Tag Archives: food

Gone to the Birds

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A little bit about the birds in my life.

This morning, my rooster started crowing at 4:03 AM. I know this because I heard him. We’re getting on to the time of year when you can leave windows open all night. I think one of the bedroom windows must be open a crack because I heard him quite clearly this morning. I was already awake, of course, so it didn’t really bother me. It just reminded me that I have a rooster. And it made me wonder whether my new neighbors — the folks that moved into the pink house on 328th Avenue — could hear him. And whether he bothered them.

My closest neighbors must hear him pretty good. I asked them once if he bothered them and they assured me that he didn’t. They like the sound. That’s good to know. But when you consider that he does most of his crowing before sunrise, it makes you wonder how early they get up.

One of my other neighbors had a rooster for a while. I could tell because I’d hear crowing far off sometimes, when it wasn’t my rooster. Then the crowing stopped and I knew the coyotes had paid Mr. Rooster a visit.

The coyotes have paid my chickens numerous visits. The first time was way back with my first batch of 8 chickens, all hens, which I used to let out during the day. They’d come down the driveway to where the horses live and spend the morning scratching around in the sand for bugs and other chicken delicacies. One afternoon, when they all came back to roost, there were only five of them. Three had disappeared without a trace. You’d think the horses would protect them, but no. Horses have no interest in chickens.

A funny story here. Every night during the summer’s monsoon season, we have to move our horses out of their lower corral, because it’s in a flood zone, to spend the night in their much smaller upper corral. The upper corral has fence-hung feeders. I’d go to the upper corral in the evening and prepare it by adding hay and a grain mixture we call “bucket” to each feeder before bringing up the horses. The chickens were usually out and about and even though they don’t have enough brains to fill a shot glass, they figured out that there was grain in the feeders. So once in a while, they’d hop up there and scratch around a bit. One day, when I brought the horses up, Jake, our unflappable Quarter Horse, stuck his head in his feeder to get at the grain and immediately pulled it out. A chicken popped out, onto the ground, and ran away. Jake seemed to let out a deep sigh before he stuck his head back in for dinner.

I currently have three hens and a rooster. Over the years, I’ve lost lots of chickens to coyotes, which is why a coyote tail hangs from my Honda’s rearview mirror. More recently, however, the problem has been my neighbor’s dogs. I like my neighbors and I like their dogs. We live outside the town limits, at the end of a dead-end road. There are only three houses out here and we all have dogs. Although leashes are technically required — this is Maricopa County — none of us pay much attention to that. Instead, we’ve trained our dogs to stay nearby. Dogs don’t necessarily understand property lines, so our dogs occasionally stray onto each others’ property. No big deal there. My neighbor’s dogs, Bo and Trixie, often come up to my house to visit my dog, Jack. Sometimes they go down to the wash and play together. They play rough — too rough for my brother’s dog, who came to visit for Thanksgiving. But they have fun and they don’t really bother anyone.

That is, until Bo and Trixie discovered that if they dug under the fence, they could get at the chickens. The fence was my effort to contain the chickens so the coyotes would stop getting them. Coyotes are evidently lazy and are not interested in the hard labor of digging under a fence. Bo and Trixie, on the other hand, like to dig. The chickens gave them a reward for good digging. So one day, they dug under the fence, got in, and had a good chicken dinner, leaving only two live chickens behind as mute witnesses.

At first, I thought the coyotes had done the dirty deed. But then I realized that whoever had done it had left parts. Coyotes don’t leave parts. They take the whole chicken in their mouth and trot off with it. I’ve seen them do this. But I wasn’t putting two and two together yet so I figured it was the coyotes. So we reinforced the bottom of the fence with stakes and filled in the holes and got some more chickens, including the current rooster.

One day around Thanksgiving, I’m lounging around the house with my house guests and there’s a knock on the door. That in itself is amazing; no one ever knocks on our door. No one can ever find our house. If you know where our house is, it’s likely that you know us well enough to just open the door and holler “Hello?” I opened the door and found my neighbor’s three little kids standing there. They’re aged 4 to 8 or something like that. Two boys and their older sister. “Our dogs are eating your chickens,” they reported.

I threw on my shoes and ran down the driveway, followed closely by my brother and whoever else was around. Sure enough, the dogs were in the chicken yard. But these chickens had some survival skills — quite impressive for chickens — and had retreated into the upper part of the coop. The dogs were unable to catch them.

We got the dogs out and secured the chickens in the upper coop, where I knew they’d be safe. We patched up the hole Bo and Trixie had made. And a few weeks later, we installed an electric fence around the outside bottom edge of the fenced-in yard. I was there one day when Bo touched it. He went yelping back home and didn’t return for over a week. Needless to say, they don’t try getting into the chicken coop anymore.

The chickens, however, must be traumatized by all these close calls. Only one of the three hens lays eggs. I get about 5 eggs a week from her. The other two are freeloaders. They don’t know how lucky they are. My chicken-raising book advises you to eat the chickens that stop laying.

PhotoI also have a bird in the house. Alex the Bird is an African Grey parrot. As I type this at my kitchen table, Alex is practicing his vocabulary. “Jack, no! You’re bad! Are you cranky? Hello Mikey. Are you a duck? Gimme that thing. Jack, no! Alex! Hey goober. Fatso. Come on Jack. Wanna go upside down? Are you a chicken? Are you a cow? Are you a cranky bird? Ricky bird. Alex, are you cranky? Alex is a maniac. Okay, Alex the Bird. Hello. Hey, you goober. See you later alligator.” You get the idea. He’s 2-1/2 years old and he says a ton of stuff. In fact, he’s forgotten half of what he used to know. It’s pretty amazing considering that he’ll live to be about 50. By the time I’m dead and gone, he’ll be talking better than most people I know.

Alex also does sound effects, like the dog whining, my cell phone, and the squeal of the back screen door (which no longer squeals, but Alex squeals anyway every time we open it). He whistles pretty darn good, too. Right now, I’m teaching him the theme for the “Andy Griffith Show,” which I downloaded from the Internet. Every once in a while, I play it a few times for him. He practices in the morning — like right now — and I repeat back the part he’s trying to do to reinforce the correct stuff.

African Grey parrots are incredible companion pets. They thrive on attention and will learn to say whatever you take the time to teach them. Like all other birds, they’re messy, but if you have a dog that likes bird food, a lot of the mess is cleaned up as it happens. Every morning, in fact, when Alex has his breakfast (scrambled eggs), he drops half of it on the floor where Jack is waiting to gobble it up. Sometimes I think he drops the food on purpose just to watch Jack.

Unlike the typical African Grey (at least according to most books and articles I’ve read), Alex is extremely affectionate and likes to be cuddled. I hug him every morning before I put him back in his cage for the day and every night before I put him back in his cage for bed. He also likes to play rough. I hold him upside down by his feet and tickle his belly. Although he makes some fussy noises sometimes — his way of saying, “Cut that out!” — I know he likes it. It’s the attention, I think. He trusts me and knows I won’t hurt him. So although our rough play should be scary to him, it isn’t.

There are a lot of wild birds around Wickenburg, too. Hummingbirds abound. I used to keep feeders filled for them, but I’ve been slacking off. I don’t spend enough time at home to watch them. There are also quail, doves, Gila woodpeckers, thrushes, orioles, and more others than I know. When I had my office in the house, I recall looking up out the window one morning to see a Gambels quail dad leading his six or seven baby chicks to a shady spot in my flower garden. I watched them lounge for quite a while, transfixed. The babies were so cute! Then dad decided to move the troop on and they hopped out of sight.

We also have roadrunners here, although I don’t see them very often. Roadrunners are most often found in sandy washes and places where they can find lizards and snakes, which they eat. I was in Lake Havasu City the other day, chatting with some folks at the Nautical Inn when we spotted a roadrunner standing on the deck of a building less than 50 feet away. One of the men told us a story about an exchange between a roadrunner and a coyote that he had witnessed. The two animals faced off with a long chain-link fence between them. The roadrunner made cackling noises, and walked back and forth on his side of the fence, teasing the coyote. The coyote walked back and forth. Little by little, the roadrunner and coyote got closer and closer to the end of the fence. Finally, the coyote seized his chance. He took off, darting around the edge of the fence. But the roadrunner was quicker. He took off (they do know how to fly) and sailed over the fence, landing on the other side. Then they faced off again, on opposite sides of the fence, and the roadrunner started cackling all over again. It was quite clear who was smarter (in case those cartoons didn’t convince you) and the roadrunner was definitely having some fun at the coyote’s expense.

We don’t get many birds in the yard anymore, probably because of Jack the Dog. He chases all animals out of the yard. That’s okay, though. There are plenty of other places for them to go. I’m sure I could get some back if I put out seed for them, but Jack is actually quite good at catching doves and I really don’t want to see any more dead doves on my doorstep. (And they say cats are bad.)There are three red tailed hawks in the area. They live near the golf course on Steinway Road. I often see them together on the power lines there. The are also turkey vultures in town. They just got back from wherever it is that they go for the winter. They look wonderful in flight and many observers mistake them for hawks. But there’s no mistaking them when they’re on the ground around a dead cow. They’re downright ugly!We have owls, too. There was one that lived in the state land out behind my house. Every evening, just after sunset, he’d fly out for his nighttime hunt. He’d land on a tree behind our house and hoot for a bit, then soar past our house and land on the top of a power pole on 328th Avenue. We saw him nearly every day for weeks. And we often saw or heard him coming in early in the morning. But one day, he misjudged his landing on the power pole. His wings evidently touched the power lines in just the wrong way. Fried. We found him on the ground near the power pole. The next day, his body was gone.

That’s the way things are here in the desert. Every animal — dead or alive — is a meal for another animal. Nature keeps a delicate balance here that really isn’t a balance at all. For example, because of all the rain we’re having, there’s a lot of grass. That means there’s plenty of food for the rabbits. That means there will be plenty of rabbits this spring and summer. Rabbits are good food for coyotes. So next year, there will be lots of coyotes. It happened the last time we had an El Niño year, so I know what to expect.

That’s all for now; I need my second cup of coffee. And my rooster is crowing again.

Will [Try to] Fly for Food

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A full moon journey to Falcon Field is spoiled by restaurant operating hours.

The idea is simple. Wait until the moon is just about full, then take a sunset flight down to Falcon Field in Mesa, AZ, have dinner at Anzio’s Landing restaurant there, and fly back in the light of the full moon.

We’ve done it many times before in the R22. But now we had two extra seats. We could share the experience with friends.

John and Lorna couldn’t come. Lorna has the cold John had last week and she just wanted to rest up for the trip to Quartzsite the next day. So we asked Stan and his wife Rosemary. They said yes. The plan was to meet us at Wickenburg Airport at 5 PM. I’d left the helicopter out, so it was just a matter of a quick preflight and safety briefing before we loaded up and flew out.

At 4:45, I decided to call Anzio’s, just to make sure we could get a table. The phone rang at least eight times before a machine answered. The short story: Anzio’s was closed that night. It would be open on Sunday nights starting next weekend. Sheesh.

Time for plan B: the restaurant at Scottsdale Airport. Scottsdale is a bit closer, but I don’t particularly care to land at the airport there. For one thing, the tower controllers tend to be very cranky. I think they hate helicopters. Second, they don’t let helicopters park anywhere near the restaurant. So that meant walking a quarter mile or more. But the food at the restaurant there is relatively good and I could deal with cranky controllers. I’d done it plenty of times before. Better make sure they’re open.

The phone rang seven times before a machine answered. They close at 5 PM on Sundays.

Deer Valley and Glendale both have restaurants. But I wasn’t interested in eating at either of those, even if they were open. I wanted a nicer dining experience. Although Sedona is nicer, I wasn’t keen on crossing three mountain ranges in the dark for the return trip. So it looked as if we weren’t flying for food.

Mike called Stan and spoke to Rosemary. They decided on a local restaurant. With the possibility of a flight afterward, I decided.

So we ate at House Berlin, which is one of my favorite restaurants in town. I had the walleye, which was excellent as usual. Mike had the wiener schnitzel. (House Berlin is the only restaurant in town with veal on its menu.) Stan and Rosemary had sauerbraten and pork medallions respectively. Everything looked and tasted great. So at least the dinner portion of our evening was saved.

Afterwards, we headed out to the airport. It was dark, but not completely dark yet — we could still see lightness on the western horizon. The moon was out and nearly full (it fills out in two days), but there were a few clouds up there with it. They were light, thin clouds, the kind the moon could shine through anyway. I used a flashlight to check the fluids and we all climbed in. After starting up and warming up, I made a radio call and we took off into the night.

This was the first time I’d flown a helicopter away from Wickenburg at night. I usually fly back and that’s usually from Falcon Field. So it was extremely odd to head southeast, with the moon shining right into the cockpit. The moon reflected off the water running in the Hassayampa River, making it look like a glowing ribbon below us as we crossed. Once we left the lights of Wickenburg, I followed Grand Avenue and then Carefree Highway. The rough plan was to head out to Deer Valley. I punched it into the GPS so I could aim right for it. At night, Phoenix is a sea of lights and a GPS is a good tool to help find one set of lights among the others.

We saw Lake Pleasant to our left. The moonlight reflected off the water magnificently. We crossed over the dirt track near Pleasant Valley Airport and near the three dirt runways of that darkened field. The moon was lighting up the desert, making it possible to see some of the details of the terrain. But high clouds kept the moon from being really bright, so the experience was not as impressive as it usually is.

Seven miles out of Deer Valley, I called the tower and requested a transition down I-17 to the Loop 101 with a turn there to the west. The transition was approved — Deer Valley was dead quiet — and we agreed on an altitude. By that time, I’d entered the light zone and we were surrounded by light. Instead of the moon illuminating the cockpit, ground lights did the job. I followed my intended route as the controller talked to an inbound Bonanza pilot and a police helicopter that was probably on the south tower frequency. Then we were heading West, away from the airport. The controller approved a frequency change without me even asking. I wished him good night and continued the flight over the Loop 101.

During the whole flight, all of us were talking. Well, to be honest, it was mostly Mike and Stan. Rosemary was very quiet and, for a while, I thought she might be nervous. But the flight was smooth and I was flying about 500 feet higher than I fly in that area during the day, so we weren’t very close to the ground. Nothing to be nervous about, unless she’s just nervous flying at night. I know a lot of pilots who won’t fly at night. I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not only is it depriving the pilot of a wonderful experience, but it’s preventing the pilot from ever getting comfortable flying at night. He’ll never be able to fly at night, even if he has to, if he doesn’t get comfortable doing it.

Of course, I cheat. Most of my night flights are with a full moon providing plenty of illumination. The horizon is easy to see and there are usually at least some ground lights for reference. I’d have to have either poor vision or a bad brain to lose track of which side was up.

We left the lights after Sun City West and headed toward Wickenburg. I didn’t even have to punch it into the GPS. Grand Avenue was to our left and Carefree Highway was ahead of us. I flew over the proving grounds, where cars or trucks were driving around the track in the dark. That’s when I noticed that it wasn’t quite as clear as it had been when we left Wickenburg. The clouds had thickened up a bit and there seemed to be some haze down in the valleys. The horizon wasn’t the fine line it usually was.

After Morristown, we followed Grand Avenue back into town. I turned on the runway lights, made a call into the airport, and followed Sols Wash northwest, to avoid flying right over the houses. I was about 300 feet higher than I usually was, so my descent to runway 23 was a bit steep. But it was smooth and before long we were parked on one of the helipads and I was cooling Zero-Mike-Lima down.

We’d been out for about 40 minutes. It had been a nice flight. Stan and Rosemary really seemed to enjoy it.

I left Zero-Mike-Lima out for the night — it was cold and neither Mike nor I had brought a jacket. I’d put it away in the morning. We finished the evening with a drink and more conversation at Stan and Rosemary’s house.

Eat Cheese

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My cheese is delivered and I have a cheese tasting dinner with friends.

The cheese (referred to in a previous blog entry) arrived on Thursday. It came in a box fitted around a Styrofoam cooler that contained the cheese and a reusable ice pack. The cheese was still cool, despite its long trip from PA via FedEx but the box was stinky, like you’d expect a box of moldy cheese to smell.

Moldy is a strong word. Blue-veined is the word the cheese descriptions use. It appears that I’ve hit that magical age where a person starts liking blue-veined cheese. Oddly enough, Mike has, too.

John and Lorna came for our cheese dinner. I put out an assortment of crackers and some sliced french bread. And the cheeses. Not only the four I’d bought online from iGourmet.com, but two others I’d bought locally.

Here’s my cheese review.

Amarello is a sheep’s milk cheese from Portugal. I bought it because I’d never had sheep’s milk cheese. It has a semi-firm texture and a rather sharp (to my palette), salty flavor. It reminded me of a cross between Provolone and Romano. I give it a thumbs down.

Brie is a soft cheese found in many places. I bought this particular brie at the local Safeway supermarket. They have several brands there and I know from experience that I like the store-brand “Primo Talgio” the best. I put it on the serving plate beside Coulommiers, a French cheese described in the catalog as the “ancestor of all bries.” When tasted side by side with the brie, it had a much more complex flavor and an interesting finish. I give both a thumbs up, but the Coulommiers gets a bigger thumbs up.

Saga is a blue-veined, brie-like cheese. I bought it at Safeway. It’s one of my favorites. It has an interesting flavor and should not be eaten with brie as it makes the brie taste bland by comparison. Thumbs up.

Morbier is the cheese that started me on this cheese quest. It’s a French cow’s milk cheese that has a unique appearance — a blue line running horizontally across its center. This cheese was the big hit of the evening. Everyone liked it. Even John, who has extremely conservative tastes in food. This cheese not only gets a thumbs up, but it will likely be on every future order.

Gorgonzola Dolce is a very soft Italian cheese that has a strong flavor and even stronger aroma. I think this was the cheese that, despite its double-wrapping, stunk up the box. I like this cheese, but I don’t think it’s because I like the flavor. It think I like the difference of the flavor. I’m always interested in eating something different and this definitely is different. I give it a thumbs up for that reason, but a thumbs down because the piece they sent is so enormous that I’ll be eating it for longer than I probably want to. I’ll probably try different gorgonzolas in the future. Smaller ones.

My cheese experiment cost about $60, including the locally bought cheeses and crackers. I have enough cheese left to do it again, several times, Mike and I will probably work through them over the next week or so.

I’ll probably do this once a month or so, just to build up my knowledge of cheeses and enjoy their flavors.

Got any recommendations? Use the comments link or form for this post.

Say Cheese!

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My love for cheese has me shopping online.

I love cheese. Not the kind you buy in the supermarket’s deli counter: American, Swiss, cheddar, etc. Not really even the kind you buy at the supermarket’s cheese display: brie, Gouda, Havarti, Fontina, etc. (Although I admit I’m fond of Saga, which is available in one of Wickenburg’s supermarkets.) I like the kind of cheese available in cheese or gourmet shops, the kind imported from all over the world, the kind with complex flavors and interesting histories. The cheese that’s very difficult to get when you live in a small town on the edge of nowhere.

Oddly enough, Wickenburg’s Safeway store — the better of the two supermarkets in town — has a big cheese display and a rather impressive assortment of supermarket-type cheeses. It’s there that I can find the pseudo-fresh mozzarella that goes so good with tomatoes and fresh basil, the Saga that’s so nice on a crispy cracker, the double-creme brie that’s wonderful melted onto a slice of toasted French bread, and the goat cheese that tastes so nice melted on a Boboli crusted topped with olive-oil sauteed eggplant and garlic. That cheese display can meet most of my cheese needs, but not my cheese desires. I like to eat cheese as a meal itself and after a while, the supermarket cheese selections get about as boring as the supermarket meat department selections.

When we were out in California for the New Year, we stumbled into a cheese shop at La Jolla Shores. The shop had lost its original purpose. Although named “Cheese Shop,” it had clearly turned into a combination gourmet grocery store and deli. There were very few cheeses to choose from. In fact, I think Safeway has far more. But among the selections was a cheese called Morbier. We bought some, I ate some, and I remembered how much I liked cheese.

When we got home, I searched the yellow pages listings online to find a cheese shop in Phoenix. The closest I could find was A.J.’s supermarket. A.J.’s does indeed have a more expansive selection of cheeses than Safeway, but it doesn’t satisfy my cheese desires. Besides, A.J.’s prices tend to be outrageous. The Saga you buy there costs about twice the price of the Saga in Safeway. And it’s the same stuff. So how much is that other stuff overpriced?

Not to say that I shop for cheese based on price. Price doesn’t stop me from buying a cheese I really want, but it does prevent me from buying a lot of it.

Not satisfied with the Yellow Pages results, I went online with Google to search for cheese shops. I found a place called DiBruno Brothers, based in New York. Of course, I couldn’t remember what Morbier was called, but I remember what it looked like. (It has a very distinctive appearance.) And I remembered that its name began with an “M.” So I browsed DiBruno’s Web site until I found Morbier and clicked the Add to Cart button. Then I shopped around and bought a few more cheeses based on their description and checked out.

Shipping for my order was supposed to be $9, which I thought was very reasonable. But the next day I got an e-mail from DiBruno telling me that they had to charge me $10 more for shipping. I don’t like “bait and switch” tactics — which this appeared to be — so I cancelled my order. No Morbier for me.

That was about two weeks ago.

igourmet.comYesterday, after munching on some Saga and longing for something different, I tried again. I found a Web site called Cheeses.com, which has all kinds of information about cheese. From there, I followed a link to iGourmet.com. I searched for Morbier, found it cheaper than DiBruno’s, and clicked the Add to Cart button. More cheese went into my digital shopping cart before I checked out. Shipping via FedEx is a reasonable $12.45, so the whole thing didn’t cost a fortune. Well, it did cost more than steak dinner for two at Charlie’s, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it a lot more.

I wish there was a cheese shop locally, one where I could buy the cheeses and other unusual “gourmet” items I like to eat without leaving town. But if Phoenix and Scottsdale can’t support a cheese shop, I can’t very well expect Wickenburg to. Especially when the most affluent businesses Wickenburg can attract these days are Dollar Stores and Check Cashing Places.

On Dieting

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I lose weight, then gain some back, then work on losing it again.

Throughout my life I’ve been lucky where weight is concerned.

First of all, I was always thin. I was the kind of kid who could eat a ton and still stay relatively slim. And back when I was in college, I had my metabolism up so high that I couldn’t help but lose weight. For a while, I was almost skeletal. Without being anorexic or (heaven forbid) bulimic.

Second, at 5’8″ tall, I can weigh a lot and carry it very well. The long legs help that a lot. Heck, put me in a pair of black jeans and a black shirt and no one even has to know I’m overweight.

As I got older, things changed. Unfortunately, they changed very slowly and I came to accept it. 5 pounds here, a larger pants size there. Over a period of 10 years, my weight crept up and up and I accepted every pound and inch. I won’t say I was happy about it, but I certainly didn’t think about dieting. After all, I’d never needed a diet before.

I reached my high of 180 lbs after a cruise two and a half years ago. I felt terrible. I looked terrible. And it didn’t help that the woman from the other couple we cruised with was a “stringbean” — a name my grandfather used to apply to me.

I tried one of those starvation diets with special foods and supplements. It was called Fit for Life. Jeez. How can people do that? I remember eating a 3-ounce serving of meat one night for dinner. It was so tiny, I could barely find it on my plate. Actually, that’s a lie. There was so little food on my plate that night, the 3 ounces of meat stood out like an olive on an empty plate. And frankly, the supplements and special foods cost a fortune and tasted like garbage. Sure, you can lose weight if you stick to it. But you’ll soon be out of money and wondering what real food tastes like.

Results? I lost 8 pounds in two weeks, then couldn’t lose another ounce. I lost interest when the food ran out and I needed to make a trip down to Phoenix to get more.

Next, I tried Atkins. I don’t care what anyone says: Atkins works. At least for the first 10-15 pounds. That’s what I lost and it stayed off for quite a while — a few months, at least. But I couldn’t lose more. And then I started working at the Grand Canyon and noshing an awful lot between flights. The guys would buy these jello puddings in tiny cups. I had to get some, too. And frozen dinner entrees like pot pies you could nuke and then pick up and eat like a sandwich became a lot easier than making salad for lunch every morning before work. So although I lost 15 pounds, I gained almost 10 of them back in two months, just working at the GC.

The other day, I weighed myself. 169 lbs. I’d been down to 159 at one time. My “I’ll be happy with it” goal was 150. My “I’d love to be there” goal was 140. I wasn’t going to get there eating pot pies and pudding.

So I’m back on Atkins and drinking a TON of water. In fact, my primary exercise is walking from my desk to the bathroom about 12 times a day. And filling my water glass. I lost 5 lbs in 3 days. I know I won’t keep up that pace. But I do want to get back down to 160 before I go back to the GC. And start eating salad with lots of meat and cheese again.

I just wonder how I’m going to handle all those bathroom breaks when I’m flying.