Cicada!

Yet another cicada husk:



And an even creepier closeup of the same thing:

Stuffed italian sweet peppers recipe

First, apologies for the really poor quality pictures from the previous post.  Not sure what happened there.

Now, the recipe!  Note that I'm terrible at keeping track of the quantities of herbs and spices I use.  I just throw them in until it's tasty.

Ingredients:

• Italian sweet peppers (some number of them)
• 1lb ground beef
• olive oil
• 1 c israeli couscous
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 medium tomatoes, chopped
• 1 jalapeno, diced fine
• salt
• pepper
• paprika (1tbsp maybe?)
• fresh basil (2tbsp maybe?)
• garam masala (2tsp maybe?)

Sautee half the onions with some salt in the olive oil until translucent (mine got a little brown).  Add the garlic, cook for another minute or two, then add the ground beef.  At this time, start cooking your israeli couscous according to its instructions.

When beef is half cooked, add half the tomatoes and basil and continue to cook until beef is fully cooked through.  Drain thoroughly.  Bring back to stove, add rest of the onions, tomatoes, basil, along with the jalapenos.  Add salt and pepper to taste, along with paprika and garam masala.  Continue to cook until everything is incorporated and looks yummy.  At this point, your couscous should be done, so add that in there too.  Cook for another 3 or 4 minutes, just to get some of the flavors into the couscous.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350 deg F.  Cover a half sheet pan with aluminum foil.  Take your peppers, remove the stems and seeds, but try to maintain them whole.  

Now, stuff your filling into the peppers!  Get as much in as possible, it's tasty stuff!  I had 5 peppers, and only used about 1/2 of my filling, so plan accordingly.  Once the peppers are filled, very lightly coat them with olive oil.  Bake for around 45 minutes, remove from oven, and enjoy!

Stuffed Italian sweet peppers

Recipe to follow

Oh deer!

A young buck near the parking lot at Norris Dam.

A couple of wildflowers

Starting to go through my backlog again.  Here are a few wildflowers from my Aug. 24th hike at the Norris Dam Marine Railway Trail.

First, a lobelia (downy, I think) with some dewdrops on it.  I love dewdrops.



No clue what this one is, but again, more dewdrops!


An upside-down bluecurl:


... and this one is properly oriented ...

New camera equipment

SB-600 flash and 300mm f/4 lens.



Fairly sad cellphone pic, but these probably complete my kit for awhile.  I had a smaller SB-400 flash, but it's totally automatic with no manual settings.  The SB-600 hopefully gives me a bit more freedom to play around, once I figure out how to actually use flashes reasonably/artistically.

Back to 5K training

Seems as though there's another race coming up, so I gotta get back in "shape" for it.  This time it's the Moonlight for Sight 5K supporting the Lions Club and their Sight Conservation Program.  Registration form is here.  I did this run last year, and it was pretty fun.  It's a decent area, and running at night is a pretty different experience.

So anyway, here's the data:

(Apologies for the Bing Map :(  )

The run portion was around 35:35 - a bit slow, but there were mitigating factors, I swear!  (a) I sorta skipped lunch yesterday and (b) the greenway near Ijams is freaking hilly!  Or something.  Anyway, I finished, and that's what really matters.  I can probably bring the time down by a couple of minutes if I try hard.

This week's CSA box

Quite a range of things this week:

• Tomatoes
• Sweet potatoes
• String beans
• Butternut squash
• Bell peppers
• Apples
• Pears!
• and the obligatory eggplant (blech!)

The moon, again

Here is the moon.

A deer

This doe (I think) was really not happy to see me wandering down the path at Seven Islands.  She kept chuffing at me until she got disgusted and pranced away.  I suspect she had a fawn somewhere close, hidden in the grass.

A couple of spiderwebs

From Seven Islands:

Seven Islands Birds

Just a couple of birds...

Blurryhawk:







Needs ID:


Needs ID (but probably a mockingbird):




Needs ID:






This is my favorite (I mostly dig the red eye).  It's some kind of Towhee.  Can't really figure out which kind though.

Catching up, part ... something

Here's a whole slew from Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge:

Bugs and whatnot....











Flowers...


Rose pink




Indian pink

Catching up, round 5

Still playing catch-up.  Sheesh!

Cool insects from Seven Islands....

Unidentified fly-ish thing:



Unidentified wasp-ish thing:


More indigo buntings, from Ijams and/or Seven Islands:







Female goldfinch from Melton Dam:



Male goldfinch at Melton Dam, checking out some nefarious goings-on:



Oh snap, he was checking out some finch-graffiti artist!


Female does not approve....

Catching up, round 4

Now, for a change of scenery, some scenery!

First up, just a shot of one of the big fields at Seven Islands.  In the rear-left you can see the road that runs down the middle of the preserve.



The next two are kind of cool.  I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out where they were taken.

Birds in flight

So, I have to return my loaner AF-S 300mm f/4 to my friend tomorrow.  Seeing as the weather has been cruddy most of the time I've had it, I haven't been able to get in much time actually using the silly thing!

So today, despite the cloudiness, I headed up to the dam to see if I could roust up any wildlife.  I managed to find a big ole spider that ran up to a tree as soon as I spotted it.  The 300mm was not a good lens to try to use, especially in the woods with cloud cover, and no VR on the lens.  So yeh, not salvageable photos of that little guy.  You'll just have to take my word for it.

I also didn't see any good wildlife among the tall grasses.  The other day I'd seen quite a few small birds perching on the grasses and whatnot, so this was a bit disappointing.   I figure I would head down one more parking area, on the off chance that something cool would be there.

Finally, there was!  I spotted a trio of night herons off in the distance.  Flying away from me.  Argh!  Buuuttt, the weather was really nice, so I camped out on a rock and just chilled for a bit.  As luck would have it, the night herons headed back my way, although they were on the other side of the river.

Long story short, every so often they'd take off and cruise a bit toward me, and I managed to get quite a number of shots that I was pleased with.  Here are a few quick edits.

50% crop:


~30% crop:


I'm pleased with these for a few reasons.  First, I got some really decent shots of birds in flight, finally!  These were both hand-held on a lens without VR, and are pretty freaking clear despite that.  They were also shot at a higher ISO that I normally have been shooting (640 instead of 200), but I think since I mucked with some camera settings, the noise reduction in Lightroom is working a lot more like I would expect it to.

One more quick shot of a great blue heron.  I like this one too, although I wish there was more contrast between the heron and the water.  Not a lot I could do that one though!



Again, I was very pleased with the crispness of the shot.

Ok, that's it, no more gushing :)