Book review: Food Politics

by Marion Nestle

It is very depressing to listen to this and realize that almost everything she describes is just as true today as it was in 2002. Yes, things have changed. But they have not changed enough.

Soda is still marketed to teenagers. The sugar industry is still subsidized by the government and still maintains an army of lobbyists and a chest of campaign contributions for politicians. Strange substitutes for fat still end up in our food products. And food researchers are still funded by the very manufacturers who have a vested interest in their results. With the expected results.

So there was nothing new here for me, but it was still worth a listen. If nothing else, from time to time she'd report on an item that I could happily say "no more" to. Or so I hope...we did succeed in getting some of the corruption out of our food supply.
Or did we?  Maybe it just got sneakier.

Misadventures in Cooking

 Hmmm...looks like bread, smells like bread.  Shall I taste it?

Nah. It's good enough just to look at. The only purpose of bread is to convey butter into the mouth.

This was an experiment with a part whole wheat flour/mostly bread flour recipe off the internet. It uses the dough cycle on the bread machine, with the option to take out the dough and then shape, let rise, and bake in the oven. I think my bread pan was a little too big for the amount of dough, because even after two hours of rising (the recipe said 45 minutes), this was as tall as it could get.

Book review: The Last Ride of the Pony Express

My 2,000-mile Horseback Journey into the Old West

by Will Grant

Cool travel adventure--the author decides to follow the route (as much as possible) taken by the legendary and short-lived Pony Express mail delivery service. And he does it on horseback, tool. He does not try to recreate the Pony Express schedule--the 10 day relay that the riders targeted was going to take him an entire season from May until September, 142 days. But he did it!

He did truck the horses around heavily populated areas a couple of times. I don't blame him for that--I'm sure it was the right thing to do for his horses' safety and his own enjoyment, not the mention avoiding the fury of people in cars who'd be held to the speed of a trotting horse. I was a little sorry not to hear his adventures "in traffic" but the episode crossing the Missouri River in St. Joseph was enough to satisfy me.

Lot of history in this book and a lot of people he met along the way. Great, great reading enjoyment. And a couple of award-deserving hero horses, too. Chicken Fry and Badger are the stars of this show!

Book review: The Wedding Plot

 
by Paula Munier

I love her characters; I like her plots; and the dogs Elvis and Suzie Bear make these stories complete.  They're not at all 'cozies'--the violence, bloody gore and body count alone puts them into the standard mystery genre.

So with all there is to like, I have to admit that while I was reading this one I had a bit of a deja-vu moment: an oh, no, not again groan. She always seems to be getting her heroine shot. Or beaten, or knocked down, or wrecked in a car. Mercy ends up in the hospital in every single book. Or so it seems. And her dog Elvis is responsible for at least one extremely violent "take down" that ends up with a perp in the hospital. How come she never gets sued for her dog's actions?

Aside from that, it's good. Very.

Book review: The Tiffany Girls

by Shelley Noble

Based on real people--the American artist/designer Louis Comfort Tiffany and his top-level team--with the action taking place in the stories of fictional young women who work in one of the glass studios. Two in particular--Emilie Pascal and Grace Griffith--are the centers. Emilie is the daughter of a notorious art forger in Paris; she escapes and keeps her identity well hidden when she comes to work at Tiffany's. (I'm not giving away the story; this happens in the first chapter and it's on the blurb) And Grace wants to be a political cartoonist in the newspapers of the day. They're both great characters, and their stories very well told and engaging.

Other characters come and go with hints of interesting backgrounds and aspirations, but too much of them would have made the book as long as a fantasy saga. It's just the right length as it is.

(Note: don't read the afterword. It bummed me out)

Book review: Journey into Summer

 Journey into Summer: A Naturalist's Record of a 19,000-Mile Journey through the North American Summer
Edwin Way Teale


Great nature travel!  It's very old--published in 1972--but I am just now reading it. And it's still just as gorgeous and poetic and exciting today as it would have been so many years ago. He writes of plants and insects and animals, weather and scenery to knock your socks off.  In particular there's a time when they drove through firefly heaven--winged lanterns--and another time when they stayed up all night to watch a meteor shower. His descriptions were so vivid that I can't imagine why I've never done that.

One odd note--in the time of his journey, the 1970s, he made many notes of the scarcity of bald eagles and osprey.  He lamented their absence and often made comments on the empty nests left bare as a symbol of vanishing wild. If only he were alive today--what a rejoicing he would have at the return of these majestic birds!

He died in 1980, no doubt before the knowledge became common that DDT had been the agent of the birds' decline. He had some theory about why they were scarce--sorry I forgot what it was. But he was happily wrong about that.

Book review: Dog On It!

 The first in the series; I read one of the others last year because it happened to be available as an ebook from the library.  I loved this even more!  The dog is consistently the narrator and not quite as "occasionally unreliable narrator" as he was in the other book, still a great narrator. In fact, I kind of liked this better.

If you're hesitating, as I was, about reading a mystery novel starring a private investigator and his dog but narrated by the dog, put your hesitations aside for a minute and read the first couple of chapters. I'll guarantee it's not "cutesy" at all and the dog is a pretty funny customer. The author doesn't put very many anthopomorphically hard-to-believe thoughts into Chet's (the dog's) head, and he does a great job at explaining how his sense of smell works, much better than a human's.

But if you still hate it after that, I'll try to forgive you.

Magnus to the Coast, Day 8 and return

 Monday Dec 11 2023

Last day. We spent it at Martin Creek Lake State Park. By the way, I saw pipits at the Gas station and they were very clearly American Pipit. So that one the other day could have been a Spragues, or a hybrid, maybe?


REVIEW
I don't know which one came first--the campground or the power plant--but whichever one it was that came second, shouldn't have. I had heard that there was a little noise from the power plant, which annoyed some people but was tolerable to others. But what no one explained that the "little noise" was LOUD, all night long, and the power plant had glaring lights that made the campsites brighter than Times Square on New Year's Eve.  The power plant was pretty--all the twinkly lights across the lake--and would have been pleasant to look at if you were driving  by. But staying there was like spending the night in Texas City in between a couple of oil refineries. Not fun.

Our site 54 had a view of the lake through the trees. My dog and I hiked around the Island on the trails amid the tall Loblolly Pines, and it was peaceful and quite beautiful.  Other than the noise from the power plant.  There were tent camping sites on the Island; maybe a good spot for a scout trip.

Our site surface was asphalt; the utilities worked okay although our site only had 30-amp power. No sewer, but the dump station was easy to access.  The campground was almost empty on a Tuesday in early December--maybe two other campers in our loop. There were plenty of deer meandering through. It was exceptionally tidy throughout the park and even around the lake, which is unusual for Texas lakes. I picked up a Walmart bag on the ground but never found any trash to put in it.
Trail

 

Power plant

Magnus to the Coast, Day 7

Sun Dec 10

Again no notes. Molly and I had lots of good walks, though.

 

Magnus to the Coast, Day 6

Sat Dec 9

I have no notes of the day, sorry.  I think we went for a birding drive and had little success. One thing I need to remember is that birding--especially of stupid little seaside sparrows that refuse to stay out in the open--takes a long time. And when I have a person idling the jeep and waiting while I watch birds...I don't. And it's not that he gets impatient or anything--not at all. It's me. When I feel that someone is waiting on me, however patiently, I cannot persist. I have the same issue with clothes shopping--if I tried to go clothes shopping with company, I'll end up grabbing the first item that fills the need and getting on with the rest of the trip. Whereas if I were by myself, I'd peruse.

Sometimes. And bird

watching is just the same unless I happen to be "in to" a string of pretty spectacular sightings.

However, stupid shy sparrows aren't it. So we didn't see anything.

A long while back I'd researched placed to eat in the area, and came up with Schooner's in Nederland. So that's where we went.  I tried to come up with an explanation for it, but Ed summed it up for me--
Mediocre.

Blah.

Magnus to the Coast, Day 5

Friday Dec 8

Short drive almost due east, to Sea Rim State Park. Another of my absolute favorites of Texas State Parks.  (they are: Caprock Canyon; Sea Rim; and Brazos Bend)  We zoomed around the south loop of Houston, seeing the city skyline off in the distance. And then we drudged through the depressing oil refineries and chemical plants of Port Arthur and Sabine Pass. And then, finally the congestion disappeared and we were on the ocean highway to Sea Rim! Hurray!

,The campsites aren't especially exciting. There are only about twenty in the whole park, laid out in two lines alongside a road.  (Down at the end of the road is a loop with a few extra campsites squeezed in). Each camp site has a little grassy area carved out of the brushes to hold a picnic table, fire ring, and an infinite supply of mosquitoes.

 

Yeah, mosquitos. In December. Why didn't I remember that little detail?  Last year we came to this area in January and found them too, so why'd I not realize they'd be around in December?

Anyway, we'd purchased a bottle of fancy "Vet Chem" mosquito repellent for dogs, and so we doused Molly head to tail in it. It seemed to help for about five minutes, then she was back to snapping and worrying.  She had a pretty miserable time of it, although when we put her inside it only took her five minutes to forget the misery and be ready to go out again.

Nothing much else happened. Just a long walk on the beach and in and around the day use area. They'd added a brand new, very long, handicapped accessible boardwalk in the salt marsh flats. Lovely!  I walked out a pretty long way and then realized there was no reason to go back, plus, the mosquitoes were not bothering us out there. According to the sign the salt marsh was fully of a mosquito-eating fish and it kept the population down. Seemed to work.

The only birds out there were a pair of ducks that didn't like us walking in the same universe as they were. They left in a hurry. Stupid ducks.

Magnus to the Coast, Day 4

Thurday December 7, Second day at Brazos Bend.

The plan for the day was to take a long, long walk with Molly and in the evening, go to eat at Pappadeaux in southeast Houston. And we did.

 


In the morning, a short and mostly unsatisfactory walk with Ed and Molly. We went down to see the Brazos river, then tried to go to the nature center. It was closed--no volunteers to staff it. Then we went to the office, but they didn't have anything worth shopping for. And then to 40-acre lake, which was so low that there seemed to be less than an acre of water. There was a single, but very large, gator on the opposite bank. a Few gallinule (or is that moorhen?) and a coot or two. Some white ibis in the distance.

After that we returned for lunch and then Molly and I took a very long jog. The plan was to jog around Elm Lake, and we did that and then some. We ended up going half way around one of the oxbow lakes, then came back and took the Pliant Slough trail which circled around back to the nature center. The total jog time (counting a few pee stops but not birding stops--I paused the stopwatch for those) was one hour ten minutes. Not  bad.

Lots of alligators on Elm Lake and a huge flock of Ibis. About half were asleep but the others were actively feeding.

On the way back, in the short grass at the Nature Center there was a pipit. One. I watched it for a long time and concluded that I would have no trouble identifying it when I got back to my bird book. (Since I was jogging, I only had the binoculars--no backpack, bird book or camera)

And, of course, I couldn't. It looked like a Sprague's pipit but wagged its tail like an American pipit. It was alone, which is common for the Sprague's and unlikely for the American. So which was it?

I'll never know.  Stupid pipits.

Vultures:
 

When I gave up watching the pipit and headed back, I passed a guy and lady holding a kid. The guy asked me what the big black birds circling around were, And I got to show off my meager knowledge--turkey and black vultures. I agreed with him that I'd never seen so many in the air before.  Which was a slight exaggeration--I saw as many at that lake in Missouri that time, but there were mostly on the ground there. And I've seen as many in Cedar Ridge park in Texas. But there were still a whole heck of a lot of them.

Magnus to the Coast, Day 3

 December 6

Wednesday was our short drive to Brazos Bend State Park, one of my favoritest of the Texas state parks. Everything about it is great--except the campground, which is only "almost great."  The sites are large, somewhat shaded, well separated and have lots of lovely big trees. But they're neither scenic enough or private enough to be called "great."

The park is full of birds, trails, more birds, and alligators. And probably lots of other stuff--I did see some wild hogs there last time. But no other animals except squirrels.

So after our quick drive and set up, Molly and I took a walk. We were determined to go to see the Brazos River because on our last trip to this park we never did. We started out with a map, and after a bit of meandering and guesswork, made our way through the network of trails to the day use area and a short-ish, quarter mile walk down the "White Oak" trail to the river. Yippee!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next time we come we're going to take the long trail that goes out to Yellowstone Landing.  But that was out of reach--as it was by the time we got back to camp, darkness was beginning to creep up. And we'd walked over an hour already.

Magnus to the Coast, Day 2

Tue 5 Dec 2023

A second day at Buescher State Park. I'm not sure why I reserved a second day here, but it was nice not to move.

On our camping loop (Oak Haven) there were some cabins with have balconies that overlook the lake very nicely. Looking through tree trunks, I could stand up there and see ducks in the water, most likely pied-billed grebes, a coot, and a very large duck with a dark head, light-colored bill (blue, maybe?), white body, dark tail with a single white feather in it. What in the could that be?  Just a mallard? I didn't have my camera when I saw the one big duck, but I did get some of the little grebes (I think)

While standing on the balcony trying to photograph ducks, I was pestered by a large crew of chickadees, titmice, ruby-crowned kinglets, and a carolina wren or two.  But no nuthatches--darn!  I like nuthatches.

Ed and I took the scenic and hilly drive between Buescher and Bastrop parks. The first half of it was okay--pretty but nothing special. The two scenic overlooks on the map just overlooked farmland and cows down below. And lovely pines. Nothing to complain about but no oohs and aahs, either.

But after that, the road got really steep and fun for a couple of miles. Wow.  What a place to ride a bicycle.

Then, since we were so close to Bastrop, we stopped at a pet supply store and then a tractor supply, looking for a new bed for Molly. She'd been needing one, but I have to confess that our real motivation was to get something in a gray color that would coordinate with our new Magnus Motorhome's red/black/gray decorating scheme. The little pet store was lovely and if I lived there I'd shop there frequently, to support small business if for no other reason. But they didn't have what we wanted, and Tractor Supply did. Which sucks.

 

 

When we returned and Molly and I set out to jog for "at least" one hour. Which wasn't going to work, because I also wanted to hike the trail that paralleled the scenic drive we'd taken earlier.  So we jogged to the trail, then walked out, returned, and jogged back to the camp. All in all, we only got in 30 minutes of jogging but almost two hours of walking. So that was exercise.

We saw a large number of people on the trail--four--large considering that this was a Tuesday on a weekday in December. All were guys; one on a bike, two walkers; one with a dog. None of them had binoculars--idiots.

And just as we'd stopped to let one of them pass by and were getting going again, Molly jumped a little at something just off the trail--a bird.  A quail-sized, dark, skulking bird. I just got a glimpse of it as it snuck away, and after ten minutes of squeezing through the dense undergrowth and straining my eyes, I only got a briefest glimpse of movement.  So I have no freaking idea if it was a bobwhite quail or a woodcock. Darn!   You'd think a woodcock would be unmistakable--a little chunky bird with a beak much longer than its head. But without even seeing the head--or the beak!  How am I supposed to be sure?

Damn. damn. damn.

Magnus the Mighty (expensive) Motorhome takes us to the coast

Mon 4 Dec 2023
But first, a couple of motorhome decor pictures:

First day of our December camping trip, to Brazos Bend and Sea Rim.`What kind of idiots go camping in December? My kind, I guess.

But it's not really that cold--no colder than we've done in November or early spring trips. Highs in the mid-sixties to nearly seventy; lows around 45. Or in human terms, cold enough to make me wear jeans over my sweat pants, two hoodies and a heavy jacket in the morning, but warm enough to wear a teeshirt in the afternoon for jogging and wish I'd swapped the sweat pants for shorts when I'm going uphill in the sun. But there wasn't much of that at our first stop--the sun. There were too many trees.

Mostly post and blackjack oaks, both small trees up to 30 feet or so; sprinkled with cedar elm and red cedar. And crowned with a goodly number of Loblolly pines, both large and small. They seem to call this the "lost pines" area. I can't imagine why--there are too many pines here to consider them lost.

But back to Day 1. We left home at about 9:30 and arrived at Buescher State Park at about 2:20. A pretty easy drive with only one pee stop and no gas stops. Google Maps took us down the Pickle parkway to bypass Austin and then just a short jaunt east through Bastrop.


Ed had a lot of trouble on the park road--trying to move to the side to avoid what appeared to be low overhanging branches, he ended up having to back up. Making me and the guy behind me back up, tool. But when Ed finally satisfied himself getting through, he said that branches on the sides scraped a little. I didn't see it, I'm glad to say.

Molly and I went for a little walk before supper, and after exploring all the rest of the camping loops, amphitheather, and playground we ended up taking a short cut across the spillway behind the teeny tiny dam on the teeny tiny lake.  So we circled the lake and arrived back at camp in slightly more than one hour, arriving just as the charcoal was burning down to cook steak and fish for supper.

Nice night. I saw about five deer during the walk but Molly missed them. Poor girl.  Other than that, all I saw was a house wren, a red-bellied woodpecker, a cardinal, and a ruby-crowned kinglet.

 REVIEW   Buescher State Park

We were in the water/electric site 19, Oak Haven loop. It was a nice site, mostly shady but well cleared around so we didn't have any issue backing in. We probably would have had little trouble getting a satellite signal if we'd had a satellite. I think the surface was asphalt but I'm not sure. It was long enough for a 35' motorhome and a tow vehicle.

Only 30-amp electricity, though. That wouldn't have worked for us in the summer since we need to run both air conditioners to keep cool. But in December, it was fine.

Although it was beside the lake, you couldn't see down to the lake from our site.  Also it had such dense underbrush that we felt closed-in. Private and cozy but without any scenic view.  But in the same loop there were a few cabins with decks that overlooked the lake down below (through trees).  They were very nice and even had air conditioning units. But our site had such dense underbrush that we felt closed in--the thick brush gave us privacy from the other campsites, which were well spaced away, but no room to breathe.

Getting into the camping loop was challenging. The trees were not trimmed overhead or on the sides, so it was impossible to get through without scratching at the sides and on the roof. We are in a 35' motorhome, about 12'2" tall, and since it was pretty much brand-new to us, we were over-sensitive to the scratching.

There were a few trails that my dog and I found quite pleasant to walk. Not a long walk, but not bad.  We ended up circling the lake to make an extra mile.

Magnus the MIghty Motorhome takes us to Seminole Canyon, Day 8 and 9

Tue 21 November 2023

Bison at San Angelo State Park

When I complained earlier about the reservation change, what I hadn't mentioned was that the orignal park was only about 30 minutes from the Caverns of Sonora but the new one was over an hour. At the time I made the reservations, that didn't seem like a big deal. But it was.

Because we were tireder than usual, dealing with all the inefficiencies and newness of our Mighty Magnus. The drive times were taking a whole lot longer--Ed was being excessively cautious and all the roads were sh*tty--and we'd somehow lost our will to explore. Zack the dog was in bad condition and I was having to take him for extra walks that seemed to take forever. So all in all, I'd lost any interest in taking an additional two hour drive to tour a cave.

So Caverns of Sonora got canceled. If I'd realized all of this back when I booked it, I could have reserved a camping location right there at the cave. Which would have made next day's drive even longer, but at least we'd have gotten to see it and not lost money on the cancellation. A heavy sigh is in order.

 Ate at this place. Good, but not worth a second trip.

Wed 22 November 2023

And home.

Magnus the Mighty Motorhome takes us to Seminole Canyon, Day 7

Mon 20 Nov

I'd made reservations at South Llano River State Park, the place with the turkeys, but the TPWD had canceled them due to a change in the hunting season dates. Which sucked royally, because I'd also made reservations to tour the Caverns of Sonora nearby. When TPWD canceled me and I rescheduled, I chose San Angelo State Park. We'd been there twice before and I liked the place a lot, but didn't really want to go back so soon.

But there we were. The drive was horrid--I let google plan a route and it took us about 30 miles on a RM road -- ranch to market. This particular RM road had no fewer than six cattle guards.  I'd planned this trip for Mammoth, but now we were in the new behemoth, trying to keep it in as good condition as possible for as long as possible. Cattle guards and ranch-to-market roads were not a good choice.

Maybe a good name for the new motorhome would be Magnus P, or just Pal short for Pallazzo? Or Magnus the MIghty Pal Motorhome?

A plover that wasn't a killdeer, I don't think.

Pretty Texas Sage

Magnus the Mighty Motorhome takes us to Seminole Canyon, Day 6

Sun 19 Nov

This day we had reservations to take the guided Seminole Canyon pictograph tour. The ranger was very low-key and matter of fact; she didn't have much to say other than to answer questions and our group didn't have a lot of questions. There were about 18 people.

View from the cave:

The pictographs were faded and worn, but still interesting. More interesting to me was that the floor of the canyon had dropped at least three or four feet since the white settlers first discovered it--their date marks were way out of reach. 

After that Molly and I took a walk over back to the visitor center, hoping to see some jackrabbits or other wildlife. I think we saw a cottontail and that's about it. But it was a nice long walk.  Very lovely. Have I mentioned that I love this place?

Black-throated sparrow

Curve-billed thrasher (probably)

Pyrrhuloxia

Cactus wren