Tag Archives: war

Vichyssoise

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Another cold soup.

Mike and I got on the cold soup kick the other day when I made gazpacho. We decided to try a few different cold soups for dinner, leaving the big meal of the day to lunch time (when it really should be eaten).

So I got online and did a Google search for cold soup recipes. I wound up on a page at allrecipes.com with a list of cold soups. I printed off a few recipes that sounded good. But the one I decided to try first was for vichyssoise, a leek and potato soup. The recipe was submitted to the site by Derek Parker and had a rating of 5 out of 5 stars.

The soup was quick and easy to make. I followed the recipe quite closely and was rewarded with an extremely tasty soup. We had it for dinner last night and I just had a little post-lunch snack of some more.

If you try this recipe, serve it with a crusty bread, like a loaf of French bread. That’s the only thing it needed to make a perfect summer meal.

Stanley, ID

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Yet another photo from my midlife crisis road trip.

I rolled into Stanley, ID one day on the second half of my trip. I’d started the day in McCall, ID, and would end it in Sheridan, MT. According to my notes, I drove 452 miles that day. It was one of the longest driving days of the trip.

Stanley, IDI was immediately struck by the beauty of Stanley. It was a nice, small town with the Salmon River running through it. The Sawtooth Mountains bordered the area to the southwest, the direction I’d come from.

Stanley has an airport, which I was quick to check out. Unfortunately, the elevation there is 6403. Although that’s fine for operations in my helicopter at less than max gross weight, heavy loads at high temperatures affect performance at that altitude. It would limit my capabilities. And, after all, the whole reason for my trip was to find a summer (or year round) place to live and operate my business. Stanley, although beautiful, was not the answer.

I took this picture as I was heading out of town. I stopped alongside the road, got out of the car, and pointed the camera back toward town. Down along the river, two people were riding by on horseback with a pair of dogs. The drive so far that day had been very refreshing, following one mountain stream or river after another. Although I didn’t know it then, in less than 3 days I’d be back in the desert, missing all that flowing water.

Sheridan, MT

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At a friend’s ranch.

My August 2005 road trip (which still hasn’t made it to this blog), took me all over the northwest. On the way back, I decided to stop in and visit our friend Lynn. Her husband, Ray, had been partners with Mike (my husband) on a Grumman Tiger airplane. At the time, Ray and Lynn lived in town. They decided to move — or maybe Lynn did — and they bought a house on some acreage in Sheridan, MT.

I arrived at Lynn’s doorstep after a very long day in the car. I’d started at McCall, ID and had driven along one scenic road after another. In Idaho, most roads don’t run east to west. They run north to south between mountain ranges. (Or at least that’s how it seemed to me.) So I did a lot of zig-zagging up and down the state of Idaho before crossing the Continental Divide at Chief Joseph Pass.

I’d been told that Ray and Lynn’s house was in Dillon, MT, so that’s where I headed. When I got there and called for directions, I learned that I was still about 30 miles away. I finally found the place in the foothills of the Tobacco Root Mountains, near the Beaverhead National Forest.

Sheridan, MTLynn got me settled in and we had some wine by one of the two creeks that flowed past her house. Then we went for a walk in her alfalfa field. This is the view from the end of the field, looking back toward her house.

I can’t remember how many acres they have there, but I can remember the color: green. There was a lot of water in the area and with the right irrigation equipment, they were able to grow two crops of alfalfa a year. That was more than enough than they needed for their horses (which graze in a separate field). So they hired a guy to cut the alfalfa twice a year. He gets half the crop for payment and they sell the other half to pay their annual property tax bill. Nice.

I spent a wonderful night there, listening to the water flow by outside my window.

The Lost Truck

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I take two guys up to find a misplaced pickup truck.

The call came mid-morning on Tuesday, just as I was preparing to take Zero-Mike-Lima down to Mesa for scheduled maintenance. The woman told me that her son and father were out in the desert looking for her son’s pickup truck. He’d parked it somewhere on Sunday before dawn, left it for some coyote hunting, and couldn’t find it in the morning.

One thing led to another. The son and his grandfather showed up at the airport. I gave them a safety briefing and loaded them on board the helicopter. A while later, we were heading out to the triangle of land between routes 89, 93, and 71, just north of Wickenburg.

Normally, I can spot just about anything larger than a washing machine from the air — especially if it’s a color other than desert beige. The truck had a crew cab and was pewter — about as close to desert beige as you can get. But it was a truck. A shiny, four-month-old truck. And that triangle of land isn’t that big.

I started by following the son’s directions to where he thought he’d come in from route 93. No luck. He claimed he’d parked near a corral. There were about a dozen cattle tanks in the area, each with its own bit of fencing that could be considered a corral. We flew over and around each one. Nothing.

I then went into a standard search pattern grid. Back and forth across the desert, moving northeast to southwest. Nothing.

“It must have been stolen,” the son said. “I can’t believe it. I left the windows open a crack. I guess someone must have found it and taken it.”

I found it hard to believe. It’s not as if there are car thieves hanging out in the desert, waiting for a hunter to park a brand new, $38,000 truck and walk away.

But the truck just wasn’t there.

I climbed about 1,000 feet for a final look. The entire area was spread out beneath us. No luck.

I headed back to Wickenburg. I wrote up a statement they could show the police to prove they’d looked hard for the truck. I cut them a good deal on the flight time, feeling sorry for them.

This morning, I called the mom to collect my fee via a credit card. I told her how sorry I was that we hadn’t found the truck. She told me that they’d found it afterward. It was by a hill. She didn’t have all the details.

I got the credit card info and hung up.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. There was only one hill in that entire area. We circled it and flew all around it. It’s not as if it’s a forest out there, with big trees to hide something the size of a truck. If it were out there, we would have seen it.

Which leaves me to wonder whether he had me looking in the right area after all.

I guess I’ll never know for sure.

The Weather in Newark

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I get an e-mail for online check-in that includes a weather report.

I’m going to New York this weekend. It’s for a surprise birthday party for my husband, Mike. He knows about it, of course. His blabbermouth brother managed to keep it a secret for all of ten minutes.

Anyway, we’re flying out there. On Continental Airlines — their hub is in Newark. And I just got an e-mail message from Continental offering online check-in.

The e-mail included a graphic image with the weather forecast. Here it is:

Weather in Newark

Should I be upset that they’re forecasting rain the whole time I’ll be out there?

Or should I be glad to feel the rain on my face and in my hair (and down my back) again? After all, we haven’t had any significant rainfall here in a while and I rather miss it.

Will report back next week.