Saturday, 25 February 2017
Those temps well into the seventies? They faded through the late afternoon, and I planned ahead: chili. Chili is not one thing—it’s just a stew that includes chili peppers. Tonight’s stew has garbanzo beans, grated carrots, and rice along with what many chilis include.
Thursday, 16 February 2017
A ride-through car wash is a rather unsettling experience. However, I don’t yearn for the economy of Oaxaca when we lived there years ago, and (incredibly cheap—to me—and off-street) downtown parking included a car wash as enticement for your business—totally done by hand by men/boys with buckets of scarce water and rags.
I know garbanzos are beans and beans have pods, but garbanzos in pods still catch my eye as a curiosity.
Monday, 13 February 2017
We had alternate coffee this morning, not the regular drip but instead moka-pot-style espresso. The process results in a coffee-puck after the water passes through the grounds. And the top of the puck has little dots or holes from the passage of the steam-hot water.
Extra caffeine, I think….
Tuesday, 7 February 2017
The morning mundane…creating compost. Really, the important output was crumble/betty/strudel/a gift.
Then, we attended a simple downtown protest…and learned via megaphone announcement that BDeVos got confirmed (took the Veep to make that happen). Bets on how long Bets lasts? [I don’t wanna preach! Hey, is that a LadyGaga line?]
Loved this.
The Powers-that-Be sent a seriously uniformed cop to stand watch over the sidewalk (first time it’s been more than building security) and make sure protestors didn’t encroach on the space that passers-by needed. The guy wasn’t terribly worried, I thought, as I watched him munch through his take-out lunch with his focus on the food and not on the crowd. [Left to right: building security guy (it’s okay to use the bathroom inside, but you have to leave your sign outside)—left; weight-lifter cop in full uniform (yes, I’ll have a piece of your free pizza, thanks!); and Pizza Guy (from across the street with a platter of hot BBQ chicken pizza freebies).] First customer was the cop…. Many of the protestors declined politely.
VNice of the pizza restaurant manager to trek over with the food donation…meanwhile many drivers honked (this is P-Tree street! Traffic reigns!) and it was a grand old time chanting (hey-hey…ho-ho…swamp_cabinet_has_got_to_go) and so on.
Saturday, 28 January 2017
Happy New Year and good luck! [All the food pictures didn’t do the dishes justice…so here’s plate number two waiting for the entrees to show up.]
Would you call this Chinese china?
Sunday, 11 December 2016
One hallmark of the Pacific Northwest of North America is plants growing on plants. Maybe this is true elsewhere I typically roam, but here the parasites (or whatever the hitchhikers are) are varied and visible.
Another hallmark of the PacNW to me is salmon. Here we prepped it with a mushroom sauce that was a typical soy-ginger-garlic-honey mixture, with an extra boost from mushrooms. Easy, tasty!
Sunday, 4 December 2016
So, the agriculture in the high plains revolves around cattle farming, seems to me…usually black angus or these herefords—both mostly polled (a genetic mutation that renders them hornless).
Along with the natural grazing, there’s plenty of hay growing and baling, and a demand for grain, mostly grown where there’s irrigation. Some irrigation is from creeks/rivers, but mostly the water seems to be pumped up from the aquifer below (essentially non-renewable). Here’s a cattle loading chute and an elevator (grain storage).
To make the plants grow, these tanks supply fertilizer or herbicides…I’m guessing mostly fertilizer. Go ammonium nitrate!
We continued to climb westward toward the Rockies, crossing the North Platte again and again before we diverged from it above Casper. Yes, ice—not thick, but it’s pretty cold and the sun, which seems strong in the car, is rather weak out in the wind.
We’ve been looking for these four-foots, and finally found some, often gathered in fairly larger herds, some browsing and some resting. We also saw what we are pretty sure were mule deer; these were loners or up to a trio—not the large groups that the antelope have formed.
I read about a canyon in a Craig Johnson/Longmire book, and we checked it out…just an up-and-back side trip. The railroad was on the other side, and we saw a few fisherman. A sign indicated we should watch out for mountain sheep, but we saw zero. Here’s a side canyon opposite us.
It was cold enough that the tunnels had interior icicles (that word is difficult to spell if you don’t do it very often). The train’s tunnels were only as large as they needed to be. I suppose that’s true for the highway (engineers are parsimonious in design, no?), but they didn’t seem so rigidly rectangular as the railroad ones.
Now, we’re up against the Winds, and it is windy, and as we approached town we could see that it was snowing in the higher altitudes…that’s snow making that grey-blue obscurity above the sign. (Is that our motel?) We hear we may get a bit of S tonight, but not much accumulation. We bought new -30°F windshield wiper fluid and topped off our reservoir, so hopefully it’ll tolerate the low temps—ATL fluid is limited to +32°F (save the environment!).
I noticed these photos tend to be very horizontal—that’s the way it is out on the plains. Now that we’re approaching the mountains, the vertical has rejoined us.
Thursday, 1 December 2016
We were driving along and feeling the beginnings of “time to figure out a lunch spot,” and did online research, and made a pick. The way the roads were, we drove past the place (right over there, on the opposite frontage road), then had to loop back to the…place (combo grocery and café—sounds strange, I know; it was only a little odd). Of course we eyeballed the place—especially looking to see if it had many customers—almost always a good sign. As we drove past, the vehicles were numerous and 75% were red trucks like these two. Turned out a utility crew was relocating, and had stopped for lunch. And their order, by something like 40 line-dudes (or whatever their job descriptions were—I didn’t see any lady utility-workers), was in front of ours. Which was really, The Guru’s steak, as I had the all-you-can-eat sah-lahd. Anyway, the waiter/cashier took pity on us for the long wait he could not fix, and charged us $6 for everything. All because of the red trucks. (Well, the people they carried.)
That was mid-day. For our late-day meal, again we searched the area likely to have a real restaurant (not a chain place) at the right hunger-point. Came up with an old-fashioned supper club kind of place. Just look at the decorative detail in the main dining room! …Famous for their fried chicken (good, very crunchy) and for their gravy. The gravy was as rich as dessert. Cream? Certainly. And butter. Salt, too; not shy about any of those…. Yum.
I realize I haven’t mentioned b’fast. It was not special, and had no memorable qualities. The pre-scrambled eggs were hot, there were biscuits, oatmeal, and sausage patties. Coffee: choice of decaf, gourmet, or bold. See—nothing special.
Tuesday, 29 November 2016
The morning’s big news: rain rain rain! Since about midnight. Slow enough maybe it’ll seep in a bit. Other places not far away got more rainfall than we did; let’s hope for more.
This evening’s milestone: the last of the turkey dinner became soup, and we consumed it with gusto!
Saturday, 26 November 2016
First, I thought, oh this geometric light-dark is…dramatic.
Then, I thought: new life. And the burgeoning bulbs took center stage in my mental universe. Go flowers! [Too early for bulb-growth…just too darned early—it’s DEcember.]
Then, I thought: the easy and wise choice is to go with the leftovers-that-don’t-look-like-leftovers. This is not tetrazzini…
The choice is yours…I give you all the options.