Wild trout and tangy ice cream

It mostly rained on my parade Sunday afternoon. I had planned to do a little exploring in the Pisgah National Forest, seeking new waters to fish for little wild trout. I got to the entrance of the forest at Brevard, took a right and just had to stop for some of Dolly's home-made ice cream. They make up their own flavors, changing them from year to year. I have about four I keep going back for but the best of the best has to be the strawberry, mango combined with just a touch of red pepper that you do not notice until you stop licking the cone. Then, there is this unusual after taste. It's a nice burn on the tip of your tongue.
I then rigged up my rod so the rain could begin. It kept it up, sometimes brutally so, for an hour or so. I didn't even wait for it all to stop but instead danced shirtless in the rain with my head thrown back to catch some raindrops on my tongue. (remember the pepper?)
It had been so hot during the week here in Shelby that by the time Saturday rolled around I was ready for someone to stick a fork into just to see how done I was.
It was so hot, potatoes cooked in the ground and corn popped in the field.
With the rain, the temperatues dipped like they had fallen over a waterfall like a tourist without a brain.
Wooo...it felt wonderful.

Wild dogs took my baby!

Well, that was the headline in the newspaper years ago when a woman in Australia told authorities that a wild pack of dingos dragged her baby into the Outback.
These vicious-looking critters keep the bears away from the cabin. Haven't seen old momma bear in several years. She used to come around and leave claw marks on the apple tree and sign on the ground.I guess Bo and Booboo and Hero and Susie and Fraya keep em scared.
They wanted me to put their pictures on the blog.

Cooking the wild blueberry pie

We finally got around to cooking the pie with those wild blueberries Mrs. Koontz and I picked the previous Monday. I was surprised they were still there in the fridge. Anyhow, we picked through the berries, added a little less than half cup of sugar (coulda used more), a cup of flour or thereabouts, some cinnamon and some nutmeg. We used the double pie shells made with shortening, not lard. Seemed like it cooked for more than an hour but that's not right...I think you bake it 35 minutes, then remove the aluminum so the crust on top browns nicely.
We topped it off with whipped cream, but the consensus was it would have been better with vanilla ice cream.
I hope there are some berries left in the patch when I get back up there.
The finished product disappeared before I could get a photo. Perhaps next time...
The photo shown here is of my two grandsons, Patrick and Spencer, at Virginia Beach. They love blueberry pie also.

Girls in bikinis pick wild blueberries

We went hunting for some wild blueberries the other day and found a ton near the Blue Ridge Parkway. (That's as close as I will come to giving the location away). As we picked away, people would slow down to see what we were doing since we were still visible from the road. My reaction was to turn my back, to give the impression I was doing something more private than picking blueberries. Folks have been known to slam on the brakes and rush up the hills to get the berries you had intended to pick yourself. The ruse works. Nobody stopped.
I had meant to include some blueberry health tips in my outdoors column Saturday but got to writing about fishing and forgot about writing abut the blueberries.
We had intended to make a pie with about 3 cups of the berries, sugar and cornstarch but Mrs. Koontz could not find a piecrust that did not include lard (pig fat), so she got this little tart shells, which are cute but as I left Tuesday to come back to work they had still not been filled with blueberries and cooked in the oven and cooled and covered with whipped cream.
You think there are any left at the cabin?
Well, you gotta have faith...
Oh, yeah, we chased those girls in bikinis away.

Wild song about fishin' blues

Thought I would try to add this to the web site since it is about fishing and I love to fish, especially for wild trout in the wildest of places.

Hope this works.

The Wild One as a Simpson character

Well, how do I look as a guest on the Simpsons? I only had room for one of my dogs and one of my cats (the others were watching another show).

They have this neat Web site where you take a photo of yourself and change it into a Simpsons' figure.

Just google simpsonizeme.com and have it. It's fun.

But I have my doubts about the importance of a good photo or even a photo of yourself.

I made three, including two co-workers, with just my photo. You do all the work putting the pieces together until you get the hair, glasses, turtleneck shirt or whatever and so on.

It's good clean fun (is that an oxymoron?)

The scary thing is I pretty much resemble this guy, though I did clip the ragged part of my beard this morning.

Go ahead, give it a try.