Recently, I visited Harvest Home Farm to play a show in their barn. Owners Mike and Becky Poulos share their knowledge and love with anyone willing to come visit the farm. After the show, they kindly sent me on my way with an arm load of food and a warm, cozy sheep pelt, which I plan to sleep on during the crisp nights of hammocking in the fall.

Among the many items in the cooler of fresh-from-the-farm goodies were some lamb chops and wild blackberries, which I put to use in the following recipe* of my own. Enjoy!

Blackberry Sauce for Lamb Chops

By Scott Troyer

Ingredients

• 1 qt. Blackberries (fresh or frozen)
• 2-3 T. Honey
• 2-3 T. Butter
• 2 cloves Garlic finely chopped
• 1/4 c. Onion or Shallot finely chopped
• 2 t. Dried Rosemary crushed
• 2 t. Dried Parsley
• 2 t. Dried Tarragon

Instructions

Cook the blackberries on medium high heat in a small saucepan until they have broken down and released most of their juice. Mashing them a bit will help release more of the juice too. Strain the berries through a fine sieve over a small sauté pan. Gently press the berries to remove the remaining juice. Reserve the berry pulp for baking or serving over ice cream, yogurt, cereal, etc.

Bring the juice to a simmer on medIum high heat and add the garlic, onions, and herbs. Stir continually to avoid burning. After the liquid has reduced to approximately half add honey until the desired sweetness is achieved. Continue simmering until the liquid is slightly thick (the sauce will thicken as it cools). Shortly before serving add the butter and stir until melted and completely combined with the sauce. Serve the warm sauce generously over freshly grilled or pan-seared lamb chops.

Notes

Makes enough sauce for 4-6 chops. Use more or less honey to achieve the right amount of sweetness. Other berries may be substituted. Wine can also replace the berries, in which case the recipe would call for far less honey. Most of the alcohol will be cooked off during the reduction process, so it is safe for children. Fresh herbs can replace the dried herbs and would actually be preferable if they are available. For a bit of showmanship sprinkle a few leaves of fresh tarragon on top of the sauce of each lamb chop.

*I don’t use recipes, but for the benefit of those that do, I’ve put this one together. If this doesn’t fit the MLA for culinary reference, I apologize; I’m a total hackchef. :)

After scouring a bunch of forums with various non-helpful solutions and scary Terminal command line code that “might ruin everything if you’re not careful,” I finally found the safe and easy solution in a free trial download of Cocktail, a shareware maintenance utility for Mac OS 10.4 and above.

Cocktail is an award winning general purpose utility for Mac OS X. It is a smooth and powerful digital toolset with a variety of practical features that simplifies the use of advanced UNIX functions and helps Mac users around the world to get the most out of their computers. Cocktail is installed at more than 200 000 computers world wide. The largest part being private individuals, but Cocktail can also be found at large international companies (Puma, Sony), educational institutions (Harvard University, University of Texas) or newspapers (The New York Times, Business Week).

Cocktail can empty the trash!

Fixing the problem was as easy as clicking the Empty button found under the Misc subgroup in the System tab. Trash empty. Computer nice and tidy again.

Life’s been busy – really busy. Many of you have been bugging me to record some material and I’ve been trying. But life on the road has made it very difficult for me to record. The answer: I’m taking time off from touring. For the past 3 years I’ve been non-stop traveling and playing shows and, frankly, it is time for a break. My goal during this “time off” is to finally lay down some tracks. I have such a backlog of material to choose from and quite a few irons in the fire, so I’m aiming to bite off manageable chunks.

Scott Troyer

If you’re not already a fan of my music on Facebook, go ahead and do so now. I keep in touch with everyone really well that way. Here’s an update I sent to my fans a few days ago that talks about one of the many “irons I’m heating up in the fire.”

This past weekend I had the pleasure of spending some quality time in the studio with my old bandmates. Our band, called Rudisill, formed in 2003 and performed under several monikers. In 2005 we put out a full length album called ‘Carbon Paper Treaties’, which featured 10 of our songs. We had many more songs (arguably some of our best) left to record when the band was forced into an indefinite hiatus due to our lives taking separate geographic directions. Though we’ve been apart for about 3 years, our hearts have always been in this music.

If you knew us back then and want to keep up to date with what’s happening in Camp Rudisill, click the link below to become a fan. Or if you are new to our music, but want to find out more about what I was involved with in the past (and hopefully will be in the future), click the link below.

Rudisill

Recently I was in Washington, D.C. and was wondering what a certain building near the Washington Monument was. (It was beyond my sight at the moment, but it happened to be the Department of Commerce.) I wish I could have snapped a photo of the building and tagged it with #solve via my phone. Then within minutes the Twitterverse would have returned the an answer like: “@scotttroyer #solved Dept. of Commerce. Have fun in D.C.!”.

I’m not sure about the answer being tagged #solve or #solved. Using different tags for questions and answers could help separate them, but it might be nice to see them together as well. What do you think?

This type of crowd sourcing could be used to identify objects (architecture, species, products), solve math problems, translate phrases, get pricing information, etc. The potential is limitless. Let me know what ideas you have for this proposed use of Twitter or if you’ve know of some sort of method already in use. Either way, start using the #solve hashtag to solve your problems now!

08.0khz (Everyone) [See post to listen to audio]
10.0khz (60 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]
12.0khz (50 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]
14.1khz (49 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]
14.9khz (39 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]
15.8khz (30 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]
16.7khz (24 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]
17.7khz (24 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]
18.8khz (24 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]
19.9khz (24 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]
21.1khz (24 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]
22.4khz (24 & Younger) [See post to listen to audio]

And under Contact you can send me a note or even some music in my Dropbox. Hot hot hot!

EasyTip screenshot

Alright peeps, check it: my friend Aaron Heise made a sweet tip calculator app for the iPhone a few weeks back and it’s officially available on iTunes now. It really is “impressively simple” as he claims. No whiz-bang whirlygigs, just plain old useful tip calculation. You can click here to buy it on iTunes for a mere 99 cents or just search for ‘Aaron Heise’ to find it. For more about the app visit the micro site Aaron has put up here.

Buy it! Do eet niow! Get een zee choppa!

The primary purpose of the veggie tray is provide hungry dinner guests with a simple-to-prepare appetizer. Veggies are served because they are healthy and every responsible host wishes to provide his/her guests with good options. The trouble is that the veggie tray is not about the veggies. No matter what good intentions may lie behind the preparation and serving of a veggie tray, the focus always becomes the dip. Regardless what type of dip is served, the veggies simply become a variety of vehicles to shovel more dip into the eaters’ faces. It struck me today (while transferring mass amounts of ranch dressing from the tray to my mouth), that while all veggies are able vehicles for dip transfer, some are obviously better than others. Below is my analysis of several veggies I sampled and their ability to carry ranch from serving dish to gullet.

Carrots
Well rounded performer. Stick formation allows for deep dipping and copious coverage. Surface texture is smooth, but enough to grip the dip. 3/5 stars.

Broccoli
The big dipper! Voids between the florets, turn this heady veg into a sauce sponge. Stem acts like built in handle. 5/5 stars.

Cherry Tomatoes
Not a team player. While delicious on their own, this slick sphere is hard to grip and sheds dip. Enjoy them sans ranch unless you’re willing to dive in after them. 1/5 stars.

Celery
Step up to the trough! Like the carrot, this stalk is easily handled and dipped, but holds a distinct advantage: the U-shape, which proves great for shoveling fattening dairy product. 4/5 stars