It's official - Ike's a Top Model

Thanks to everyone that voted for Ike on the Riverheights Clinic Photo Contest. Ike was in the top 10 and selected to be on their website. More to come but boy I can just hear him now, "Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close up."

Back to the cooking portion of our program...

OK, so the last few posts have had very little to do with cooking and more with Ike and his desire to become a top hunting dog/model, so I thought it would be good to return to the cooking portion of the blog. I was recently asked by one of the blog followers, "How about some easy after work home style dishes. One or two bowls, cook in the oven for 1/2 or so with easy clean up... Well, we made one of those tonight... Granted we decided today to make some red sauce - my DirecTV is on the fritz so Sandy thought, "Let's make a red sauce- can't watch basketball or NASCAR!" so we made that and then she thought "Spaghetti Pie". It's easy, quick and you don't need to use a home made sauce, there are some pretty good bottled ones out there.

Got the recipe from Cooks.com (link below)

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1626,146173-243207,00.html

Only change we made was using ricotta instead of cottage cheese- I think a 9x9 square pan would work great too and we broiled it for about 3 minutes at the end to get the cheese brown and toasty. Anyway, here are some pics of it.

It really held together very well and will without a doubt be consumed as leftovers in the next couple of evenings :)

Oh one more thing, I readily admit to not being much of a baker, but if you get the right tools even I can make a pretty nice looking cake. Wilton heavy 9" no stick pans, Parchment paper, a revolving turntable to frost and offset spatulas for applying the frosting makes baking a cake not NEARLY as imposing a task...

My great niece Kyri says, "I love Uncle Steve's cake!"

Continental Round 2

Hi everyone;

As promised I said I would post some more from the 2nd Continental Shoot and following clean up hunt at Hickory Grove in Wyanet, IL. Well, it took me a while to figure out the editing features for my software so I could get the videos small enough to post on the blog. I got a pretty good example of Ike working but missed some of the best shots of Ryder and he pointing a bird right off the bat. You know it will take a few times to get used to having those camera glasses on and how to manage them. But either way it was another great day good shooting and great food. We kind of got split up in the clean up and Ryder did the typical phenomenal job of finding buried birds (I swear that little guy has the best nose (no wonder Harold says just trust him)) but Ike really finished strong - pointing (and actually chasing a rooster down) 3 birds in the last 15 minutes. The video is of the first one.

I have pretty cool still of a single frame from the video of the shell ejecting (you can see the pheasant dropping beside my left thumb):

One final note I have never gotten a photo of our host Mike Wirth so please see he and his wife Lori (of the tremendous meals) . Can't say enough good things about them, their guides and the their operation --Top flight people and if you every want to do some upland hunting give 'em a ring!

The season's almost over but not quite yet so,

"Ike, find that bird!"

"I Like Ike"

Hey everyone;

We are co-opting the 1950's campaign slogan "I Like Ike" and asking each of you to go to the RiverHeights Vet Clinic's facebook page to VOTE for IKE!! He promises a pheasant in every pot if you vote for him for their "Top Pet Model". Voting closes at 4 PM on Friday so vote early but you can't (in the spirit of Chicago voting) vote often - only one vote per picture. We have 4 pics of Ike but the favorite so far is this one:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=57928&id=117057788304375

Tell your facebook friends to join in on the fun.