Really good but reaaalllllyyy long

Mariposa Road:
The First Butterfly Big Year
by Robert Michael Pyle

Giving up on this, a little more than halfway through. It's a 558 page book describing a day-by-day journal of the author's yearlong travels to see all the butterfly species in the United States.  Well, no--not all the species. There are close to 800 identified species in the country, and he set himself a goal to see 500 of them.

He came close but I won't say how close for fear of spoiling it for you. It's a good book and I recommend it highly, but after nearly three hundred pages I began to find that I picked it up with increasing reluctance and put it down with immense relief. It was good, but just too much for me.

Wow. Repetitive but, wow

A Season on the Wind:
Inside the World of Spring Migration

Kenn Kaufman has become quite a nature writer. I adored his "cult classic" Kingbird Highway but it was a personal story about his birding big year. This is a whole another animal.

[watching the Geminid meteor showers]

In the sharp, cold air the stars crackled with brilliance, and we stood in silence, gazing upward. Once every few minutes a glowing meteor would blaze across the sky, and we would squeeze each other's hands and keep watching. And then somewhere out in the fields the coyotes started singing. We sensed that they were also watching the sky; their cries had a pensive, solemn tone, as if they had become the voices of the lost wilderness, the voices of Earth. Unseen in the dark they went on and on, with yips, keening howls, mournful wails, an elegy to the sky, calling down the falling stars.

And read his description of the courtship display of the pectoral sandpiper:

Standing atop a high hummock, a male makes growling, squawking, coughing sounds, then puffs his body to a ridiculous degree by inflating special air sacs under the feathers of his throat and chest. Launching into the air, he flies with slow, deep, exaggerated wingbeats, looking like a blobby brown balloon, making a series of low, throbbing hoots: doob doob doob...The whole thing is bizarre and more than a little comical. So graceful and strong in normal fight, the pectoral sandpiper transforms himself into a dorky showoff in courtship.

But of course none of this is what the book is about. If you think you know anything about bird migration, think again. There's a lot more to it than "birds fly south for the winter."

Some fly a little south, to the southern U.S.; some fly all the way to southern South America. Some species that you see year round actually do migrate a little, you just don't notice it. When I lived in Kentucky I thought the robins went south for the winter--until I encountered a flock of them skulking around in the woods. And if you think there are invisible "flyways" the birds migrate along...nope. Some ducks stick to well established routes, but they're just as likely to be west to east, northeast to south, and crisscrossing all over. Hawks migrate in the daytime when they can float on the thermals; they dislike crossing the dead-air of big lakes. Some birds migrate in flocks but many more go singly. Little songbirds migrate at night and are just as likely to shoot across the gulf of Mexico as not, coming down on the other side with most of their excess fat storage spent.

There are places where migrating birds seem to congregate but they're mostly accidents of geography. Kenn Kaufman has located himself in a prime spot--on the south shore of lake Erie. It's a region he has made famous as a spring migration stop-off for warblers and other long-distance migrants. When they arrive at Lake Erie at daybreak, they have to make a choice whether to go on across the water or stop off for a day to eat and regain energy.  Apparently a lot of them stop to take a break--in April, it's a miraculous place for bird watchers. And--as he explains many times--a terrible location for wind turbines.

We didn't use t know that many songbirds migrate at night, nor did we realize just how many of them there were. Picture a large cloud of birds moving north in the dark, and remember--most diurnal birds can't see any better in the dark than we can. They can see the stars overhead and the lights below, but not an invisible blade of deadly whirr right in front of their eyes.

Decent plot but dragging detection

Staging is Murder

I so very much wanted to love this book. It had everything--antiques, old houses, loving friends, and a mystery that was easy to understand, complicated to ferry out. And a heroine who wasn't afraid to use unusual household objects as weapons in a pinch.

But the story dragged, dragged, dragged. At times I thought she was writing for an audience of five-year-olds. And the heroine, a supposed lover of mystery novels, was so very very clueless. She agonized for pages over how to get started--when she had the murder location and the personal property of the murder victim right under her fingertips and at her sole control. Duh!  How about, uh...searching the house, stupid?

Part of my problem was the audiobook format. Now that the reader did anything wrong, at all. She was great. But her problem was that she had to read every word--and there were way too many words.  She (the heroine) agonized over every little detail...except the ones which were so very obviously important.

And for crying out loud, when you get hold of an important document that clearly holds a clue to the mystery, you don't simply make a couple of copies, hide them, and email one to yourself! You already suspect that the murderer is out to get you, so if you happen to be next, couldn't you leave one somewhere for the police to find?  If you can make two copies, why not five?  Or why not mail one to yourself...or the police?

So as you see, I disliked/liked this book and it clearly made me scream. Still, I'm thinking I might risk a paper copy of a sequel. But no more audio.

Great history; not so mystery

The Gown:
A Novel of the Royal Wedding
by Jennifer Robson

Absolutely great! Assuming you're a person with respect for handicrafts, a passion for history and enormous nosiness (call it curiosity) about people's lives, you are sure to love this. Yes, the "mystery" was pretty obvious--you'll guess it from the beginning--but the adventure of uncovering it was a pleasure.

I won't recap the plot; you can read the book cover. But I will only say that the author took three different women and made them all into voices you wanted to hear and stories you wanted to know. The narrator of the audiobook helped a lot with that--cheers go to Marisa Calin--you rock! But I suspect that even if I'd read the words on paper I'd have adored this book.

Gorgeous coffee table fare

The Jemima Code
by Toni Tipton-Martin

I'm going to have to rate this as a did-not-finish. It's a gorgeous book, expertly written and seriously researched. My only issue is that it's "too much" to read straight through. As a reference work or a coffee table book, it's perfect.

The other reason I gave up was that in the interest of quantity--was it really necessary to review every single Soul Food title of the sixties and seventies?--they sacrificed on quality.  Each cookbook had barely enough content to keep me reading for a minute, and then it was on to the next book.

No complaints--nothing but applause!  But don't try to read it like a novel--treasure it as a glory of facts and history and honor for the writers of all those cookbooks.

Missed a good one

We Were the Lucky Ones
by Georgia Hunter

I lost the review I wrote on this. But I am not qualified to post it anyway, because I stopped reading halfway through. It's written in chapters alternating between the different members of the family--the parents, the son who escapes to Argentina, two young husband-wife couples, and another daughter. Possibly I've missed one of these--don't quote me.

I've read so much about the war and concentration camps and suffering of Jewish people under the Nazis, I couldn't get up the appetite for reading more. Plus, I didn't realize this was a true story, so I kept thinking these were a fiction author's trumped up tales--which wasn't true at all. My mistake and my loss--when I realized it was due back at the library, I picked out the most interesting story line about the husband and wife who pretend to be gentiles and end up in a Siberian detainment camp-- imagine having to melt the ice off your child's eyelashes each morning so he can open his eyes? It turned out to be such a thrilling story I wish I'd read the rest.

So, no rating but I give the book a thumbs up.

Animal romp in the not wilds

The Urban Bestiary
by  Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Amusing and lovely tales of the animals and birds that live with us in our cities and suburbs; often told tongue-in-cheek: the four reasons why we hate rat tails. We do hate them, and there are reasons for it, and when you read this you'll understand why.

This turned out to be a a mixture of personal observations, science, history and even an occasional folktale. Delightful. On house sparrows gathering nesting materials in her chicken coop:

Finally, one male house sparrow selected the very biggest and longest--a primary wing feather. Such a prize! The feather was longer than he was but weighed nothing; he picked it up horizontally in his  bill and attempted to make off with it, flying straight into the hogwire fence. Hogwire is characterized by vertical wire rectangles, two by four inches each, a good sparrow-sized opening but not a sparrow-with-long-feather-size opening. I was stunned to observe what happened next: the sparrow dropped to the ground, put his feather down, walked through the fence, then reached his head in, grabbed the tip of the feather, and pulled it through. This was problem-solving, the sort of thing we expect from primates and maybe the higher avian orders, such as corvids and parrots. Certainly not from a plain, hated little sparrow.

From Brian, a fish and wildlife officer:

If you move to bear country, there will be bears. If you don't want them to raid your birdfeeder, then take it down. If you don't want them to get into your garbage, then chain it up. Brian gets frequent callbacks:
"I did what you said, I put a bungee cord on the can, and bears still got into it."
"Bungee cord? You need a chain with a lock. It's a bear."
"But I--"
"It's a bear."

On a recent trip to the Texas hill country, I cringed to see all the Future Home Of... signs on narrow roads in the undeveloped wilderness. How many car-deer collisions will it take before the deer are driven away? How many raccoons will be relocated or shot because the new homeowners get their garage can dumped out on the ground? How many foxes will survive after people strew rat poison inside their garages?

I wish they would all read a copy of this book. Understanding the wild creatures might lead to tolerance, to co-existence. When I first moved to the suburbs I had the delightful experience of cleaning up all of the contents of my garbage can spilled in the street, but I learned to keep the garbage cans in the garage until trash day.  I learned to keep the bird seed in rat-proof metal bins. And when a barred owl dive-bombs your head during a morning jog, look around to see where its nest might be--and take a detour next time. Let the critters live--or go back to your condo in Houston. Please.

Run on in many delightful ways

Jog On:
How Running Saved My Life
by Bella Mackie

Hard to believe any editor would have allowed so many run-on paragraphs. She just starts unloading her personal experience and on it goes and on it goes...like jogging. Jog On! But--strange as it may seem--it was good. You might have to insert your own paragraph breaks from time to time, but the adventure never lagged.

I highly recommend this book to aspiring runners or persons fighting anxiety. It was very encouraging to me, too. While I've never experienced the kind of public panic attack she was sometimes hit with, even I have had moments where I just want to curl up in a ball and shake. My moments always have a cause; hers were somewhat random and debilitating.

With a little anti-anxiety medication and a whole lot of jogging, she came through. Her writing is personal and honest, and you don't come off thinking of her as some impossibly competent recovered addict who now sits on top of the world, benevolently smiling on the lesser beings. Not at all! She's like a real friend who struggles through the days just like we do...until time to go jogging.

Last Day at Canyon Lake

I have no notes about the trip back. I remember it was mostly painless.

Bird summary: Osprey (at least two), Bald Eagle (2), Belted Kingfisher, Yellow-rumped warbler, mockingbirds all over, bluebird, turkey and black vultures, Great Egret, Great Blue Heron, Cormorant sp., big flocks of something migrating south, and a bunch of unidentifiable sparrows.

NOTES:
1. Don't trust supermarket packaging of corn meal--or anything else that's prone to impact-driven, disastrous explosions.
2. Take a walk every day no matter what.
3. When we don't have the boat, be sure to schedule side-trips so we don't end up sitting around and being bored. Ed really enjoyed the eating out and shopping in San Antonio. I did too, but would have been equally happy bird watching.

Sunday at Canyon Lake

It had been an atypical trip so far, but then, that was the idea. It wasn't planned to be a camping trip but rather a visiting old friends trip. And it was working as planned, until last night when I couldn't go to sleep because I hadn't had any exercise but was mentally exhausted from driving and shopping and hanging out with people I didn't know very well. None of my favorite things.

Sunday should be better. The only things on the agenda were fishing at the crappie dock and a long, bird-watching walk. Maybe two. Maybe I would get a good picture of that little falcon.

Later: it was better. The best! We went down fishing in the morning, after sleeping late and getting a good breakfast. Except I exploded my egg in the microwave.

At the dock, since I wasn't getting any bites, I started watching birds and what a watching there was! I'd seen a flurry of sparrows earlier and decided they were song sparrows, but there was one with a white eye-ring that escaped me. Then a pair of osprey I watched for a while. I absolutely adore osprey.  And to think that when I was a kid in the 1970s I might have never had a chance to see one! (They were one of the worst victims of the DDT/eggshell thinning of the 1960s.) But now I've seen lots!

After they sailed away, a pair of bald eagles came a-circling.  They're truly magnificent.  On top of all that excitement, the bushes were full of little birds--mockingbirds and Carolina wrens, of course, but tons of sparrows and some small-beaked bird that worked the low scrub in the rocks by the water. He looked like a kinglet, but larger?  And a yellow-rumped warbler or twenty for sure.

When I finally remembered to check my phone, I found I'd missed a call from Norman and one from Theresa. She and Bob were ready to come visit, if we wished. And we did!  After that some people came down to the fishing dock to chat. Nice folk--they'd traveled all over the states The guy originated in Texas and the lady in Oregon. They appeared to divide their time between the two places and many more in between.

While I was chatting I heard the rattle of a kingfisher! Soon I spied him...he found a perch on the branches of trees by the water and stuck to it...for like...forever.  He just didn't move, so I could never get a good look at his markings. He seemed small enough to be a green kingfisher...but was probably just the same belted (blue) kingfishers I've seen all my life. In all the time I watched him, and tried to photograph him, he didn't move.  So I'll never know for sure.

Theresa and I had a delicious walk out the peninsula to the boat ramp, where we found Bob still putting his kayak in. He'd misplaced his seat during the move and was still getting his gear together, so it took him longer than usual.  We continued our walk to the end of the peninsula, through the tent camping area (closed for the season) and back to the RV. There we ate grapes and chatted, and by the time we walked down to see if Ed was nearing shutting down his fishing, the sun was starting to droop.

We helped Ed pack up and haul the wagon up the hill, then quick-stepped over to the boat ramp. Bob had already come up but we were able to ate least help him lift the kayak onto the truck and over. Izzy and I accepted a ride in their truck back to the campsite--what a wimp!  But for the day, I'd gotten in a good bit of walking.

By the way, on our walk I saw one of the little falcons again and it was definitely a Kestrel. So probably no Merlin this trip. No matter.

Odd for a Sunday, but that night, the campsite was filling up!  Mostly older people--I saw only one kid and pretty much nobody who looked younger than us. Bob's suggestion was that they might be coming in for the Wurst-fest, or some such thing, going on in nearby New Braunfels that week.

Saturday at Canyon Lake

During the last hour or so of our night, I'd mentioned my plan to blow off the Mi Tierra breakfast + shopping excursion and just take a long walk instead. BUt it appears Ed didn't hear me--or maybe I didn't say it out loud--and when he asked about our schedule in the morning I was surprised. He'd actually been looking forward to the shopping. So with one vote "yes" and one vote "okay", we did it.

Traffic going down 281 was stop-and-go for a long time--the main road was under construction, so all traffic was routed onto the feeder with many stoplights. But eventually traffic picked up and became the sort of big city downtown driving that I despise. Too many lanes, too many exits, too many idiots driving too very fast, and no time to make the slightest mistake before you missed your exit and were miles away in minutes. Groan.

On the other hand, with a modern phone navigation you don't have to despair like I did that one time when I missed getting on I-45 south to Houston and ended up in downtown Dallas with no idea where I was or how to get back onto the tangled mess of highways just above my head.  That was one of the more miserable trips of my life.  But these days you need not worry--just let the phone reroute itself and you soon get a second chance. Or a third. Luckily, I only needed a second one.

I'd not planned where to park, though. I passed up what was probably free parking under the highway and was heading along streets crowded with pedestrians before I realized how close I was. Luckily a $5 lot appeared in front of me and I whipped inside. I'm not going to argue with a five-dollar parking fee when a Mi Tierra's breakfast is wafting through the air.

The wait was only ten minutes and the service was fast.  The menu seemed much smaller than I remember, but this was Saturday morning at eleven o'clock and they were serving more lunch than they were breakfast. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a breakfast-only menu we'd eaten off before...aha. They do. I didn't see pancakes on the menu at all, else I would have ordered some.  (Turns out they probably were there; I just missed them in my hunger.)


No matter--I pigged out on warm, fluffy flour tortillas instead. Plus machacado and fried potatoes, which I love.  I could eat fried potatoes for breakfast every day and not get tired of them.






Then we shopped around in El Mercado and surrounding shops until our time ran out. We needed to return to our poor puppies in time to give them a walk and give ourselves showers before heading to Bob & T's cookout.


On the way back my phone navigated us by a different route, avoiding 281 altogether. I liked that, and if I just knew where it had taken us, I'd make a note to always go that way. There were a lot more curvy, two-lane roads but no traffic light stop-and-go freeway feeders.

We took the dogs to Bob and Theresa's house and found the people all sitting out in the driveway talking. Their deck is still just a frame of wood, but it's going to be gorgeous some day. Zack got to roam around with the other dogs, but Izzy was best stowed in the back seat. I'm sorry for her, but I expect it was better than being in the RV all alone. At least she could see us from the back seat.

"The people" consisted of just Amy and Kelsey, Chris and Mary Rose. Good folk for a cookout. We didn't stay too late, of course. For future reference--COE parks--or at least this COE park--close their gates at ten p.m. and don't have a key code. If you get locked outside, you park outside and walk to your campsite.

Second Day at Canyon Lake

Plan: long walk with dogs. Actual: meeting up with Bob & T at the Guadalupe Trail for a short hike along the "undeveloped side" of the river. I don't think it was the real Guadalupe Trail but rather just a nature hike near the dam. It was pretty, with lots of ups and downs, but the view was simply the backyards of the million-dollar homes across the river. I wouldn't bother with it another time.

My dog Izzy got all overprotective and bit at theirs. Not pleasant at all, but no damage was done and they took it in good stride.



Canyon Lake from the dam overlook

Ed and I had concocted the idea of eating some Tex-Mex in San Antonio. So before the walk, I checked and rejected a series of restaurants on my phone. When I finally found one that seemed good, I proposed it and they were happy to oblige us. So we went back to Mammoth and grabbed a change of clothes, then followed them to their brand-new house to take showers in their brand new guest bathroom. It was nice.


(And here I'd intended to write a long complaint about urban sprawl and the huge mess people are making in the lovely Texas scrub of the hill country. I won't. All I'll say is that it's a real shame Texas didn't set aside a handful of ten-thousand acre parks in the Hill Country and dedicated them for wildlife conservation. Because in ten years, it will all be houses. The beauty and wildlife that drew people to move there in the first place will be gone forever.)

We toured their lovely house and showered in their brand new facilities, then Bob graciously drove us to La Hacienda de los Barrios.



It proved to be large, busy (but no wait), and with a great Tex-Mex menu that freely mixed old traditionals with trendier new dishes. They had at least four vegetarian entrees, right there on the menu--no alterations necessary.

I'd considered eating cabrito for a non-CAFO meat option, but it was listed as "Market Price," which is never a good sign.  Some other time.

Everyone was pleased with their food but I was sadly disappointed in mine. I hadn't eaten enchiladas in so long, so I chose that.  But they were flavorless and sprinkled with cheese; the fillings weren't tasty enough to make up for eating all that cheese that added calories and milk fat but no flavor.  On the other hand, the bowl of beans was excellent!  If I ever go back, I might order nothing but beans.

Back at their house, we hung around for just a few minutes before heading back to Mammoth for bed. Traffic on those little roads is horrendous, but at least I didn't have to dodge a deer.

Mammoth goes south for Halloween

(Thu October 31 2019)
Crane's Mill Park on Canyon Lake Texas
Sam Rayburn Tollway South; Texas 121 TEXpress/Texas 183 TEXpress, I-820 W,  Chisolm Trail parkway south; US 67 South; 220 West; US-281 South; some little roads over to the park.67 to 281. 311 south. 3159 east/north. 2673 north/west.
1. Planned distance: 325 miles
2. Map time estimate: 5:35
3. Adjusted estimate: didn't calculate
4. Actual distance: 320 miles which makes no sense--are our tires mis-sized?
5. Actual time:  5:58 (excluded 20 minutes stops)
6. Gas stop in Fort Worth and pee stop at "picnic" area on 281
7. Average mph trip: unknown

Really late start (12:16). None of the prep work (backing up the boat to get it out of the way of the RV, for example) had been done the day before. It's true it had been raining and wet in the previous morning, but work could have been done in the afternoon.  When we finally got started loading the car onto the tow dolly, more problems arose. First the car overshot the dolly and required major engineering to get loose. Then it kept coming up the ramp off-center and missing the very narrow wheel spaces.

So we didn't leave until after noon for what was supposed to be a five-and-one-half hour drive.  The actual numbers are shown above.

But it wasn't such a bad trip. Sunny and cool but not so cool that we were miserable in the front seats. Mammoth's heater doesn't work too well--the air it blows is warm, not hot, and it has to be blowing right on you to feel it.

Barreling down the eternally congested I-35 was out of the question, so I routed us on the I-820 loop around Fort Worth.  We were able to get on the express lanes for SH-121/820 and stay on them, all around the messy part.  Except we needed gas. Obviously, you can't get gas on an Express Lane, so Ed just gripped the steering wheel harder and I frantically searched for truck stops on my phone. But my phone's "search along route" feature wouldn't go far enough out and it only showed gas stations at the next couple of stops for our route. I located found a Racetrack station just off to the left at a nearby stop, and we went there. Luckily it was one of the new ones, with diesel, and we were able to refill easily on an outside lane. Whew.

Of course as soon as we got back on 820, truck stops jumped up all over the place.


The drive was pleasant, but went through all the little towns--Glen Rose, Marble Falls, ...with all their little traffic lights. But the road, especially TX-181, had shoulders and passing lanes every few miles. And there wasn't much traffic.

I tried to take some pictures of the impressive scenery when we approached the hill country, but all I captured were hills.

The only real issue we encountered was the setting sun, in particular, how fast it appeared to be setting.  We were hoping to arrive in order to finish out hookups without a flashlight.  Amazingly we made it--6:33 and still light. After a quick exchange to the very nice lady at the entrance, we were soon on our way to a waterfront site at a campground that was more than three-quarters empty.

But not before nearly hitting a deer. He darted out from a bar near the park, got in the road in front of us, and hesitated. Ed hit the brakes pretty hard and so did the oncoming car. The deer survived, but the box of cornmeal in our pantry did not. It hit the floor and exploded .

It was large, level, and clean, like all of the Texas Corp of Engineers parks we've camped at. So far. No wood knocking needed. Our only complaint was the same as we've had for the others--too open.  They'd left a few trees but not nearly as many as they might have, so all of the spaces were wide-open to all the others. It wasn't objectionable...yet if we'd taken a site away from the water, our picnic table would have no privacy from any side. As it was only our nearest neighbor overlooked us and we didn't see much of him or his family outside.

It was a chilly night but the space heater kept us cozily warm. Supper; dog walking; bed; sleep. Aaahhhhh.

Not the adventure story I expected

Only Pack What You Can Carry
by Janice Holly Booth

I hadn't fully expected an instruction manual on How to Live Life, but it wasn't a bad one. The title is telling you not to carry around a lot of baggage that prevents you from achieving your dreams, but the bulk of the text tells you how to do stuff--not how not to carry stuff.

There are many examples from her life, but they''re episodes all meant to tell a story. It starts off like a memoir, and I'd hoped for one, but it quickly becomes an instruction manual and I wasn't all that disappointed.

It's full of quotable quotes. I'll give only one and hope I don't ruin the impact by quoting out of context and without all of the life lessons that make it real.

If the price of doing what you love is that you might die doing it, what is the price of not chasing your dreams or fulfilling your potential? The cost is an interior death, where your dreams, ideas, hopes and schemes wither away, leaving a hollow core to be filled with superficial distractions...

Cook and learn--splendid!

Take Big Bites
by Linda Ellerby


Early into this book I wrote a very mean review of what appeared to be "just about the worst recipe for chili I've ever seen." I was--and still am--tempted to try the recipe just to prove how hideous it would be. But instead I'll just mention that whoever wrote it down didn't have to wash their own pans.

But I'm deleting all that. Who cares about a bad recipe or two in such a wonderful book?  I feel honored to have been allowed to read it.  Food was just a tiny bit of her masterful approach to wringing the spice out of life, so I can't blame or fault her for attempting to recreate some of the significant meals of her magnificent journey through life.  It wouldn't mean anything to me to try to cook them, but to her, it was clearly worth the writing of them.

This cooking woman has a brain, a conscience, strength, compassion, bravery and an occasional, self-embarrassing admission of weakness. The episodes of her life included here are no doubt a tiny subset of all the fun, cool, and totally misery-making things she has experienced.  Volunteering for a church mission to get a free ride to visit Latin America. Hopping across the border at Brownsville with a best friend to relive the memories of food and friendship in the days before Tex-Mex cooking lost its spice. Causing a riot in Turkey by giving out oranges to hungry kids. Outward Bound trip down the Colorado. Being pummeled by the largest naked woman she'd ever seen at a bath + massage somewhere. And more and more--I'm having trouble finding a representative sample of adventures to list. They're so diverse.

And best and last, her walk down the Thames at age sixty. That's an essay that will make you cry, yet still bring a little hope to the passage of time.

Okay cozy, but I want better. Try again.

A High-End Finish
by Kate Carlisle

I want to read the next one--I want to see if she can do it. The heroine was attacked on page 14 and then at least three other times in the course of the 311-page book. She's a gutsy broad, but can she sustain this pace without serious injury?

That aside, it's a pretty good mystery and some amusing twists on good-looking male characters who will doubtless ask the heroine out sooner or later. Or maybe she'll ask them; we will see. I can see the author is setting up for a long, spirited ride through romantic comedy--with a murder or two on the side.

If you're into police procedural or even amateur detective stories, this isn't for you. Evidence, fingerprints, and paper trails are not a feature here. But there's plenty of well drawn action and lively characters.

Cooking Thanksgiving

I had a hankering for turkey and dressing and the local free-range turkey grower was offering birds through my CSA, so I decided to do Thanksgiving. (I do that every year so not such a big surprise.) With time on my hands at work last week, I added a few side dishes that had accumulated in my to-try folder and created a Thanksgiving "menu."

Deviled eggs
Asian shrimp cocktail
Turkey with herb rub
dressing
gravy
mashed potatoes
roasted Cipollini onions
Mexican street corn salad from Serious Eats
Golden Crusted Brussels Sprouts
cranberry sauce
Rolls and butter
pumpkin pie

The Asian Shrimp Cocktail was soon slashed from the menu--too much work and too much food already. Also the rolls and butter. But all the rest were faithfully executed. Some notes for future planning (and current amusement) follow.

Deviled eggs: this is one of those to-taste recipes I learned from my mother. No measurements, just taste and add until it's just right. The only problem is that every time you taste, there's a little less filling in the bowl. Note to me: watch the salt! Stop before you think it's enough. And  try adding a little real horseradish--mysupermarket horseradish mustard doesn't have enough Devil in it.

Roasted Cipollini Onions: well, that was pretty much a fail--no Cipollini Onions. Best I could find were small-ish sweet onions and they weren't very small and they weren't very sweet. I ended up cutting them in fourths. Plus the recipe was silly--it said they'd caramelize in 30 minutes in a 325 degree oven. Impossible! They weren't even soft at that point and the four tablespoons of butter wasn't even brown.

All that said, I'll save the recipe. Adding mushrooms, it would make a no-fuss addition to grilled steak. With a lot less butter.

The Mexican Street Corn Salad was a maybe--I need to try again using fresh corn, and I need to throw the chopped cilantro, onions and garlic in the pan right before turning off the heat. You heat up a big pan and char the corn kernels over high heat. Then, to all the ones that don't pop right out of the pan, you add the chopped herbs, mayonnaise, and a little cotija cheese. Lacking better instructions, and not wishing to goo up my frying pan with melted cheese, I cooled the corn down, transferred to a bowl, then added the herbs and stuff. But I think it would have been better if the herbs had gotten a minute of cooking in the hot pan.

Golden Crusted Brussels Sprouts was very simple. Instead of roasting them in an oven, you cook them in a pan until tender, then turn up the heat and brown the outsides. Sprinkle a little salt and grated cheese (I used gruyere). Serve warm.

I say, blah! Roasted vegetables is all the trendy thing, and in general it works, but I'm getting tired of it. What the recipes don't mention, although this one hinted at it, is that if you over-roast the vegetables, they turn from delicious to dull. This recipe said to start at a low temperature and to check them for doneness at ten minutes.

All I can say is, whoever wrote it needs to have his clocks checked. Mine weren't at all tender at ten minutes. So, needless to say, I burned 'em.

Never again. Brussels Sprouts are so sweet and yummy when cooked in a pan with a little water, I'm not wasting them on any more of these fancy cooking techniques.

I didn't taste the pie yet. I was so tired I went to bed early. The crust may be hideous--I started a bad recipe and realized my mistake, then tried to correct it rather than throw it all away and start over.





I did get an opportunity to try out the "How to Carve a Thanksgiving Turkey" instructions on Serious Eats.

What do you think?




Theirs:








Mine:






Close, huh?

Lots of rocks, yeah!

Basin and Range
by John McPhee

A classic, of course, and beautifully written to boot. But it's the sort of thing I'd be better off reading on paper. I tried the audiobook and listened while jogging--every time I noticed a flock of ducks in the pond or a new planting of flowers, I lost track of a few million years and had to skip back. Not that it's not gripping, but it's dense. In a good way.

My only complaint is that he seems to think that listing off names that mean nothing to the reader is somehow elucidative. Or poetic.  I've seen other writers do it, even my beloved Terry Tempest Williams, and I always find it boring. What's the point of listing of names of geologists with only the context of "they were all part of the development of James Hutton's theories. I won't remember them. If he wants to give them credit for their work, he could put them in a footnote.

Listing of geologic eras, again without context, is just listing of random words. He might as well say, "fish; tree roots; cryptography; Mercedes; chewing gum; currency; nuclear physics."  That would mean as much as "Cenozoic, Paleozoic, Triassic, Deuteronomy, Genesis...oops. You see what I mean?

Cookinig with the ones who know

Apron Strings
by Jan Wong

What a delight! Mother and son go in search of home cooking in three countries, and find it by living with the ordinary people who host them. France and Italy were best--who can resist Chiara and Maria Rosa's Two Stir Risotto al Porro?

Here is how she introduces it:
Cookbooks tiresomely insisted you stand over the pot, constantly stirring risotto, one reason I rarely made it. Restaurants back home made a fuss about risotto: they charged a fortune, forced you to order it for a minimum of two persons, and warned you it would take forty-five minutes. In Italy, just as there was no cult of pasta, there was no cult of risotto. It was just rice. I watched Maria Rosa toss in half a cup of hot broth, give the rice a couple of stirs, cover the pan and turn down the heat. That was it. Every now and then, she checked on the rice. When it dried out, she added more broth.

In addition to teaching you an easy way to make risotto, that passage gives you an idea of how Jan Wong writes. I just love it. Chatty, informative, and .  Plus I learned that Italian people eat dried pasta, just like we do. French people--or at least the ones she stayed with--do indeed drink wine with their meals, but the amounts were scanty. The best of cooks occasionally favored a recipe that most of their friends would call hideous. And most of all, if you cook for a cook, even if you have to substitute or omit half o the ingredients, they will be extremely appreciative.
right there

Their trip to China was strange. The family that was hosting them was either extremely wealthy or extremely overextended on credit--they lived in a 5-bedroom, two story penthouse full of antiques and art. But the kitchen fare was meager--the hostess was on an eternal diet and her maid was timid and lacking in self-confidence. She could cook, all right--they both could--but the hostess was too busy with her beauty regimen and the maid was too scared.

Garlic Gripes

So I've wasted an absurd amount of time on the Internet trying to find support for why I hate garlic powder. And I have failed. So in addition to the time lost, I have lost faith in my own judgement.

Here's the most informative article I found:
In defense of garlic powder  by Ari LeVaux

On the other hand, my research suggests this: (1) if you can taste the garlic powder in the finished dish, it's too much; and (2) old, stale garlic powder is insipid. So maybe I wasn't crazy in thinking that the turkey at a relative's house was awful on account of the garlic powder--it was indeed too much and it was indeed old and stale.

So...powdered or no, does garlic belong on turkey at all? Most recipes use it; my mother never did. Let us see........

Garlic, garlic, garlic. Ina Garden, Martha Stewart, Alton Brown--they all use garlic.

Bah!

Bowed over and wordless

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
by Terry Tempest Williams

I was not prepared for this. My mistake, I'm sure--I probably got it confused with another of her writings.  I'll let you read the cover for yourself and see if you can deal with the subject of a lake rising out of its borders and a mother dying of cancer.

Her writing is beautiful and never seemed forced, like it did sometimes in The Hour Of Land.  But more important than beautiful, it says things that need to be said. Topics as deep and as trivial as laughter, love and sorrow. It's beyond me to critique, or even describe.

Not that funny warning

Of Thee I Zing
by Laura Ingraham

Such a promising beginning!

Children should not be named after a piece of furniture, a planet, a fruit, or an herb. Today's little ones are saddled with some of the most ridiculous names ever--it's as if the parents are trying to force the kids to hate them early.

She goes on with a hilarious list of celebri-tot (her word) names.

This is followed by some swipes at fashion, slutty clothing, music lyrics, and colloquial speech. I found that amusing, so I kept reading...

And then came endless pages of boring gripe sessions about the same old stuff that has been annoying us since the 1970s. She ran out of steam after the first chapter but stupid me kept reading. Oh--sorry--that should be, "stupid I kept reading." Among other boring subjects were grammar (use of there vs. their); airline seats (she's a closet fat-shamer); teenage trick-or-treaters (Erma Bombeck wrote about this twenty years ago and she was able to make it funny); holidays (for crying out loud--there's even been songs written about Christmas in October--why I the would would I want to read her repetitive rants?)

I wish I'd stopped after the first chapter.

Sunday Cooking

Last weekend we were camping; next weekend we are running up to Arkansas to check in with the mother-in-law.  So this weekend, I thought I'd do a little cooking.

(Also, my to-try recipe list has jumped up to twenty-eight. I swore off collecting recipes last year, so how did this happen?)

I find myself pounding little wads of raw pork sausage, soy sauce and garlic into hollowed-out cucumbers. Pretty darn near impossible and stupid to boot.  I can't believe this is going to taste good enough to be worth the hassle.  Here's the picture, pre-cooking.


After cramming in as much pork as you can (and swearing in frustration as it oozes back out), you simmer these things in chicken stock for a half hour; add mushrooms, simmer some more, and decorate with green onions. And here it is:



Chrissy Tiegen's Mother's Pork Stuffed Cucumber Soup



(forgot to sprinkle with chopped green onion but I'll do that in a bit)

Indeed, it is a light and refreshing dish, although almost unbearably bland until I embellished my bowl with a slug of soy sauce. If I ever again feel a need to torture myself by cramming bits of ground pork into tiny cucumber cavities, I'll do this:
1. Substitute cooked rice and chopped shitake mushrooms for half of the pork
2. Roll them into tiny meatballs
3. Seed the cucumbers and chop into chunks
4. Throw them all in the broth together. It would taste just the same (or better)

Prior to making the cucumbers, I was exploding an eggplant in the broiler. Hint: if a recipe tells you to place a whole eggplant under the broiler and roast on high for one hour, you should heed the little voice in the back of your head that says, but shouldn't I cut it or something first? Else after fifteen minutes you'll hear a muffled "pfloof" from the oven and open the door to find your eggplant has split and spilled its guts all over the place.

Exploded eggplant:


After that I was supposed to close the eggplant up in the foil and let it "sweat" for a little while. And I totally forgot that step. So when it came time to squeeze out all the juices and then add enough water to make a cup of liquid, I didn't have to mess up a measuring cup. I simply scraped the two or three teaspoons of liquid into the water.

To this liquid I added a piece of dried kombu (Pacific kelp seeweed), brought it to a simmer, then added a quarter cup bonito flakes.  After this had steeped for five minutes, I was supposed to strain it--oops again. My eggplant liquid had been strained through a large-holed seive, so it had some of the eggplant solids in it. But now they were strained out along with the bonito flakes. (Bonito flakes are smoked skipjack tuna--if you smell them or taste them, they're grossly fishy. But added to a dashi like this, they're fine.)

Now the liquid received a dollup of soy sauce and mirin and was reduced.  And that was it--add the reduced liquid to the eggplant solid and sprinkle with toasted sesame seed, and i had made:

Smoked Eggplant for Ramen [eggplant stuff]
J. KENJI LÓPEZ-ALT

Sadly, it wasn't very good. I added a little more soy sauce and tried it on top of some ramen. It's a change...but not all that much better than ordinary dashi on ramen.  Eggplant is a wonderful thing but this recipe did noting for it. It will not be repeated.







Next, and last other than roasting some potatoes for breakfast hash, I created



One-Skillet Cod and Kale With Ginger and Garlic
from Serious Eats

I had collards rather than the Lacinato Kale they requested, so I pre-cooked them in the microwave.  Saute the collards with garlic, ginger, and rice wine. Put fish pieces on top and steam. Decorate with soy sauce and toasted sesame seeds. It couldn't go wrong and it didn't.

But oddly, it was "too" rich.  A real chef would probably have added a sprinkle of lemon juice. Maybe I'll try that later. But eaten with a bowl of plain rice it turned out be just right.



And guess what I did next (after trucking out to the field to track down a lost cat)? I put all this food in the fridge and ate my leftover Golden Chick fried catfish.

Superlatively deep, funny and informative

On Trails: An Exploration
by Robert Moor

Take a topic: trails. Sounds simple, no? My immediate thought would be deer trails through the eastern forest, bighorn sheep through the Grand Canyon, Oregon Trail, Mormon Trail, the Trail of Tears....

And I wouldn't have written a book one-millionth as fascinating as this. He has a brain-bending essay on the difference between trails and roads; a description of the oldest living trails in fossils rock and you'll  never guess the creature that made them; a personal story of the Appalachian trail and what it meant to him and other people; the potential of extending the Appalachian trail through Greenland and down its companion mountain range in Europe; and tons of other stuff.  I'd have to read this book three times to get it all.

Great quotes:
When researchers tasked a slime mold with connecting a series of oat clusters mirroring the location of the major population centers surrounding Tokyo, the slime mold effectively re-created the layout of the city's railway system.

[on watching sheep]
..The better one gets to know sheep, the less sheep-like they appear.

[on losing the sheep he was supposed to be watching:]
In my mouth had grown a cat's dry tongue.

[on the difference in meaning of 'place' between European and Native American culture]
The full ramifications of the Removal, and the pain it inflicted, are difficult for non-Native Americans to grasp. As Belt made clear to me, our two cultures have a drastically different "sense of place." To Euro-Americans, places are most often regarded as sites of residence or economic activity--essential blank backdrops for human enterprise. As such, Euro-American places are largely ahistorical, replaceable;  they change hands, and their names can change, too. By comparison, the Cherokee conception of place is more fixed, specified, eternal. "In the native world, places don't change identity," Belt said. "We are more in touch with place as where things have happened, and where things are, as opposed to where we are."

[on our own trails]
in the end, we are all existential pathfinders. We select among the paths life affords, and then, when those paths no longer work for us, we edit them and innovate as necessary. The tricky part is that while we are editing our trails, our trails are also editing us.

[said another way]
The same rule applies to our life's pathways: collectively we shape them, but individually they shape us. So we must choose our paths wisely.

Monday and leaving Lake O' the Pines

Another late start, and after a second cup of coffee and a good bit of deep thought, we decided not to take the boat out on Monday morning.  We figured that by the time we got everything loaded and packed, it would be past noon (and it was).  The dogs and I went for a good long walk instead. Sadly, Izzy had developed loose bowels. There was no way my little blue baggies were going to pick up the droppings she left in the grass.

I heard a couple of slow drummings in the trees, and looking up, could see a large swathe of bark stripped off a dead pine. Could it be...?  After a trip back to campground area four to check out the site I wanted for next time, we wandered back to the dead pine. Finally I saw him--Pileated Woodpecker! Just as I'd hoped. Those guys are unmistakable.

Then we loaded up the boat...no birds except this sweet guy








And proceeded with all the usual packing up. I was mildly bummed because there had been so little bird watching this trip. I can't blame the boat--for a couple of the days it was too windy and birds don't seem to get out much in the wind. At least not so I could see.

Bird summary: chickadees, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Pileated Woodpecker, common crow, bluebirds, that annoying lttle yellow bird (probably pine warbler), Bald eagle (two adults and a probable immature, circling), Turkey and black vultures, cardinal, mockingbird, blue jay, double-crested cormorant, probable osprey, American White Pelican, mallard. 17 species. Sad.

Trip home, without stops, took 2:31. (From 1:19 to 3:50)

Sunday at Lake O' The Pines

Awoke late (7:45) to clouds. I'd left my east-facing window with the shade half pulled, to let in the daylight...but all it let in was the light of the camper next door. That was enough to wake Ed but even he didn't get up all that early.  The plan for the day was fishing, but this time I'd insisted that it be a two-part plan--morning fishing, lunch break, afternoon fishing. So I did a quick dog walk and breakfast, then to the lake we hurried.

It was windy and pretty much miserable out there...and then it started raining. Not hard rain but very, very unpleasant. My feet in swim shoes were getting numb and I'd brought socks but no boots. Changing into the socks helped, but they were quickly wet.  I fought several lovely little catfish--they're fun to catch because even the smallest fight like demons. Since I was using a crappie hook with no barbs, they were also easy to take off the hook and return to the water.


Due to the late start, we didn't get back for the "lunch break" until two o'clock, but still it was pleasant to have dry socks, warm feet and a real bathroom. And I'm sure the dogs appreciated their afternoon walk. When we got back out on the water the wind died down a little and the sun peeked out a moment or two.  We were fishing the dead trees that stick up in the shallows, and on our third tree I caught another lovely crappie. After that, nothing.

We weren't equipped for fishing after dark but that was a shame, because it turned into a beautiful night. On the lake, that is. Back at the campsite I was sad to realize that even though a lot of the noisy and annoying people had left, a fifth-wheel had arrived with a guy playing heavy metal, and not even something new--this was some very old junk that I remembered and disliked from long ago when I used to listen to the stuff.

So there was no sitting outside and enjoying the moonlight. But at least the dogs got a decent walk and I got a big bowl of neogiri nooodles with shrimp.

Saturday at Lake o' the Pines

I slept better than the night before, despite having gotten the shivers before bedtime; it took a good while before I got warm enough to sleep.  Guess I got chilled somehow.

In the morning it didn't seem nearly as cold as predicted, but still I needed gloves, hood, and heavy jacket. I managed to see the sunrise--I was determined to get up and enjoy the morning before all the kids started running around. It wasn't much shakes as a sunrise, but still, as always, a sunrise.

While Ed got hooked watching a Castle episode, the dogs and I took a early morning birdwatching walk. I was barely out the door when I saw a woodpecker in the top of a dead tree--and it wasn't in the book!

Okay, it probably was. It had a dark head and dark back, maybe some white on the wings but not much, and no other markings. It was almost certainly an immature red-headed woodpecker.

We didn't see much else other than three very annoying birds at the very top of this tree--





Yeah, I should have nailed 'em, don't ya think?  We went on down the same route we had the day before because that's where I've always seen birds. There weren't much any this morning--just jays, bluebirds, and a pair of cardinals in the bushes--but then I had the sun in my eyes. I did identify the camping spot we need to occupy next time--E410. It's right where I've ben seeing all the little yellow birds.





On back and we found a spot where the black vultures hang out; then saw a medium-sized bird (probably Kingbird) and a little bird at the very top of the adjacent tree.  Then it was time to start the day. (Sigh) There was a whole sink full of dishes to do, then a trip to a nearby bait store to get minnows, then fishing.





Few fish and even fewer birds. We fished some underwater "structure" for a while and then went into the dock for a bathroom break. (I may have this next sequence out of order by a bit) At the dock, Ed talked to a guy who had caught a whole bucketload of crappie; Ed got the location from him and marked it on his phone.

Then we took the boat south for a bit and found a stand of dead trees sticking up from the water. We tied up to one and right away I caught a 12-inch crappie. Lovely! Assuming we were into a big flock of them, we fished on. And on. And on. It appeared that this was a one-fish stickup.

So we went upstream to the place Ed had marked but it's a big lake and the guy might have been off on his directions. We passed several places where drowned trees stick up, plus a lot of very expensive houses on the Eastern shore.  On the way I saw three terns and a bird perched on a boat dock that could have been many things but was probably just a great blue heron with his neck drawn in.

No more fish, though. Just a small crappie and a lot of little catfish that kept stealing my minnows.

When we returned, the party across the way was in full swing, with stupid top 40s music playing to our left and big groups of adults talking to the right; kids fishing on both sides and just a lot of general hullaballoo. Not what we were looking for, as you can imagine. We retired indoors and watched old British comedies recorded from PBS.

Is it significant to note that I haven't cracked a single book so far this trip? I packed three plus the kindle!

Friday at Lake O' The Pines

It set in raining around 2am. Or so I guess--I woke up and heard raindrops, then checked my phone for the time. Several times in the night I heard it raining again, but when I got up (awfully late, after eight o'clock) the pavement had mostly dried up. Just a few puddles remained when the dogs got their morning walk.

It wasn't all that cold, but the wind had shifted to the north without lessening any. So we hung close to the RV all morning. Weather Underground predicted showers at eleven o'clock and sure enough, they came.  Then it predicted clearing, with a possibility of more showers coming through later.  I voted for clearing.

The dogs got a short walk in the rain. I found if you're wearing a rain jacket with a hood, and you try to look at birds up in a tree, the hood funnels all the rain onto your face and down your back. So...no birds for a while.

It quit raining--or pretended to quit--at about 3:30. I played with the camera for a while, trying to photograph six mallard ducks that swum up in close formation. Of course, by the time I got a shot, they were leaving.

Then three little birds that might have been brown-headed nuthatches came by the window, but they left too rapidly to get glasses on. Then a Carolina chickadee moving at light speed...after that, I had to get outside.

So at about four, with streaks of blue sky showing to the north, and dogs and I took the same walk as yesterday--over to the E4 campground near the fenced-off boat ramp. Aside: I don't get this at all. There are two boat ramps "in" this park. The one at the north end is connected to the park, but the one at the south is separated by a four foot chain-link fence.  It goes alongside the E4 campground and all the way down to the water. To get to the boat ramp, you have to go back to the front gate and exit the park. I assume the reason for this idiocy has to do with the gate being locked after hours. Fishermen who aren't campers can still access the lake there. But I found it inconvenient.

The little yellow birds were still there--that's when I decided Pine Warbler for sure. On the way back I saw ten White Pelicans in formation--magnificent! Plus bluebirds and blue jays and a couple of annoying woodpeckers--probably Downy--that I couldn't see. When I returned I was planning to drop Zack off and take Izzy for a long, fast walk uphill to the northern boat dock, but Ed was ready to launch the boat. So we did.

While waiting I saw a pair of adult Bald Eagles circling over the water.



Sadly, when we were done, traffic at the campsites was starting to pick up. There were at least three cars at the tent camping area and more coming in--they were making an awful racket. So when I walked the dogs, instead of going by the ten camping we went downhill again, toward the "out of park" boat ramp. Third time for the same walk in a place with so many wonderful walks!  We were going to go on out of the park and down to the boat ramp, but there was a crowd of deer eating the grass there, so we turned back rather than scare them off.  The deer don't seem to mind me, but the dogs alarm them.

This is the spot in the E4 loop that I wish I'd reserved--it's off by itself and that whole camping loop seems to be occupied by older people. No kids, bikes, or motorcycles. Ideal for me!

Back at our site, things were on the downward slope. A family with at least four kids moved in right next door. Across the drive was a trailer with a dog. They kept it on a long rope but still my stupid dogs had to bark and get all aggressive. It's my fault that they're not socialized, but still annoying.  And then the electricity went off. It turned out the water had been off earlier--we'd noticed that our water pressure was abominably low so Ed had filled up the fresh water tank. That way we'd be able to use the water pump for showers.  But it appears that the water had been completely off for most people.

We ran the generator for a while, but within an hour the electricity came on. Did I mention that after the sun came out the temperature climbed to mid-fifties, which was quite pleasant. I was comfortable with just a tee shirt and flannel shirt. Excellent weather!