Chilaquiles with Wagyu Beef Chili

 Chilaquiles are called Migas by Gringos.  Itz not a Migas, iz Chilaquiles...  They are informal enchiladas.  A formal Enchilada has a nice, fresh Tortilla that is rolled.  Chilaquiles use the leftover bits.  Nachos are even more formal than Chilaquiles.  Nachos are usually Round, or Triangular Tortilla chips that are uniform.  You want the best, freshest Tortilla chips for the Nachos.  Chilaquiles are different.  Chilaquiles are made with the leftover scraps.  Those little bits of Tortilla chips leftover at the bottom of the bag.  To us Texicans, some of the best food is the leftover bits that no one else wants which makes it dirt cheap.

You want to start with a little too much butter in a pan to fry the Tortilla bitz...

Then dump in the Tortilla flotsam, you know, the little leftover bitz from the bottom of the Tortilla Chip bag.

Let the Tortilla flotsam fry for a while, then dump in some Eggs.

 This is like a Country Scramble.  Put the Eggs in whole, let them set up a little, then knock them around.

Then dump in some cheeze.  Whatever you have.  This is Cheddar, but it can be whatever is leftover.

Then knock that around a while, and itz Chilaquiles.  Nomlishous.

Then I load them on a plate, add a side of my Wagyu Beef Chili, then Nom Nom Nom...

Harley says Om Nom Nom Nom...  I think that those are his favorite words...

Wagyu Beef Chili off the cuff

 OK, here we go...  Sick of making holiday food...  Sick of eating holiday food...  I'm launching into the New Year with Wagyu Beef.  Wagyu Beef is American Kobe Beef, like in Japan.  You will pay an enormous sum of money for a Kobe Steak, here or in Japan.  Well this is locally raised, and mass raised Wagyu Beef, right here in the Southwestern United States, and it is not nearly as expensive.  I've tried it as Cheezeburgers, and it's great.  So, lets make Chili with it...

It's ground beef, so we are going to treat it like normal Chili.  There is a slightly higher fat content.

As we are browning the Wagyu Beef I will season it liberally with the salt shaker, and add diced onions.

As it close to browned I'll add some diced Garlic, and keep seasoning with the salt shaker.

Next dump in some diced Tomatoes.  Typically I would add some diced green Chile as well.

You gotta has some Masa in the Chili, so this time I am using yellow Corn Tortillas.

Then add the spicy dry ingredients.  This is my usual Chili Spice Mix, Carroll Shelby's.  And a little more Red Chile Flakes.  I omitted the Green Chile, so gotta haz a little more Red Chile...

Next I add some Tomato Sauce, and a little water.  Keep tasting, and seasoning, gotta get the salinity right.

The final thing is Beer.  Then we'll let this simmer down for a while.  The Alcohol in the Beer brings the Nightshade Plant Flavors out, like the Tomato, and the Chile.  Chili absolutely has to have Chile, Tomato, Masa, and Beer.  It just doesn't taste correct without those ingredients.  We'll let it simmer down for a couple hours, and then have a Fiesta...  Viva la Wagyu Beef Chili...

Guerilla Astrophotography 4

 I am trying a different eyepiece now.  This is 9mm Orion Sirius Plossi.  Greater magnification, and a smaller aperture make this much more difficult.  The telescope is 1200mm focal length, and now I am using a 9mm ocular lens, so the magnification is 133.33x.  Almost too much.  Then I have the 4x zoom with the Power Shot A560.  Potentially 533.33x magnification, but that is outside of the theoretical specification of the telescope, so not going there.  It's a nice shot though at 133x magnification...

Keep in mind that the aperture of the lens is limiting my field of view.  Also the periphery of the image is not the edge of the Moon, and you are seeing a small portion of the Moon.  It is not focused perfectly, but it is the best image I got with the 9mm Plossi.  This is considerably more challenging than using the 25mm Plossi.  I have a 30mm Plossi, with a 2 inch mount, which is an exceptionally beautiful lens, but my SteadyPix Pro camera mount doesn't fit on it.  The SteadyPix Pro adapts to a 1.25 inch mount.  I've done some handheld shots with my phone on the 30mm Plossi, but have a hardtime acquiring an image that way.  I would much rather use the SteadyPix Pro to hold the camera.  So, yeah, I think this is progressing positively.  I think I would have much more fun with a Canon EOS 5DS with a 40 megapixel sensor.  You know, it's only $1500 for just the camera body...

Just found out the new Canon EOS 5DS has a 50.6 megapixel sensor, and is more like $2000...  Well, OK, that'll do...

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/details/cameras/eos-dslr-and-mirrorless-cameras/dslr/eos-5ds

Guerilla Astrophotography 3

 Starting to play with the optical zoom of the camera in combination with the telescopes magnification.  This is maybe one of the best shots I have ever got of the moon.  I'm going to look at Orion, M42, and Pleiades next...

Guerilla Astrophotography 2

 I've finally got a chance to play with my new (old) astrophotography setup.  I've been studying the stacking software, and it uses an AVI file for the source images.  It turns out that my little Canon Power Shot A560 produces AVI files.  What a nice coincidence.  Actually I think that is a standard, and I didn't know about it.  So I have a nice clear, cool evening, and the Moon is high, lets take some shots.

The Power Shot A560 has a 7.1 megapixel sensor.  Well by today's standards it is kinda small, but seems to do really well.  Playing with it tonight I found that I had to push the camera's lens in really close to the telescope eyepiece.  I'm using a 25mm Orion Sirius Plossi eyepiece.  The telescope is 1200mm focal length divided by the 25mm ocular lens gives us 48x magnification.  Then I get another 4x optical magnification from the Power Shot A560, so theoretically I can get 192x magnification from the complete system.  The shot of the Moon above is at 48x magnification.

I had this idea in my head that I needed an eyepiece camera for Christmas.  After letting that stew in my brain for several weeks I came to the conclusion that I could do this without spending several hundred dollars on an eyepiece camera, or several thousand dollars on a new Canon EOS.  Just back up, look at what you already have, and then figure out how to make a system work.  I'm kinda impressed I was able to do this without spending a lot of money.

Something else I have noticed is how dirty my camera, and telescope are, LOL!  The Camera is around 12 years old, and the telescope is about 3 years old.  I did clean the telescope about 2 weeks ago, but from this shot I can tell it's getting dusty again.  I guess it's time to scrub it down again.  If you look carefully at this last shot you can see a couple dog hairs too, LOL!  Thatz Harley, his fur covers everything I own...

Guerilla Astrophotography

 Sure I'd like to have a Canon EOS with a 20 megapixel sensor, but, you know, I don't have the scratch to make it happen.  No worries, I do have yesterday's technologies at my disposal.  I have used my phone to take astrographs, and it works fairly well, but I have been manually holding my phone in front of the eyepiece, and it is tedious getting a decent shot.  Well, look at this...

This eyepiece adapter is called SteadyPix Pro from Orion Telescope.  There have always been various telescope eyepiece adapters available for telescopes for cameras that have detachable lenses.  That makes it much easier when you can remove the lens of the camera, and then directly attach the camera to the telescope eyepiece.  I do have a 35mm Nikon F1 camera that I can do this with.  But...  It is a Film Camera, and doesn't really suit my vagabond shooting style where I post shots directly to the interwebz...

Another aspect of having a general purpose camera on the eyepiece of the telescope is that it drastically reduces the amount of equipment that I have to move around when I want to do astrophotography.  The NexImage 5 Eyepiece Camera from Celestron is a Great Sensor, but it requires support equipment.  You need to bring a computer, and cables, and a power supply.  While this might not seem like much, it consumes the time that you have available to take astrographs.  The SteadyPix Pro, and a cheap general purpose camera will allow you to take astrographs, and view them right at the telescope eyepiece.  It streamlines the process, and saves time when you want to be shooting the sky, and not setting up the computer, or troubleshooting cabling.

 

The camera that I am using is the Canon PowerShot A560, which we bought back in 2008.  Sure, kinda old, but its image sensor is still bigger than the NexImage 5 at 7.1 megapixel.  OK, now I go snap some shots...