In the Headlights

Linville Falls

When Sandy and I were in the cabin at Roan Mountain State Park a couple of weeks ago, we didn't hike as much as we had the year before.  Not by a long shot.  Maybe it was because it was a month or so later in the year, but it was hot as Hell.  Maybe because the whole area was having a heat wave, so while it was 104 in cities in Tennessee and North Carolina, it reached the high 80's at Roan, and was in the 70's at night.  So mostly we stayed in the shade.

One day, we drove to Linville Falls, in North Carolina.  Linville Gorge is called the Grand Canyon of North Carolina.  That may be a bit of hyperbole, but the falls is (are, actually, as there are a few cataracts) nature at her beautiful best.

The source of the river is on Grandfather Mountain (the highest peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains), which we visited last year.

Within the gorge, the water descends over 2000 feet.

There are hiking trails and paths leading to different vistas.  We visited all of them, and each offered a different vantage point.  All were well worth the walk.

All in all, the paths got pretty challenging, and we were  beat by the time we finished.  I still blame it all on the heat.  But even the path up to the parking lot seemed like it was on a 60-degree plane.  We got pretty winded, but so did everyone else on the path.

But when we do this again (I think it will be for the Highland Games at Grandfather Mountain.  Maybe not next year, but down the pike a bit), I'd like to visit Linville Falls again.

Peaches 'n' Cream

On our last day of vacation at Roan Mountain State Park, Sandy and I got together with Beth and Meredith who were staying a few cottages down from us.

At that point, we were trying to eat up the perishables. (We'd stocked up for a long visit, then added lots of fruits and vegetables as we drove through North Carolina and into Tennessee.)  The other stuff wew could bring back in boxes or the cooler.

We had a small basket of peaches that was looking forlorn.  I hated the idea of throwing them away, but couldn't see just eating them.

They became dessert:  Peaches Foster.  This dessert is inspired by the divine bananas Foster, which I'd first tried at Brennan's Restaurant in New Orleans years ago, and made a number of times from their cookbook.

So off to the store it was, for vanilla ice cream and brown sugar.  I forgot about the cinnamon until I was making the peaches;  it turned out great, though next time, I'll sprinkle on a bit.

First I poached the peaches in boiling water, so that I could peel them. Then, I cut them in half and removed the pits (buy freestone peaches if you want to save yourself a world of heartache), and quartered each half into wedges.  Since I was prepping the food ahead of time, I squeezed a lime over the peaches to keep them from turning brown, and covered them with plastic wrap and returned them to the fridge.  There were about four cups of peaches for four of us.

When it was time for dessert, I melted a half stick of butter over medium heat and added a few heaping tablespoonsful of brown sugar (about a cup).

When that was bubbling, I added the peaches, and cooked them until they were limp, about five minutes.  I then added about 1/2 cup of Jamaica rum.  After a few seconds, I lit a kitchen match and ignited the peaches. 

They made a beautiful sight, and no, I didn't burn down the cabin.  If I had, I wouldn't be sharing this recipe with you.  The photo is of the peaches flaming.  After I got the shot, I was so busy scooping ice cream and spooning hot peaches over it that I forgot to take a picture of the peaches Foster themselves.  Guess I'll have to make it again soon to rectify that.

Note:  I winged it on the amounts in the recipe, since I didn't actually measure anything.  The amounts I gave were from the bananas Foster recipe, and were quite close to what I used.  We didn't have any cinnamon or liqueur, though I imagine adding cinnamon and some peach liqueur probably wouldn't have loused up the recipe too much. 

Party Time

I'm taking today off and breaking out the good bubbly.

The good stuff!  What could possibly warrant that?

Well, two years ago I wrote my first post.  For about a year-and-a-half, I posted twice a day, at 1 PM and 5 PM, but about six months ago, I went to once a day, at 1 PM.

It's been a fun ride, a refuge, and a virtual reality for me.  I have some new friends, most of whom I haven't met but can't wait to.  Shawn Lea and I have had some adventures, and I have a couple of people I am planning to meet soon.

I hit 500,000 hits earlier this month.  I realize that a lot of it is thanks to Google (Thanks, Google!), but I am honored to have the small and somewhat devoted following I do have.  You know who you are.  There are fewer thrills than Googling something and seeing one of your posts pop up on the first search page.  A few days ago, a friend mentioned a lanyard (imagine!), and I asked if he had read Billy Collins's poem.  He hadn't, so I decided to Google it so he could read it.  One of my posts came up third in the search.  Since people at work don't know I do this, I clicked on another site, but I had a secret smile the whole time.

It's been a lot of work, but has also been a refuge from the frustrations and disappointments of everday life (like when your pasta comes out over-cooked).  It's a way to share my feelings with anyone who wants to come for the ride. 

Welcome.  While I find it hard to slot into my schedule at times, I have no intention of stopping, and I hope you'll join me on this wild ride.

[Image from Wedding Insurance]

All The News

that fits, we print.

So sad.  Yesterday marked the last issue of the Weekly World News.  First the Wall Street Journal goes to Rupert Murdoch, now this. 

Where can we go for the real dope.  You know, I mean the scoop...

The Weekly World News started in l979, a black-and-white, over-the-top tabloid with something for every fruitcake.  It was just the thing to read on the bus or subway if you wanted to be left alone, with plenty of space.  Especially if you held it upside-down.

And now it's gone, gone, gone!  No more Bat Boy.  And who will keep tabs on Elvis and/or the aliens, vampires and zombies among us now?

Some of  OFF/beat's Emil Steiner's favorite headlines (the illustration's from there too.):

-Man Poses as CPR Dummy to Meet Women.
-Seeing Eye Squirrels for Blind Dogs
-Tiny Terrorists Disguised as Garden Gnomes
-Vegan Vampire Attacks Trees

Those reporters must have had a blast.

Unfortunately, this gem could not survive.  Its current readership is 83,000 (Weekly World News has 83,000 readers!) down from 1.2 million (Weekly World News had 1.2 million readers---who are/were those people?) in the 1980's. 

Thank heaven The Wall Street Journal is still with us.

The Hole Truth

There's a hole in the cosmos,
Dear Liza, dear Liza,
There's a hole in the cosmos,
Dear Liza, a hole.

  Stryder sent us this story, though I'd read it in the paper as well.  He commented that this is where lost socks go.  Lost everything, probably;  there's certainly enough room.

After reading The Canon, by Natalie Anagier, I almost understood the article.

Scientists noticed a slight cooling of some cooling in the cosmic microwave background, a remnant of the Big Bang. When these waves pass through a void, they cool slightly.  From this, they extrapolated the existence of a huge void in the universe.  When we look at the sky, we see starts and galaxies.  There are billions of them.  And black holes, and white dwarves and red giants. Using a Very Large Array (very creative names these astrophysicists use) radio telescope, they determined that the void was six to ten (ahem) billion light-years from home.  and nearly a billion light years across.

[Image via Sweet Georgia]

Awesome Animals

Peggy sent me these stunning photos.  I don't know where they originated, but I think they are well worth sharing.

Wonderful photography, capturing these moments of intense action.

   

Bickering over choice bits.

 

No need to bicker here, there'll be feasting.

I wonder how this little tete-a-tete will end.

These eagle-action shots are phenomenal.

 

You've really arrived when you can get someone else to pick your nose for you.  Louis XVI, any comments?

You may have noticed a signature and a web site on two of the photographs of fishing birds (are they hawks?).  They are the work of Miguel Lasa.  His web site is a vast gallery of stunning photographs going back several years.  I didn't browse the entire catalog to see if all the photos above are his.  They well might be.  But if your jaw dropped with these shots, you should take some time and look at some of the others.  They are truly awe-inspiring.

I'll stop now.  I'm running out of superlatives.

W.O.W.

This week's word is "guerilla", for no other reason than that I'd never thought about its provenance before.  I ran into it a few days ago, I think, in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a book that was recommended to me by Tom, my dance instructor, who has turned out to be well-read and funny, making dancing so much more fun.

You know about guerillas and guerilla warfare...it refers to tactics of a small, mobile army to combat, and often neutralize a larger, less flexible enemy.

But where did the word come from?  If you speak French or Spanish, you know. It is the diminutive of guerra, and means "small war", not unlike the French "guerre".  I wonder if it is related also to "guerere bellum", or "to wage war" in Latin.

If you liked that paragraph, you must go here, to "Vicipaedia", "Wikipedia" in Latinum.  I do remember from my Latin classes that the "V" is pronounced "W", and "C" is "K". 

Wonderful.  Have fun.

[Image via Gymnasium Laurentianum]

Heirloom Tomatoes

When we drove to Roan Mountain State Park last week, Sandy and I each packed some special food items so we could really indulge during our vacation.

But one of the standouts was something we picked up in a roadside stand in North Carolina, near the Tennessee border.

We passed a store with a small sign that said "fresh produce."  It didn't look real promising, but we stopped all the same.  Inside, there were bins and bags of fruit and vegetables.  We got some banana peppers, and a basket of peaches.  We were looking at tomatoes, and the owner suggested we look at some different ones.  We were skeptical.  They were dark, almost brown, and a bit soft, with harder green areas.  They looked like they were overripe in parts, and underripe in others.    He said no matter, they were special, juicy, delicious tomatoes. 

We decided to try a few.

OMG, they were transforming. The best tomatoes ever.  We saved them for tomato salad...cooking them would have been a shame, because they really needed nothing.  We ate quite a few slices just in making the tomato salad.

The salad was simply sliced tomatoes with finely diced onion sprinkled over the top, salt and pepper, and then a drizzle of olive oil and a drizzle of vinegar.  Rather than using the dominant balsamic vinegar, we used some milder sherry vinegar.  Normally, I'd have used shallots, and a bit of chopped parsley as well, but we didn't have any at the cabin.

So what makes a tomato an heirloom?  That is highly debatable, though it is agreed that they must be open pollinated...that is, the plants must be pollinated by natural means, like bees, wind, bird poop, whatever.  Since parentage is more or less random, this increases biodiversity.  Other schools of thought say that the seeds must be 50 years old, or 100 years old, or cultivated since World War II. 

I don't espouse any particuolar school, but I do know the ones we had at Roan were, arguably, the best tomatoes I have ever eaten.  They may have looked tomatoes likely to be last picked for the baseball team, but boy, were they fabulous.

After we got back, Sandy emailed me a site featuring heirlooms.  She thought our tomatoes looked like they might be Black Krim, or maybe Black Seaman, or maybe Cherokee Purple or even Paul Robeson.  Pictures of all these are at the site.  Because there is a Cherokee County in North Carolina, Sandy thinks they are probably Cherokee Purple.

These tomatoes were so good that she is going to get seeds for some of these varieties and attempt to grow them next year.  My tomato experience with growing tomatoes is that you spend a lot of time looking for caterpillars and disease, at least it was an issue when Red and I tried to grow some tomatoes a few years back.

I hope it works, I'd love to get some more delicious tomatoes, and if it works out, I might even try growing them again myself the following year.

Woman on the Edge

Sandy and I spent last week in Tennessee and North Carolina.  We drove to Roan Mountain State Park, and moved into our spacious cabin on Monday, unpacking huge amounts of wonderful food, books and wine.  No TV,and no computer access...enforced relaxation, which is great. 

We met Beth and Meredith, a mother and daughter who had a cabin a few doors down from us.  They were spending some time together before Meredith takes off for college in about two weeks.  We were all sympatico, and got together for some great meals and talk.

The down side is that that area of the country is going through a record-breaking heat wave, and at Roan, the temperatures were about 15-20 degrees higher than they were when we visited last year.  Without A.C., it was pretty stifling at times.

We had a long drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We had visited the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, and decided that rather than return on the highway, we'd opt for the scenic route.  Also, the access for the Blue Ridge Parkway was pretty close to The Biltmore, so we thought we'd shave off some time.

Ah, the best laid plans...

It took us almost twice as long taking the scenic route, which was one lane each way with no divider, along winding mountain roads. At its highest, the parkway is at 6050 feet.  Talk about scenic. We crawled all over Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the Eastern United States.  I was driving.

Some of you may remember my meltdown/panic attack driving up Grandfather Mountain last year.  I suffer from acrophobia...fear of heights... and terror struck my heart as we wound around those mountain roads, with the long drop-offs right next to the road. 

Had I realized it was going to be like that, I a)  would not have chosen (or allowed to be chosen) the Bue Ridge Parkway, b)  certainly would not have been in the driver's seat, c) would have begged, borrowed or stolen some kind of major tranquilizer to put me into a stupor.  Come to think of it, we had several bottles of wine we'd bought at Biltmore.  That would have done.

So I found myself behind the wheel.  I decided pretty early on that I needed to conquer this fear:  there would not always be someone else there who could take the wheel when I decided to curl up in fetal position in the back seat.

Without a doubt, I white-knuckled it quite a bit, had my heart, which was racing considerably faster than we were, in my throat.  But we survived.  My strategy was NOT to look over the scenic overlooks.  In fact, I looked to the inward curve of the road on all of those, and generally focused down the road rather than on anything actually close to us.  It was a very scary two hours.   Particularly when opposite traffic would appear out of nowhere, casually straddling that center line.

Sandy was the picture of cool as I did this.  Either she was comfortable with my driving, or she was afraid to spook me further.

So we did it.  I'd like to say I conquered my fear, but I know it will be waiting to leap out at me next time I take a lovely mountain road.  At least next time I'll have a strategy.

[Image from Mount Rogers.org]

Insect-Eating Flower

This isn't a man-eating dog post.  Rather, it is about a lovely plant Keith planted in my yard, telling me that the yellow center attracts insects, and that the flower then closes around said clueless creature.

He couldn't remember what it is called.  I'll bug him (heh!) and let you know if he remembers when he's not trying so hard to.

This purple plant is about the size of an outstretched palm, lovely and very different.

If you know what it is, please fill me in.  I couldn't find it searching insect-eating plants or flowers, or carniverous plants.

Okay, I found a bit more about this vine and flower.  It is called Aristolochia elegans, or pipe vine or Dutchman's pipe, or calico flower.  Apparently it attracts butterflies, but I don't see anything about it eating them, or any other live critters.  Still, it intrigues, and I'll let you know if I learn anything more.