Laurabelle's Blog

Last week Jeff and I flew to Texas for my great-aunt Treba's hundredth birthday on August 25, 2007. She lives in south Texas, so we were a little afraid that Hurricane Dean would throw a gear in the works, but luckily Dean headed south into Mexico and left Texas well alone. (I feel slightly guilty for benefiting from someone else's misfortune, but I am still grateful that it missed us.)

I forgot my camera, so no pictures, but I'll give you a run-down of events.

Birthday festivities

Thursday the 23rd Jeff and I flew down (uneventfully) and were met at the airport by my parents. We went to dinner at a little Cajun place near Rockport where the menu is yes or no. They serve a spicy crab boil of crab, shrimp, crawfish, sausage, corn, and potatoes, dumped on top of butcher paper on the table and eaten largely with one's bare hands. The delicious seafood made a very strong impression on Jeff. After dinner we still had some time to kill before the plane bearing my brother and his wife arrived, so we headed back to the airport and played bridge until they came.

Friday we visited the King Ranch and took the tour. I wanted Jeff to see a Texas Longhorn, and he did, though from a bit of a distance across the pasture. Friday lunch consisted of excellent sandwiches at a shop that had been in business for over fifty years. On Friday evening the birthday festivities started with more seafood, fried this time. I tasted frog legs but was not terribly impressed.

Saturday was the birthday party proper. I helped by handing out name tags and boggled at the line of people waiting to see my great-aunt. There was lots of family present as well as friends from in and out of town. I saw family I hadn't seen in a long time and met some that I hadn't ever seen before. Friday dinner, after the party, was Mexican; I think I had carne guisada and a cheese enchilada.

Sunday we attended church with Treba and ate a small lunch as a finale. Then Ralph and Lori headed back to the airport, while my parents, Jeff, and I drove north.

We were not sorry to leave the Quality Inn where we stayed; I was not impressed with the room. The alarm clock and one lamp did not work, even after we complained, and the bathroom door did not shut. We also saw multiple cockroaches. The motel served breakfast, but most of it was so sugary that after the first day we opted to eat at the diner across the street.

The pretty part of Texas

Jeff had only seen west Texas and a bit of Dallas before, so I wanted to show him some of the nicer parts. My parents were not initially enthusiastic, but they agreed to make the long drive. (There is a lot of Texas between Dallas and my great-aunt's town.)

On Sunday evening we reached San Antonio too late to see the Alamo, but we enjoyed dinner on the River Walk. At the motel that evening we played more bridge, and I flatter myself that I improved (though it helped that my cards were better than the previous Thursday).

On Monday we saw the Alamo, ducked back to the motel to retrieve my forgotten hoodie, then visited New Braunfels, where my mother finished high school and where my grandparents had lived for many years. There wasn't very much to see, but we did drive by their old house, visit the ginkgo tree we planted for my grandfather on the golf course, and leave fresh flowers on their headstone at the cemetery. We also ate lunch at the New Braunfels Smokehouse.

To kill time before dinner, we visited the state capitol building in Austin. I had actually never been there (not even in Texas history class in seventh grade; we visited San Antonio instead), and it was fairly interesting to wander around the house and senate chambers and look at the portraits. The center and front of the floor were blocked off, of course, and I couldn't get close enough to read the descriptions on a few paintings. I complained to Jeff that if they were going to block off that area, they should at least make the text big enough to read from a distance. He made fun of me for being a Melton and reading everything.

We ate dinner at the Stagecoach Inn in Saledo. There has been an inn at that location since about 1860, and the wait staff still recite the menu from memory. Most of us had chicken fried steak, which was at least decent (though I think mine is a bit better).

That night we slept at my parents' house, where I grew up.

The house

We slept a lot at my parents' house. My purpose in being there was to give myself a little time to see friends, although I only actually was able to see one. (It did not help that I had forgotten to let people know I would be in town, and of course people have to work during the week.) On Tuesday evening we had dinner with my cousin who lives in the area, and on Wednesday we had dinner at an Indian restaurant with my one available friend. I also spent Wednesday afternoon packing up almost all the books I still had at my parents' house. There were quite a lot of them, since I had stored my books there all through college (and kept adding to my cache!). I asked my father whether he would mail the books if I boxed them up. He said yes, so I did.

On Thursday the 30th we flew back home to California. The flight was blessedly uneventful.

Last Thursday Jeff and I got our first box of vegetables from our organic CSA, Eatwell Farm (check out their farm news blog too). It's great so far, and I'm hoping this will work out well for us in the long run. You see, I don't like vegetables very much.

You might be forgiven for saying huh at this juncture. If I don't like veggies, why is more of them a good thing? Well, the fact of the matter is that I like them okay; I just don't tend to buy them. I'll go to the grocery store and kind of hem and haw and end up buying some salad greens that we sometimes don't even finish before they wilt. In terms of variety of diet, this is not a good thing.

The way the CSA works is pretty simple. I pre-pay for a certain number of boxes. On about Tuesday they pick what's ripe that week, and on Thursday I pick up my box of veggies at a pickup location on my way home from work. The farmer gets a steady source of income, and I get very fresh veggies.

Also, my vegetables are pre-selected for me, which for me is a positive feature. There are a lot of vegetables that I'll actually eat if they're presented to me but that I wouldn't usually choose on my own. Also, I tend to spend a lot of mental energy on figuring out what I'm going to cook for the next week. The CSA limits my decision space to finding ways to use what's in my box, so the decision is much simpler.

The first thing to go from last Thursday's box was the strawberries, perfectly red, ripe, and luscious. The zucchini was steamed that night and tossed with chiocciole (funny sort of macaroni-ish pasta) and pesto. Three carrots and half the spinach went into minestrone last night; the rest of the spinach, the arugula, and all of the lettuce (which is just slightly bitter) will be salad. The garlic is hanging up for storage, and the parsley is in the freezer.

So far, the vegetables have been excellent. Jeff was impressed by the zucchini, so much more flavorful than ordinary store-bought squash (I grew up on my mother's garden zucchini, so I was not as blown away). I don't like bitter greens very much, but I have been enjoying snacking on the carrots. The carrots are a bit more flexible than I expected, which weirded me out a bit because I associate flexibility in carrots with old age, but these have been very flavorful, juicy, and much easier to chop than the rock-hard stuff. (And what do I know? I've never grown carrots.)

Speaking of carrots, I think I'll have one now.

Tomorrow is my birthday, but Monday is a horrible day to have a birthday, so I’m officially celebrating it today. That means that I had a nice big breakfast, pumpkin pie for mid-afternoon snack, and sushi for dinner.

I also opened the presents that were here. (I figure that a few presents will be late, so it averages out. I don’t mind presents being late, by the way; it just makes the holiday last longer.) Mom gave me a pair of hand-knitted argyle socks, and Dad sent a handmade wooden plate, cup, and spoon. Meg gave me a stunning culinary reference book. Jeff didn’t give me a librarian action figure, because we’re together almost 24/7, and they were out of stock when he went in today. (Next shipment is Nov. 13.)

Sushi was absolutely lovely. I had the deluxe sashimi, which was a chef’s selection of the 8 freshest fish that they had that day. I chose it because it meant that I didn’t have to pick what I wanted, I knew the fish would be as fresh as possible, and it was a very good value (at least 2 pieces each of 8 kinds of sashimi, for $17). The 8 kinds were dark tuna, white tuna, salmon, scampy, scallops, octopus, squid, and clam. I’m not so keen on the squid (rubbery at first, then slimy when chewed), but everything else was lovely, including the octopus. Jeff had a bowl of tuna and rice for himself, but I made him taste the more exotic bits on my plate.

The meal was more expensive than I can afford on a regular basis but much less expensive than I had expected. It was also surprisingly filling, and Jeff says that raw meat has enzymes that vegetables don’t and that are destroyed by cooking. (He also says that he might be wrong, but he’s pretty sure on this one.) If he’s right, then I can not only relish the memory of delicious sushi but feel satisfaction that I’m nourishing my body well.