Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

I was sitting at the computer and glanced out into the yard. I saw a woodpecker and first dismissed it as a hairy, but almost immediately decided the gizz was off, so I looked closer. It was silently hammering on the side of a grand old maple tree in my woody backyard. It was brownish mottled on the belly and patterned black and white on the back. It's bill was straight and sharply pointed, very crisp to my eyes. And then I began to see some reddish blush on the throat and top of head. I don't see these woodpeckers very often so this was exciting. And even better, this bird stayed pretty much in the same spot on the same tree for hours.

Maria and Richard came and stayed overnight after we had a party at Tom and Eunice's. A YB sapsucker would be life bird for Maria but I didn't expect it to still be around the following day. There was a lot of wind in the night, lots of small branches and twigs all over and a group of neighbors' mailboxes were all askew due to either the wind or vandalism. We were watching the reconstruction at the mailbox scene when I remembered the sapsucker, looked out at the maple tree and it was there! So Maria got a good look at it.

Again, amazingly, this bird stayed in that same spot nearly the whole day. While at the computer, I need to look through a window and screen, and it was overcast today and the backyard is shady, so it looked like a clump of leaf litter hanging on the tree. Maria couldn't even see it for about 15 seconds as it was camouflaged somewhat. But when we looked closer and from a better window, it was very obvious. The white vertical "racing strip" and a suggestion of yellow belly, black and white head, with the above-menioned beginnings of red, thereby identifying this as an immature male.

Traver On Fishing by Robert Traver

Rober Traver of course is John Voelker best known for his novel Anatomy of a Murder. After that great literary success, Voelker quit his job on the Michigan Supreme Court and fly-fished, wrote, played cribbage and drank bourbon for the rest of his life. This is a collection from several of his books about how and why, where and with whom he fished and drank and played.

He is a wonderful writer, absolutely passionate about fly-fishing, specifically for native brook trout in secret places in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He is witty, observant, irreverent.

His love for the woods and waterways of the Upper Peninsula is reason enough to read his stories. Or to read a poignant lovely vignette titled The Intruder. Or to laugh out loud as he writes of his friends and neighbors, his fellow Yoopers. Or to read hundreds of fine sentences like these:

"For trout, unlike men, will not--indeed cannot--live except where beauty dwells, so that any man who would catch a trout finds himself inevitably surrounded by beauty: he can't help himself."

"Since all fishing seems inevitably to involve progressive dementia, next summer I'll doubtless do my fishing from a streamside padded cell, for diversion making up long languid leaders of out of the dangling cobwebs."

"There is no substitute for fishing sense, and if a man doesn't have it, verily, he may cast like an angel and still use his creel largely to transport sandwiches and beer."

I have always felt it would be a wondrous thing to cast dry flies on trout-water with enviable skill, but since I will never do that, reading Robert Traver is a vicarious venture into this magic.

Finding Chandra by Scott Higham and Sari Horowitz

Chandra is Chandra Levy who disappeared in the summer of 2001 near Washington, DC. This is the story of her disappearance and, for a long time, the investigation of the main (and only) suspect, Gary Condit, a Congressman from California, with whom Chandry was having an affair.

The cover hype was that this book is "Washington's In Cold Blood.." Not even close. It was mildly interesting but no one emerged as a fully drawn character. As someone said on the radio this week in another context, but it applies here: "Washington is a seductive town..." It is, and power and sexual adventures and misadventures are common threads. Almost always, it has been powerful men who mesmerize the young women who come to work in Washington, and who then succumb to these men.

In the end, Gary Condit was not the murderer, but he lost his credibility, his power and position in Congress as the case remained unsolved for so long. The police were focused on Condit far too long, all the while ignoring most other suspects. The book makes that point and also focuses on Condit. Yet, there is almost nothing written about his family and how his behavior affected them, nor all that much written about Chandry. Don't write a book about such a case if so much is left unsaid.

Chandry's remains were found nearly a year later in Rock Creek Park, very close to where Ingmar Guandique had attacked other women during the spring and summer of 2001, but the news thrill and scandal of a married congressman who was involved sexually with a young woman who had disappeared preempted rational inquiry, or so it seems.

This is another sad story recounting the vulnerability of women from sexual predators, be they deviant and brutal and murderous or members of the powerful elite known as Congress.

The Steig Larsson Trilogy

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; The Girl Who Played with Fire; The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

All the action takes place in Sweden and that alone made reading these character and action-packed novels worth my time. I felt immersed in Swedish culture: coffee drinkers to rival the Dutch; summer chalets and cabins on the water and cold winters. The more general themes were computer hacking, sexual perversion, murders, journalistic integrity, the delicate balance between law enforcement and media, a more relaxed attitude towards sex (quite different from Christine O'Donnell's views), the proximity of Russia and the Baltic countries, and the intrigue of old crimes and modern punishments. I escaped for several days into this world.

The "girl" is Lisbeth Salander, an unlikely protagonist. Pierced and tattooed and socially inept, Lisbeth had been dismissed and discarded by most of society. She is now an adult and her character and her personal history were slowly developed in these novels. I was slightly weary of it all by the time I finished the last book but, for the most part, the plots, the many interesting and believable characters and the immersion into the Swedish landscape held my interest to the end.

Marinated Eggplant

Hmmmmm... While eggplant is quite a lovely color and an interesting-looking vegetable, I have not cooked with it more than once or twice. This dish is an appetizer. I sliced the eggplant, baked it and then immediately added garlic, dill, marjoram, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil and pepper, sprinkling all of these on the tops of the slices. Mollie says "...the ingredients will be in peak harmony" if it sits in refrigerator overnight. So that's what I did and the flavor harmony did happen. Unfortunately, this dish still did not make me an eggplant fan. It was just OK. I wondered if I would have been able to tell what I was eating if I were blindfolded. The texture is not firm, a bit soggy, and this diminished the appeal for me. Still, everyone has different tastes and it might appeal to some. It was much better eaten at room temperature than right from the refrigerator.

I suspect if one is writing a cookbook or is a chef and her main work is trying to creatively combine food ingredients, one has quite a different perspective on the issues of tastiness and successful recipes. How many tastings do they have on each recipe? How often have they made a particular dish? If they run a restaurant, how often is a recipe like Marinated Eggplant offered and what has been the feedback?

I am learning a lot about food combinations/preparations that I would never have tried were I not doing this. I am learning about fresh herbs and the utter importance of having at least one good KNIFE. I am learning about YEAST and kneading.

The timer is buzzing. My latest bread is about to come out of the oven and it smells damn good!

Tuscan Bean Soup

This was delicious! I used dried white beans, which soaked several hours, garlic, celery, carrots, green beans and a few odds and ends (salt, pepper, basil, lemon juice). The only thing I would do differently would be to add 1/2 to 1 cup more liquid. An easy, hearty, delicious fall soup. If this were made on a Saturday, it would be an easy nourishing supper meal a couple of nights during the upcoming week.

(I used Great Northern beans and they made a nice color contrast with the green beans and carrots.)

Cheese Nut Pate

Mollie says she thinks she has made this pate "more than any other recipe in the book." If so, she and I have quite different ideas of what is a success. This was definitely not something I would make again. It is something one would make and serve for a party. I am glad I didn't do that at any of my many soirees...

For the recipe, I mixed cream cheese, cottage cheese, cheddar cheese, a bit of minced onion, ground almonds and walnuts, lime juice, mustard, a bit of melted butter, dill, salt and pepper, baked it and then the idea was to garnish the whole thing, after extracting it from the loaf pan. Says Mollie, "The pate should emerge in one piece. If it breaks, you can easily mold it back together." I knew right then after reading this that it wouldn't unmold nicely and it didn't.

The garnish base is bland ricotta cheese spread all over the crumbly unstable load, after which one plays with nuts, olives radishes, cucumber slices and parsley to make it decorative (I guess). I admit I didn't do that since I hadn't made it for a group. Perhaps it might have been a bit more festive-looking at least. Mine looked like a salmon loaf, had only a mild, boring taste and it crumbled easily. I finally mixed the ricotta into the whole de-loafed shebang and tried a couple more times trying to convince myself it wasn't too bad. And it wasn't, but it wasn't that good either. I took some to the Wetzels and we never even tried it up there. I eventually threw too much in the garbage. I hate to do this, but....

So it goes when one is cooking one's way through a cookbook.