49. My Two new words of the week...

doff

  \DOF\ , transitive verb;

1.

To take off, as an article of clothing.

2.

To tip or remove (one's hat).

3.

To put aside; to rid oneself of.

AND

capricious

  \kuh-PRISH-us; -PREE-shus\ , adjective;

1.

Apt to change suddenly; whimsical; changeable.

49. My Two new words of the week...

recalcitrant

  \rih-KAL-sih-truhnt\ , adjective;

1.

Stubbornly resistant to and defiant of authority or
restraint.

AND

appellation

  \ap-uh-LAY-shun\ , noun;

1.

The word by which a particular person or thing is called
and known; name; title; designation.

2.

The act of naming.

49. My Two words of the Week

intrepid

  \in-TREP-id\ , adjective;

1.

Fearless; bold; brave; undaunted; courageous

AND

cogitate

  \KOJ-uh-tayt\ , intransitive verb;

1.

To think deeply or intently; to ponder; to meditate.

2.

To think about; to ponder on; to meditate upon; to plan
or plot.

44. Learn how to cook 10 traditional American dishes (1/10) - Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

Bienvenue dans le monde delicieux de la cuisine Cajun!!!

Ahhhh yes, Cajun, the deliciously amazing cuisine our cousins to the east of us gave to the world when French immigrants came face to face with other European immigrants and West African slaves in Louisiana in the 18^th century.  The French learnt from the slaves how to live off the land and adapt their French rustic cuisine to the local ingredients found in Louisiana (rice, crawfish, river creatures, sugar cane) and thus Cajun cooking was born!!

Cajun cuisine makes my hubby very very happy, especially gumbo and jumbalaya and therefore I though it would be a nice, albeit perhaps ambitious introduction into Traditional American cuisine.

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

Ingredients

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 large onion, chopped

1 large green capsicum, chopped

1 pound andouille sausage, sliced ¼ inch thick

4 cloves garlic, minced

salt and pepper to taste

1 tablespoon Creole seasoning

6 cups chicken broth

1 large bay leaf

1 rotisserie chicken, boned and shredded

All of the ingredients for the Gumbo

Directions

Heat the oil in a Dutch Oven over a medium heat. When hot, whisk in the flour. Continue whisking until the roux has cooked to the colour of chocolate milk. Be careful not to burn the roux – if you see black specks in the mixture, you’ll need to start again.

Beginning the whisking of the Roux - a fundamental Cajun mix of oil and flour

Once the Roux looks like chocolate milk and your arms are hurting from all the whisking its ready!!

Stir in onion, capsicum, celery and sausage into the roux; cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for another 5 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and Creole seasoning; blend thoroughly. Pour in the chicken broth and add the bay leaf. Bring to the boil over a high heat and then reduce to a medium low heat and simmer, uncovered for an hour, stirring occasionally.

Be careful when adding the first lot of ingredients to the Roux - its hot oil and it will spit at you!!

Add the stock and the bay leaf and head to the couch for an hour with a glass of wine... you deserve it!! 

Stir in the chicken and simmer for another hour. Skim off any foam that floats to the top in the last hour after you’ve added the chicken.

Now there is nothing left to do but wait for the Gumbo to thicken up! 

Serve the Gumbo in a bowl over white rice. Add Tabasco sauce if you like a little bit of kick!

Dinner is Served! Now sit back and enjoy the kudos!! :D 

Was it a success? Well lets just say the hubby ate it every night for dinner, for DAYS until every last morsel in the pot was gone!

20. Scuba dive at 5 different locations around the world (1/5) - Belize

One of the many reasons we decided to head to Belize for our honeymoon was to experience the diving - Belize has the second largest coral reef system in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland of course!!) including the amazing Blue Hole - a large submarine sink hole or cavern. 

Blue Hole was an amazing but QUICK dive due to its maximum dive depth of over 45 metres (which is beyond the allowable recreational dive limits). There was very little marine life due to the depth apart from a couple of sharks and groupers but we did see some MASSIVE stalactites and did a couple of swim-throughs at around 40 metres. My poor little Suunto D9 was going crazy with alarms the entire dive and quickly ended up in decompression mode due to the depth limit breech but the guides deco'ed us on the way back up - meaning a number of people had to swap tanks while still under 6-8 metres of water at the end of the dive to safely complete the decompression stop.

 

The Blue Hole

Our second dive site for the day was called Half Moon Caye - we saw lots of barracuda, parrot fish as well as a gorgeous spotted eagle ray... however the highlight of the dive, and in fact the day, was right at the end of the dive. We'd just completed our safety stop and where planning on beginning our accent when we started to hear a whole heap of musical clicks and whistles and two dolphins began to circle around us, playing... I looked at my dive computer and cursed... I only had 30 Bar left.. but being only 5 meters from the surface decided I was going to suck my tank dry to be able to experience this.. after all I could easily pop to the surface having completed my safety stop already!

 One of the dolphins who came to play

Our last full day in Belize saw us head out to Hol Chan Marine Park (Hol Chan means 'little channel' in Mayan) for a shallow dive at the cut followed by a snorkle with docile nurse sharks and stingrays at Shark Ray Alley. 

The dive never had us any deeper than 7-8 metres but it was the best dive we completed while in Belize for marine life. We saw parrot fish, grouper, snapper, trigger fish, huge schools of horse eyed jacks, a cute little puffer fish, grey angelfish and a couple of absolutely massive tarpon as well as hawksbill turtles, spotted eagle rays, sting rays, nurse sharks, moray eels, octopus, as well as these crazy crustaceans that looked like spiders!!  

A school of Horse Eye Fishies

Although we had to be careful of snorklers in a number of places and I struggled with my buoyancy due to the shallow water and I was struggling a little having imbibed a little too much the night before, it was a thoroughly enjoyable dive - even if I didn't feel up to the snorkle afterwards.... 

32. See a moose/bear/bald eagle/hummingbird/otter/beaver/bison/red cardinal/elk/coyote in the wild and try and photograph them (1/10) - hummingbird

While lying, relaxing one morning in my hammock on the deck of our suite at Chaa Creek I had a visit from my first ever hummingbird!! Even though my visitor wasn't the prettiest specimen (rofous-tailed hummingbird) it still impressed upon me how they are such gorgeous and amazing animal. 

Oh to have an SLR camera so I could of adequately captured this moment!! (hint hint Paul) Trying to capture Mr Hummingbird made me realise that an SLR camera, and probably a photography lesson or two as well, is essential before I try and complete any more of this particular 101 challenge. You can make out my little hummingbird, but only just.. he's the little brown smudge in the middle of the picture. I guess this challenge is to be continued..... 

96. Watch the sun rise and set on the same day

Diving the Blue Hole in Belize is a LONG day - you need to meet the boat at 5:15am to travel to the dive shop to gear up, travel 2.5 hours into the open sea to the Blue Hole, complete 3 dives and then travel the 2.5 hours back into San Pedro, which gets you back at the Resort around 6:30pm... as said a LONG day... but one where you are guaranteed to see both the sun rise and set.  So Paul and I dragged our sorry butts out of bed at 4:30am so we could be ready and waiting on the jetty for the dive boat - a boat that we where still waiting for at 6:30am!!!! It never turned up!! So two very tired and agitated people headed back to their room for a couple of hours of sleep.

As it turned out, the Resort screwed up and didn't tell us the dive shop had changed the date of the dive trip! So we arranged to go out on a 2 tank local dive instead that afternoon.. which still allowed us to watch the sunset in San Pedro that evening...