Cream of Artichoke and Leek soup

3 whole artichokes
2 leeks, finely chopped
1 tablespoon Olive oil
4 cups chicken broth
1 cup water
2 cups milk
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
1.In a steamer or in a colander over boiling water, steam artichokes 45 minutes, until tender.
2.While artichokes are steaming, heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Saute 1 leek in oil until translucent. Saute additional leek and with the water pour in broth and cook 30 minutes.
3.Scrape the flesh from each artichoke leaf and place in the pan with the leeks. Scrape the prickly choke away from the heart of the artichokes, chop the hearts and add to the leek mixture. Return to medium heat and stir to combine. Slowly stir in milk, but do not boil. Season with salt and pepper. Serve hot.

Video Expo closing

Rob Gwilt the owner of Video Expo store since 1994 has decided to close the shop due to his father retiring and will be taking over Reel Action Video in Clyde. Economic hardships, illegal downloads, coping and pirating and sharing copies of new theateral movies has caused the store to be less profitable than it once was. Taking over Reel Action Video is a family friendly and a long time buisness in Clyde and since Rob lives in Clyde it will eliminate the almost daily round trip to Abilene.

Video Expo is where you went to get something a little more obscure than the general new release. They carried Hong Kong and other Asian favorites, cult classics, Anime, TV series, and is well known for their 5 movies 5 days 5 dollar daily special. Chances are you may not find those little known favorites at the bigger chain stores, but you generally could at Abilene's niche and oldest video store Video Expo.


The plan is to have the store closed by August 20th 2010 and will be selling off all merchandise starting sometime around July 19th 2010. Everything is for sale; if it does not have a price, please ask, long time Expo employees Elaine 15 years, Mickey 14 years and Phil 13 years are going to be organizing the store to sell common genres like comedy, drama, action, seperate areas of the store for $5.00 each. New releases and more unusual titles will sell for $9.00 on the other half of the store as well as Blu-Ray for 9.99 each. Adult movies will start at half off the set price. Series and Anime sets will be priced as marked. Video Expo will also be selling racks, registers, DVD players, and other Misc. equipment.

Hollywood Video, a chain of movie stores with locations across the country closed it's doors earlier this year and several other video-rental stores in the area have closed recently because of the changing market

We are really disappointed that we are closing amd the hardest part will be not visiting with our friends who come to visit on a regular basis. The closing of Video Expo leaves just one independent video store left in Abilene, Box Office Video on Judge Ely and we encourage everyone to support your locally run stores.

To all our dedicated customers, we thank you for your support and love of great film and making work an enjoyable experience these past 16 years.

More and updated information will be posted at our website http://www.vidhead.net

HTPC setup so far

Rosewill Wind Knight Case with pre-installed 2x 120mm Fan

ASUS M4A785-M AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Mother.

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 32-bit.

ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 92mm Fluid Dynamic CPU.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive.

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel

AMD Athlon II X2 240 Regor 2.8GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Processor

COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power Plus

ASUS ENGT220/DI/1GD2(LP) GeForce GT 220 1GB 128-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0

to do list

To Do List, not prioritized yet or complete.

Garage clean and prep
Bathroom (kids)
Garretts room
Carport
Front porch (clean and repair roof)
Book shelves
Entertainment center
Kennel
Change office around
Fix kennel walk way
Ceiling (lights and replace)
Bathroom (ours)
HTPC
Trim trees
Garden

Kitchen/house

Ok, my last post was in October, which coincidentally is when I started my new job. Since then, I haven't had time to really work on the house other than trying to clean up the yard and put my sorry excuse of a garden in. (I should be mowing now instead of posting on this blog.) I did order and finally start to build our Kitchen/HTPC. The plan is to have a touchscreen PC in the kitchen to use as a central point for receipes, weather, security, surfing and controlling media content for the rest of the house. Last year while I was researching for the kitchen PC, there was hardly anything out there. A year later, it appears that a lot more people have had the same idea as me. Touchscreen computing. (lots of links)

While remodeling, I made sure I ran cables from one side of the room to the other including, HDMI, VGA, speaker, coax and ethernet--just so we can run the media center on kitchen PC and to channel media to the big screen. Yes, I know there is thing called wireless, and I am sure I will be integrating more wireless as I go As this projects keeps going on, it keeps morphing into different ideas. We were thinking traditional kitchen setup with table and that's it, but now we are thinking more of an internet cafe look and function. The west wall now has sheetrock up, and now we are going to make the whole wall a bookcase. Between the wife and me, we have tons of books. Right now, though, they are all in storage, and we would like them available. In front of the west wall, we will be building a bar/computer desk that will hold at least two computers; the bar/kitchen table will have the kitchen computer with the touchscreen. The idea is to have retractable screens and keyboards so we can all sit around for dinner and also use it for our media-centric family.

Just a small update for now, and I will be posting more since I now have my computer up and running. I will post more pictures as I go. But for now, I really need to go mow some grass.