Take Us Out to the Ballgame...
But First How's About an Oyster? 

A 'doublie' taken Father's Day Miller Stadium Milwaukee

When traveling with wild baseball hooligans, it's hard to predict what might happen next.  Not that the standard long drive to the sports city isn't enough to stir things up – the sibling fighting, the hunger pains (the sugar pains more like it), the borrrrrrdom – but what happens when you get there and find out that some of those stand-by entertainments of old don't cut it anymore?  

Indoor Waterpark at Mpls. Downtown Marriott Depot

What is a father of wild baseball hooligans to do?  Well, when in Minneapolis, you take 

them shopping, admire the architecture along the way, consider the history of the place,  

go to a good restaurant before the ballgame, and hope for fireworks at night's end of course.  Carly's first oyster experience at McCormick and Schmick's on Nicollet Mall, above, came verrrry cautiously.  Some poking and prodding of the slimy gray goo and finally a licking of the finger convinced her that Blue Points and St. James Rivers might not be her thing.  The Popcorn shrimp was darned good though!  Only five blocks around the corner the new Target Twins Stadium stood, open air, still under a 6 o'clock sunlight, clean, quiet and cheery.

One stadium beer and two innings later, well, we tried some shopping (the poor Twinkies were getting beat good by that time), and came back for a few innings more and enjoyed some very fortunate seats.  By the seventh inning, all wild baseball hooligans were ready to walk back to the motel, only a ten minute walk away.  As we sat in our little hotel chairs and pull out couch watching the newest Muppet motion picture, out our third floor window, framed as though a TV in itself, fireworks started to flash up above the apartment complex across the street and went on for half an hour – the largest show we've ever seen in our lives.  

We kept one eye on the Muppets and one on the fireworks until they finally died down and the traffic outside slowed to a quiet rolling murmur.  The next morning, I walked a block down toward the river to see where the fireworks must have launched from.  Mill Run Park at St. Anthony Falls, the grandest of historical parks in the city, offering long biking, walking and viewing areas.

 Time to head back home and start planning for the next baseball trip.

  

Day Butler on King



"But Uncle Merle," would say Little Jack what seemed to be twenty times a day.  It was how Little Jack said it, with a long and sentimental emphasis on Uncle that got to Merle and always made him think about Jody and Buffy in the old melodrama TV show Family Affair, which he used to watch

as if it were a minor religion when he was a kid.  Mistress Suzanne was also a fan of the old show. In fact, she said upon his interview for the job as 'Day-Butler,' "I'm looking for someone who is a cross between Mr. French and a Charleston chef.  You fit the bill."  Merle had no children of his own.  When he moved to Charleston, his job as local meat

selector at Husk was one of the most enviable side-chef jobs in the city, no doubt, but he wanted to live on King Street and there was no way he could afford that coming directly off the boat, so to speak, from Florida. Certainly no funds to draw from just as yet.  He applied to get into the King building by re-creating himself – as what was advertised as a Day Butler.  No problem, he thought, as he looked through a very minimal amount of the creative fine print on the contract.  I've cooked, I've cleaned, and overall I've janitored for my own six brothers and sisters growing up, he said to himself, so why not Day Butler?  Mistress Suzanne Manchester, as she demanded to be called, only had to hear that Merle was at Husk and her entrancing brown eyes, heavily laden with artwork around the lashes, lit up.  "You're hired."  Mistress Suzanne's husband, it turned out, owned the building

along with what Merle came to learn sixteen other pieces of property down in Charleston, which was, frankly, a coup d' real estate, unheard of for a city which had boasted the number one travel destination in America for nearly a decade running.  The husband got into the Monopoly of the downtown historical district before all the city's awards began to roll in and he now owned some of the hottest commodities in the nation. If one small pub and eatery didn't make it – too many plans, not enough financial backing – it didn't matter.  There was always another up and coming chef in the making licking his or her own chops waiting to invest a week later.  It was because of this stroke of luck and investment brilliance that the family was able to virtually pick and choose tenants in the King building.  They kept the fifth floor vacant until

they found the right tenant, depending upon their family needs.  Mr. Manchester set up his own fishing guide, his wife and children two doors down; Little Jack's tutor lived across the hall (what help he was Merle found out quickly!). An ice cream maker called home three doors down.  It wasn't exactly the kind of natural set-up Merle would have ever considered plausible based on where he grew up, on a small farm on the outskirts of the Soldier Grove, Wisconsin, but this was the new game

 he was in, and he was, for lack of a better way of putting it, game.

Husk, Charleston



One year in Charleston South Carolina had certainly changed Merle and his understanding of food, namely how to prepare it for the sake of something other than personal appetite or mere mass production.  Cooking, he thought, had been something like an athletic event when he worked down at the Sweet Shack on Captiva Island, Florida.

Down there the days might be long but the nights were short, for he was working there nights, and could remember the frantic hustle of the small kitchen.  Nobody seated in the dining room looking inward to the kitchen could possibly realize that the Shack's prep room was packed with six cooks and chaotic. It was full-on busy all the time.  Out back in the parking lot of the Sweet Shack they ran

a smoker day and night.  Merle would prepare pounds upon pounds of baby backs, rubbing them down with a ginger-based and lime zest sprinkle that had become famous there on Captiva, and would later, with the help of one or two other secret ingredients, win him an award at the Airport Restaurant, Piccadilly Lilly in Wisconsin.


It was in Florida, though, where Merle began to see that cooking for mass audiences was different than the individualized meal that he grew up cooking for his six brothers and sisters in Soldier's Grove, Wisconsin.  His father was a farm cooperative representative and he spent his days roaming the endless rural by-ways of the bountiful Wisconsin farm fields in his black '64 Chevy, often carrying along with him in the back new specs for small machinery that he thought could lighten the load for the standard over-worked small farm owner.

His mother, of Italian descent, had grown up in the small Tuscan village of Montepulciano, where her father owned and ran a 7th generation olive farm.  Merle could still find in certain specialty stores in Madison or Milwaukee (now online) stocks of the famous Montepulciano Olive Oil.  


He reached South Carolina via a short stint as sous chef on a cruise boat, heading northwards one day by picking up all his belongings in his small permanent hotel room at the Captiva Seven Seas Resort (he was a consultant for the resort restaurant as well), and found an apartment near the Restoration on King hotel in the center of the shops and restaurant scene in Charleston.  One interview led to another, until Merle's story of Montepulciano Olive Oil picqued the interest of the manager at the world-famous Husk Restaurant, where they took buying

local to an extreme which Merle had yet seen.  The head chef and owner Sean Brock owned a parcel of farmland nearby and would await news each day as to what was ripe for picking, would harvest it, then create a menu to showcase those products that day.  There was no set menu.  Brock collected his own heirloom seeds and grew personalized tomatoes that tasted as they had for previous generations before mass production had sapped all of the energy and flavor out of the ordinary market tomato.  The idea at Husk was to re-live South Carolina history not only through the taste buds but through the  traditional rituals of service, preparation, and setting.  Merle, with his own background in local, and in ribs preparation, was hired on the spot to be in charge of an all local meat selection.

Julia's Key West at Red Pines

Key West Salad at Red Pines 

The Quarry Lane's living motto 'Everyday's an Adventure,' might lead to any number of good eating places in our river town and environs.  Hook up the bikes, hop in the car, park somewhere and the bike tires will hopefully lead to somewhere not far from the trail.  One of the great 'trail to table' trips that I can remember doing

frequently in the past was the great Lake Onalaska to Trempealeau Hotel bike cruise. The 15-miler each way is quite an investment in time and energy, but the Great River State Trail, through Midway,  New Amsterdam, Holmen, and then on into Trempealeau, gives the rider a full view of Wisconsin history and nature like no other as it snakes through small rural town, thick farm field, and eventually a National Wildlife Refuge, which literally teems with untouched wildlife and backwater scenery.

The description of the Hotel says it well, "Founded in 1851, Trempealeau is a place where history is close at hand.  Wooded bluffs, where French explorers established camp, overlook the Mississippi River, and sacred Indian mounds at Perrot State Park remind us of our nation's inception.  The beauty of the natural world and the pleasure of seeking a

quiet respite from the fast-paced world are values held dear in Trempealeau.  Our peaceful river town is a well-kept secret that we welcome you to discover."

Although the Hotel trip is the epitome of 'trail to table,' it has lost the battle to time itself, and we have found an abbreviated bike ride just off the trail in Onalaska at Red Pines.  We park directly on cty. Z leading into Brice Prairie, and only a short bike ride into the township, Red Pines stands at the crest of a short bluff overlooking the backwaters of the Black River.

Northwoods cedar by design, the bar and grill captures the sunfish bait and tackle spirit of the

Lake Onalaska fishing scene.  After a short ride into Midway, Julia and I redirected to Red Pines and sat out on the open air patio watching the sunshine skim off the lush green island barriers and the pontoons bobbing lazily along the shoreline below.









 

7-13

"High horns, low horns, silence, and finally a pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries that almost shakes the bog with its nearness, but without yet disclosing whence it comes.  At last a glint of sun reveals the approach of a great echelon of birds. On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of the sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds.  A new day has begun on the crane marsh."  – Aldo Leopold, from "Marshland Elegy"


The green underworld is but a few turns of the bike tire from the edges of the city.  County Z down into Brices Prairie where the high ground of bluff and concrete gives way to a flickering lushness seen in few other places on earth.  

It is a full regard for life here, a bounty, nearly always in flux and growth, what one could almost determine, without the hand of human intervention, something of a harmony between the natural currents of wind and water and the vegetation that has learned to adapt to its contours or has been forced to release onto another path.  As bikers, we speed through the variety; farm fields, striving under all conditions, a mere scenery; we slow down long enough for the mosquito to land, the gnats to swarm, the double dragon fly to helicopter by, and we know – for we can see it, feel it – that there is more here than the stiff dimensions of a painted canvas.  

Infamous Red-Winged Blackbird

Stealth features of the Red-Winged Blackbird Dive Bomber

You know it's summer in the coulee region when, at any time, any place, seemingly out of 

nowhere from the sky, something of a reddish stripe might swoop down and dive bomb your head. Biking, hiking, (bbq'ing?) along any given stretch of road, trail, or park...it doesn't matter.  Up until yesterday, my own fondest memory of a dive bomb by the infamous Red Baron of birds was several

years ago I was biking in the hinterlands of farm fields out on cty. FA on the other side of Irish Hill.  Chugging along at 17 mph silently, innocently – I thought –  I heard a tick tick tick on the top of my helmet.  I could not see the culprit immediately – I had other things on my radar, like the road ahead – but could see flashes of a flapping shadow on the road swoop down, attack my shadow, hover, attack then hover again.  Now, when getting dive-bombed by something mysterious and unseen,

Random pic of an unsuspecting dive bombee

it takes a moment to assess whether you are under some uniform attack, or whether it's just a freak incident?  Red wings are tenacious though. They keep hitting until you are out of their sphere of protection....only to then drift immediately into another's sphere of protection, and so on along the long line of roadside light posts.

Yesterday I got a call on my cellphone from Julia who claimed to be 'under attack.'  Her are Carly, similarly innocent, they thought anyway, were riding their bike along the outer trail of the Aspen Valley Pond, but had to "dump our bikes because our heads were getting pecked at by red wingers.  We ran but they kept hitting us, so we are home now and wondering if you could get our bikes."  Sure, what a job!  I arrived at the pond to a very odd sight.  There was a planned bbq down in the shelter and one of the cooks had walked up to the bikes, apparently trying to help, with a large baking pan over his head; another fella, a bit skittish behind him, was waving one of those large dog-catcher size nets around his head, but the Red Baron was too cunning, too wise to attack to such defenses.  Instead, he turned his attention to some other unassuming creature who thought he could roam the suburban skies in peace.

 

Cookie Chronicles

For this roving cookie reporter, it was neat to see at the end of the Kids' Y-Triathlon this morning

that the racers were offered bananas and apples at the end of the hard-fought race...heck, Cookie

Monster  himself, as we've found out in recent Sesame seasons, has been seen more and more enthusiastically devouring his lettuce, apples and bananas ("as well as normally inedible objects!").
But Cookie has admitted to still loving as his favorite those old reliable chocolate chip cookies (oatmeal cookies coming in a close second).  So we've decided to make a request for next year's race to serve 'Cocoa-Kissed Ginger Macaroons' for the participants (and reporter), to give them something both healthy and chocolatey to swim, bike and run for!

Like Hallie Klecker says in her Super Healthy Cookies book, "Everything is better with a little chocolate, including everybody's favorite coconut cookie: the classic macaroon.  Cocoa powder adds chocolate flavor while ground ginger adds some spicey zip."  She adds what she calls a little 'Chocoholic's Tip:' drizzle the cooled treats with really easy chocolate drizzle, made out of unsweetened chocolate and maple syrup.  Sounds pretty yummy.  It's a plan.

Highway Construction Cone

New City-wide Identification Symbol

Dear Mr. Editor

Don't mean to rant, but a few observations that my wife and I have noticed concerning the road system laid down in our fine city so far in this long and grueling summer of travel. First among them, there are now no roads left to travel on, which makes leaving our home in the morning difficult. Second, that there is now no viable way for my children to move along to their respective rigorous extracurricular activities without losing at least one bike tire per ride. Third, that unless the coordination of city, state and federal dollars begin to work together somehow a bit more closely, there is no real end in sight, and that we may all be reduced to creating our own at-home-businesss (with the assistance of the gov't I suspect? Farmers may still be able to operate considering the gigantic size of the rear wheels on their John Deere tractors, which should compare nicely to the size of the wheels of the very construction machines needed to travel over the five foot high trenches that line the city.  Somebody called us the new Midwest Venice of no-water?).

A neighbor recently made to us the wise remark that if those predicted-to-exist aliens arrived in the La Crosse area, they would surmise that all those four-wheeled blocks of steel (cars) inching alongside those "very well planted orange trees and shrubs," on rough dirt tracks next to those "dinosaur-like blocks of steel" (bulldozers, cranes, utility trucks, we can only suppose), would wonder why we don't all just use that one remaining wide open channel of moving transportation available (Mississippi River we assume the alien would be thinking here).

The aliens would see the glum faces set inside the blocks of steel – so many of them holding white puffing sticks – yelling out unusually loud messages to the men with orange discs on their heads, that this would probably be seen as the chief mode of communication in this area of the earth.  We told our neighbor that we could only hope that the aliens had along with them a more efficient road construction crew and might even set us up quickly for air travel so we could get to work on time this year still.  All of this is too bad considering the strong history of road building we have here in the coulee area.  As we made an attempt at driving to our daughter's softball game last night – thinking blindly, again, that we might get there on time through a parade of work zones – we remarked on all the roads that used to be useful, like hwy. 16 (now blinking orange neon sign assures us of construction to come June 14!) and that scenic highway on the south side of town, 33, where we dodged and weaved moon craters to finally arrive at scheduled field, now reduced to a lane so narrow it turned even an elderly motorcycle rider to a road-raging Evel Knievel.

In our final humble opinions, we had always hoped that road construction might be done in a sort of orderly manner – a couple of roads at a time, and that perhaps there was a supervisor of some sort in the background holding a giant blue print grid with a grand plan that allowed for some traffic movement here and there.  We have now been proven wrong.  Maybe the aliens are in charge.

Cookie Chronicles

Looking over the recipe 'Bunny Bites', the first in our new Super Healthy Cookies: 50 Gluten-Free Recipes for Delicious & Nutritious Snacks, I couldn't help myself but to think about one of my own lifetime personal heroes Cookie Monster (right up there with Yogi Bear and Napolean Dynamite among others) and what he's been up to since those old learning-the-alphabet days of "C is for Cookie" ("'C' is also for donut with a little piece cut out!" he says on his album).

It turns out ol' Cookie Monster has been going through some identity transformations along with the rest of culture in the last decade or so, and finds himself recently changing some of his habits – he's gone from the days of shoveling in plate-size cookies as early as a little blue monster-tot ("om, nom, nom, nom, the first time me eat cookie I loved them even then..."),

Baby Cookie Monster on left, mother with cookies on right

to becoming the monster of moderation who now claims that "A cookie is a sometimes food." This has, it turns out, stirred up quite a cultural squabble.  As Cookie has now been seen on the series holding carrot sticks in paw instead of piles of cookies and hanging out with other newly health-seeking puppets,

the letters of complaint have filed in, "why is Cookie Monster holding a carrot stick," asks one deflated father of a daughter...."he's a Cookie Monster for goodness sake.!"  Sesame Street has retorted back that the "popular character would be 'broadening his eating habits' in the future.  We are not putting him on a diet, and we would never take the position of no sugar," said Dr. Rosemarie T Truglio, the show's vice president of research and education, "We're teaching him moderation."  Well, speaking for this cookie family, we will be testing the boundaries that can be found out there in cookie-land between moderation and that old nom, nom, nom 'Cookie' enthusiasm.  Our 'Bunny Bites' recipe, which includes carrots, flaxseed, banana, and brown rice flour, walnuts, and maple syrup, begins with a short paragraph titled "Three Cheers for Carrots!"  Seems like a very good start.