Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

Charleston Eats: Locklear's Beach City Grill

Lemon pepper mahi-mahi with pineapple-mango salsa over stone ground grits from Locklear's Beach City Grill at the Folly Beach Fishing Pier on Folly Beach

Key lime pie

The geeky way to be clean

My latest order of Geek Soap arrived today!

The d20 massage soap is my favourite. There's Android soap, Trek soap, arc reactor soap, and a wee little game cartridge soap.

Thanks Lesley!

BarcampCHS 2010 Poster

Got my hands on some of the new posters for this year's BarcampCHS. The posters are pretty sweet.

And when you turn the lights out,

Charleston Eats: Tomato Shed Cafe

Crab cake platter with green butter beans and cheesy stone ground grits from the Tomato Shed Cafe

CSA Haul

I decided to sign up for the fall Ambrose Farms CSA and made my first pick up today (after lunching on a very delicious crab cake platter at the cafe).

CSA pick-up at the Stono Market turns out to be a pretty simple process. All the items are laid out for you, and coloured tags tell you how many of each item you can pick based on the share size you purchased.

This was today's haul

Seems like a pretty good haul for a 1 person share. There's zucchini and yellow squash, eggplant, a couple of sweet potatoes, a couple of jalapeno peppers, acorn, patty pan and delicati squashes, a pumpkin and popcorn on the cob. I even got a re-usable bag to carry away all my stuff in.

The zucchini and yellow squash are pretty huge. Mutant huge, at least compared to what I'm used to. I just happened to have a zucchini from Publix in the fridge that I hadn't used yet.

The Ambrose Farms zucchini is on the top. The bottom one is (obviously) the Publix zucchini.

It's going to be fun figuring out what to do with all this stuff.

Lowcountry dog park tour: Bee's Landing dog park

Tucked away in the corner of the Bee's Landing Recreation Complex (buried in a subdivision off Bee's Ferry Road) is the City of Charleston's newest dog park. To get there, go to the right of the recreation center building all the way to the back. Go to the right behind the baseball field and you'll see the dog park. There currently aren't any signs and only a worn dirt path to the dog park, but there are indications that a sidewalk or path is being built leading to the dog park. Otherwise it's not at all obvious there's even a dog park there.

The dog park is a pretty decent size, split into two sections, presumably for large and small dogs. The section on the right side is the larger of the two. There are lots of trees which should provide plenty of shade for hot weather. The trees will also keep things from drying out quickly after a rain so there is pretty good mud potential here.

There is only one water fountain located in the larger section, so people using the smaller section will have to either bring their own water, fill a water bowl from the fountain or bring their dogs into the larger section for water.

The trees kind of keep you from throwing a ball a really long distance, although if you throw too far you're likely to end up throwing it out of the park anyway. The holes in the wire fence are also pretty large so any tennis balls thrown towards the fence have a high probability of going through.

There are large gates connecting the two sections of the dog park, and also connecting the larger section to a third area with a stream running through it. I don't know if this third section is meant to be used by dogs. I presume the gates are meant to provide access for service vehicles, but there are no signs on them and they weren't locked or anything (yet).

This dog park is a good addition to the West Ashley area and extends the dog-friendliness reach of the city.

See the rest of my pictures from the dog park here.

Here's a Google Map to the dog park

View Bees Landing Dog Park in a larger map

Save the Windmill!

I'll bet you never knew there's a windmill in Charleston, did you. It's located at Plymouth Park in the Riverland Terrace area on James Island. Not only will you find this windmill there, but also a nice little playground, baseball field, a boat launch and a fire station. It's also a great place to sit and watch the water go by.

Ok, it's not exactly functional, but it is interesting and unique. And the dogs like to visit it.

It's also in need of repair. The Riverland Terrace Garden Club is putting on a fundraiser dinner this weekend to raise some money to repair the windmill.

Windmill Fundraiser

The Riverland Terrace Garden Club is raising funds to repair and paint its Dutch-style windmill.

Chef Barry Waldrop, owner of Stono Cafe Catering, will prepare a dinner Saturday to raise the $3,000 needed for the project.

The windmill, built by John Roessler at the Wappoo Cut around 1936, was a landmark along the Intracoastal Waterway. It was donated to the club and moved near Elliott's Cut adjacent to the Plymouth Avenue firehouse boat landing and playground in 2000.

The dinner menu is croissants, fall salad, herb encrusted pork tenderloin with a port wine demi-glaze, garlic mashed potatoes, vegetable medley and a fall berry cobbler. A silent auction will be held during the event, which takes place at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in the James Island Baptist Church social hall.

Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at the Charleston Post Card Co., 182 Plymouth Ave., James Island. Or call Edith Mclemore, event chair, at 762-0771 or Barbara Knight, president, at 762-1243.

In which a pumpkin is roasted

Today's CSA pickup came with another pumpkin. I still hadn't done anything with the one I picked up last week (or most of the other squashes from last week either).

This pumpkin bread recipe looked interesting, but I was out of eggs and too lazy to head out to the store this evening, so I decided to roast one of the pumpkins.

A good sharp knife makes splitting it in half a pretty easy job.

Scoop the innards out. I like to drizzle a little bit of olive oil inside before roasting.

Place the halves cut side down on a half sheet pan and roast for about an hour.

Now you have roasted pumpkin.

Steamy. And much more yellow than I expected. The dogs get canned pumpkin every now and then, which is always orange. Perhaps just a different variety of pumpkin.

Then just scoop the pumpkin flesh out of the skin and let it finish cooling and draining a little.

It doesn't taste like much by itself. Maybe after I get rid of some of the water it will start tasting like something.

Now I have to figure out what to do with this roasted pumpkin...

Charleston Eats: Mustard Seed

Mustard Seed James Island

Atlantic Salmon over couscous with local veggies

Turkey meatloaf, garlic mashed potatoes and local veggies

Pizza in Charleston Trip on Gowalla

Explore some of the local pizza joints with my Pizza in Charleston trip on Gowalla.

Thanks to Chrys for the idea.

Ferris wheel lights

I think if someone wanted to be clever, they'd program the lights to show a message to photographers that like to do this kind of thing