Queen For A Day

Punxutawny Phil has indicated there will be another six weeks of winter.
That feels about right: I've added socks to my full sleeping regalia and there is a bucket in the den catching some of the torrential rain that descends when Mexican moisture collides with Canadian howlers over central Texas.

When it warms up/dries out a bit it will be time to head out of town and pick one of the weekend festivals that Texas towns host through the year. There are big hoohas like the Texas State Fair in Dallas and the Cowboy Symposium but also plenty of small town affairs with cook-offs, carnivals, pageants and all the funnel cake you can eat.
Some of the cook-offs are famous and all are viciously competitive even when it's all smiles and howdy-do in the official program. It's usually about chili which is alright by me.
Local produce gets to star which is also mighty fine because in season there are some lovely things to eat around here: pecans (roasted, salted, caramelized, slathered in chocolate), spinach (not sexy but exceptionally good two seasons a year), peaches all through June and July (ode-worthy, smaller, less sweet than a Georgia peach and better too), hot sauce, strawberries, melons, bbq and just about anything you care to slather on it.
As for the funnel cake - carnival or Fair food is anything vaguely and directly hazardous to health - on a stick.

This is a peanut butter & jelly (that's jam) deep fried sandwich. Or you could have a corn dog, a crab cake, a battered candy bar.
It has to be on a stick so you can wander about looking at Longhorns, preserve jars and the girl with the tiara.
In Luling it's all about melons and who's going to be crowned annual Thump Queen. When I first saw the posters for this a few years back I admit to thinking it was a display of amateur female brawling. When I noticed melons were a big feature I remained intrigued. But melon is the local produce now the oil is gone, and thumping is what you do to a melon to test its ripeness. So Luling has its Thump Queen and a seed spitting competition.
In Burnet County, the town of Bertram joins its rural neighbor Oatmeal, for a celebration of the cereal and proudly crowns the annual Ms Bag of Oats. If you like okra and a more mature sovereign this is the festival for you.

SXSW starts in a month or so and that's my cue to head over to Europe - I hear brilliant music all year round in Austin, it gets crowdier* during SXSW so I hoof it. I don't feel like I'm missing out. After all, there's the Rattlesnake Sacking Championship and Round-up in Taylor to look forward to.


* I made it up. I can do that because I live in America and I "author" this blog. See what I mean?
Food photo by Cheryl Carlin

"Shall We Go To The Poodle Dawg?"

It's a local bar, one of the smoking joints like La La's, and Buddy's Place on the same stretch. It stands next to a 'chicken' take-out and is almost hidden by the towering, ugly sign the 'chicken' people foisted on the neighborhood a year or so ago.

The facade of the bar is clinging on to its painting of a giant poodle and fading reminders that there will be "Pool, Shuffle Board and Set Ups" inside.
A couple of years ago there were bands playing regularly but nowadays it's hard to say what you'll hear. One night we ran in at the start of a storm and were stuck there for an hour while three old fellers took turns playing swamp rock and blues. Another time we were with visitors , crawling our way down the road to catch Alvin Crow at Ginny's and the place was almost empty. When I went up for beers the bar tender wanted to know all about what we were doing and where we were going and when I turned back to our table she repeated it all to the four guys sitting there on stools who nodded as if it all made sense, considering.

There are some poodles displayed behind the bar but mostly the place is decorated with Marilyn Monroe: black and white photographs, dozens and dozens. The last time I went, I took a turn on sentry (no lock on the walk-in ladies loo), looking at all the blonde Marilyns in evening gowns and at the beach all brunette.

Years ago when we were chasing our furniture from Florida to California during the great move, we called in at The Pood - a date to see my old friend Erik Hokannen who brought his fiddle along and sent us on our way with some tunes that fairly blew us to Big Bend.

Things are quieter in there since we were blown back.

Return To Comfort

Too cold to go to the annual Elvis Birthday Bash at The Continental Club.
Too cold to stand in line in seamed stockings, too old to get mean and dirty over the six or seven chairs in the whole place. I was too cold and too old to stand all night. Even for The King.
-8 Celsius cold.

(A lot of my vowels are American now, I cook with a dangerous mix of American cups and Imperial ounces, I think summer temperatures in Fahrenheit - but I feel the cold in Celsius.)

What I wanted was a good long soak in a hot bath.
America does outstanding showers: powerful, back-massaging blasts of water whether it's a motel, a schmancy hotel, or any of the bathrooms I've called mine from California to FLA.
Baths? Not so good. This surprises me, I mean lots of Americans are tall and they build galumphing great bathrooms and yet my 5ft & 4 inches never gets to stretch out in steam, with a dry hand for a martini, chin above water. It isn't a pleasure sitting bolt upright with legs submerged or lying with bosom underwater and knees aloft like Mont Blanc.

The Husband once took me on a mystery trip, along Route 290, west out of Austin, through Blanco, for 90 miles or so, to the town of Comfort. It's a sleepy place: a man in a Stetson pulled up in a tractor at the gas station.
At an old house with guest cottages I was treated to a room with a screened-in porch overlooking Cypress Creek where deer came to feed at sunset and sunrise. With shade, and free from the torment of mosquitoes I could enjoy what I rarely can in Texas most of the year, sitting outside in the fresh air. Then go inside and sink down into the deepest, longest claw-foot bathtub I've ever seen. It was bliss. At some point I must have emerged because we walked down Main street to eat catfish and rice at Guenther's Grill.
It's a colder time of year now but I could sit in the porch with a blanket and hip flask. And I could sink into that bath. Time to raid the coin jar and break open the bubble bath.

Sniff

Since St Stephen's Day, pale, bare Christmas trees have been laid down at the side of the road and in the back of pickup trucks. The American way with a Christmas tree is to buy it and decorate it the day after Thanksgiving (late November) and throw it away just after Christmas a month later.

I choose a tree during the week before Christmas, keeping it and the house decorated until Twelfth Night.
So I have the smells of the festival for a few more days until the Feast of the Epiphany, perfume of balsam from the tree locked inside the room, aroma of Panettone released when the bread bin is opened, preserve jars of mince meat for the final pie.
Every year, stripping the tree makes me feel bereft so I inhale good and long while it lasts.

What has been your favourite seasonal sniff?

Season's Greetings

It has been a bit of a stinker of a year: domestic chaos - not all of the bricks and mortar variety, a body that feels as if it has gone off in a huff to sit in another room, and a mind that goes about slamming doors when it can remember where they are.
Better, then, to mention some of the things that have been beneficial:

For reminding me that, after the #th day in my robe, it can be a good thing to get dressed, these ladies at Wardrobe Remix - drummergirl, artisterin, pec'sgirl and hidden seed.

Blue Cheese Dip - Mix together some sour cream, Helmanns mayonnaise, crumbs of blue cheese, white pepper & salt. Chill for ages or if you're like me, don't bother, snip some chives over a bowl of it, grab chips (crisps) and retire.

Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five - dancing to Muskat Ramble

Reading - 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel, 'Coventry' by Helen Humphries and 'Brooklyn' by Colm Toibin are the books I still think about, months after finishing them.

After a year blogging mostly in my head, thank you to the folks who actually managed to turn up at the keyboard - to the bloggers I read from England, Scotland, Germany, France and America and to anyone who passes by this page:
Merry Christmas!

Ta Very Much

6pm.
That went down well:
Roast duck with roasted Brussels sprouts and mashed potato, duck gravy, apple stuffing and a dish of regular sausage stuffing with fresh sage on the side. A glass of red.
Followed the recipe for the duck in a second edition Julia Childs etc 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' and recommend; haven't done a duffer from that tome yet.

It's just us chickens this year so had the phone-around-the-in-laws in Florida.
Now it's the start of The Holidays - where Thanksgiving mashes with Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and we're all supposed to camp outside a big box store overnight to buy guns/TVs/flannel pajamas at crazy prices at the 'Black Friday' sales beginning at dawn tomorrow.

Instead, I'm going to sit back with a slice of pie, have coffee and a Sidecar and, as I don't have a book or knitting on the go, accompany myself on the ukulele through Tin Pan Alley.
Pennies from heaven, people.

Ta Very Much

12 p.m. Back to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Didn't Cindy Lauper die? Someone very like her was gurning on the ramparts of a pink cardboard castle. Followed by Alan Cummings, fetching in a wrap-around scarf, doing a respectable Scottish rendition of 'That's Life', surrounded by M&Ms. It all came to an end with falling snow and Santa on an enormous sleigh pulled by dozens of sculpted reindeer; if I had seen this last spectacle as a child I would have wet myself.
Pumpkin pie is out of oven; aroma of spices covering any remnants of the noxious fumes.
Husband is in kitchen doing things to the duck There isn't a turkey small enough to fit in our very stupid and small oven so we're doing Caneton Roti a la Alsacienne which sounds schmancy but is simply a duck roasted on all it sides with sausage and apple stuffing. Yum.

Ta Very Much

10 a.m and pastry resting in fridge.
Fire turned off as we are overcome by noxious fumes.
We open all the windows, move to the den and put on the TV. Quaint pilgrims with giant heads are just reaching Herald Square. It's the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Cue adverts.

Ta Very Much

Thanksgiving Day in Austin, 9 a.m.
The American Husband and I are in the living room with morning coffee, still sitting in our dressing gowns, testing out the first fire of the season.
He tells me that President Obama has pardoned the turkey, a 45-pounder called Courage. The bird will now spend his days at Disney World. I'd rather go nobly to the table. I wonder how the innocent and guilty on death row feel about Courage.
Time to make pastry for the pumpkin pie.

In The Morning

Why.....when I know that I will hop across the bedroom, skid on the rug and head-butt the closet door......... do I still try to put on my jeans without first taking off my slippers?