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.

On a Roll

Julia has now found herself more and more often behind the cutting board, the stove and the grocery cart. Having to watch her own diet in order to avoid dairy, she now rolls up and down the grocery aisles picking up containers, spinning them to check out the back labels for the important CONTAINS: line checking for common allergens such as dairy.  Meal planning becomes critical; fresh ingredients become more and more appealing.  I have now heard her ask for me to make sure and get some kale

when at Festival!  Don't forget the avocados.  Can I eat pesto?  Well, let's take a look.  Nope, this pesto batch actually includes romano cheese! But, if you chop up fresh basil and add olive oil...let's do that.  Cookbook shelves now abound with 'food plans' that generally advise to simply eat more pure food (the way every other generation except the last few have) by avoiding highly processed, fast foods, replacing your white with wheat bread; fresh veggies instead of canned; make

your own granola, for example, so you know that the chocolate chips are pure cocoa or dark not milk.   The daily blogger turned cookbook writer Hallie Klecker said this in her introduction to a cookbook I recently ordered for Julia, The Pure Kitchen: Clear the Clutter from Your Cooking with 100 Gluten-Free, Dair-Free Recipes: "My journey toward wellness began when I first eliminated gluten and dairy from my diet. After experiencing various health issues – unexplained weight loss, fatigue, digestive problems, achiness, and mental fogginess to name a few – I cut the gluten and dairy from my diet on

the recommendation of a holistic health practitioner.  Within a week, I felt better than I had in months. Over time, as I began living life free of gluten and dairy, I came to realize that the allergen-free products sold in the grocery store were nowhere near healthy substitutes.  Most of the packaged foods hinged on refined, starchy flours, sugar, and low quality oils.  I quickly discovered that the easiest and most cost-effective way to eat would start by cooking at home." What Hallie is saying is more simple, yet radical in way, than merely cruising the aisles and looking for ingredients lists.  She's suggesting we grow or buy more simple products to start with, fewer to no additives, then using those to assemble our various recipes.  No doubt easier said than done.  For better or worse food health is time and it is access to those single, no additive, products (I've often thought that a new food chain – small stores everywhere like Subway – selling veggies like a farmer's market would provide the access part for people). We grew

three pots of lettuce this spring and Julia now 'harvests' nightly and sticks spinach on wraps, creates simple tossed salads, or assembles fresh crab rolls as shown at top.  Next year, so the demand has gone, we will plant kale.  The year after that, we've decided, avocados.

July 2, 1776

John Adams, when he realized that there would finally be unanimity among the colonies signing in assent of independence from the British Crown, famously quipped that July 2 would in generations to follow become a national holiday. Because July 2 was the date of the signing, however, and July 4 the day that the Declaration was publicly announced, he was both right and wrong – the symbolic day would become famous, but just two days later.  Last year's Quarry Lane dedication to our national document found George Washington reading the Declaration to troops in New York several days after its signing, and serving as motivation for the tearing down of King George's statue on the Bowling Green; this year's dedication goes towards festivities to be found at the historical garden centerpiece

of Charleston S.C. at Middleton Place, where a South Carolinian signer of the Declaration, Arthur Middleton, was born, raised and became one of the city's founding Patriot fathers.

After reading about the Revolutionary War for sometime now, it has been inspiring to finally watch all of this play out dramatically in the very well done HBO Series John Adams, who is played by the

great Paul Giamatti, and wife Abigail played by the equally excellent Laura Linney.  One particular episode follows the extremely heated sequence of days in which the Continental Congress labored to find a unanimous vote from all colonies to split from England.  Virtually all delegates understood in those meeting chambers that the fledgling colonies would have no chance against such supreme power unless they banded together.  The show does a nice job of depicting the understandably precarious position of delegates: to stay loyal to the King meant possible peace and a return to tradition; to vote for independence meant certain bloodshed.  John Adams became the chief rallying

Adams center, Jefferson to left, and Ben Franklin to right

voice for separation, seeing, in legal terms, that the relationship between the two nations had become unjust; voices initially from South Carolina were much more apprehensive, but the likes of Middleton and Rutledge eventually, at the last hour, voted for independence and sealed the fate of Charleston.  One of the most famous pictures of the signing of the Independence shows the Committee of the Five

drafters (Jefferson as the writer) approaching the table.  To the farthest right is Rutledge from South Carolina, who was the youngest signer at the amazing age of 26.  This weekend it would be quite a sight to watch the fireworks display at the Middleton grounds, now considered one of, if not the, most important gardens in the country, offering a planned sequence of flowers to bloom all year round, a museum (Middleton home), stable, and tours introduced with the reading of the Declaration.

Two Weeknight Winners: Thursday



Good cooking (fun cooking) is like anything else – to do it you need a bit of gusto, some momentum, and it helps to get into a rhythm.  So you pick up the cookbook and pin back the ear of the next page of the cookbook and try that one the next night – head off to the store for the fresh ingredients and carve out the space late in the day to put it all together, eat, then repeat.  A night after Summer Squash and Apple Pork Loin, it was time to try Chicken and Creamy Mushrooms with Snap Peas, why not?

This was the first recipe I've ever made that included snap peas; for some reason this veggie has always reminded me too much of cheap filler at Chinese restaurants and I only think of them as too

crisp and all shell.  It turned out the snap peas were the treasure ingredient, reducing down in a cream and mushroom sauce very well and very quickly, leaving them soft on the outside yet the peas nestled within maintaining their crisp texture.  The recipe starts with chicken pieces (I use almost primarily chicken thighs anymore) dredged in flour, fried to brown, then roasted until tender and done, and finishes with a simple but wonderful sauce consisting of chicken broth, a few pinches of diced scallions, mushrooms and cream.  All done within 25 minutes, this is as close as you can get to quick gourmet, the kind of plate that kids might look at and wonder about temporarily until they take a little nibble at those sweet soft peas coated in cream.