Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
These experimental fritters were a part of two separate quests — the quest for a hearty breakfast low in simple carbs, and the quest for traditional comfort foods that use sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes. Potato salad using sweet potatoes was totally agreeable. This morning I made fried potato cakes with sweet potatoes. As with the potato salad, make them exactly as you would make them with white potatoes. These have some chopped onion, egg for binder, and flaxseed meal as a stiffener.
A galette, traditional in Perpignan during L’Épiphanie.
From my friend in Perpignan, here’s another installment in the series “What they’re eating in the south of France.” Above: a breakfast/lunch baguette with cheese and salad, with coffee.
Basmati rice with lentils, corn, and scallops
Tiramisu ice cream
I was away from North Carolina for 17 years, so I’d forgotten that the local flora is by no means completely dead during the winter. We’ve had a series of warm, wet days, but we’ve also had many nights with lows in the low 20s, with the lowest temperature I’ve recorded so far 16.3F. Not only has a lot of my new grass stayed green during the winter, it’s actually grown a little.
Peppermint can’t be beaten down.
Clover slows way down in the winter, but it winters over, green.
Exuberant grasses
I don’t know what this is, but I have a lot of it, and it thrives during the winter.
In this spot, two bales of straw that defended a raw ditch this spring are now melting into the grassy soil.
Past one of the arbor vitae trees (planted in March), something wicked this way comes.
The straw covers the area where the final grading around the house was done in late October. This newest grass planting has made slow progress all winter.
In the ashes of burnt construction scraps, grass thrives.
I think I found a use for those dry hummus mixes. They’re healthy, and they store well, and they make good earthquake or ice storm food for the cupboard, but they’re terrible hummus. Only fresh hummus is worthwhile. However, these mixes make a good binding for vegetable fritters. The fritter above is chopped broccoli, chopped cauliflower (both cooked until just tender) and chopped onions. The vegetables are bound with the instant hummus, and I added egg to make the fritters set from the heat of the frying pan. Fritters are real nice to have when you’ve just got to have something a bit crunchy and fried. These fritters are low carb, low glycemic, and cruciferous to boot. It shouldn’t be hard to make a vegan version if you can find a suitable substitute for the egg.
A great blue heron (Wikipedia)
I got out of the Jeep in the driveway in front of my house earlier today, and the biggest bird I’ve ever seen lifted off from the front gable of my house and lumbered out over the woods like an overloaded 747. It was huge, with a five-foot wingspan or more. It almost certainly was a great blue heron. If a stork on one’s roof is a sign of good luck, I believe I’ll assume that a heron is good luck too.
I have a lot of work to do learning to recognize bird species. A few days ago I saw a pileated woodpecker. They too are an impressive bird, and they make a wild, gooney-bird sound in the woods.
It speaks well of the health and variety of the local habitat that such a wide range of species can be seen here. I was amused, listening to Bill Moyers interview Michael Pollan recently, to hear Pollan say that in areas where there is an overpopulation of white-tail deer (like here), hunting them and eating them is good food policy. From bears to foxes, we’ve got them here. The little streams seem healthy, with plenty of minnows and tadpoles this spring.
The heron left a heron-size poop streak on the roof of the house.
This is Rockford Methodist Church, built in 1913. It’s in the little town of Rockford, close to the Yadkin River. Note the chimney. Not all old wooden churches of this vintage have chimneys. I have not been inside this church, so I don’t know what kind of stove might be, or might have been, inside.
Have you ever been to a high school drama production that wasn’t fun? I thought not. What’s that? Some of you say you haven’t been to a high school drama production? Then you have missed an important piece of Americana.
The local high school did “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” and a young neighbor who had the role of Lady Plymdale invited me to go.
What magic, to be so young, rather the the Wildean old curmudgeon that some of us are.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
The track I followed today to Walnut Cove, then to Sauratown Mountain (getting lost on the way), then back home past Hanging Rock State Park and through Danbury.
I’ve made some improvements in my “Where’s David” GPS system that make it practical for me to use the system any time the Jeep is on the road.
The old system used a Garmin eTrex Legend handheld GPS device. When I wanted to use it, I had to make sure the Garmin device’s batteries were charged, put it in the back window of the Jeep, and plug it into the VHF transceiver. I wanted a system permanently hooked to the Jeep and drawing the Jeep’s power, the same way the VHF transceiver is hooked up.
The GPS device I previously used, now retired — a Garmin eTrex Legend
The new GPS device — a Trimble Placer 450
The new GPS device, a Trimble Placer 450, is made for permanent installation in vehicles. The devices are made for the commercial fleet-tracking market. I connected it to the Jeep’s wiring, and it’s safely mounted in the trunk of the Jeep along with my VHF transceiver. The Placer unit also has an exterior antenna, so it gets stronger signals from the GPS satellites
The Placer GPS unit’s satellite antenna, outside on the back of the Jeep
The control panel for the VHF transceiver is mounted above the windshield
The VHF transceiver’s antenna is on a short mast on the back of the Jeep
Sauratown Mountain
How it works: The Placer GPS unit monitors the Jeep’s position, speed, heading, and altitude. The Placer GPS unit constantly sends this data to the VHF transceiver, a Kenwood TM-D700, through a wired serial connection. Every so many minutes, the TM-D700 transmits an AX.25 APRS packet on a ham frequency reserved for this purpose — 144.390 Mhz. These packets are almost always heard by a ham “digipeater” or internet gateway station which puts the location information into an Internet database operated by hams. Once this is in the database, anyone can look at, and map, the data. Amateur radio transmissions, by law, are open to all who want to listen. One must have an amateur radio license to operate the VHF transceiver and make the transmissions, though. That is, a license is required to transmit, but anyone can listen. The Kenwood TM-D700 is well suited to this GPS location mechanism, because it has built-in digital capabilities, with a device called a “terminal node controller.”
About Sauratown Mountain: Stokes County has its own little mountain range, the Sauratown Mountains. Two of these mountains, Hanging Rock and Pilot Mountain, are state parks. However, one of the mountains, Sauratown Mountain, has been used for decades as a site for radio and television antenna towers. On a clear day, one can see 60 miles or more. Since VHF radio frequencies follow a line of sight, from the top of Sauratown Mountain one can communicate nicely on VHF frequencies. While I was on Sauratown Mountain this morning testing the new system, I spoke with KG4IXS, who is 16 miles northeast of Danville, Virginia, almost 70 miles away. The Kenwood transceiver can, of course, handle both digital and voice communication.
How to find David: There are a couple of links to the right here on the blog under “Where’s David?”
Continuing in the category of who’s eating what where, here’s another shot of what they’re eating on Maui, with another cat as bonus. This is Phatboi, who I suspect got fat off of something other than pineapples and limes.
Send me your who’s-eating-what-and-where photos! But please, mind the quality of your photography. Whatever your subject is, get up as close to it as possible and frame it nicely. Attend to your foreground and background. There’s a world of difference between a photograph and a snapshot. One is art. The other is, well, practice until you learn to make art with your camera.