Bone Suckin' Ham Stir Fry

A couple of years ago, my buddy Gary in NC gave me a bottle of Bone Suckin' Habanero Sauce, which Kim and I loved. We have been watching for it to show up somewhere here in Toronto, but so far no luck. We did get a jar of the Bone Suckin' BBQ Sauce, and have been keeping it around waiting for an excuse to use it. Tonight we did a strange stir fry, and I thought it was worth writing down - it was really tasty.

• Cube up about a cup of ham
• Cut up a head of broccoli. Small pieces. I always peal the steam and cut that into carrot sticks as well as using the flower
• Slice up about a half of a Spanish onion
• Slice up about half of a zucchini
• Slice up about half of a red pepper
• Crush about 4 cloves of garlic
• Slice up a big handful of mushrooms
• A nice big handful of bean sprouts
• Set the BBQ sauce handy
• Get whatever oil you like to stir fry with - I like grape-seed oil

Time to start cookin!

• Toss the crushed garlic, some oil, and the ham  in the wok, stir fry until it starts to brown, remove from wok and set aside
• Add a little more oil, toss in the vegetables - holding off the mushrooms and and bean sprouts - and stir fry until they are close to al dente - then toss in the mushrooms, and keep stirring until they are close
• Throw in the sprouts and the ham, and add about half of the 16 oz jar of BBQ sauce. Keep stirring for about a minute.

If you like spicy, then either spice up the above by adding something - or if your honey is in the mood for sweet - then leave like the above.

In my case, I then added a bit of Uncle Big's Killer Hot Sauce - just a bit mind you - to my serving, and that was the finishing touch!

So there you go! BBQ stir fry - for something a little different.

Mercury & Venus in Conjunction

From 2010 Spring Venus&Mercury

I got NASA - Sunset Planet Alert message the other day, and have been watching for Mercury. I have watched the stars all of my life, and have seen all of the naked eye planets before - except for Mercury. Mercury is tough to find for an urban guy like me - low and dim means invisible in the city unless you have a good marker. There is no better marker than Venus!

So Kim and I headed up Royal York, and stood on the overpass over the Gardner, where I knew we would get a good view to the West-North-West, and we waited.

From 2010 Spring Venus&Mercury

Once it started to get dark, maybe 20 minutes after sunset, we saw Venus appear. That is always easy to find in a city sky. The photo's do not really do it justice. As you already know if you watch this type of thing, I think you could see Venus in the night sky from the middle of the new strip in Las Vegas - it is that bright.

From 2010 Spring Venus&Mercury

Even though it was easy to find, I was glad to see that as per my sky map check earlier in the evening, we had good clearance above the horizon, and I was therefore very hopeful we would get Mercury as well!

So we waited awhile, and Bingo! Mercury popped out of the haze!

From 2010 Spring Venus&Mercury

We were very pleased. Lots more photos in the album - click below and enjoy. No doubt lots of better photos out there - but hey - we had fun.

2010 Spring Venus&Mercury