolls.

Buerre Blanc

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

While we’re eating low carb, we might as well get some of the higher-fat recipes out of the way. So tonight I made up some Raymond Beurre Blanc to go along with some steak.

Also making an appearance was The Fungal Saute, a perfect accompaniment for steak, made extra delicious by the butter sauce.

We loved this, and it was really easy to make. It’ll be a go-to when I need a quick sauce. I did think it was a little too lemony/acidic for my taste, but Gemma didn’t. Next time though, I think I’ll try half the amount of lemon juice and see how that goes.

Poached Eggs

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

What better use for Poached Egg Tips than to make some Eggs Benedict? The challenge for us is we’re currently in a January low-card diet, but we made it work well!

First I got some poached eggs going.

While they were simmering I made some keto english muffins and some easy hollandaise sauce. When everything was done, we put it all together with some smoked ham and had an amazing low carb brunch.

Tofu Caesar Dressing

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

Going to try and do Season 3’s low carb recipes as we take a bit of a diet in he new year. Last night we put together some salad with the No Guilt Caesar dressing.

I was skeptical of the tofu, but it was really good. The dressing was creamy, smooth, and garlicky. This probably won’t replace our favorite Caesar dressing from America’s Test Kitchen, but it was worth making and we’re going to finish the rest off over the next few days.

Season 3 has a few low-carb-friendly recipes so I’m going to try and get those done this month.

Baked Beans

Rusty Geldmacher — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

Progress has slowed a bit during the holidays but this week I decided to cook up a BBQ dinner featuring The Once and Future Beans along with some pulled pork sliders with cole slaw (slaw made by special guest chef Chris).

Cooked the beans for about 6 hours total, and added a little more liquid at the five hour mark when the beans were tender but not quite done yet.

Gave these a three only because I think I burned some of the bacon fat as I was rendering it and there are little chunks in the beans that tasted fine but made for a strange consistency.

Hosting with Good Eats

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

Had Gemma’s sister, sister’s husband, and nieces over on Friday night and decided to incorporate some season 3 recipes into the weekend. For dessert on Friday I made the Flandango for everyone.

Like most of the desserts so far, it was the first time I’ve attempted it, and was a little nervous, but they were awesome. Used caramel, chocolate, and raspberry-apricot preserves as the toppings. Next time, I’ll cool them in the fridge before serving.

Saturday morning I made up a couple batches of the “Instant” Pancake Mix – one batch used regular AP flour and the other used gluten free AP flour.

Both types of pancakes came out great – we even had a bunch left over to freeze and eat later.

Honey Butter

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

Had a few minutes free so thought I’d whip up some Honey Butter. Rather than use a pound of butter and a stand mixer, I just used a single stick and mixed it in a bowl with a fork.

Tried it on some toast and it’s amazing. Going to try it on some mashed sweet potatoes next, and then some pancakes this weekend. It’s delicious!

Turkey Soup

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

I wanted to get into Season Three right after Thanksgiving in order to have the raw materials for Bird to the Last Drop a.k.a. Good Eats turkey soup. I’m so glad I got the timing right, because this soup was so easy to make and so delicious.

Everyone loved it, served with some cut up Italian bread and butter. I just wish the recipe made more – next time will probably try adding another 32oz container of vegetable stock.

Pear & Blueberry Tart

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 25 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

I had a feeling I might save a dessert for the last recipe in Season Two. So here I was with only No Pan Pear Pie left, and it just so happened to be Thanksgiving. That was just a coincidence, but a happy one – I was able to serve this with Thanksgiving dinner, and the reviews were great. The tart was sweet but not too sweet like some of the pies we had. It was nice and balanced, and the crust was amazing.

Even though I didn’t get it to look as great as Alton did on the show, the taste made up for its funny looks.

Reflections on Season Two

Season Two started off with a whimper, in the form of a fruitcake. However, I’m really glad I started with that because I would have just been dreading it the whole time.

As I started off the season, we were a bit underwhelmed by some of the recipes. The meatloaf was a bit too spicy, the stuffed mushrooms were good but not mind blowing, and I was expecting way more from the ribs.

But as we approached the latter end of the recipes, we hit on a bunch of 5-rated ones. The fish and chips were awesome, and this will be the only way I ever make shrimp cocktail from here on. I’m not sure I’ll ever make this pear tart again, but I’m really glad I did.

I did rush a little bit through the end, though, because I wanted to make sure I was on Season Three after Thanksgiving to get to the recipes from Remains of the Bird using our leftovers. Mission accomplished, now let’s see what Season Three has in store…

Fon-don't

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

Well the Fondue Vudu wasn’t so great. Rather than coming together as a nice, smooth cheese sauce, it turned into a clumpy and often stringy mess. The flavor was OK but not good enough to make us ignore the consistency. It’s too bad because I had prepared a lot of great stuff to dip into it – summer sausage, roasted baby potatoes, bread chunks, and blanched broccoli.

Shrimp Cocktail

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 21 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

Made The Shrimp Cocktail for a pre-dinner snack tonight and it was awesome. The brine made the shrimp salty and sweet, and broiling cooked them to perfection. The cocktail sauce was tangy, sweet, and spicy.

A real crowd pleaser – both Gemma and Vivian loved it. This is how I’m going to prepare shrimp cocktail from now on.

Fish and Chips

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

We’re getting close to the end of Season Two, so I’m starting in on the recipes that I’ve been procrastinating on for one reason or another. Tonight it was Chips and Fish, which I’d been putting off because, well, frying is kind of scary.

Turns out, while it did make a huge mess and took quite a while, the fries and the fish were both fantastic. The fries were crispy with a nice fluffy inside, the fish batter was light and crispy, and the fish itself was flaky and delicious.

There was a moment at the beginning where I thought I’d screwed up the fries, because I misread or misremembered the recipe and thought the fries were blanched at 220, not 320. I didn’t realize that until I had finished them, so I washed them off and dried them again, then started over. Fortunately it didn’t seem to make a difference and the fried were great.

We served the meal with some homemade tartar sauce, which went like this:

1/4 C mayo
2 dill gherkins, finely chopped
1 tsp dried dill
Squirt of lemon juice
Pinch of sugar
Pinch of kosher salt

It was a great compliment to a delicious meal!

Blueberry Jam

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

I made up the Spiced Blueberry Jammin’, canned it in the way AB shows in the episode, cooled the jars and … didn’t seem to get a vacuum on the lids. Not exactly sure why, though I might have second guessed myself because I came back later and the lids didn’t “pop” anymore. However, I had already opened them out of curiosity so they definitely lost any kind of “preserved” that they had.

The jam itself though was pretty good. I don’t usually use a lot of jams and jellies normally, and I’d probably choose strawberry if I did, so even though this was a good experience to learn the basics of preserving, probably won’t make it again.

File this one under: I get the idea.

Banana Splits

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Banana Splitsville is really three recipes in one. I started by making the doodads and the caramel sauce during my lunch break.

As you can see, at first I tried while the caramel was too hot (upper left) and ended up with lumps. As it cooled I got better doodads (the paper on the right). They were a little crunchy and stick to your teeth. Then I made the caramel sauce. I don’t think I waited long enough to see smoke (maybe it was steam, or my eyes playing tricks on me?) but it didn’t seem to matter because I got it to a boil and everything seemed (and tasted) just fine.

After dinner, I then bruleed the bananas and put it all together. I didn’t quite get the glass-like texture that Alton did in the show, and I stopped with the torch when it seemed like it was cooking the bananas (notice the browning). But, they were still sweet and a bit toasty.

The finished product doesn’t looks great (I blame my food photography) but it was really tasty, even though banana splits aren’t something I’d usually go for.

Burgers

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EDT

I’ve been looking forward to grinding meat in the food processor for the Burger of the Gods. It was a cool experience, and the burger came out great, except that I definitely left too many of the gristly parts of the steak in when I cut it up. Gemma’s burger had so much gristle she couldn’t finish it, yet Vivian’s had none. I also prepared them with just salt in the burger mix, but next time I’d probably add in all the usual stuff I use (an egg, Worcestershire sauce, garlic power, etc.)

I prepared mine to eat the way Alton did on the show: a toasted bun with just some mayo. It was good! But I do like my burgers with a bit more toppings and condiments. Overall though, a great burger.

Red Sauce and Popcorn

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Tried out two Season Two recipes last night. First up was the Pantry Friendly Tomato Sauce. To me, this sauce was fantastic. Gemma doesn’t really care for the “roasted tomato” flavor in anything, so next time I want to try this without the broiling step – perhaps doing the whole sauce in a big skillet. Regardless, though, a really great red sauce that is easy to make.

Later on I went to B.J.’s place to watch a movie and brought with me the stuff for Plain Brown Popper. I just dressed it up with a little garlic salt and melted butter, and it was a great snack. This “recipe” is more like a method, though, which is why I rate it 0, or N/A. There’s a ton of ways to dress up and customize popcorn, and next I’ll probably try putting some clarified butter and tumeric on it.

Baked Apples

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Made Baker, Baker as great dessert treat tonight, served over vanilla ice cream. These are delicious, though definitely a special treat.

They taste just like apple crisp!

Waldorf Salad

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 16 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EDT

This was another one I wasn’t really excited for at first. However, the mix of flavors was pretty good. It’s a Wonderful Waldorf wasn’t exactly wonderful, but it was good nonetheless.

Good Eats Grilled Cheese

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Decided to try the Big Cheese Squeeze for lunch today. Improvising a sandwich press using two cast iron pans is a pretty interesting idea:

It definitely did the trick and the sandwich was delicious.

A weekend of Good Eats

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EDT

We had mostly no plans for this long holiday weekend, so I figured I’d kick off Season 2 with a bang. Did a big shopping run on Friday afternoon and then pretty much cooked all weekend. What a blast!

Friday night started off with The Fungal Saute, which we used to top some home-made pizzas.

Saturday morning I figured I’d break out the Chemex to do True Brew using the same ratios that AB does.

While sipping my coffee, I got to work on the Free Range Fruitcake using the dried fruit I had macerated in rum the night before.

I only have an 8-inch loaf pan so with the leftover batter I used a muffin tin to make 4 fruitcake muffins. In the future, this is probably the way to go. I was keeping an open mind, but after it was done it was hard to eat. Gemma’s mom thought it was edible at least, as long as you put butter on it. Neither Gemma or I could stomach it, and I ended up tossing most of the loaf, and sending the muffins home with Gemma’s mom. Will most likely never make a fruitcake again.

Saturday night we started by making That Ol’ Cap Magic as an appetizer, and they were delicious.

Dinner was Good Eats Meat Loaf with Better Than Grannie’s Creamed Corn on the side. The creamed corn was phenomenal, and it’s something I’d definitely make again, even though getting the kernels off the cobs was a bit messy.

The meat loaf was good as well, though a bit on the spicy side. It was almost like a load of taco meat, which isn’t a bad thing, but next time I’ll leave out the red pepper and chili powder. But, the glaze was awesome and gave the loaf a flavorful, crunchy crust.

Sunday night we hard pork chops and 10 Minute Apple Sauce with a side of Creamed Corn Cornbread. The apple sauce was good and complemented the grilled chops very well.

The cornbread was OK, definitely not a 2, but it was a little dry. Vivian did have a lot of fun helping me make it though!

Finally, to top the long weekend off I decided to cook up a batch of Who Loves Ya Baby-Back? ribs. They were flavorful and delicious, and cooking them with liquid was an interesting addition to the way I usually do them in the over with just a dry rub. I think if I had cooked them longer than 2.5 hours they would have been more “fall off the bone” but they were tasty nonetheless and Vivian just crushed them one after another.

And that’s it! One holiday weekend and got through almost half of Season Two!

Season One Finale - Fish in a Salt Dome

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EDT

I attempted to do the Striped Bass in Salt Dome about a week ago, but after visiting all the seafood shops and supermarkets in the area (there’s like 4 or 5) I discovered that whole fish isn’t very common. So I started calling around until I found a place about 30m away that sells whole fish every day.

At first I sought out a striped bass like Alton used in the show, but then I learned that the minimum size you can buy is 35”. That’s like 18-20 pounds of fish, oh and striper is like $25 a pound. So, yeah that idea was out.

Instead I ended up with a ~3 pound haddock, which was nice size for the three of us.

I have to admit I was skeptical of this one, but in the end it turned out great (if not a tad overcooked, which was my fault not the recipe or the technique). The flavor was great, with the citrus and herbs giving the meat a great subtle flavor. Also, just to note, the fish was not salty at all.

Salt dome, pre-cook:

Cooked salt dome:

The big reveal:

And the aftermath:

Reflections on Season One

And that wraps up season one. From start to finish it took a little less than 2 and a half months.

So far the project has been really fun and I’ve cooked some stuff that I never really thought I would.

Can’t say that I was too surprised the last recipe would be the fish in the salt dome, or that three of the last four would be desserts. I started pretty fast through the recipes then slowed way down when it got to these. Season Two only has 2 or 3 desserts so hopefully I won’t have that lull at the end.

There were some great surprises in Season One though. I’ve never made biscuits, shortcake, or scones before and I don’t think I would have if it weren’t for this. Now I have these recipes in my back pocket for when I need them. Making ice cream is another skill I’m happy I’ve picked up.

For Season Two, I’m going to make sure to start earlier on the ones I’d rather put off, so I’m not dragging my feet by the end. And it’s going to start with that fruit cake…

Lava Muffins

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 26 Sep 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Cooked these when our neighbors invited us over for dinner, and they were a hit! Not everyone liked the sauce with the melted ice cream and espresso powder, but everyone enjoyed the gooey chocolate muffins. Served these over a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Chocolate Mousse

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 18 Sep 2021 00:00:00 EDT

I tried making the Chocolate Mousse a couple weeks ago and the attempt failed miserably. When I went to fold the whipped cream into the chocolate, I ended up with a soupy mess. I think I didn’t let the chocolate cool enough and the whipped cream melted.

This time things went much better!

Spooned it into ramekins, let it set in the fridge, then served it up with some whipped cream and sliced strawberries.

Coffee Granita

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Decided to do this on a Friday since it’s extra coffee in the afternoon. Used a venti dark roast from Starbucks, some orange zest, and some Allan’s coffee brandy.

Served it up with some whipped cream and a few raspberries to top it off.

Onion Soup

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Years and years ago I got an electric skillet for Christmas. Opening the gift I immediately thought of the Good Eats French Onion Soup recipe. I never found a use for the skillet, but I always kept it stashed away in the hopes that one day I’d use it for making this soup.

Today was finally the day!

I even borrowed my mom’s onion soup crocks to make it extra authentic.

This soup was really, really good. Erin said it was some of the best onion soup she’s ever had. I give it a solid 4, though probably won’t be making it again anytime soon due to the labor intensive and… pungent preparation.

Gratin

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Finally got to use my mandoline slicer today and made some Potato/Portobello Gratin.

(OK, that picture doesn’t make this look too appetizing but believe me it was really delicious.)

I used the full 3/4 C of half and half like in the recipe but it looked like a little too much so I poured some off. The gratin came out really tasty, but not very “saucy”. However, there was a really good crispy crust around the edges that might not have been there with too much more liquid. Perhaps if I do this one again I’ll keep all the half and half and see how it turns out.

Scones

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

What I like about the quick bread recipes from the episode The Dough Also Rises is that it’s all usually stuff you’ve got on hand and they takes no time at all to make. Today I decided before dinner to whip up a half batch of Scones using dried cranberries.

Roast Beef w/ Gravy

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

The night before, I made a White Roux in a small skillet, using Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 gluten free flour.

After making the roux I popped it in the fridge to use the next day. While at it, I salted a 2.5 lb top round roast and let it sit in the fridge overnight.

Tonight, I cooked the roast using this recipe – all in the name of getting some pan drippings for making Gravy from Roast Drippings

The gravy was fantastic, though I believe I thickened it a little too much. Don’t believe that picture up there, it was really delicious. I don’t think I’ll ever let pan drippings go to waste again.

Strawberry Shortcake Parfait

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Googling something along the lines of “what do I do with lemon curd” brings you eventually to this Strawberry Shortcake & Lemon Curd Parfaits recipe.

The great thing about this idea is that I could use both the Lemon Curd and the Shortcake recipes from season one, all in one dessert.

Basically, you layer shortcake/lemon curd/strawberries twice, and then top it all off with some whipped cream. It’s amazingly delicious.

Power the Pilaf

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

I’ve been looking forward to making AB’s Rice Pilaf and today I figured I’d bring all the stuff down to my folks’ place and make it along with our dinner. Served it with some grilled chicken and veggies. Everyone loved it – will definitely do rice this way again.

Sawmill Gravy

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 14 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Sawmill Gravy a.k.a. sausage gravy, has been a camping staple for us for years, though it’s always been Dan who makes it. This was my first attempt at it, and I’m so glad I know how to make it now. Will definitely pull this one out some time again.

Key Lime Sorbet

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Not much to say about the Key Lime Sorbet – I guess we’re not really sorbet fans, so this wasn’t really our cup of tea.

Update: brought it to my parents’ place the next day and my parents and my sister seemed to like it a lot, though, so it’s not going to go to waste.

Southern Biscuits

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Getting into the latter half of season one, this is where I’m starting to get farther out of my comfort zone. I don’t typically do baked goods, doughs, pastries, etc. and Alton sprinkles a lot of them throughout the series. That’s good though, it’s one of the reasons I’m doing this in the first place!

Today was Southern Biscuits from the episode “The Dough Also Rises”.

But with a small twist. The other night at dinner, Gemma and I were talking about this project and given that she prefers to eat gluten-free, she asked if I could try some of these recipes GF. So, for these biscuits I made two half-batches: one with regular AP flour, and the other with gluten free replacement flour.

On the left: with gluten, on the right: gluten free. Not pictured: the one Vivian immediately stole and scarfed down.

The GF version was just as good as the gluten version, though the dough was a HUGE pain to work with. It never really formed into a workable dough, but I guess that makes sense because gluten is what makes doughs, um, doughy.

Broiled Butterflied Chicken & Mashers

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Combined Season 1 recipes Broiled, Butterflied Chicken and Mashers for tonight’s dinner. Served them up with some sauteed spinach.

Eggs Over Easy & Serious Vanilla Ice Cream

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Not in the same meal, though.

Kept the “breakfast for lunch” train rolling with some Eggs Over Easy.

Then for dessert with tonight’s dinner, we did Alton’s Serious Vanilla Ice Cream served on top of a slice of vanilla pound cake with some sliced peaches and whipped cream to top it all off.

Two 5-for-5 recipes in a day!

Pan Seared Rib Eye & Hail Caesar Salad

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Dinner tonight: Pan Seared Rib Eye and Hail Caesar Salad. Put it together with some grilled sweet potato steak fries.

(I think my food photography is getting progressively worse)

Scrambled Eggs Unscrambled

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Thought I’d bang out a Season 1 recipe with breakfast-as-lunch Scrambled Eggs Unscrambled

Pan Fried Fish & Pasta

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Continuing on with Season 1, the next couple recipes went into tonight’s dinner:

We usually prepare pasta with just butter and cheese, but this prepartion was a good change of pace. Combined with roasted broccoli, this was a quick and easy weeknight dinner.

Like before, notes and ratings on each:

Starting Season 1

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Began cooking Season 1 today!

Putting together a meal with a few recipes from the season is a good way to start on the list, so I started with:

Here are our notes and ratings for each. Check the FAQ for what the ratings mean.

Mt. Hale Snowshoe

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 00:00:00 EST

Route

Zealand Road from Rt. 302 to Hale Brook Trail - 2.5 miles
Hale Brook Trail to Mt. Hale summit - 2.2 miles
Hale Brook Trail from Mt. Hale summit to Zealand Road - 2.2 miles
Zealand Road back to Rt. 302 - 2.5 miles

Total distance: 9.4 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Zealand Road is unplowed in the winter, so we had to park about a quarter mile down Rt. 302, then snowshoe the road until getting to the trail. The route was pretty flat, but an extra 2.5 miles on either end of the trip can be tiring

Garfield Ridge Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Day One

Gale River Trail to Garfield Ridge Trail - 4.0 miles
Garfield Ridge Trail to Galehead Hut - 0.6 miles
Frost Trail from Galehead Hut to Mt. Galehead summit - 0.5 miles
Frost Trail back to Galehead Hut - 0.5 miles
Twinway from Galehead Hut to South Twin summit - 0.8 miles
Twinway back to Galehead Hut - 0.8 miles
Garfield Ridge Trail from Galehead Hut to Mt. Garfield summit - 3.1 miles
Garfield Ridge Trail back to Garfield Campsite - 0.4 miles
Total Day One: 10.7 miles

Day Two

Garfield Ridge Trail from Garfield Campsite to Mt. Garfield summit - 0.4 miles
Mt. Garfield Trail from Mt. Garfield summit to Gale River Loop Road - 5.0 miles
Gale River Loop Road back to the car - 1.6 miles
Total Day Two: 7.0 miles

Total distance: 17.7 miles

Visualization

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

This hike corresponded to the Flags on the 48 event
We summitted Garfield twice, once on Saturday evening and once on Sunday morning. Since Saturday’s summit was a bust, we decided we might as well hit it again Sunday morning since the weather was real clear.

Marmalade v0.3

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 EDT

Just in time for Code Jam 2013, I’ve pushed a new version of Marmalade to RubyGems. This version introduces the ability to run your test cases in parallel.

In Code Jam, it’s critical to submit your results as quickly as possible. At the same time, though, often the most straightforward way to solve a puzzle is by using brute force rather than taking the time to figure out the most elegant or efficient algorithm. Unfortunately, since brute force often means slow execution, these two factors are at odds with each other.

To help with this, Marmalade 0.3 takes advantage of Michael Grosser’s excellent ‘parallel’ gem, allowing you to run your test cases using all available CPU cores.

To see how this could help, let’s look at the Rope Intranet example solution. For this particular puzzle, we bascially brute force the solution by testing every wire against all the other wires. Running this on my i7 with four cores, I get the following results:

rope-intranet$ time ./rope-intranet.rb -f A-large-practice.in
Case #1: 2
Case #2: 0
...
Case #14: 241081
Case #15: 0

real	0m16.124s
user	0m16.080s
sys	0m0.037s

However, when running the solution we’re only using one out of the four cores available to us. It follows that we can probably do better with this example. Using the latest version of Marmalade, we can have it run up to 4 test cases in parallel at any time:

rope-intranet$ time ./rope-intranet.rb -f A-large-practice.in --parallel
Case #1: 2
Case #2: 0
...
Case #14: 241081
Case #15: 0

real	0m4.860s
user	0m31.222s
sys	0m0.192s

We now get our solution in almost a quarter of the time. Of course, the difference between 16 seconds and 4 seconds isn’t all that much, but for some puzzles parallel execution can mean the difference between getting your submission through in time or not.

I know having this would have helped me last year, so hopefully it can help someone this time around. Good luck in Code Jam 2013!

Introducing jekyll-contentblocks

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00:00 EST

When I recently rewrote my site using Jekyll, one thing I really missed was having something like Rails’ content_for mechanism. Using content_for, a page can inform its parent layout about content that needs to be put in various places on the rendered page. A couple of popular examples are:

Specifying content for the sidebar
Adding JavaScript or CSS files into the page’s <head> section

I saw a few implementations out there of this kind of functionality for Jekyll, but some were too specific (i.e. sidebar only), others didn’t seem to work with the latest version of Jekyll, and still others worked but did not allow for Markdown within the blocks.

Thus was born the jekyll-contentblocks plugin.

The plugin introduces two new Liquid tags: contentblock and contentfor. Here’s an example of how they are used. Say we have a layout, _layouts/default.html:

<html>
  <head>
  	<title>{{ page.title }}</title>
  	<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/main.css" />
        {% contentblock styles %}
  </head>
  <body>
  	<div class="main">
  	  {{ content }}
  	</div>
  	<div class="sidebar">
  	  {% contentblock sidebar %}
  	</div>
  </body>
</html>

This layout defines two places where a page can add content: styles and sidebar.

Now let’s say we want to include a specific set of CSS styles specific to posts. To do that, we define our _layouts/post.html layout like this:

---
layout: default
---

{% contentfor styles %}
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/posts.css" />
{% endcontentfor %}

{{ content }}

Using the contentfor styles Liquid block like above would pull the posts.css file into every page using the post layout. Now, if we have a post that wants to include some content in the sidebar, we can simply create a file like _posts/a-post.md:

---
layout: post
---

Here is my post content.

{% contentfor styles %}
* here is a markdown list
* that will be rendered into the sidebar
* for the post "{{ page.title }}"
{% endcontentfor %}

As you can see, the contentfor blocks can render Markdown (or whatever the current file format is) and they will render Liquid tags within them.

So that’s basically it – please give the plugin a try in your own Jekyll project and let me know on the plugin’s GitHub page if you encounter any issues!

Mount Mansfield Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Hell Brook Trail to Long Trail - 2.0 miles
Long Trail to Mount Mansfield summit - 0.3 miles
Long Trail from Mount Mansfield summit to parking area - 3.3 miles

Total distance: 5.6 miles

Visualization

Garmin Connect

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

First Vermont 4,000 peak. The summit was so cloudy and foggy at the top that we didn’t get any good views, though.

Tuckerman's Ravine Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Tuckerman’s Ravine Trail from Pinkham Notch Vistor’s Center to Tuckerman’s Ravine - 2.5 miles
Tuckerman’s Ravine Trail from Tuckerman’s Ravine to Pinkham Notch Vistor’s Center - 2.5 miles

Total distance: 5.0 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here

Notes

Conditions at the bowl were white-out, like a blizzard. We stayed up there just long enough to take a few pictures and get out of there.

Angel's Landing Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Route

West Rim Trail from The Grotto picnic area to Scout Lookout - 2.0 miles
Angel’s Landing Trail from Scout Lookout to Angel’s Landing - 0.5 miles
Angel’s Landing Trail from Angel’s Landing to Scout Lookout - 0.5 miles
West Rim Trail from Scout Lookout to The Grotto picnic area - 2.0 miles

Total distance: 5.0 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Jon’s bachelor party.

Observation Point Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Route

East Rim Trail from Weeping Rock parking area to Observation Point - 4.0 miles
East Rim Trail from Observation Point to Weeping Rock parking area - 4.0 miles

Total distance: 8.0 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Jon’s bachelor party.

Fin

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Back in August of 2003, Dan and I found ourselves hiking the Daniel Webster Trail on our way up Mount Madison. I’m not sure exactly when it happened (though I’m guessing it was during post-summit euphoria) but at one point Dan told me about the AMC 4,000 footer club and how there are 48 4,000-foot peaks in the White Mountains. My love of the mountains and hiking had been growing steadily since about 2000, so when I heard about the list it was immediately apparent that it was something I needed to do. Right then and there, Dan and I decided that together we would start bagging the peaks on the list, with Mount Madison counting as number one.

Ever since then I’ve been chronicling our adventures as we continued to make trip after trip into the White Mountains. Now, 7 years later, Dan and I finished our project when during our annual July 4th camping trip we summited Mount Moosilauke, the 48th mountain on our list.

Moosialuke was the perfect peak to save for our last one. Our hike led us up the Beaver Brook trail, which runs along a cascade for nearly a mile. The summit of the mountain is surrounded by an alpine meadow, affording some beautiful 360-degree views. The summit was also once home to a lodge and the ruins of the foundation provide a great place to hang out and seek some shelter from the wind. Our group dropped our packs at the old foundation and cracked a bottle of champagne that Dan had packed in for the occasion. A fantastic trip, with incredible weather. It was also the first summit I completed with my new wife – her list is now at 2 down, 46 to go!

So what do we do now that we’ve bagged all the peaks on our list? Do them again? Try for the New England 4,000 footers? The New England Hundred Highest? Maybe try our hand at high-pointing the US? One thing’s for certain and that is we won’t stop any time soon. Our usual companions Mike and Chris are both well on their way to finishing their lists, so guys just let me know when you’re ready to head up again.

Married!

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

OK the wedding was a little over a month ago but it’s better late than never to announce that I am now married to the love of my life, my wonderful new wife Gemma.

I think my wife summarized it best in our wedding announcement:

The ceremony took place at the Monponsett Inn in Halifax on May 29, 2010. Even though the weather threatened to spoil the day, it all worked out. “It was pouring rain for about an hour before the ceremony, before clearing up at exactly 6:30,” writes Gemma. “The outdoor ceremony had perfect weather complete with birds chirping and a rainbow over the bride. I guess we got good luck either way, since it rained and shined on our wedding day!”

Thanks to everyone who attended for making it the happiest day of my life!

You can see more photos at my Flickr gallery.

Mount Moosilauke Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Beaver Brook Trail from Rt 112 to Mt. Moosialuke summit - 3.8 miles
Beaver Brook Trail from Mt. Moosialuke summit to Rt 112 - 3.8 miles

Total distance: 7.6 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Final hike to complete the New Hampshire 4,000 footers list!

Mount Washington Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Recap

After a few cancellations due to bad weather, we finally got a window of opportunity to hike up Mt. Washington. The highest peak in the White Mountains, Washington soars to just about 6300 feet at the summit.

By a “window of opportunity” I mean waiting for weather conditions that wouldn’t kill us. Mount Washington is home to the world’s worst weather, and we didn’t want to take that lightly. The day started off very well, with fairly clear skies and a view straight up to the top. However, as the morning turned into afternoon, clouds came through and covered the summit. As a result, we hiked the final two miles to the summit in a thick fog with only a couple hundred feet of visibility. Combined with the wind and drizzle, it was quite an experience.

Hiking Washington is bittersweet – due to the auto road and the cog railway, the summit is crowded with tourists. It’s tough to feel like you’ve accomplished much when you get to the summit and you’re able to use a flush toilet, eat pizza and clam chowder, and buy a t-shirt. On the other hand, knowing you’ve just climbed the highest peak in the Northeast is a great feeling.

Route

Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail from Marshfield Station parking lot to Lakes of the Clouds Hut - 2.5 miles
Crawford Path from Lakes of the Clouds Hut to Mount Washington Summit - 1.5 miles
Crawford Path from Mount Washington Summit to Lakes of the Clouds Hut - 1.5 miles
Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail from Lakes of the Clouds Hut to Marshfield Station parking lot - 2.5 miles

Total distance: 8.0 miles

Video

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Owl's Head Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Recap

The majority of the hike in was flat, about 8 miles worth. Then it’s straight up the mountain: 1500 feet in one mile or so. We were chasing the clock, so we went as fast as we could. It was brutal. Fun, though!

Route

Day One

Lincoln Woods Trail to Black Pond Trail - 2.6 miles
Black Pond Trail from Lincoln Woods Trail to Black Pond - 0.8 miles
Bushwhack from Black Pond Trail to Lincoln Brook Trail - about 1.0 miles
Lincoln Brook Trail from bushwhack to trailside camp - 1.3 miles
Lincoln Brook Trail from trail-side camp to Owl’s Head Path - 1.5 miles
Owl’s Head Path from Lincoln Brook Trail to Owl’s Head summit - 1.1 miles
Owl’s Head Path from Owl’s Head summit to Lincoln Brook trail - 1.1 miles
Lincoln Brook Trail from Owl’s Head Path to trailside camp - 1.5 miles
Day One Total: 10.9 miles

Day Two

Lincoln Brook Trail from trailside camp to bushwhack - 1.3 miles
Bushwhack from Lincoln Brook trail to Black Pond - about 1 mile
Black Pond Trail from Black Pond to Lincoln Woods Trail - 0.8 miles
Lincoln Woods Trail from Black Pond Trail to parking lot - 2.6 miles
Day Two Total: 5.7 miles

Total: 16.6 miles

Bushwhack

This page has gotten a lot of hits from people looking for the Black Pond bushwhack, so I I’ll dedicate a little space to that. First thing’s first, I do recommend doing this rather than walking the extra miles and having to cross the river three or four more times, especially in the Spring when the river is running fast and deep. However, make sure that you have a map, a compass, and a GPS if at all possible.

Once you get to Black Pond, there’s a little clearing with some rocks and you’ll notice that the trail seems to continue. This is the start of the bushwhack. This method of reaching Owl’s Head is so popular that for the first half mile or so the bushwhack actually looks like a real trail. In fact, when we were there, someone had started marking the bushwhack with orange blazes. We started out following the blazes from Black Pond, but eventually lost them about three-quarters of the way, once the “trail” started going away and the trees started thinning out a little. At that point we relied on our maps and GPS to get us the rest of the way.

The whole time we had our GPS running so we got tracks of the entire thing. I’ve included these for download below. Before we went I had looked for some GPS tracks of the bushwhack but was unable to find anything. Also included in these tracks is the way up the mountain, which is also kind of bushwhack in itself. Hopefully, these tracks will help someone. For the bushwhack, use our Day Two track – Day One was when we lost the blazes and had to go follow the river to meet back up with the trail. On Day Two we had the advantage of knowing where we’d been so we could travel in a much more direct route through the bushwhack.

Video

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Did the bushwhack from Black Pond to Liberty Brook Trail – recommended in order to avoid river crossings

I left my heart...

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Ever since we got together, Gemma and I have been throwing around the idea of spending some time out in San Francisco and the surrounding wine country area. Well, we recently did just that and all I can say is I wish we hadn’t waited so long. The landscape is incredible, the people are wonderful, and the food is unbelievable.

Here are some highlights of our trip:

We got engaged! I proposed at a winery called Terra Valentine, which I thought would be a fitting place to pop the question.
Our friends Kristy and Damon took us on a special tour of wine country. Visiting wineries with two industry insiders is the only way to do it. Not only are the tastings free, but you get to sample the reserve wines and sometimes even get the behind-the-scenes tours. Thanks Kristy and Damon!

Fine San Francisco dining. Dinners at Garry Danko and Asia de Cuba were two of the best meals I’ve ever eaten.
I got to satisfy my hiking urge by taking a 3-mile walk among the giant redwood trees at Muir Woods. I highly recommend this if you are at into hiking or the forest or any kind of nature.

We took a boat to Alcatraz and spent the day wandering around and exploring the island. Some may wonder if this is worth it and the answer is a resounding yes! The tour is fascinating and there’s much more than just an old prison out there.

Those are the major ones, but just being out there is a highlight itself. We definitely can’t wait to go back!

See more pictures from the trip on my Flickr galleries.

Wildcat Ridge Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Recap

An awesome fall hike, this time hitting the peaks of Wildcat Mountain (there are 5 of them, though only 2 count towards the list). This one was almost over before it began, since the very first thing we needed to do was cross Glen Ellis Brook which had fast, high, freezing cold water. Jumping from icy rock to icy rock is a recipe for disaster, but thankfully we all stayed dry.

After the brook crossing, we started a 2 mile walk straight up the side of the ridge to the summit of Wildcat D. The day was pretty cold, but it was amazingly clear, which gave us some incredible views on the way up and from the summit. Here you see a view of Mt. Washington where you can see Tuckerman’s and Huntington Ravines.

Wildcat you may know is a ski mountain. So it was cool to get to the top of D peak and see the lifts waiting for the winter. We were able to use the old lift house as a wind-stop for lunch, which was another stroke of luck.

After the summit of Wildcat D, it was a relatively easy walk across the ridge to the summit of A peak, the highest of all the Wildcat peaks.

Overall, a great fall hike!

Route

Wildcat Ridge Trail from NH 16 to summit of Wildcat D - 2.2 miles
Wildcat Ridge Trail from summit of Wildcat D to summit of Wildcat A - 2.0 miles
Wildcat Ridge Trail from summit of Wildcat A to summit of Wildcat D - 2.0 miles
Wildcat Ridge Trail from summit of Wildcat D to NH 16 - 2.2 miles

Total distance: 8.4 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Kinsmans Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Lonesome Lake Trail from Lafayette Campground to Fishin’ Jimmy Trail - 1.5 miles
Fishin’ Jimmy Trail from Lonesome Lake Trail to Kinsman Ridge Trail - 2.2 miles
Kinsman Ridge Trail from Fishin’ Jimmy Trail to North Kinsman summit - 0.6 miles
Kinsman Ridge Trail from North Kinsman summit to South Kinsman Summit -0.9 miles
Kinsman Ridge Trail from South Kinsman summit to North Kinsman Summit -0.9 miles
Kinsman Ridge Trail from North Kinsman summit to Fishin’ Jimmy Trail - 0.6 miles
Fishin’ Jimmy Trail from Kinsman Ridge Trail to Lonesome Lake Trail - 2.2 miles
Lonesome Lake Trail from Fishin’ Jimmy Trail to Lafayette Campground - 1.5 miles

Total distance: 10.6 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

This day also happened to be the day that they were doing Flags on the 48

Mt. Osceola Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Mt. Osceola Trail from Tripoli Road to summit of Mt. Osceola - 3.2 miles
Mt. Osceola Trail from summit of Mt. Osceola to Tripoli Road - 3.2 miles

Total distance: 6.4 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Cannon Mountain Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Recap

Cannon Mountain was the second peak we hit that afternoon. Going by the book time this is a short one (4 miles/3 hours) so the idea was to get that out of the way without having to one day go up north for only that hike. Though, I’m not sure what Olympian they had time that one out because it was more like 4:15 since it was insanely steep for almost half the journey to the summit.

Route

Kinsman Ridge Trail from Cannon parking lot to summit of Cannon Mtn - 2.0 miles
Kinsman Ridge Trail from summit of Cannon Mtn to Cannon parking lot - 2.0 miles

Total distance: 4.0 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Almost half the distance up the mountain was at a 33% grade!

Stop saying Hawaii in there

Rusty Geldmacher — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Ok so it’s been almost a month since we got back, but I’ve finally finished sorting and uploading the pictures from our recent trip to Hawaii.

In short, Hawaii is incredible. My lady and I spent a week and half there, with our time split between O’ahu and Kauai. O’ahu was wonderful for seeing the sights (Waikiki, Hanauma Bay, Pearl Harbor, etc.) and having fun with our friends. Kauai was the best for outdoor activities and beaches. I highly recommend seeing both of these islands if you ever get to Hawaii!

For me, the highlight of the trip was hiking in Waimea Canyon on Kauai. The canyon walls rise about 4,000 feet and they are quite a sight to behold. We hiked down a wooded trail and along the canyon ridge to the top of Waipo’o Falls – a wonderful 4-mile round trip.

You can see more pictures in our Hawaii photo gallery. Aloha!

PS: This title of this post is from The Simpsons.

East Osceola Winter Summit

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST

Route

Greeley Ponds Trail from Rt 112 to Mt. Osceola Trail - 1.3 miles
Mt. Osceola Trail to summit of East Osceola - 1.5 miles
Mt. Osceola Trail to Greeley Ponds Trail - 1.5 miles
Greeley Ponds Trail to Rt 112- 1.3 miles

Total distance: 5.6 miles

Visualization

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

This was by far our hardest winter hike yet – some points on the way up were about a 50% grade, which is made twice as difficult while wearing snowshoes!

Flume Gorge Snowshoeing

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST

One of my best Christmas presents this year was an awesome pair of snowshoes that I got from my wonderful girlfriend. Eager to get out and use them, last weekend a few of us went up to New Hampshire’s Franconia Notch State Park for a day of trekking through the snow. Earlier this summer, Gemma and I had explored The Flume Gorge, an 800-foot miniature canyon at the base of Mount Liberty. The place was absolutely amazing, and we vowed to head back there in the winter.

During the summer, the Flume has a fully staffed and very crowded visitors’ center which acts as a (for-pay) gateway to the park. But with the advent of winter, the center closes down and the land is free to use. Though the parking lots are plowed, the paths up to the visitors’ center are not, and once up to the front, you’ll need to hop over a stone wall and walk around the building to get to the trailhead. This sounds sketchy but trust me it’s 100% within the rules, I know because I emailed the park staff before we went up there :)

After putting our ‘shoes on at the trailhead behind the building, we headed down the trail and across a covered bridge which leads to the beginning of the gorge. In the summer, a series of boardwalks takes you through the gorge, but these are pulled away when the Flume closes for winter. There are some permanent boardwalks on either end of the gorge, though, and we were able to walk down these a little ways so we could take in the incredible sight of the ice-covered gorge walls and the pristine beauty of Avalanche Falls.

After experiencing the gorge, we continued following the trail towards The Pool, a small body of water surrounded by near 100-foot rock cliffs. Spanning the northern end of The Pool is Sentinel Pine bridge, another covered bridge that was built on the trunk of a giant fallen pine tree. After The Pool, the trail then heads back towards the visitors’ center though a series of enormous glacial boulders.

At just under three miles, this trip was neither too short nor too long. Whether you are brand new to snowshoeing or you are an experienced veteran, I highly recommend checking out The Flume in the winter time. You will not be disappointed! For more pictures, check out my full photo gallery on Flickr.

Mt. Tecumseh Day Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST

Recap

Late fall is a great time for hiking – the air is crisp and clear, there are no bugs, it’s not oppressively cold, the views are fantastic and it’s a great extra challenge. This time, we went to New Hampshire and hiked up Mt. Tecumseh, which at 4003 feet is the lowest mountain on the list. Don’t let that fool you, though: Tecumseh is no joke. It’s one of those mountains that starts off nice and steady but rises steeply for about a mile up to the summit. At just over 5 miles round trip, it was great hike to kick off the winter season.

Route

Mount Tecumseh Trail from Waterville Valley to Mt. Tecumseh summit - 2.5 miles
Mount Tecumseh Trail from Mt. Tecumseh summit to Waterville Valley - 2.5 miles

Total distance: 5.0 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Mount Jefferson and Mount Adams Day Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Recap

We decided to take advantage of the late August weather and walk up two of the three highest peaks in the White Mountains. Starting at the highest trailhead in the Whites, Caps Ridge Trail, we made our way across the Ridge of the Caps and up to the summit of Mt. Jefferson. This route takes you up 2700 feet in about 2.5 miles, with the majority of the climbing done in the last three quarters of a mile or so.

Summiting Jefferson via the Caps Ridge Trail is definitely a popular hike, but most of the time people loop around and come back after Jefferson. We thought it would be sweet to continue on to Mount Adams, which is just another two miles away from the summit. So continue we did and it really worked out because the the terrain and the views around Mount Adams are simply incredible.

Route

Caps Ridge Trail to Mount Jefferson summit - 2.5 miles
Gulfside Trail to Lowe’s Path - 1.9 miles
Lowe’s Path to Mount Adams summit - 0.3 miles
Lowe’s path to Gulfside Trail - 0.3 miles
Gulfside Trail to Edmand’s Col - 1.3 miles
The Cornice to Caps Ridge Trail - 1.3 miles
Caps Ridge Trail back to the trailhead - 2.1 miles

Total distance: 9.7 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Mount Cabot Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Unknown Pond Trail from Mill Brook Road to Unknown Pond - 2.2 miles
Kilkenny Ridge Trail from Unknown Pond to Mt. Cabot summit - 2.8 miles
Kilkenny Ridge Trail from Mt. Cabot summit to Unknown Pond - 2.8 miles
Unknown Pond Trail from Unknown Pond to Mill Brook Road - 2.2 miles

Total: 10.0 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Weather was bad – had rain for about a third of the hike, lots of thunder and some lightning too
Met a guy who turned back carrying a 40-50 pound black lab on his shoulders. Said the dog was scared of the thunder and wouldn’t move!

North Twin Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Route

North Twin Trail from Haystack Road to North Twin Summit - 4.3 miles
North Twin Trail from North Twin Summit to Haystack Road - 4.3 miles

Total: 8.6 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Kind of foggy but the weather largely cooperated

Sandwich Range Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Recap

We started relatively early on Saturday morning and made our way down Oliverian Brook Trail, following the blue blazes. About a mile into the trail, it split off at a fork so we decided to turn right and keep following the blazes. Three quarters of a mile down that side trail we happened upon a large group of people standing at a fire road, scratching their heads. As we later figured out, we all had gone the wrong way by following the blue blazes! So, backtrack we did and that’s why on the GPS plot you’ll see a slight detour near the beginning of the trail.

The rest of the trip went smoothly, though. The first day we hit Mt. Passaconaway and Mt. Whiteface, then camped near the summit of Whiteface at an old tent site called Camp Heermance (which is no longer maintained). On day two we walked across the Sleepers, then up the south slide of the Tripyramids. Dropping our packs where Tripyramid Trail meets Sabbaday Brook trail, we quickly bagged North Tripyramid, then made our way out the 6 miles back to the car. The last pasrt of the trail went right through Sabbaday Falls, which is an incredibly beautiful waterfall right off of Route 112.

After this 20+ mile trip, we were definitely ready for some Yankee Smokehouse on the way home!

Route

Day One

Oliverian Brook Trail to Passaconaway Cutoff - 1.9 miles
Passaconaway Cutoff to Square Ledge Trail - 1.7 miles
Square Ledge Trail to Walden Trail - 0.7 miles
Walden Trail over Passaconaway summit to Rollins Trail - 1.6 miles
Rollins Trail over Mt. Whiteface summit to Camp Heermance - 2.4 miles

Day Two

Rollins Trail from Camp Heermance to Kate Sleeper Trail - 0.1 miles
Kate Sleeper Trail to Tripyramid Trail - 3.3 miles
Tripyramid Trail over South and Middle Tripyramid to summit of North Tripyramid - 1.4 miles
Tripyramid Trail to Sabbaday Brook Trail - 0.5 miles
Sabbaday Brook Trail to Kancamagus Highway - 4.9 miles
Kancamagus Highway to Oliverian Brook - 2.5 miles

Total: 18.0 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

We hit every 4000 foot peak in the Sandwich Range on this hike

Tuckerman's Ravine

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Last weekend we had originally intended to hike up Mt. Cabot, but since time was going to run out (leaving our car locked behind the gate of the Berlin Fish Hatchery) we decided instead to hike up to Tuckerman’s Ravine. A popular place for adventurous skiers, the ravine is about three miles up the side of Mount Washington. Even though it was in the high sixties and sunny, there was a ton of fresh snow on the mountain and that brought out gaggles of skiers, boarders and spectators like us.

Here is a picture of the route plotted from Dan’s GPS data using Google Earth:

There are no chair lifts at the ravine. Instead, people strap their skis/boards to their backs and then hike the three miles to the bowl. Once there they proceed to climb up the side of the ravine (sometimes having to use ice picks to get up there), strap their skis on and ski down. It’s pretty incredible to watch.

Even though we didn’t get to hike our planned route, the day was still a blast. You can see some more pictures in my photo gallery of the hike.

Mt. Waumbek Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST

Recap

Well we loved hiking Mahoosuc Notch in the snow so much that we decided we were due for another trip up north. This time we went to hike Mount Waumbek, one of the lowest 4000 footers and also one of the most northern of the group. The conditions were great: high temperatures in the mid teens, slightly overcast, excellent visibility, and only a very light snow at times.

Again as with the Mahoosuc hike, preparation was key. We were dressed in many layers, had plenty of water and a reasonable plan to get back before dark. The trail was in very good condition, with firmly packed snow and markers every 100 feet or so. When hiking in the snow it’s easy to lose the trail if it’s not well marked or there are no footprints to follow. The trail conditions on this hike alleviated any of those concerns.

Hiking in pristine winter conditions is unbeatable. Walking up a mountain surrounded by a forest covered with deep undisturbed snow is almost like stepping into a different world. Though winter hiking brings with it a unique set of challenges (or water kept freezing!) the experience is well worth the extra effort!

Route

Starr King Trail from RT2 to summit of Mt. Waumbek - 3.6 miles
Starr King Trail from summit of Mt. Waumbek to RT2 - 3.6 miles

Total: 7.2 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Our second winter hike went off without a hitch!

Teetering on the edge of catastrophe

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST

It seemed to us that Mahoosuc Notch – said to be the toughest mile on the Appalachian Trail – would be a lot more fun if there were six inches of snow on the ground. So with fingers crossed, we headed up to Maine last weekend to attempt it. The Notch, since you’ve probably never heard of it, is a one-mile stretch of trail that must be slowly traversed by climbing over, under and around giant boulders. The snow on the ground in early November made that even trickier by providing lots of places to slip and lots of places which looked solid but weren’t. It took us nearly three hours to get through the entire thing, but man was it worth the experience.

Mahoosuc Notch in November photo gallery
Dan’s (much better) account of the trip

In case you’ve heard otherwise, Northern New Hampshire/Maine is cold in November. The average temperature while we were walking was in the mid to high thirties, making it so our water bottles would start to freeze if we didn’t give them a few shakes every now and then. On Saturday night, we slept in a three-sided shelter near the top of Mahoosuc Arm (3700 ft). When the temperature dipped into the single-digits, not only our water froze but our boots froze as well. When we were getting ready to go on Sunday morning, we had to smash our boots with rocks to thaw them enough to untie the laces and get our feet in. Problem was that it was like putting your foot into a block of ice. Once we got walking, though, our feet and bodies warmed up and it was actually really comfortable as long as you kept moving.

At one point Dan remarked that this trip was continuously teetering on the edge of catastrophe, meaning that so much about our situation could have gone wrong. Luckily, we were prepared for every obstacle we met and everything went fine. Winter hiking is an incredible experience and I definitely recommend it to anyone who thinks they can handle some mild discomfort. I’m not sure I’m ready for multi-day winter hikes yet, but this was definitely a highlight of my 2006!

So that’s it for our hiking adventures this year. Next year will bring more 4,000 footers and hopefully at least a late winter/early spring day hike.

Southern Presidentials Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Webster-Jackson Trail from Rt 302 to the summit of Mt. Jackson - 2.6 miles
Webster Cliff Trail from Mt. Jackson to Mizpah Spring Hut - 1.7 miles
Webster Cliff Trail from Mizpah Spring Hut to summit of Mt. Pierce - 0.9 miles
Crawford Path from Mt. Pierce to Mt. Eisenhower Loop - 1.2 miles
Mt. Eisenhower Loop over summit of Mt. Eisenhower back to Crawford Path - 0.7 miles
Crawford Path from Mt. Eisenhower Loop to summit of Mt. Monroe - 2.0 miles
Crawford Path from summit of Mt. Monroe to Lakes of the Clouds Hut - 0.2 miles
Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail from Lakes of the Clouds Hut to Cog Railway Station - 2.1 miles

Total: 11.4 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Saw The Gorge, a huge double waterfall on the way down Mt. Washington

Mt. Carrigain Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Signal Ridge Trail from Sawyer River Road to summit of Mt. Carrigain - 5.0 miles
Signal Ridge Trail from summit of Mt. Carrigain to Sawyer River Road - 5.0 miles

Total: 10.0 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

From the fire tower on top of Mt. Carrigain you can see 43 of the 48 4,000 footers!

Mt. Isolation Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Day One

Rocky Branch Trail from Jericho Road to Rocky Branch Shelter #2 - 6.1 miles
Rocky Branch Trail from Rocky Branch Shelter #2 to Isolation Trail - 0.1 miles
Isolation Trail to Davis Path - 2.6 miles
Davis Path to summit of Mt. Isolation - 0.9 miles
Davis Path from summit of Mt. Isolation to Isolation Trail - 0.9 miles
Isolation Trail to Rocky Branch Trail - 2.6 miles
Rocky Branch Trail to Rocky Branch Shelter #2 - 0.1 miles
Day One Total: 13.3 miles

Day Two

Rocky Branch Trail from Rocky Branch Shelter #2 to Jericho Road - 6.1 miles
Day Two Total: 6.1 miles

Total: 19.4 miles

Video

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

First overnighter of the year, training for the big hike over the 4th of July

Pemigewasset Wildernesss Loop

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Recap

This was one of the longest, most fun, most physically intense hikes I’ve done so far. For four days we trekked a thirty mile loop up and down ten mountain peaks in the western half of the Pemigewasset Wilderness. The weather reports mentioned chances of thunderstorms, but since our rule is to hike rain or shine, we went anyway. Well the reports were mostly right, as we got rain on three of the four days we were there. On the first day, as we were descending Mt. Flume, we actually got some hail! But somehow luck was with us – we only had bad weather on one peak, most of the thunderstorms passed in under and hour, and we got great views for the most important parts of the hike.

We had actually planned the hike so we could do it in four or five days depending on if we were up for a long (11 mile) walk on the last day. That’s what we opted for, so we made it out in four. We skipped North Twin because we wanted to beat the weather to Guyot Campsite, but other than that the hike went exactly as planned.

Route

Day One

Osseo Trail from Route 112 to Mt. Flume summit via Wilderness Trail - 5.6 miles
Mt. Flume summit to Mt. Liberty summit - 1.2 miles
Mt. Liberty summit to Liberty Spring Trail - 0.3 miles
Liberty Spring Trail to Liberty Spring campsite - 0.3 miles

Day Two

Liberty Spring campsite to Franconia Ridge Trail - 0.3 miles
Franconia Ridge Trail to Mt. Lafayette summit - 3.8 miles
Garfield Ridge Trail from Mt. Lafayette summit to Garfield Ridge campsite - 3.9 miles

Day Three

Garfield campsite to Galehead Hut - 2.7 miles
Loop to Mt. Galehead summit and back - 1 mile
Twinway to North Twin Spur at South Twin summit - 0.8 miles
Twinway to Bondcliff Trail - 2 miles
Bondcliff Trail to Guyot campsite - 0.6 miles

Day Four

Guyot campsite to Wilderness Trail - 6.3 miles
Wilderness Trail to Route 112 - 4.7 miles

Total: 33.5 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Longest hike, day-wise, that I have ever done up to this point!
It rained on three of the four days, and on the first day we got hail!
However, most of the time we got a window of good weather to summit peaks

China wrap up

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Last night I added a gallery of my pictures from China, 56 photos in all. Here is just a small sample.

Jack and I right before sitting down for dinner. That is only about half of the food we ended up with at this feast!

This is the market we went to in Hangzhou.

Here I am standing in a doorway at the Hangzhou Botanical Gardens.

A view across the Haungpu River at night. Here you can see the Oriental Pearl Tower all lit up.

The complete gallery is here. I guess that will wrap up the reporting on my trip. I’ve had fun telling the stories of my travels on this site. In case you missed anything, here is a re-cap of the story:

Weekend sight seeing: Shanghai

Rusty Geldmacher — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EDT

To my dismay, I woke up this morning to find it absolutely pouring outside. The forecast said that the rain wasn’t going to let up until around 6pm, which sort of bummed me out. My plan was to walk around Shanghai in the morning and see what kind of weird and wonderful stuff I could find. But then with rain entering the picture, I was holed up in my hotel room with nothing better to do than flip through channel after channel of Chinese TV. In an interesting stroke of luck, I clicked over to ESPN international and lo and behold what is on TV but the Red Sox-Tigers game! So at least I had that small taste of home to keep me going for a while. By the time the game was over and I had surfed the web for a while, the rain had actually let up enough for me to get on my way (with my umbrella handy, of course).

My plan was to walk around and do some shopping. I told the first cab driver to take me over to Nanjing Road, which is supposedly where “everyone goes” to shop. When I got there I found out that it was true everyone goes there but it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. The place is a long stretch of pedestrianized road with stores on both sides – boring, Western-style boutiques and department stores. Yawn. If I had wanted to go to a mall I would have stayed in Massachusetts.

Nope, I wanted some Chinese stuff, so I hopped back into a taxi and headed for the Old Town Antiques Market – a sort of outdoor bazaar full of all sorts of strange, old Chinese merchandise. It was here that I was introduced to the wonderful world of haggling. If you’ve never haggled before, I don’t blame you. It was definitely something I was not accustomed to and at the beginning I sort of felt guilty for trying to low-ball people so much (especially when the exchange rates make things so cheap to begin with). However, it is customary to do so in that situation and I’d go so far as to say it’s absolutely expected of you.

After just one day of doing this, here is how I observed it to work. To begin with, you approach a stall and find something you want to buy. You kind of look at it, then pick it up and inspect it. As soon as you touch it, a merchant will come up to you and ask, “do you like?” I guess the trick here is not to appear too interested in something, so you just kind of shrug and say, “it’s OK.” They will then say something like “how much you think?” Personally, I never answered them because with my limited experience doing this I had no idea what things regularly go for. Instead, my beginner’s strategy was to let them start the bargaining. I would just give them a blank stare, squint, shrug or do something that indicated that I wasn’t intending to buy it to begin with. At that point, the vendor will usually pull out a calculator and type in a price: “one-eight-oh” they’ll say, for example. “One eighty?! For this?!!?” is a pretty decent response to the first offer. “How much you think?” It’s now the buyer’s turn to grab the calculator and enter in a ridiculously low price that will have the vendor either gasping or laughing. I would typically start at about a third of the offering price, so in this case I would type in sixty. After some back and forth usually you will arrive at a price around half of the original offer. For something that started at 180, the ending price (for me, the rookie haggler) would be about 100. So in this example, we just talked them down from 180 RNB (about $22.00) to100 RNB (about $12.00). A savings of $10.00 isn’t that bad, but I’m sure I could’ve done better with some more practice. For instance, it wasn’t until I had nearly spent my budgeted shopping amount that I realized the “start to walk away” technique is insanely effective. Another thing that would have given me more of an edge would have been being able to speak Chinese. Either way, it was actually really fun and it added to the whole experience of buying Chinese antiques and curios.

After that mentally and physically draining experience, I went back to the hotel to take a short nap. Once recharged, I headed on down to The Bund to see what all the fuss is about. I can’t say I was disappointed. The area is very nice, with a great walkway right along the river. From the walkway you can get a fantastic view of the Oriental Pearl (apparently the largest TV tower in the world) and the other skyscrapers residing along the other side of the Huangpu River. On the Bund side of the river there are very old European-style buildings that used to comprise the financial center of Shanghai. For dinner I stopped at a restaurant built into a boat docked along the banks of the river. Naturally, it was very good food. In fact, I can’t say I’ve had a particularly bad dining experience while I’ve been here and I really don’t understand why people complain about it.

So my flight home is tomorrow and this is probably the last time I will check in while I am here. All in all this has been quite an experience, and one that I wish everyone I know could have been involved in. As always, it is really eye-opening to be in a different part of the world. You end up experiencing a different perspective, and you begin to gain a frame of reference for where other people are coming from. I’m looking forward to coming home, though, and seeing my friends, family and my girlfriend. I’ve got a lot of plans for when I get back, so I might as well not lament leaving here. The next adventure is just around the corner!

Weekend sight seeing: Hangzhou

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Breakfast at the hotel and then around 7:30 Stanley and his wife Cynthia picked me up out front. Our destination was Hangzhou (pronounced “Haan-joe”), a city just over 100 miles southwest of Shanghai. We got there in a little under two hours and the first place we visited was an area called West Lake, which as you might imagine is situated right next to a large lake. Just like Shanghai, there were a ton of people there. However as Stanley explained to me, people in Hangzhou a are little more relaxed and unhurried than the people in Shanghai. The cab drivers were still nuts, though.

Stanley and Cynthia (again, their American names) both went to Zhejiang University which is located right near West Lake. Since they both knew the area fairly well, I was able to get a very good tour of the major sights. The first place we went after walking around West Lake for a bit was a mountain right near the lake that had a huge tower on the top. Each morning he mountain (who’s name in translated as Germ Mountain – shrug) hosts a number of the city’s elders who walk up early enough to see the sun rise. There are a lot of rocks and platforms in which to see the sunrise from the top of the mountain. On our way down the other side of the mountain, we came across a Taoist temple that we spent some time exploring. For lunch we ate Hangzhou-style Chinese food at a place who’s name translates to Grandma’s Kitchen. Dishes included fish soup, lotus root, freshly caught West Lake fish, and of course Stanley’s favorite: bullfrog. After eating, we then went and checked out the Hangzhou Botanical Gardens, which is home to a pool of giant fifty year old goldfish. These things were enormous, and we fed them by tossing pieces of squash into the water. Finally, before we left Hangzhou for the day we stopped in to one of the busy street markets where I bought some souvenirs to remember my visit by. Once back in Shanghai, Stanley and Cynthia took me to a Sichuan-style restaurant for an extremely spicy yet incredibly delicious dinner.

Again, pictures will be added once I get home and get a chance to sort through them. For now, though, I am so tired I need to pass out.

That ain't crab rangoon

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EDT

I’ve been learning a few Chinese words and phrases here and there, but by far the phrase I use the most is “xie xie” which means “thank you”. You pronounce it “shee-ay shee-ay” with the emphasis on the “ay”. Or so I think. I’m pretty sure. Anyway, I find myself using that one a lot (see previous post) and so far no one has hit me for accidentally insulting them, so that’s good.

Oh man, I should have brought my camera to lunch today. At a restaurant near the office I sampled delicacies such as frog (complete with bones), beef tongue (can’t seem to get away from that but it’s good), ox stomach, and fish bones. Though some people might be repulsed by the mention of what something on the plate is, everything is usually prepared so well that it really doesn’t matter. I’m sure the guys here have had experience with visitors rejecting food because of what it was or what part of the animal it came from. They tell me what something is and then laugh as if they were waiting for me to vomit. My philosophy: If it tastes good, I’ll eat it – and everything I’ve had so far tastes great so it’s really not a big deal. As a bonus, I’ve gotten many compliments on my command of the chopsticks!

Tomorrow’s plans are finalized. Stanley (again: American name) is taking me to Hangzhou, which is something like an hour and a half south of Shanghai. It’s where he went to college and apparently it’s got some good touristy type stuff to offer. Yes, I am a tourist here – how can I not be? The only thing I can say is “thank you” so integrating with the locals is a bit difficult. I’ll check in again probably Sunday night after I spend the say walking around Shanghai.

Chinese Hospitality

Rusty Geldmacher — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EDT

I’ve got to say that I am continuously impressed by how friendly everyone is here. It’s almost embarrassing how people seem to go out of their way to help out. For example, I ate at a restaurant the other night and the hostess sat down with me and showed me all sorts of different things on the menu, told me what was good, what she recommended to try, and all that. She really didn’t have to do that, but it was probably obvious to her that I was clueless and didn’t know where to begin (one thing she recommended was beef tongue, which turned out to be tender and succulent). It goes beyond restaurants, though. The people here at work are uncommonly kind, not only to me but to each other as well.

Last night, a co-worker named Jack (that of course is his English name) invited me to his home to eat dinner in celebration of the Duanwu Festival, which is also known as the Dragon Boat Festival. This holiday is celebrated in remembrance of a man named Chu Yuan, a royal court official who lived over 2000 years ago. In one particular way of celebrating, people eat tzungtzu, which are pyramid-shaped rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves. Jack’s wife Hui Tan made a lot of these for us and they were fantastic! She and her mother also made us a whole spread of delights such as fish, pork, tofu, soup, watermelon and apple salad, various types of vegetables, and more. Needless to say, the meal was excellent!

After eating, we watched a little Chinese TV, and I was only mildly surprised when I found out that here they have their own equivalent of American Idol and that it is just as popular. Before leaving, Jack and his wife presented me with the gift of a very fancy set of wooden chopsticks that are hand painted with an historical scene. I was eternally grateful for all of their kindness and hospitality, and I certainly mean to return the favor if they ever happen to venture state-side.

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do this weekend. Today it is raining so I think for now I will focus on hoping it stops.

Shanghai, Day One

Rusty Geldmacher — Tue, 30 May 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Today’s my first full day in Shanghai and so far, so good. After a fourteen hour flight, I landed here yesterday at about 4:00pm, prepared to be immediately immersed in a completely different culture and language. Turns out that things aren’t so different after all. Shanghai is just like any other huge city in the world. Sure, the language is different but most of the important signs are duplicated in English, and lots of people speak at least a bit of English as well. I hear that English language courses are mandatory starting in about third grade around here.

With all that going for me, it wasn’t too difficult to get from the airport to the hotel. First from the airport I jumped on the Transrapid MagLev train, which goes straight from the airport to the edge of the city. The train is really cool – like a monorail on steroids, it goes faster than 400km/hr. Our top speed was 430km/hr (267 mph)! After disembarking at Long Yang station I took a taxi to my hotel, the Renaissance Yangtze Shanghai.

A word about driving in Shanghai – leave it to the professionals! Seriously. Growing up in and around Boston I’ve seen my share of crazy and scary driving situations, but I’ve never seen anything like this. People weaving in and out of traffic, creating their own lanes in the middle of two other lanes, swerving into the oncoming lane while leaning heavily on the horn – it’s all here. Add into that mix people on foot, bicycles and mopeds and you’ve got yourself a situation that is both petrifying and wildly entertaining at the same time. Even when you’re just crossing the street you are taking your life into your own hands. People seem to ignore the fact that pedestrians have a “walk” sign – they’ll just swerve in front or behind you. My advice: find a large group of people and cross the street in the middle of it.

After checking in, I walked around the block and checked out the buildings and some of the city. It’s kind of weird – it seems like things in the city are either 20+ years old, or they are brand new. I’m not sure if anything happened here in the 80’s and 90’s. There are a LOT of apartment buildings, and they look like crates stacked one on top of each other, much like buildings you’d see in the projects. They are everywhere you look. Another thing that is immediately noticeable is the heavy haze and smog. It’s covering the city. If there was ever a place that needed clean air vehicles as desperately as Shanghai, I haven’t been there (and I’ve spent some time in LA). Perhaps it has something to do with the summer weather (it’s humid and in the low 80’s here at the moment), but somehow I think it’s like this all year round.

One of the main things I am looking forward to here is the food. So far (in the two meals I’ve eaten here) I haven’t ventured too much out of my comfort zone. Both meals were at the hotel restaurant and both were fairly Western with a slight Chinese twist. This morning with breakfast I did eat some Dim Sum dumplings, though. I hope to go out to eat with some of the guys here at the office and try some really authentic Chinese cuisine.

Speaking of which, here I am at the Intel office. I figure the rest of the week is going to be fairly routine. Get up, catch the bus into work, work all day, go back to the hotel, wander around until I find somewhere to eat dinner, sleep, etc. After all, working is the main reason why I am here. During the week I’m going to come up with a plan for the weekend. Some people have suggested going to see the countryside, and others have suggested checking out downtown Shanghai. I’ve got a few days to work that all out, but for now I’ve got to get down to business.

Note: I thought it would be worth mentioning that I will be adjusting the time on my posts from Shanghai to reflect the local time that I posted them.

Mt. Hale and Mt. Tom Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 20 May 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Hike One

Hale Brook Trail from Zealand Road to summit of Mt. Hale - 2.2 miles
Hale Brook Trail from summit of Mt. Hale to Zealand Road - 2.2 miles

Total: 4.4 miles

Hike Two

Avalon Trail from Crawford Deport to A-Z Trail - 1.3 miles
A-Z Trail to Mt. Tom Spur - 1.0 mile
Mt. Tom Spur to summit of Mt. Tom - 0.6 miles
Mt. Tom Spur from summit of Mt. Tom to A-Z Trail - 0.6 miles
A-Z Trail to Avalon Trail - 1.0 mile
Avalon Trail to Crawford Depot - 1.3 miles

Total: 5.8 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Dan and I did two separate hikes on one day, in order to kick off the hiking season and get into a hiking mindset
We ran into a little rain, but we powered through it

Mt. Willey and Mt. Field Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EDT

Recap

Dan, his brother Rob, and I once again headed up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire to tackle more peaks. This time we hit the peaks of Mount Willey and Mount Field which both lie together on a convenient loop. The hike was fun and the weather largely cooperated. Although the air temperature was around 50 degrees (and around 40 degrees on the peaks), the sun was shining and there was little to no wind. The mountains are a great place in the Fall, and you can see more of it in the gallery for the hike. Big thanks to Dan for bringing his camera and taking great pictures!

Visualization

Route

Kedron Flume Trail from Willey House (on Rt. 302) to Ethan Pond Trail - 1.3 miles
Ethan Pond Trail to Willey Range Trail - 0.3 miles
Willey Range Trail (across summits of Mt. Willey and Mt. Field) to Avalon Trail - 2.5 miles
Avalon Trail (across summit of Mt. Avalon) to Rt. 302 (at Crawford Depot) - 2.8 miles
Rt. 302 to Willey House - 3.0 miles

Total: 9.9 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Ireland Trip 2003

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EDT

Right after I graduated from WPI graduate school, my parents, sister and I took a 10-day trip to Ireland. After weighing the pros and cons of various approaches to seeing the country, we decided to take a guided bus tour. The tour allowed us to hit all of the major sites, while still giving us a good amount of free time to explore on our own. Being on a tour has among its advantages a tour guide who talked about each place we travelled through, therefore giving us a history lesson we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. As you’ll see, the trip really was a history lesson come to life. Being on a tour also gives travelers (well, tourists in this case, I’ll admit) a chance to hit major attractions with admissions and activities setup for you beforehand. That means less waiting than there otherwise would be.

Of course, having someone else set your schedule could be seen as a drawback, which is why we viewed the experience as a sort of primer so when we went back (which of course I intend to do), we’ll have a good idea of where we want to go and what places we like the best. This trip introduced us to the history, the landscape, and the major things to see. When I go back next, I will engage with the people a lot more and not have to worry in the back of my mind if I’m missing something I should be seeing.

All in all, it was a great experience. The country and landscape are beautiful, the people are friendly and welcoming, and the general attitude was a good one. Two points that people bring up about Ireland didn’t seem to apply that much: bad weather and worse food. We were there in late May but only got rain on one day out of 12 (10 touring days plus two travel days). Sure, it was overcast a lot of the time, but staying dry in Ireland seems to be the trick, and we pulled it off. Secondly, the food we ate was absolutely delicious – especially the full Irish breakfasts – so I really don’t know where that myth comes from. I can’t even think of one bad meal we had, never mind the delicious Guinness that awaits you wherever you go.

Below I’ve reproduced our trip itinerary as given to us by the tour company. I also put links into my photo gallery from the trip. Enjoy!

Day 1. Arrival in Dublin, Ireland. Check into your hotel. The rest of the day is free to relax in the Irish capital. Before dinner join your tour director and traveling companions for a toast to happy touring.

Day 2 Dublin. Boyne Valley Excursion & City Tour. Motor north to the lovely Boyne Valley, scene of a bloody 17th-century battle. Near Drogheda, visit the Boyne Valley Visitor Centre and Knowth, where your local guide explains a fascinating passage-grave dating from the Bronze Age. Return to Dublin through history-steeped landscapes. Your afternoon orientation tour takes in statue-lined O’Connell Street, elegant Georgian squares, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Visit Oscar Wilde’s Trinity College, famous for the 1,200-year-old Book of Kells and the magnificent Old Library.

Day 3 Dublin-Sligo. Horse-racing country this morning. Drive across the Curragh to the Irish National Stud at Kildare, whose thoroughbreds command respect on the racecourses of the world. Then north to Longford for a visit to Strokestown House for a guided tour of the restored 1740’s mansion, a stroll through its fine gardens, and at the Famine Museum an insight into the circumstances of the the Great Irish Famine of the 1840’s. On the way to Sligo stop at Boyle for photos of the Cistercian Abbey ruins.

Day 4 Sligo. Donegal Excursion. First stop: Drumcliff for a visit to the grave of the native son and poet W.B. Yeats. Then step across the border into Northern Ireland to visit the famous Belleek Pottery Factory, renowned for its exquisite cream-colored Parian china. The rest of the day is dedicated to wild and beautiful Donegal. Follow the scenic Altantic coast and in Donegal town, founded by Danish Vikings and home of the O’Donnell Clan, shop for hand-knitted woolen goods and other crafts from the region.

Day 5 Sligo-Galway. South to Knock, a village that attracts pilgrims from all over the world since the townsfolk saw apparitions. Via Westport head for the unspoiled region of Connemara, an area known for its hardy breed of ponies. Visit Kylemore Abbey, a massive yet graceful castle acquired by Benedictine nuns as a precious heirloom for Ireland. At Moycullen visit a Connemara Marble Factory before arriving in the port city of Galway, a vibrant city with a great seafaring tradition. Hear about the infamous Lynch Stone, commemorating the day Mayor James Lynch Fitzstephen hanged his son for murder.

Day 6 Galway-Limerick. Unusual visits today starting with a fun adventure: board a reserved carriage on the West Offaly Railway for a guided tour of the Bog of Allen and hear about the story of peat, its secrets, and the uses it has been put to through the ages. At Clonmacnoise, let your guide explain the remains of the ancient ecclesiastical site which are among the most extensive of their kind in Ireland. After lunch, skirt Lough Derg to spend the night at Limerick with a recommendation to join the optional medieval banquet at Knappogue Castle.

Day 7 Limerick-Killarney. On this morning’s city tour view the Treaty Stone and St. Mary’s Cathedral, and visit King John’s Castle in the medieval heritage precinct. South now via quaint Adare with its thatched cottages to the popular resort of Killarney, your destination for the next two nights. A special treat: a fun-filled horsedrawn jaunting car ride out to Muckross House gardens set amidst some of the most spectacular scenery in Ireland.

Day 8 Killarney. Ring of Kerry Excursion. Join the famed Ring of Kerry map for a 100-mile panoramic drive around the island’s southwestern tip. Plenty on which to focus your camera here: sparkling seascapes, mountains dotted with brightly colored farmhouses, winding lanes bordered with subtropical vegetation, and the breathtaking panorama of the Lakes of Killarney from Ladies View. Back in Killarney the rest of the afternoon is free to explore on your own. Tonight an entertaining optional evening in Tralee with dinner at the Galleon Restaurant followed by tickets for Siamsa Tire National Folk Theatre.

Day 9 Killarney-Waterford. Across the Kerry Mountains drive into County Cork for a visit to Blarney, renowned for its castle and magical Kissing Stone. Time for lunch, to walk up to the castle, and to shop for traditional Irish handicrafts. In the afternoon proceed via Cork, Youghal, and Dungarvan to Waterford, a stronghold founded by the Danish Vikings in 853. Here enjoy a visit to the world-famous Waterford Crystal Factory.

Day 10 Waterford-Dublin. Today’s agenda: Enniscorthy, site of the final battle of the Great Rebellion of 1798; Ireland’s oldest handweaving mill at Avoca; Powerscourt Gardens with stunning views of the Wicklow Mountains. Back in Dublin tonight, as a fitting farewell to Ireland, your tour director will suggest reserving seats for an enjoyable Irish dinner and cabaret show.

Cross Country Trip

Rusty Geldmacher — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EDT

In early June of 2005 two intrepid explorers, Jon Suchecki and myself, embarked on a journey of conquest and discovery. We were to attempt driving non-stop from Hudson, Massachusetts to Denver, Colorado. We would rest there for a day or so and then complete the journey across the country with Los Angeles as our destination. They said it was a crazy idea. They said we would get tired and need to sleep. They said it couldn’t be done. They were wrong.

I’ve got some photo galleries associated with our trip. The thumbnails in the trip log below will go into the corresponding picture gallery, but if you want to just jump right to the albums, use these links below:

Part One: Hudson, MA to Denver, CO

Leaving on the morning of June 7th, Jon and I drove his 1998 Subaru Legacy GT straight into Denver, CO. This was the longest part of our journey and it took us a grand total of thirty-two hours and forty-five minutes from the time we first got on the road to the time we parked outside Kevin’s apartment in Denver. Along the way we kept a semi-detailed log of the major events, faithfully reproduced for you below. All of the times are according to the clock on Jon’s stereo, which was set to Eastern Standard Time for the whole first part of the drive.

Time	Event
5:45 AM	Leave from Hudson, Massachusetts
6:35 AM	Enter Connecticut
7:30 AM	Stop for gas in Connecticut
7:50 AM	Back on the road
8:35 AM	Enter New York
9:35 AM	Enter Pennsylvania
10:50 AM	Get on I-80 W
11:20 AM	Stop for lunch and gas in Pennsylvania
11:50 AM	Back on the road
3:10 PM	Enter Ohio
4:15 PM	Stop for gas in Ohio
4:30 PM	Back on the road
6:15 PM	Get on I-70 W
7:20 PM	Stop for dinner in Ohio
8:05 PM	Back on the road
8:20 PM	Enter Indiana
10:35 PM	Enter Illinois
11:25 PM	Stop for gas in Illinois
11:45 PM	Back on the road
1:15 AM	Enter Missouri
1:45 AM	Stop for coffee in Missouri
2:00 AM	Back on the road
4:10 AM	Stop for gas in Missouri
4:20 AM	Back on the road
5:25 AM	Enter Kansas
7:10 AM	Stop for breakfast and gas in Kansas
7:55 AM	Back on the road
11:10 AM	Stop for gas in Kansas
11:30 AM	Back on the road
12:10 PM	Enter Colorado
2:30 PM	Park in Denver, Colorado

Part Two: Denver, CO to Los Angeles, CA

After an eventful two days in Denver (seeing the White Sox romp the Colorado Rockies, checking out the many bars and restaurants, going to Rocky Mountain National Park) Jon and I hit the road again in the early morning of Friday, June 10th. This time, final our destination was in sight: Los Angeles. Compared to the first leg of the trip, this fifteen-hour and fifty-minute part of the journey was a piece of cake. Again, here is the trip log we wrote, this time with Jon’s clock set to Mountain Time for Denver.

Time	Event
4:55 AM	On the road in Denver, Colorado
5:30 AM	Stop for gas in Colorado
5:40 AM	Back on the road
6:30 AM	Stop for breakfast in Colorado
6:50 AM	Back on the road
9:10 AM	Enter Utah
9:40 AM	Stop for gas in Utah
10:00 AM	Back on the road
10:40 AM	Get on I-15 S
12:55 PM	Stop for lunch in Utah
1:30 PM	Back on the road
2:50 PM	Enter Arizona
3:15 PM	Enter Nevada
4:50 PM	Stop for gas in Nevada
5:00 PM	Back on the road
5:10 PM	Enter California
8:45 PM	Park in Los Angeles, California

Trip Summary

So there yout have it: our cross country jaunt. Unfortunately, we didn’t record the mileage for our waypoints, but I suspect that could easily be recontructed via Google Maps. We’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. In the mean time, here’s a brief summary of our entire trip.

Total time moving	42 hours and 55 minutes
Total time stopped	5 hours and 40 minutes
Total trip time	48 hours and 35 minutes
Total states visited	14

Carter Ridge Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EDT

Visualization

Route

Day One

Wild River Trail from Wild River Campground to Moriah Brook Trail - 0.6 miles
Moriah Brook Trail to Carter-Moriah Trail - 5.1 miles
Carter-Moriah Trail to Imp Campsite - 0.9 miles

Evening One

Carter-Moriah Trail from Imp Campsite to summit of Mt. Moriah - 2.3 miles
Carter-Moriah Trail from summit of Mt. Moriah to Imp Campsite - 2.3 miles

Day Two

Carter-Moriah Trail from Imp Campsite to summit of Carter Dome - 6.2 miles
Rainbow Trail from Carter Dome summit to Wild River Trail - 1.5 miles
Wild River Trail to Perkins Notch Shelter - 0.5 miles

Day Three

Wild River Trail to Wild River campground - 5.2 miles

Total: 24.9 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

Spider Bridge was out, so we needed to jump over the river at that point!

Mt. Bond Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 04 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Day One

Zealand Trail from Zealand Campground to Twinway - 2.7 miles
Twinway to Bondcliff Trail - 4.2 miles
Bondcliff Trail to Guyot Campsite - 1.0 mile

Evening One

Guyot Campsite to West Bond summit via Bondcliff Trail - 0.7 miles
West Bond summit to Guyot Campsite via Bondcliff Trail - 0.7 miles

Day Two

Guyot Campsite to Mt. Bond summit via Bondcliff Trail - 0.7 miles
Bondcliff Trail to Twinway - 1.3 miles
Twinway to Zealand Trail - 4.2 miles
Zealand Trail to Zealand Campground - 2.3 miles

Total: 16.9 miles

Video

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

The clouds were so low on the second morning that the tallest mountains were poking up right through them, creating this ‘sea of clouds’ effect. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before!

Hancock Loop Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Hancock Notch Trail from Route 112 to Cedar Brook Trail - 1.8 miles
Cedar Brook Trail to Hancock Loop Trail - 0.7 miles
Hancock Loop Trail to Mt. Hancock summit - 1.8 miles
Mt. Hancock summit to South Hancock summit via Hancock Loop Trail - 1.4 miles
Hancock Loop Trail to Cedar Brook Trail - 1.6 miles
Cedar Brook Trail to Hancock Notch Trail - 0.7 miles
Hancock Notch Trail to Route 112 - 1.8 miles

Total: 9.8 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Mt. Madison Hike

Rusty Geldmacher — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Route

Daniel Webster Scout Trail from Dolly Copp Campground to Osgood Trail at Osgood Junction - 3.5 miles
Osgood Trail to summit of Mt. Madision - 0.6 miles
Osgood Trail from Mt. Madison summit to Great Gulf Trail - 3.4 miles
Great Gulf Trail to Dolly Copp Campground - 1.8 miles

Total: 9.7 miles

Pictures

Full gallery here.

Notes

It was on this hike that Dan and I decided we would start attacking the list of 4,000 footers.