I had a really fun day today. I dropped Julie off at work this morning and headed home to wake up properly (shower, brush teeth, etc.) I then suited up and rode my bike over to West Seattle to catch the ferry to Vashon. I've never ridden my bike on a ferry before. It's cool, you get to be first on and first off. :D The whole point of going to Vashon was to visit my friend Martin at his home. I've known Martin for about 2 years now. I worked for him for a little while just after Real. He's a really cool guy.

Anyway, he's got a wonderful place over on Vashon. He just got a tractor yesterday and we had some fun tilling a patch of his wife's garden. Until of course he got too close to the bee hives and a couple of the occupants of said hives made a fuss. Fortunately he only got stung once and seemingly not too badly. After that we had some lunch. It was Boca burgers and corn on the cob from the garden. They have 14ft tall stalks of corn. (You'd love it Matt) I showed Martin my LED taillight project and he pointed me to a couple of ideas for improving the circuit design that I'm going to have to pursue.

After that we stopped by his 'office' which is more of a workshop. He's going to lend me his oscilloscope!!! I'm fairly happy about that if you could not guess. It's the one piece of electronics test equipment that I've not been able to afford up to now. It's a nice mid 80's Tektronics. I'm stoked.

After that he had to run to an appointment so I took off, heavier about 15lbs of apple and 4 ears of corn :D

Martin gave me some different directions for getting off the island that involved some lovely windy roads running through pretty much wilderness. I saw a deer. Yeah, it's real rural out there.

I made it home ok with the apples strapped to the tail of the bike with my bungee mesh. I sat down for a bit to figure out what to do for dinner and then went to get some groceries and pick up Julie from work.

I had to use the corn tonight (it's heirloom corn and has to be cooked within hours of being picked) so I decided on steak and corn on the cob. Nice and easy. I'd read on 8 Legged Entertainment about how to properly make a steak. Tako the octopus told me how. If that last sentence didn't make any sense click the link and you'll soon understand.

Holy. Cow.

That has got to be the best steak I have ever had. Ever.

So it basically works like this: Heat the oven to 500 degrees. Get your steak out and sprinkle it with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper. Rub that in and then coat with canola oil (this is important, you need an oil with a high smoke point, canola, avocado or peanut will work) Set the steak aside and put a 10" cast iron pan in the oven and let it heat up for 10 minutes. Pull the pan out and place on a hot burner and drop your steaks on it. Leave them be for 45-60 seconds. Turn and leave for another 45-60 seconds. Turn them again and put the pan back in the oven and reduce to 425.

Once those babies hit 145 internally you are ready to eat. Don't waste time, eat them ASAP. They are heavenly.

Of course, it probably helped that the cut of meat that I used costs $18/lb. probably.

After that and the corn and a half a glass of Little Penguin Chiraz we decided that what we really needed was creme brulee for dessert. So I hoofed it up to Whole Foods and got 2 little creme brulee's. yum.

Now I'm working on finishing the bottle of wine.... Time for bed I think.