I See You Seeing Me

While walking through my parent's property recently, I came across a game camera near a deer feeder along one of my regular walking trails. I could not resist, so I took a picture of the camera taking a picture of me.

 

I cannot wait for the hunter to come up on that picture! I have no idea who he is, but I want him to send me that picture when he comes across it.

 

I actually wish I had a game-cam next to his computer so I could capture HIS expression when he sees it.

 

After seeing some of the pictures from my brother's game-cam, I do know that many of the animals being photographed are well aware that something is going on in that clicking camouflaged box. Too many of them come up to it and lick it or stick their noses up for a good sniff. The hunter should not be too shocked then that a human would try something goofy.

 

Since the game-cams use a memory card. I should buy a discount one and fill it up with silly pictures around the city and replace it in his camera. He'd certainly wonder how the deer managed to do that grand excursion with his camera. (I'm laughing so hard at that idea that I fear I may get kicked out of the coffee shop - people are trying to study [or so they would have you believe by the annoyed glares in my direction].)

 

Spending a few hours in the deer blind made me remember how much I enjoy being out in the wild, seeing animals interacting with their natural environment. I need to build a cabin in the woods to escape the electronic world and enjoy a slower time now and again. The different pictures from my brother's own game-cam and the close-up encounters I had in the couple hours in the wild made me long again for that peaceful simplicity.

 

A game-cam I check (prank) from time to time would only fuel the desire to be in the woods more rather than quench it. Perhaps, I can find a way to have my place and the chance to be close to all the wildlife that abounds in the woods and play with the game camera at the same time. Time to put my imagination to work and see what I can figure out.

Pineapple Upside Down Rum Cake

A couple months ago I got on a kick of making cakes with spiced rum after my roommate brought that home instead of regular rum.  While the standard recipes were good, I knew I could continue to improve the cake with variations. I wanted to make a pina-colada cake, but since my roommate is allergic to coconut, I opted to try the pineapple upside down version and pulled out the maraschino cherries.

To date it is my favorite of the multiple variations.

 

Cake:

1 box French vanilla cake mix

1 box (4 serving) vanilla instant pudding

½ cup liquid drained off pineapple (no sugar added preferably)

½ cup spiced rum

½ cup oil (I use olive)

4 eggs

Pineapple chunks or rounds

Maraschino cherries

 

Glaze

¼ cup butter

½ cup sugar

¼ cup water

¼ cup spiced rum

 

 

Preheat oven to 325°. In a large bowl, combine cake mix, pudding mix, water, oil, eggs, rum, and allspice. Beat until combined. Grease and flour a Bundt pan. Spread pineapple and maraschino cherries around the bottom then pour in the batter. Bake for 50-60 minutes.

When the cake comes out of the oven, leave in pan. Boil butter, sugar, and drained pineapple juice, glaze ingredients for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in spiced rum.

With the cake still in the pan, poke holes in the cake – I use a chopstick. Pour hot glaze over the cake. Allow the glaze to soak into the cake before turning it out onto a plate (about 5 minutes).

 

Brain Lapse

         A night after staying up well past my bedtime to watch the election coverage to its finale with the speeches of the presidential candidates, I came home from work ready for and early bedtime. As I finished my dinner and contemplated bedtime, a calendar alert went off on my phone and computer simultaneously reminding me that it was Nature, Nova, and Nova: Science Now – my favorite night of television.

         I stayed awake long enough to find out what each show was about.

         And then I went to sleep for the remainder of each one.

         This normally only happens with mindless sitcoms. But after a night being up four hours beyond my normal time, I did not have the energy to get too educated tonight.

         My brain is full from the elections.

         Maybe that is why I stayed awake for most of TMZ.

Thank Goodness for Food Chemistry

         Thank goodness for food chemistry.

         Normally, I am a food purist. I use real butter and never margarine. I use real sugar (or honey or something natural) never corn syrup or saccharine. I use lard, not any vegetable shortening. The natural always wins. But as I sit up watching the election results, my thoughts going into the night were to either take sleeping pills and avoid it altogether or drink energy drinks and watch it all the way through.

         Yay, chemistry!

         Between an (unnamed brand) energy drink and a pot of coffee, I am spending about half the night running to the restroom and the other half trying to keep up with my twitter feed that updates faster than I can read 140 character bites – much less clicking through to any of the lengthier stories. Together, they are keeping me up and functioning.

         Mostly, I am glad the election season is over. Some of the votes are going the way I want them to. Some are not. That tends to happen with elections. In some cases, I am just glad some people voted with common sense.

         As I wait for the concession speeches, I put an extra (unnamed brand) energy drink in the refrigerator for tomorrow. I think I am going to need it.

 

Where Water Was

Texas has spent most of the last decade in drought conditions. Intermittant floods have hidden the fact that despite a massive amount of rain in a short period, the drought has continued. Urban dwellers and those outside the heartland of the United States have a hard time imagining and understanding just how severe this drought has been.

  Limbs, lying on the ground like corpses on CSI, demonstrate the extent of damage to the trees of years of drought. Making my way around my parent's property, I came across countless dead trees. The agriculture department has estimated that 10% of the trees in Texas have died. In the forrested areas of my parent's ranch almost every post oak and pin oak have died. Live oaks that are hundreds of years old are shedding huge limbs - giving up much of the effort they have expended since Columbus landed on the continent.

My brother (and the rest of the family) used this flat-bottomed boat to navigate around the pond when it was at its peak. Now grass and weeds have grown up around it.

The nearest water, compared to where the boat sits, is over 100 yards away, near the treeline in the distance. One-hundred yards. For a pond! That's how bad the drought is.

Football Confession

         I talk – too much perhaps – about how much I watch sports and enjoy them. But it is time for me to come clean. Time for me to be brutally honest with myself and everyone who knows me.

         I have the television on the games every weekend.

         I barely pay attention to it.

         I listen for unusually loud noise and then I look up for the replay.

         While I do genuinely enjoy sports, I find myself too busy doing something else – cooking, cleaning, reading, writing, Facebooking, and tweeting. I think I have lost the ability to focus on any one thing for an extended period of time. It is not that I do not want to , I just have become so used to doing many things simultaneously that my brain flits from task to task.

         When I try to slow my mind down, I go to sleep. I need to work on correcting this. Just ask my roommate. He wears headphones so he does not have to hear me snoring in my recliner. I do like sports and enjoy seeing athleticism at work on the field. I need to find some way to become better focused at it without sleep overcoming me.

 

Food and Spirituality

         Making and eating food are among the most spiritual acts I perform. From gardening, ranching, and hunting in childhood, I have always had a close relationship with much of the food I ate. From the fresh vegetables raised in our garden, to the beef from the calves we raised then sent to slaughter, to the venison and other game meats we hunted, my hands had a role in the processing from beginning to end.

         Living in the city now, I have a modest garden in my back yard that produces more squash and tomatoes than I can eat, but certainly comes nowhere near sustaining me. The back yard definitely will not support a herd of meat animals or even a flock of chickens, so I am forced to rely on the grocery store or meat market for them. Until the time comes for me to slice and cook, I have no connection to most of the food.

         Despite the void between ground/hoof and table, the act of preparation remains spiritual for me. I do not exercise enough. I do not sleep enough. I drink too many high-caffeine drinks. Cooking and eating well prevent my body from going totally to pieces. Cooking and eating well honor who I am. I enjoy it and gain great satisfaction in preparing something delicious from the ingredients I am given.

         The relationship between each part of the meal encourages reflection on the connections between parts of my life. Too much of any one ingredient puts the dish out of balance. Friends, work, family, and God all shape who I am; they are the ingredients to me. Just like a recipe, any one out of proportion alters me and the person that I am. Food connects every aspect of life – friends, work, family, and God. At the table, at a restaurant, or even in passing, food offers that moment of connection – even if it is in passing.

         Perhaps, at a certain point, my career will allow me the opportunity to live on land again instead of being confined to the small spaces of the city and will allow me the chance to raise the majority of the food I eat. I like that connection, but it is not necessary for food to be a central spiritual aspect of my life. God is present no matter how many hands touch the food and I take solace in that knowledge.

 

I Can't Drive 85

         The fastest highway (toll-road) in the United States opened recently a few miles from my house. With a posted speed limit of 85 MPH, it has the fastest allowed speed in the country. The contract for building the road included the enhanced speed limit which coincided with an enhanced toll rate.

During its initial days, they toll authority waived the fees for the road – kind of like a crack dealer gives the first few fixes free. Because it was free and I needed to go that way anyway, I decided to try it out.

I have always had a lead foot, but the reversion to the 70 MPH speed limit on most major highways quite satisfied my need to drive quickly. I had to set the cruise control to maintain 85 MPH on the stretch of road. I kept finding myself drifting back to the accustomed 70 MPH.

All I could think was, “Sammy Hagar would be so ashamed of me.”

The first night the highway was open, though, three cars crashed into wild hogs. Fortunately, no one was injured. Still, this highway runs through rural Texas. We have wild animals in abundance. In Caldwell County (where the wrecks happened), one can earn $2 for bringing in the tail of a wild hog because they do so much damage to crops they are considered a pest. Two dollars provides little solace to those who hit the hogs. Still, anyone who really wants to drive that fast in rural Texas without grill-guard can plan to fork out much more than $2 on the repairs they will likely have.

I had my fix of the accelerated speed limit, so I will stick to the parallel free highway. For $3 to cross six miles, 55 MPH proves quite satisfactory.

 

Queso Mac and Cheese

         What do you do when you make WAAAAYYYY too much queso for the football game? Turn it into mac and cheese of course. I have not experimented much with mac and cheese in a couple years since I started watching my carbohydrate intake due to an expanding waistline. It remains one of the comfort foods I turn to when I really want home.

         Such a simple dish to make with so many variations possible I keep finding new things I like about it. I have switched to whole grain pasta I rarely endorse a particular brand (because I am cheap and normally stick to generic), but in the last few years, I discovered that the enormous distinction between generic and brand names when it comes to pasta and a few other items. I almost always use Barilla Plus whole grain pastas. They have a wonderful nutty flavor and solid texture that holds up to almost everything I want to do with it.

         In the case of queso mac and cheese, I opted for rotini as the pasta with grilled sausage for some added flavor (and to make it a main dish). Other than the pasta, the entire dish was put together with leftovers from previous cooking events. Putting it together and baking it, altogether, took about 1 ½ hours. The queso and sausage were done. I cooked the rotini to almost done, sliced the sausage. After draining the pasta, I mixed together the queso, pasta, and sausage then poured into a greased 9X13 baking dish (cake pan), covered with foil, and baked in a pre-heated 350° oven until heated through. In the last few minutes, I pulled off the foil and let the top brown.

         As a queso freak, this version of mac and cheese helped satisfy that urge as well as my craving for home food.

 

Jury Duty

         I have been called for jury duty for a two month time. Earlier in the year, I received the same notice, but it coincided with the start of school, so I received a postponement until the November-December window.

         This is the first time I have been summoned to the Federal court for the jury duty window. To find out if one is called, one must either go online or call-in Friday and Sunday evening to find out if one must show up Monday morning. For years I have wanted to serve on a jury that settled something more than a traffic ticket. We threw the (ticket) book at her: she was filmed making the illegal turn and then cursing at the police officer. That jury experience was fun, but not exactly challenging. The evidence was clear and justice swiftly done.

         Since I will be doing my service in Federal court this time, I am not going to get to send anyone to the electric chair.

         One day!

         Though I joke around about jury duty, I believe in it. Despite the inconvenience it causes with regular work, I look forward to opportunity to serve my community. If they could text me the testimony and let me text back the verdict, I would be even happier.

         I also have to get over the idea that work won’t work without me. I work with many talented, hardworking people who will carry on quite capably in my absence. I mostly worry about my work that they will have to shoulder. We all work so hard I hate to add any task to their workload.

         Nevertheless, in the coming weeks, I look forward to the possible judicial adventures that lay before me. Of course, if I do get the chance to serve, it will be in silence – at least on here.