Double Mugging or Bulldogging

Food highlights from the week: Duck with coconut rice, curry sauce and roasted veggies.

So another week has come to and end on the ranch and well, it was a long week.  All hands on deck as we clear off the winter dust and frost, de-mice cabins and fix broken water heaters, replace sprinkler lines and redecorate the cabins with newly-made, western-themed lamps and tchotchkes .  We are getting the Ranch ready for guests.  So that means I'm doing a little bit of everything, which I love. Tuesday I helped JW finish the fence.  Wednesday we put up new walls in the gallery and finished mounting the rest of the 9 foot prints which are up.  Check out the full video tour of the gallery check out the link.

http://youtu.be/9AVSSrEdCmU

Thursday and Friday are kind of a blur I printed some more photos and worked outside on numerous projects.  But today was about getting new prints up all around the ranch and getting the boss' studio cleaned up and hanging a bunch of new photos.  At the end of the day I got to help JW in the arena herding steer. Well, chasing steer is more fitting.  I learned how to operate the chute that the cows run out of in all those roping events you have seen on TV.

Caprese salad with a pesto gastrique and balsamic vinegar.

Earlier this week JW told me about this amateur rodeo event call "Double Mugging".  Simply put, a steer is loaded into a shoot and reeled.  Then the rider (JW) ropes the head of the young steer.  Your partner jumps off the fence once the steer is roped, grabs the steer's head and flips it over on to its back.  Even though the steer are young they still weigh about 300-400lbs.  Then the rider jumps off the horse while his teammate pins the steer to the ground and ropes the steer's leg.  Bob's your uncle and thats about the best I can explain it.  So I got to do that today and boy did I have a blast.  There is some technique involved in doing it correctly and after about 3 minutes JW and I had gone over it pretty thoroughly.  Time to put theory into practice.  JW ropes the horse and I go flying toward the steer, put it in a sort of headlock and just pancake it.  No style, all force.  Try again, and this time I get the grip right but in taking the steer to the ground I rolled the steer over the top of my body and over my face.  Third and final time, get the grip right and take the cow to the ground while thrusting my hip into the cows shoulder and performing a sort of wrestling move called the ddp.  Good news is that JW and I are gonna enter one rodeo this summer and do this event for real.  I think we have a good shot at winning the $250 first prize.  Can't wait till Monday when I get to practice again, I think Erin will get a video of me bulldogging on Monday.   Off to Yellowstone to hike and have fun before the all the tourists descend on the park and make it a cluster-fuck on all the roadways.

Deconstructed Cheesecake with berries - the cheesecake is on the right, and that's the graham cracker crust running down the middle.