One for the Crock Pot

I need a break from gnawing on Christmas chocolates! This recipe though vegetarian is also pretty stout. I like using underutilized vegetables just to see what they can do. Here, three ingredients, barley, leeks and kale, fit into the underutilized category. Barley is high fiber, kale is a healthy dark leaf green and leeks are in the same healthy family that includes garlic. My uncle grew barley and one year I helped him harvest it. Barley was one of the first grains to be cultivated and was a staple in the ancient armies of Greece and Rome. Italians sometimes use it as a substitute for the rice in a risotto, calling it instead an orzotto.

Vegetarian Barley Stew

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil, divided

1-1/2 cups of chopped leeks (about two small stalks, white and pale
green parts only)

1 8-ounce container of sliced baby bella mushrooms

2 garlic cloves, pressed

2-1/2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary

1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes in juice

1 cup pearl barley

4 cups vegetable broth

1 bunch kale (about 8 ounces) trimmed, center stalks removed, leaves
coarsely chopped (about 8 cups packed)

Preparations:
Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add leeks and sprinkle with salt and pepper, saute until leeks begin to soften. Stir often, about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, garlic and rosemary. Increase heat to medium high and saute until mushrooms soften and begin to brown. Stir often, about 7 minutes. Add tomatoes with juice, stir one minute. Add barley and 4 cups broth, bring to boil. At this point, I transfer to the crock pot where it simmers until the barley is almost tender, about 25 minutes. Add kale, stir until wilted about 1 minute, recover and simmer until kale and barley are tender. Depending on what stew consistency you'd like, you may want to add more broth. Simmer about 40 minutes.

Additional Preparation:
When serving, cool slightly, then add two or three of drops each of Tabasco sauce and white truffle infused olive oil.

Comments:
The additional preparation saved this recipe. Without that save, for me, the recipe lacked depth. Kale might be wildly healthy, but it also tasted flat and I had no fondness for its texture either (slightly rough). Once refrigerated overnight, the kale did relax. Served for breakfast, the recipe did just fine. Much of the recipe idea came from the magazine, "bon apetit".

Tabasco sauce and my new acquisition, white truffle infused olive oil, are my two very best recipe rescuers. Recently, one of the food magazines listed Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce as their choice for ingredient of the year. It's a widely available asian chili sauce and your grocer probably carries it. I'm pretty sure this ingredient is being used as a recipe rescuer too. Tabasco Sauce and Sriracha typically sell for under 5 dollars. The white truffle infused olive oil set me back about 40 dollars, fortunately, a little bit goes a long ways

I'd like to know what other people consider to be their very best recipe rescuers!

Throw it in There! Leftover Turkey Risotto

So my problem is how to get my wife to help eat leftovers. Lots of time there's not much leftover and whatever is leftover I can eat for breakfast. But, when you've cooked a whole turkey the leftovers are just too much. Heck, you might as well eat out if you're not going to try to eat what you've cooked, otherwise, home cooking is just too expensive! Fortunately, I can usually lure my wife to the table with the promise of cooked mushrooms. And, mushrooms in a risotto is not an uncommon thing so there was my idea. To this risotto add everything leftover from a Thanksgiving dinner and add a few sliced mushrooms. My little plan worked pretty well and perhaps this can give you a new risotto idea too.

Ingredients:
1 cup of arborio rice
1 quart of chicken stock
1 medium onion, chopped
1 slice of bacon, when cooked chop fine
2 cups of cooked turkey chopped rough
1/4 teaspoon sage
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
dash of cayenne pepper
1/2 cup brussel spouts chopped rough
4 medium large mushrooms sliced normal
2 precooked carrots
2 precooked celery
1 tablespoon olive oil

Preparations:

Being that the arborio rice only takes about 16 minutes to prepare some of the ingredients may need precooking (carrots and celery boiled for 12 minutes). While these are getting softer, cook the slice of bacon in a large fry pan over medium heat. Once it's crisp remove the bacon and drain some of the oil off. Don't wipe or clean the pan as we want some of the bacon flavor to carry over into the next step. Now add the olive oil to the pan and cook the onion until soft about 6 minutes. Add the spices (white pepper, cayenne pepper, sage and thyme) and stir briefly. Add the arborio rice and stir to coat about 1 minute. Add the chicken stock, turn the heat to high and stir until boiling. Reduce heat to medium, add the carrots, celery, brussel sprouts and bacon. Stir this mixture constantly as it cooks by a gentle boil. This mixture will take about 16 minutes and so I added the sliced mushrooms at about the ten minute mark. Continue to stir gently, add the turkey after the sixteen minutes stirring to warm through for an additional 2 minutes.

Serve with colorful sides (spinach and orange slices).

Comments:

It's a one pan and one pot dinner so not alot of clean up. Nice way to use leftovers. The cayenne pepper gives it a lift beyond the turkey dinner you just had the night before!

Heritage Biscuits

A Houstonian's choice of food is beckoned siren-like to many a culinary compass point. There's really no telling which way a Houstonian will go. Mexican food, asian food, southern comfort food, cajun food, gulf coast seafood, BBQ and others, all these choices propel Houstonians in different culinary directions. This recipe takes us in the direction of southern comfort food.

Also, this recipe offered me an emotional plug-in for which I traveled back into my memories of college-aged friendships. Around Christmastime one year our friend Steve, a bonified country boy, brought to our group to a Boone County dry-cured ham. This created quite a stir amongst a group of endlessly hungry 21 year olds. Knowing the ham to be locally produced added greatly to its intrigue; it had country boy cachet. After scoring the ham with a cross hatch and plugging it with cloves along with other forgotten spices, it was cooked for several hours. It was strikingly beautiful and was the most memorable feast of my college days.

So, as a fellow with some southern boy heritage, I try to have some southern comfort food ability. This recipe focuses on one such a food, the ubiquitous biscuit. This particular biscuit is infused with yams. Once cooked, split the biscuit open and place a piece of dry-cured ham between the two halves, top with mustard and honey. The magazine, bon appetit, provided much of the recipe idea.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

Ingredients:

1 3/4-pound red-skinned yam, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch
cubes and boiled in salted water for 8 minutes, then
drained and mashed

1-3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon dark brown sugar

2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Pinch cayenne pepper

8 tablespoons butter (1 stick) chilled unsalted
butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes, plus 2 tablespoons
butter, melted

1/3 cup chilled buttermilk

Also:

Hot mustard
6 ounces thinly sliced country ham
Honey

Preparations:


Whisk flour and all the other dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the cubed butter to the flour mixture, toss to coat and rub in with finger tips until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add 3/4 cup of mashed sweet potato and the buttermilk toss with fork. Gather the mixture in the bowl, kneading until the dough comes together. Turn the dough onto floured work surface and pat into 1-inch thick rectangle (proportionate 2 x 1). With a floured knife blade cut(press through) the dough rectangle crosswise and lengthwise reflouring the blade after each cut. You should end up with 12 to 15 biscuits, maybe 18.

Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-inch cake pan, then place the biscuits into it. They will be pretty close together most likely touching one another and that's just fine. Now, brush the tops of the biscuits with melted butter. Place the pan in the bottom 1/3 of a 425 degree preheated oven, bake for about 22 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in the pan then turn out and gently pull the biscuits away from one another.

Final Prep:

Cut each biscuit in half crosswise. Spread the bottom half of each biscuit with mustard, then top each with sliced ham. Cap it with the second half of the biscuit. Serve with honey.

Confessions: The recipe calls for using an 1-1/2 inch round biscuit cutter, I just used a large knife cutting the biscuits into squares rather than rounds.

Comments: Nice biscuits, the tops should end up crumbly crisp. Economical to make. We thought the biscuits tasted saltier than necessary, next time out I'll use less. Another recipe that starts with a stick of butter. This negative makes it less useful in our daily lives. I relate this type of food to special treat restaurant fare rather than everyday type meals.

Caveats: Work biscuit dough as briefly as you can. Overworking the dough quickly diminishes the quality of the biscuit.

Winter Squash and Shrimp Risotto

Here's another recipe derived from one seen in the magazine, "bon appetit". The recipe calls for butternut squash though I substituted acorn squash in its place. My mother would often use these squashes for our dinners though I now suspect that few people have ever tried one. At many major grocery chains you're unable to find acorn squashes for sale. For dinner our mother would halve the squash, seed it, add margarine and brown sugar, then bake it for about 1 hour. We kids liked it just fine and did not pass up our portions. Also, the recipe attracted my interest because it looked to be manageable from both time and expense perspectives. And, it adds another recipe to my risotto repertoire.

Ingredients: 3 ounces pancetta chopped, 1 pound large raw shrimp (peeled and deveined), 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 large onion chopped, 1 garlic clove chopped, 1 cup arborio rice, 4 cups vegetable broth, 1 acorn squash peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes, 1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage, 1/4 cup whipping cream.

Preparation: On medium high, pan fry the pancetta until just about crisp then remove and set aside using a slotted spoon. If desired, lightly salt and pepper the raw shrimp, then pan fry in the rendered pancetta fat about 1-1/2 minutes per side. Remove the shrimp and set aside.

Additional Preparation: Add the olive oil to the pan. Add the chopped onion and garlic and cook for about 6 minutes stirring often. Add the rice stirring to coat for about 1 minute. Add the vegetable broth, increase heat and bring to a boil. Add squash and sage, reduce heat to medium and simmer until rice is tender and mixture is creamy. While cooking stir often, about 15 minutes.

Final Preparation: Stir in cream, shrimp and pancetta. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a large shallow bowl.

Confessions: I used a chicken stock that was preflavored with white wine and herbs in place of the vegetable stock. While I don't think this substitution was detrimental to the taste, I do think it darkened the coloration. So, to keep the colors bright be sure to use a clearer broth.

Comments: This is a pretty good dish with nice textures. The squash adds bulk which might help lessen overall caloric intake while increasing nutritional value. I also think that upping the garlic amount would be beneficial. The star of the recipe is the shrimp so be sure to cook it carefully, overdone shrimp would detract mightily.

Additional comments: I learned that white plates may not be the best choice for meal presentation. The colors of this dish are better served by using darker colored plates.

Caveats: Be sure your knives are sharp and that you have some confidence with them, if you have not sharpened them yourself then they're probably not sharp enough! I 'm giving this warning because acorn squash can be quite difficult to skin. Scour the internet for tips, but if your knives are not sharp then don't try it.

Scallop Potato Recipe

This recipe idea came from Bon Appetit. I picked it because it was not overly complex and also because it did not look too expensive. The ingredients that I did not have cost about $7.50 and the time to prepare and cook ran to about 3 hours.

Ingredients: 6 garlic cloves peeled and smashed, 4 rosemary sprigs about 2" long, 2 1/4 cups heavy cream, 2 1/2 tsp coarse kosher salt, 3/4 tsp ground white pepper, 2 large fennel bulbs with fronds, 3 1/2 pounds medium russet potatoes, 1/2 stick of butter cut into 1/2" cubes.

Confessions: I used all the rosemary I bought, 2 cups of heavy cream, 1 fennel bulb, 3 lb. russet potatoes, 1/4 stick of butter. I used two 12x12x2 glass baking dishes, probably a negative impact.

Additional preparation: skin the potatoes as desired, slice the fennel bulbs and potatoes to about 1/16" thickness kind of like potato chips. The potato slices need to go into a bowl of water to protect their color. The fennel stalks are not used though the fine green leaves are.

Additional preparation: combine cream, white pepper and kosher salt into a large bowl. Stir to dissolve.

Final preparation: butter a 13x9x2 glass baking dish, place the garlic and rosemary across the bottom then overlay these with 1/2 of the fennel slices. Dredge the potato slices through the cream sauce and place a layer atop the fennel slices. Repeat with another layer of fennel slices and top this layer with another layer of dredged potato slices. Pour the remaining cream sauce over the top and dot with butter. Cover the baking dish with foil, peaked so as to avoid touching the food.

Cooking: place into a 350 degree oven for 1 1/4 hours. At that time, remove the foil and return to a 450 degree oven for an additional 20 minutes in order that the top might be browned. Remove and cool for 15 minutes before serving.

Comments: nice tasting though also rich. It would be nice to sub in a more healthful ingredient for the cream. I scoured the internet and found suggestions of evaporated milk or a paste of 8 oz. low-fat cottage cheese blended with three tablespoons of powdered milk.

Caveats: the final 20 minutes at 450 degrees for browning did not work too well for me and I'll have to figure some adjustments next time out. I'd like this recipe to go into my repertoire but there are kinks to work out first.

Eggplant Gazpacho

I picked this recipe for two reasons. First, my mother had introduced me to gazpacho during a sweet mother/son lunch date which we'd had in early 80's at a Houston restaurant near Greenspoint. At the time, retail in Bryan/College Station was so bad that Mom needed to come all the way to Houston to get an artificial christmas tree from the Greenspoint Sears, or, it could be that she just wanted to have a lunch date with her son. I was a little wary of ordering it though if your mother insists, well then you go ahead and order it! I was able to put aside my disagreements with raw tomatoes and actually enjoyed the cold soup known as gazpacho. My second reason for selecting this recipe is that my father's garden is a pretty consistent producer of eggplants and tomatoes. The recipe idea came from the magazine, "bon appetit".

Recipe: Eggplant Gazpacho

2 large eggplants, halved lenthwise

5 tablespoons olive oil

4 ripe tomatoes stemmed and quartered

2 medium onions coarsely chopped

2 garlic cloves sliced thin

3/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

3/4 cup plain whole milk yogurt

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup tahini (sesame paste)*

2 cups water

extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling


*for better or worse, I substituted almond butter



Bake the eggplant, face sides down drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with pepper and salt, at 325 degrees for 1-1/2 hours. Afterwards, scoop out the large seed pockets, there'll still be generous flesh left, go ahead and scoop the flesh apart from the skin, dispose the skins. Having placed the flesh in a bowl, set aside.

Make fresh tomato juice by placing the tomato quarters into a blender then blend coarse. Strain the resulting tomato jam pressing the solids to get adquate juice. Discard the solids and set the tomato juice aside.

In a frying pan with 2 tablespoons of olive oil carmelize the onions, add the garlic when the onions are about 2/3 of the way done. During the last minute, add the cumin and cayenne pepper. Finishing that, now add the yogurt, tahini and lemon juice. Stir well and remove from heat. Now, stir in the eggplant.

Place about 1/2 of the eggplant mixture into a blender and also add 3/4 cup of tomato juice along with 1 cup of water. Puree this mixture until smooth then strain into a large bowl. Repeat with the remaining eggplant mixture, 3/4 cup tomato juice and 1 cup water.

Don't forget to season with salt and pepper to taste!


Personal thoughts: This was a fair enough recipe and I'd use it again if I saw that dad had a bumper crop of eggplants. The tahini and cayenne pepper might be a one shot purchases which can make this recipe a little problematic. I've read where combining tahini with peanut butter can make for an enjoyable sandwich. For most people a smallish taste of this gazpacho will be enough, so portions should be kept small. I'd suggest a half cup with some type of garnish as the soup's pasty tan color is not overly appealing. I'd like to try this recipe subbing in canned tomato juice or V-8 juice for the fresh tomato juice.

New Social Networking Site

I just wanted to relay my intent of joining a newly found social network site. It is designed specifically for older people and combines You Tube, Twitter and Facebook all in one easy to use package. It's called You Twit Face. See you there!

Consider our Liberties

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

These two statements were written into our country's founding document, The Declaration of Independence. I've placed them into this blog post as a proof that deism, the belief in a god or gods, is a part of our nation's founding. I cannot find any explicit rejection of these statements in the Articles of Confederation, nor in the United States Constitution, nor in the Bill of Rights.

I then believe that all laws and their interpretations must therefore include a consideration of deism. Furthermore, our leaders must make decisions respecting an active god, a creator who has given to every human being unalienable rights. Our leaders must also perceive a caring god, our founders relied upon the protection of Divine Providence. Though the establishment of a state mandated religion cannot and should not take place, just as surely, our laws and policies should reject humanism as a guiding precept. We must consider and interpret our laws and policies with at least a minimum of respect for our founding ideology, that is, an active and caring god.

Recently, President Obama declared that the United States is not a Christian nation. This is true but only in the narrowest sense. Our founding was rooted in deism and that deism just happened to be most represented by Christianity. So, Christian thought is apparent within our Declaration of Independence, a document that is fundamental to modern conceptualizations of humanity's innate rights. This is not surprising to me, I feel that Protestantism encouraged people to believe in one's personal relationship to or fellowship with God. Contrast the liberating thought of a god who meant for you to live and cares about it to the humanist's thought of an uncaring creator. A humanist will believe in a morality imposed by human thought. Our founders dismissed this humanist supposition spotting instead the frailties of such thought.

And so when we debate the future of our country I wish to encourage people, insist upon a respectful deism, it was a part of our nation's founding.

Catching a Baseball Game

So far this year the Astros have been a tough team to follow as their record is now 7-12. We went to the game yesterday and still had fun. The good guys won 3-2 and I'm sure that that had something to do with our enjoyment of the game. It's kind of fun to realize just how much you've followed the games over the years. Though I am seldom able to attend a game, I do listen in on quite a few of their radio broadcasts and this enables me to be an armchair manager of sorts. When at the game I'll need to come up with my own commentary. I will do this throughout the game, and though the opinions might be laughable nearly as soon as they're formed, they're serious thoughts at their inception. Baseball is a complex game though not unperceivable. I was proud to be sitting in the stands telling the Houston batter, Pudge Rodriguez, to sit on a fastball when the count had gone to 3 balls and 2 strikes. This he did and the result was a solo home run to break a tied ballgame. I felt as though I had called the game's most significant instant.

After the game, we enjoyed some cheap eats at the Spaghetti Warehouse, a favorite downtown restaurant.

Train Travels Thru Time or How I got to Big Bend National Park

I'm a fan of train travel. I've taken several of trips, I enjoyed them and I hope to travel by train again. While train travel seems to be rather quaint these days, it was just 50 years ago that passenger rail travel was the most frequent consumer choice for long distance travel. During the 1960's air travel quickly overtook rail as the more popular transportation choice and passenger rail service soon declined to the point of extinction. To prevent rail's total demise, the United States Congress created a public service corporation, namely Amtrak, to act as a service operator for passenger rail. Today, Amtrak is the country's sole provider of nation-wide passenger rail service.

Now, when I board a train some part of me does feel as though I am participating in an antique experience. I suspect a large percentage of Amtrak customers have booked passage precisely for that antique experience. There are many people who have never ridden a train but remain curious. If you mention to people that on a recent vacation you took a train to where ever location, the first question usually asked will be, "How was the train ride?". Well, I enjoy the spacious seating that is standard aboard Amtrak trains and I also enjoy the unique experience of dining while travelling aboard a train. In the dining car, for the sake of efficiency, it's four to a table and so it's probable that you will be meeting your dining partners for the very first time. I don't want to overrate it, but there is an enjoyable social aspect to train travel that seems to commence naturally. I suppose this social ambiance is attributable to the onboard space and comfort of trains relative to the space aboard a bus or airplane. Trians, of course, offer their passengers a great chance for scenic travel and Amtrak builds its cars with that in mind.

Now, for the pragmatists amongst us, I'll note that trains are still a viable travel option. Across our land, there are great swaths of territory with towns that are poorly accessed by plane or bus. Surprisingly, they may have train service. Such was the case for our trip out to Alpine, Texas. Also, the pragmatist might be lured to train travel because train fares will very often be a lower cost ticket when compared to the fares of bus or air travel. For instance, I can get a round trip coach ticket from Houston to Pullman, Washington for about $525. That's good! On the negative side, each leg of the trip would be 3 days in length and, with the tickets being coach seating only, I think the trip would be quite brutal! It is possible to upgrade your ticket to accommodate sleeping needs and privacy desires. But, these upgrades will then make train travel much less economical, the accommodations upgrade will cost more than the original fare. To consider trains as an option, I try to think of medium length distances with a travel time of under 24 hours. With this loose rule in mind, train travel can shine. I like the idea of leaving New York City in the evening then, after travelling throughout the night, I'll have arrived into Chicago at 8:30 the next morning. It's no longer possible to do this, but at one time it was! Nevertheless, overnight train passages do offer a nifty bonus for today's travellers, I'd rather travel and sleep through the night than waste a day driving.

Amtrak is not for the faint hearted traveller. It can be bumpy, inconvenient, unreliable and poorly accessed. While it is possible to arrive at your destination fully rested, showered, shaved and well fed, it's also possible to arrive late, tired and grumpy! Amtrak is a money losing government monopoly but, rightly or wrongly, it exists and it is an available mode of public transport.

Some of my first memories in life were of a train ride our family took from Indiana out to Washington State. My mother and father both grew up there and most all of our relatives still live there. I can remember my delight with the sight-seeing car whereupon with a turn in the tracks I could see the full expanse of our train's many cars. I also remember my father shaving while aboard the train (oops, nicked again! and again!). Also memorable, my sister Debbie, not being too sure of my awareness of anything, said to me, "Do you know where Beth is?" Well, my younger sister Beth was simply hung up in some netting and would swing about to and fro. Both Debbie and I found this to be endlessly funny. Eventually, we became jealous and we wanted to try it out too! I don't know if I'm able to remember a whole lot else about this trip, the memories may be jumbled with others as we made frequent visits to Washington State. Of course, there is the possibility that when I was tagged with a spanking for straying about the station platform in Indiana that my young mind was then able to achieve a few days of focus, I just don't know! I think this trip took place in 1960 when I was but 3 years old.

I'll toss in another memory here. When my family lived in Columbia, Missouri my grandparents would arrive via train for their visits from either Ephrata or Pullman, Washington. This would have been in the 1960's and like most people they soon switched to air travel. Our grandmother, Myrna Loan, continued to use the train the longest and so it is with her visits that the following few memories are most relevant. The nearest rail station service to Columbia was up the road in Centralia, Missouri which was located about 45 minutes north of Columbia. On the day our grandmother was to arrive our mother would've packed a picnic lunch which the family would take on up to Centralia. We'd picnic at a little (public or private?) park called the A. B. Chance Gardens though we kids invariably miscalled it Marvin's Gardens. Bologna sandwiches were our typical fare along with green grapes, apples, carrot and celery sticks. Excepting the bologna sandwiches, mom's picnic lunches were generally filled with healthful things. To be sure we'd still have some Fritos and lemonade and cookies, but I remember most the fresh fruits and vegetables. Later, at the rail station we kids would stand on the station's platform squinting out into the distance competing with one another to be the first one able to see grandma's train coming. We'd also stand near a yellow line of demarcation challenging our closeness to the railroad tracks and the trains that would come thundering in. On occasion we were fooled by a freight train coming through, but eventually grandma's train did arrive.

Here's an interesting link to train travel circa the 1940's: www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/225401

I hope everyone has set their snooze alarm because I blog onwards.

I guess it's time to write a little bit about our trip to Big Bend National Park. The train trip from Houston to Alpine, Texas (Big Bend's gateway city) was a nice value. We left Houston at 9:45 pm Monday and were scheduled to arrive in Alpine at 1:30 pm the next day. This trip included a scheduled 2-1/2 hour layover in San Antonio. For our trip, the layover was increased to 6-1/2 hours due to some track maintenance further on down the line. Now, the increased layover wasn't all bad. We were hoping for some sleep and a motionless train is quite conducive for a little shuteye! The stress involved in getting an old jeep to the Houston station and the bumpiness of travel while enroute to San Antonio had combined to rob me of some sleep. We'd upgraded from coach to an economy roomette but sleep was still difficult. The layover in San Antonio extended well past daylight so Mai and I took a short walk to see the Alamo. It was still early so there was really no one else there to speak of. We used our portable computer to take a couple of impromptu pictures, one of which I've uploaded to this blog posting. We also used the computer to record a short video, we got a good laugh out of it and hope you do too!






Soon after we shot the video we were back on the train and resumed our trip towards Big Bend and Alpine, Texas. Alpine is actually a very small town, it's large only in that it's the biggest thing out there in this remote region, this area is sparsely populated. In Alpine, road runs alongside the path of the railroad track and is the city's main drag. Often times in towns of the old west a person would disembark the train and simply walk across the street to the hotel. It's still this way in Alpine and that's exactly what Mai and I did. We stayed at the Holland House and were upgraded to the best room at the hotel. It wasn't penthouse luxury but we were impressed and very pleased to have been treated so nicely. Though Alpine is Big Bend's gateway, the park itself is still a 2 hour drive away. So, the next morning we picked up our rental car and continued our journey.

Big Bend National Park is an excellent spot for hiking adventures and it is scenic as well as historic. Being so remote, the park gets only about 400,000 visitors a year so there are no large crowds to deal with. It also means that hotel accomodations and food service are not well developed. An exception to this was the place me and Mai stayed at, the Ten Bits Ranch. This was more like a bed and breakfast and was off of the electrical grid. It was powered through solar cells and batteries and both Mai and I enjoyed this experience. We were lit well enough and still had the use of our computer. Solar power could not supply enough juice to run air conditioners and so Ten Bits Ranch closes down during the summer. At the ranch you can enjoy a full breakfast but no other meals are provided. It's an interesting place due to its proximity to an old Indian camp and also for the dinosaur bones found nearby though you're not allowed to collect relics. Our time at Big Bend numbered only 3 days and one of those days was wasted because of a breakdown of the rental car. With the help of an older couple from Boston we avoided being stranded and were very thankful. Still, we did not take the planned 12 mile hike nor did we get to ride horses as we'd hoped to, I guess we'll just have to go back!

I'm okay with that.

Tea Party! (Taxed Enough Already!)

Today me and Mai went to a tax protest gathering in downtown Houston. We'd made a special point of getting off of work early so we could do this. We took a Park N Ride bus at $3.75 per person each way and later thought that maybe we should have just driven down instead. We especially began to think this after the bus dropped us off about 15 blocks away from our hoped for destination. Downtown Houston still manages to confuse me even after nearly 30 years of living here. We got a little lucky as we found the protest site (Jones Plaza) without really knowing exactly where it was.

Alot of the media have portrayed these local tea parties, they're national in scale and number nearly 1000 parties, as ultra-rightwing conservative affairs and therefore as bankrupt in thought. Now, I suppose a person can find anything they're looking for at these meetings. What I saw was a packed venue of earnest people. As some people exited the site the crowd was replenished with new arrivals. It would not surprise me at all if the total crowd numbered upwards of 25,000, that's alot of people protesting who normally eschew public showings.

My protest involves my belief that the federal government is carelessly and wantonly destroying the dollar's value through massive deficit spending. A proposed deficit of 1.7 trillion dollars is almost unbelievable. For just one year the amount borrowed by the Obama administration is about $6000 for every man, woman and child presently residing within the United States. I truly wonder what shall become of us.

Looking to 100 & 200 day Moving Averages .SPX

By some reckoning the recent bull market is now about 25 days old. My sources have now turned either neutral or are creeping into bearish sentiment. While the 50 day moving average has been cleared there remains a great deal for this market to do were it to be called an all-go bull market. The major point being made is that the economy has run itself into such a bear frenzy that it will not be easy to come out of it. The recent bullish trend is indicative of a false countertrend, too great of a recovery in too short of a time.

This post highlights the 100 and 200 day moving averages for the S & P 500. Note, the 200 day moving average is just below 1000.