A wrapup of some overdue reviews

 In Season: Cooking with Vegetables and Fruits

I don't remember enough about this to review it, but I rather think I didn't like it. So it will remain unrated and unreviewed. 

 

 

The Something Girl


Jodi Taylor can do no wrong!  Spoiler warning: the ending might make you cry. It did me.

But I didn't mind because the journey along the way to the end was twisty and turny; painfully sad and endearingly sweet; sometimes subtle and sometimes in-your-face hilarious.  The people Ms. Taylor invents are great--crazy great. Better in this series (in my opinion) than in the more popular Chronicles of St. Mary's--that one had great plots and superb action, but few of the characters stayed around long enough for me to enjoy them. They kept dying in gruesome ways.

Not so here. There was a tiny bit of pain, but it was mostly light and sweet.

Gardening in my Roots, 6/29/2023

Since there was going to be no garden this year, I planted beans, peas, and buckwheat as cover crops. The beans and peas add nitrogen to the soil and the buckwheat breaks it up or something.

The beans have given me one good crop but it looks like the last of them already. But the purple hull peas are exploding.  

Funny thing is, the patch is full of big, black ants. And if I accidentally pick one of them along with a bean, they bite.

 

Recipe Reviews

Last week I tried Thai Green Curry by Cookie and Kate. It looked lovely--asparagus, carrots and spinach in a green curry paste--used very little oil, and tasted great. It's a keeper!

Mammoth Takes Mother to Port A, Day 10 and return

 Thursday May 18 and Friday May 19

Last day for her was the return to Arkansas. Our last night, but it didn't feel real until we headed home on Friday.  It was a mostly uneventful drive and all, except that our little dog Zack had developed diarrhea on Wednesday night and we had to clean up a good bit of mess during and after the drive. We were able to confine him to the linoleum in the kitchen and thus keep the mess in a small area. Poor thing seems pretty miserable, but he still eats with enthusiasm.

I got a little walk with Molly but not much bird watching, and then we went up to the house to eat fried rice (for them) and leftover catfish dinner (for me). Good food was had by all. And good-byes, and bed.

Friday was return day for us. We packed up in dry conditions, but shortly after we hit the road it started in to raining. And raining lots. It quit for most of the drive through Oklahoma, then started in again--POURING-- through Texas. We didn't encounter any wrecks but the slowdowns were murder. We got home sometime after four o'clock, and luckily, the rain had ended.

And that's the end of Mammoth, Mother and Port A. It was a mostly good trip, but we're both oh-so-glad that it's over.

Mammoth Takes Mother to Port A, Day 9

  Wednesday 17 May

The journey today was supposed to be a three-hour jaunt from Meridian to Burns Run East COE Campground. Somehow I made it into a four hour plus route--I took a little detour to avoid the road we'd taken the day before into Glen Rose. Yes, it was an "FM" road, but I'd forgotten we'd taken it and it had been fine, so I detoured around it and we ended up behind two big dump trucks that took forever. And then into road construction and more junk, so the trip was pretty lengthy altogether.

I have the exact times but not in front of me, so I can't write them down. Anyway, it took a longer than it should have.

But we survived, and then I had a nice (only not so awfully nice) long jog with Molly. There's nowhere much to go here--it's just the typical Corp. park on the side of a lake. Only this lake is Lake Texoma, so it's huge, and this campground appears to be mostly brand new and very, very nice. Full of birds, too--

Mockingbirds. Baltimore Orioles, Killdeer. Red-Winged Blackbirds. Several unidentified little warbler like birds. a tiny sandpiper at water's edge. Cuckoos. White-winged doves. Canada Geese, adults and cute little chicks. and a female turkey crossing the road.

Plus tons of turtles, including this one who sat around in the sun all afternoon.

Ed and his Mother did, too. Only in their case, in the shade.

 

 

And I had the long jog. Then we ate at Texas Roadhouse in Sherman.  Zack had diarrhea attacks, one before supper and one after. We're worried.

Mammoth Takes Mother to Port A, Day 8

Tuesday 16 May

Leaving Port A for Meridian State Park.

It was building up thunderstorms over the ocean when we departed. Quite early, for us--it was only a little after nine o'clock when we finished dumping and headed toward San Antonio. I messed up the route a little bit, planning to go east from the gas stop at Three Rivers but getting distracted and failing to route us over that way, toward Beeville. So instead we went up to the San Antonio loop, then took I-10 over to the 130 Pickle Parkway.

Never again! I-10 is a hopeless mess. I tried to work most of the morning and actually got a little programming done, but it was horrid and I kept getting sick with the ridiculous motion of the Mammoth--up, down, sideways and jerking all over the freaking place.

Eventually we arrived and then got a little 15-minute walk before time to leave for Glen Rose, where Mother met up with her two sisters, one brother in law, and another guy ( a cousin maybe?) that I'd met but not remembered very well. He was nice and we all had a good meal and a lot of chatting.

 

The sisters didn't get as much quiet time reminiscing as I hoped they would, but what can you accomplish in two hours at a restaurant?

We returned to camp at about seven, and after doggie supper Molly got a pretty long walk up to the scenic overlook.

 

I had a little scare at the overlook--when I turned around to go back, I discovered that there were three or four well-marked trails heading out all different directions--which one had I come up on?  I started on one of them, going a good 25 yards or so before I realized I hadn't arrived at the street yet. 

So I quickly backtracked and found the right route. And that's the end of the day. A very long, very tiresome day. I'm happy we are taking this trip but I'll be glad when it's over.

Mammoth Takes Mother to Port A, Day 7

 15 May

Today we headed out to eat breakfast at some French cafe and bakery that was supposed to be so great, but it wasn't. We left without ordering. There was nothing on the menu that Ed would eat and he thought I'd said we were eating Mexican (I hadn't) and so he had his heart set on a big Mexican breakfast.

So we left and headed to Eddie's Bakery and Restaurant. Excellent! I had migas, and although I asked for an extra egg in the mix, it seemed somewhat shy on eggs. But excellently prepared with wonderful fried potatoes and heavenly refried beans. Lea's veggie omelet was really, really good too, or so it looked. She only ate about a third of it, but she said it was good.

And Ed ate four flour tortillas with his Huevos Mexicanos. Looked great.  Only thing not so good was the biscuits, but we didn't order those. They just came with the omelet, which is silly Who'd go to a Mexican restaurant and expect biscuits, anyway? 

 

When we returned I took Molly jogging, getting in an hour and ten minutes on the timer but that was with a lot of stopping and smelling and a walking interlude halfway through. We got to the jetties and I had to walk out one of them, looking for hermit crabs. None found, but after we went far enough out on the shoreline we found terns lined up by the edge. A few large ones, like Caspian or Royal Terns, and a handful of tiny ones, probably least terns. When I tried to put the binoculars on them, they flew away.

Views from the jetty:

Then just a little swimming aka standing in the water and then hunting for sand dollars in the shallows. Nice. 

 

...and then supper at Tortugas. Nice place. Another time remember that they charge a 3% surcharge for credit cards.  My Island Salad was excellent, a composed salad with lines of cabbage, corn, and those little Asian fried things; all atop a bed of spinach and topped with a few jalapenos. And I paid $11 for five grilled shrimp--but they were huge and excellently done. Delish.

After that meal I was very tired.  But it was walksies time for Molly and the mosquitoes were out in scads. We had a good walk all the same--most of the people were gone off the beach and so went around to the north and back down to the south road. No Black Skimmers, but okay.

Mammoth Takes Mother to Port A, Day 6

14 May

Another day of bad directions! By me. Grrr.  After waffles and bacon for breakfast (I had oatmeal, banana and an egg), we headed out for the Birding Center and then to the Walmart in Aransas Pass. For reasons unknown, even though I was navigating, I missed the turn onto a side road that would take us to the sanctuary. When I told Ed to turn left at the next street, he argued that "this was the correct way" (to the ferry!) and bypassed the turn. At that point getting him to turn the damn Jeep around would have taken an act of Congress, so I just told him to go on and we'd do the birding center on our way home.

Of course we never got there. By the time we waited close to 15 minutes for the ferry and then went on to the Walmart, and then purchased four items that took a short millenium, and then came back and waited for the ferry again, I was more than ready to return to camp. And also it was late enough that we'd begun discussing swimming in the afternoon.

So we returned and then after a lunch break and a short dog walk, the weather was warm and sunny outside and it was time to head to the beach!  We all got in the water, well, except Molly, and we all got wet at least to the waist. Only Ed went out and actually put his head under the water.

It was nice, almost absolutely perfect. Mostly cloudy, warm, and the water wasn't all that cold. Lovely day for the beach.

We returned and I did maybe twenty minutes of work, and then it was time for dog walk aka "feed the mosquitoes." Awful. The wind had settled down and it had warmed up after the rain, and the mosquitoes were out so severely that even Molly, with her dog-safe bug spray on, was distracted. I was distracted to the point of misery. We made it to the beach where we could stay out on the sand and away from the aerial onslaught, then we made it back.

 

 

 

White crabs on the beach at night!

Mammoth Takes Mother to Port A, Day 5

13 May

Not exactly. (Responding to yesterday's comment: more adventures tomorrow)  It turned out kind of suckish.

We had a great breakfast at Andy's Kitchen--a bit of a wait for the food, but worth it. Eggs in Ranchero Sauce for me, with excellent refried beans and okay hash browns. And not-so-great-pancakes (tough), but they brought us out biscuits, too. I should have eaten them instead.

 The train that circles the dining room:

Definitely go there again! Maybe not this trip, but sometime again.

Then a short break and a long morning into afternoon looking at Mother's old haunts in Port A. The family "beach house" and another house that someone built, and an old hotel that they stayed in. We also saw dolphins at the ferry crossing and the very nice park that overlooks it.

 Then shopping. The first store was pretty good with lots and lots of teeshirts. I got some sleep shorts and a long-sleeved UV protecting swim shirt. But then we went to the store next door in search of jigsaw puzzles, and I took a huge dislike to the lady proprietor. When she saw us hesitating over which of the puzzles to get, she jumped in and we ended up with two puzzles, both of which were kind of lame. And also sold Mother on some window decals at the checkout counter. The whole shedaddle took a short century, and I was well sick of shopping at the end.

However it turned out good, because I prevailed on Ed to go into the restaurant next door, which was my choice for supper, and look at the menu. My worry had been that it was too trendy and weird for him and his mother to enjoy, especially her. He said it was "okay" but that he'd probably have a po' boy--the most boring and bland item on the menu. Apparently, he was not in an adventurous mood.

That did it for me. If he was going to have a shitty meal, and for certain his mother was going to have a shitty meal, how was I going to enjoy my food--at their expense? So I pulled up the maps again and quickly found "Moby Dick's", which only had 4.1 stars but sounded exactly like the kind of restaurant that they could eat fried fish at and I could have something good, too.

And that's how it went. I had time for a nice long jog with Molly--I kept moving for the better part of 1:10 which was probably closer to one hour with all the stoppage time. and then I got in ten minutes of contract work.

 

My jog ended here:

 

 

 

And then supper.

Moby Dick's:

Note at the time:
No birds today, except nighthawks and a meadowlark in the distance. And a big toad by the campsite. The campground has really filled up for the weekend, but I expect most of these people to clear out tomorrow.

Mammoth Takes Mother, Day 4

12 May

Drive to the coast. Seemed interminable at times, especially on the long boring stretches of Highway 77 between Victoria and Corpus. I wanted to work, but knew I'd never be able to see the computer screen properly in the front seat. Moving to the middle wasn't an option, since I needed to navigate.

So it's yet another day of no contract work done. Sigh. Well, I'll have a few weeks after we return.

I made a note that U.S. Highway 59 was a horrible route, and then suddenly it got good. Then bad, then very good. They've been turning it into the "future Interstate 69 corridor" forever, and so the places that are completed are very nice. Who knows if they'll ever get done.

Other than the traffic in Houston and then Corpus Christi, the drive was easy. I don't know how many times we've done this same drive, but it seemed awfully familiar. Mustang Island State Park hasn't changed much except they have their fancy new visitor center completed and so instead of being able to check in at the front entrance, I had to walk up the world's longest wheelchair ramp to check in at the second story desk.

After we were checked in and hooked up, Molly got a short walk and it was time to fix dinner. We started some rice and then took Mother on a short jaunt in the Jeep to see the ocean. What a fail--the water was so high, we couldn't even drive along the beach more than a few hundred yards. But according to the tide chart, we've not even at high tide!  That was around noon, and the tide has been falling all afternoon. It will be low tide in about six hours. Wow--where'd the beach go?

 For supper we thawed out some ribs I'd cooked in the crock pot. Two things to note for next time--after cooking, take out the ribs and chill the cooking juice. Take off the fat, heat up the juice and then thicken to make a gravy. And only THEN, freeze the meat with the gravy on it.

The other thing is to completely submerge the meat in broth. It turned out tough and dry on some of the pieces, one of which of course, Ed's Mom got.

After supper, Molly got her long walk. it was getting dark, and the black skimmers were out working the water's edge. SO COOL!  And now time for bed, so that was our day. More adventures tomorrow.

Mammoth Takes Mother, Day 3

11 May

On to Cagle Recreation Area, in the national forest near Conroe. We've been there before, last year I believe. It's where I saw the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker. None of those appeared this time, but I did get some really good looks at Yellow-Throated Warblers on the trail by the water. There were a couple of other warblers, too, but I'm not sure if they were just Pine Warblers or more Yellow-Throated.

Supper at Pappadeaux!  My choice this time was not quite as good as my trout with spinach of the time before the time before, or my catfish with red-beans and rice of the time before. This time I chose Red Snapper (I think) with a barley salad side. And I ordered a house salad too. Honey Mustard Dressing was really good. But after filling up on the salad, I put half of the entree and side away for next day.

 

When we returned it was a little before eight and not dark yet, so Molly and I took a walk down the trail along behind the campground. No birds there, but then we circled around and walked down the road for a while, and...
BATS!  Lots and lots of bats heading down the road. Not the same bat over and over again, too. I counted twenty but there could have been plenty more that I couldn't count.

So far the trip was going okay. An awful lot of driving. And some frayed nerves as we completely fail to understand each other.

Mammoth Takes Mother, Day 2

10 May

First real day of trip, by which I mean we ventured off the normal and boring route to head to a campground we'd never visited. We left a little late on account of the cookie disaster--I'd made chocolate chip cookies on Monday, but I seemed to have substituted baking power fro the baking soda and so they turned out hard as a rock and horribly flavored. Basically inedible.

When I discovered the disaster the night before, I determined that we would seek out a bakery in the Conroe area and buy Ed a pie to make up for the rock cookies, but Pam immediately volunteered all the ingredients for me to make a batch of replacements. Since we weren't in a hurry and the stuff was all there, I agreed. And so it went.

 About an hour-and-a-half later, cookies were complete and they were loading up Mother, her tiny suitcase in the motorhome and not so tiny wheelchair in the Jeep. We left at about ten till eleven, not bad at all.

The drive ended up a little bit on the boring side...no, I misspoke. It ended up being boring as hell. We went down through McAlester and then took the Indian Nation Turnpike over to Hugo and the campground. It was called Sander's Cove on Pat Mawse lake and it seemed pretty nice. We were in Loop B, with a view of the water but not water front The sites there were pretty close together and not especially lovely, but still, as I said, pretty nice.

There was the usual mess of trash down by the day use area. I was pleasantly surprised at how clean the Georgetown COE park was, but I guess it was an aberration. This one was as junky as usual--but only down by the water. The campground was nicely clean.

It rained almost as soon as we arrived, and when I went out to take Molly for a walk, it rained hard enough I didn't want to take my binoculars and take a chance on getting them wet. So we walked in the rain, me with raincoat on over my shorts and hood over my head and face.

There were a couple of well-marked hiking trails over on the way to Loop A. By the way, the bathroom over in Loop A was the most pristinely well-built, spacious, clean and lovely bathroom I've ever seen in ANY park, let alone a COE park.  It would be a nice bathroom in a restaurant, let alone a park out in the middle of nowhere near the Oklahoma border.

Without a map, I had no idea where the trails went or how long they were, so I didn't venture off the road. The place doesn't appear to be a great place for bird watching, although I did hear a summer tanager and a warbler that might have been a pine warbler.

Normally we wouldn't stop at a place like this, so close to home. So odds are I won't be back for more bird watching. And that's it for the day. Not as bad as I feared, but not at all good.

Mammoth Takes Mother (to the ocean)

Tuesday 9 May 2023

Call this the "Mother to Port A" trip because that's what we planned it for and that's what we did. She had a strong desire to see Port Aransas one last time, and knowing that we went to the coast at least twice a year, conscripted us into taking her. Against all better judgement we planned the route to bypass our home twice--one the way down and the way back--but not stop there. There were factors at play beyond logic and reason--that's all I can say.

So on "Day 1" we drove to Arkansas and went out to eat. At that crummy steakhouse that smothers all the food in grease and fat. My spicy chicken-tortilla soup was very tasty but awfully healthy with all the chicken in it. They could have made a better soup with no meat at all, but that's not the "steakhouse way".

Despite the low expectations for the trip, I was glad to leave my lonesome house. On the last few days I was so busy that I barely had time to be lonesome--jogging, grocery shopping, putting away, cooking, loading, cleaning up, cooking more, then watering trees and plants and stuff. It was horrid and I wasn't done until suppertime and then some. But true, I didn't have much time to miss the family.

At dusk, during our evening dog walk, Molly and I heard the coolest bird racket. It was LOUD!  A quick check on allaboutbirds.org confirmed that it was a Chuck-Will's Widow...with an attitude. I couldn't hear the "chuck" part of the song most of the time, but the rest of it sounded exactly like the recording. Wow.

Birds seen (before dark): male summer tanager, blue jay, and some sort of totally gray vireo in the trees by the campsite. Birds heard: Wood Thrush, Peewee, Red-Eyed Vireo, Chuck-Will's Widow.

On the way to town I saw a groundhog scurrying across the road!  And a delightful toad at camp...same one as last year? Hope so.

It was good to see Ed's Mom again, but how long it will be until the goodness wears off? Time will tell. Tomorrow they will feed us breakfast and then we're off! Hopefully before the rain moves in.

A light delight

 Nightshade for Warning
by Bailey Cattrell

I found this Book, #2 in the "Enchanted Garden Mysteries" series, delightful. And I cannot explain why. It's very light, fluffy, and contains almost nothing that would disturb a person. If you can swallow the notion that a person can concoct perfumes and extract essential oils that pretty much have magical properties, you can enjoy these books very much. The people are fun, the plots lively, and the settings and scenes quite enchanting.

Plus, I want to make a fairy garden like hers!  No real fairies stop by...but you never know.

Bummer!

 Crying in H-Mart
by Michelle Zauner

Damn! is all I can say. There was a whole lot to love in this memoir, and I can clearly see why a whole lot of people loved it a lot. But although I finished it and enjoyed a few parts, mostly it just didn't resonate with me.

There's nothing much to criticize. For my taste it could have used some severe editing. She has a tendency to describe a sequence of actions in excruciating detail, so much that I got bored halfway through and just wanted to "skip to the end". For example, her description of preparing Kimchi was one of those, but I found it fascinating and I hung on her every word. Many people would not. But her descriptions of many other things seemed to drag on into infinity.

But I need to remember--it's a memoir. A person gets to put what they want into their memoir, and what to put in is a very personal decision. In her case, she wanted to honor her mother and bring alive her memories of their time together, and that was great. She also threw in pretty much of her own life history, which wasn't so great.

But it's well written (except for the detail) and honest. I have no reason to criticize it--all I can do is read it or not read it. But now, having read it, I kind of wish I hadn't.

Another dog book and not a winner

 Renegade
by Jodi Burnette

To me, this was just another in a long string of "K-9" mysteries that I'm trying with great hope that one will approach the masterful writing and excellent storytelling of Donna Ball. And I'm sorry, but this was another in the not-quite-there category.

It wasn't bad, at all. But after having read a good bit about real dog training for search/rescue/police work/etc, I had some real issues with her depiction of the dog's behavior. I do not believe a real K-9 police dog would EVER be allowed to growl or menace a human being without a specific command from the trainer. In fact, this sort of behavior would probably disqualify both trainer and trainee from active duty.

I was also really put-off by the dog owner's lack of judgement in sending her dog in to active attack without considering any of the alternatives or the consequences. And then, after the dog suffered severe injuries and a blow to the head, she puts it back in action. What the hell was "she" thinking?  (By "she" I mean both the character in the book and by design, the author who created her.)

Sorry to be so negative, but add on top of that a sappy love interest that I had no interest (pun intended) in continuing to read, and it's clear I won't be taking on another one of this series anytime soon.

All that said, the mystery plot was really good.  If she fixes her characterization of the human and dog and sends them both to some realistic working dog training courses, I'd read another just for the great plot.