Tag Archives: food

The TimeWarpVille Saga – Other Local Attractions – Food – Corn – Rain and Wireless Phoneless

Posted on August 22, 2012 by | 2 comments

As good as Barbeque’s likely to get

The locals I talked to all seemed to agree Lum’s is either the best barbeque in town, or tasty enough to balance the high cost of Cooper’s, down the road.  I’ve eaten there three times now, found them to be clean, friendly, and surrounded by an ambiance unusual enough to be almost distracting.  Good food, Lum’s. 

As I finished my meal an older guy with a cane walked past my table.  He sported a hip-holster with a Glock, ready for action.  If I’d finished earlier, and if I’d arrived in town heeled, I’d have waited for him outside and shouted, “Fill your hand you SOB!”

Then he could have shot me down, gazed sadly at my bullet-riddled corpse and muttered, “Just another young tough trying to build a reputation.”

It would have provided a great denouement.

This could be a lot more important than you imagine

There’s corn here to be had.

A worthy cause that gives no offense except to those [such as myself] who don’t even like to be told what kind of day to have.

Too small for Clark Kent

A futuristic wireless, cordless, phoneless booth.

We middle-of-the-roaders try to be there for one another

And a bull trotting along the centerline blocking the highway for a mile or more.  I took him to be another, spiritual kinfolk to myself, called to serve on the Big Jury, and headed home unrequited.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Communication, Country Life, Texas

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Super Baked Fish Recipe

Posted on August 17, 2012 by | 6 comments

I used the Vietnamese Pan-something-or-other fish I told you about on earlier posts.

Bed the bottom of the pan with half-dozen corn tortillas,

1 each frozen fish filet

1 cup frozen green beans

1 cup frozen brocolli

1/4 cup tropical trail mix

Generic Cajun seasoning to taste

1/4 stick butter on top

Bake 60-90 minutes at 350 F.

You can be the second person in the Universe ever to try it if you hurry.

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in 2012

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RC Royal Crown Cola and Tom’s Toasted Peanuts

Posted on June 24, 2012 by | 10 comments

Despite the fact of Asians having become so much more intelligent, better educated, industrious, innovative, inventive and economically responsible than westerners during the last half-century, a few things are still out there they’ll never catch up on.  One of those is RC Royal Crown Cola with a bag of Tom’s Toasted Peanuts or Planter’s Peanuts floating in it.

A couple of other things they’ll never surpass us on include the kind of Italian food you’ll get down at the Fongoul Restaurant, Mexican food New Mexico style with green such as you’ll get at Cojone’s Mexican Cafe, and those fantastic Greek sandwiches I can’t recall the name of.  Guido? 

You’d have to have peeked into the kitchens of a few Chinese restaurants during your lifetime to know that, though all other Asians have it figured out, the Chinese got left behind about 10,000 years ago in matters of basic food sanitation.  If you eat in Chinese food joints much there’s a middling good chance you’ve eaten something that’s already been through a Chinese digestive tract, introduced to the food when he clipped his toenails into the egg drop soup.

That’s the reason Chinese restaurants use all that MSG, even though they know it will probably give you a stroke one of these days.  Covers up the taste of other things got in there, either by accident, or design.

I don’t claim to understand why it’s so.  Koreans, Japanese, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Thai, they’re all probably more concientious about food sanitation in their restaurants than the average westerner.  But the Chinese restaurant that isn’t feeding customers cockroaches, toenails and spit is by far the exception, rather than the rule.

I’ve heard the matter discussed among health department inspectors more times than I can remember [none of whom would dare eat Chinese without having gone over the food preparation area before-hand].

Maybe they’re still trying to get even with Christian missionaries for the Taiping rebellion and figure everyone else qualifies as collateral damage.

Old Jules

10 Comments

Posted in 2012, America

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Clean Underwear and Couscous – One Dose Addictions

Posted on June 5, 2012 by | 4 comments

Clean Underwear and Hard Times

Hi readers.  Thanks for the visit.

It’s been almost a year since that old Kenmore dropped into my life. 

I hate to think I’m becoming addicted to modern conveniences, but here’s my back yard today.  It’s been and is still a blessing I have to stop and take a deep breath when allow myself to appreciate it fully, the gestalt, I mean.

I never found a wringer, so there are tricks to it I’ve gradually learned, and will gladly unlearn sometime if I ever locate a wringer at the right price.

In some ways that qualifies as a blessing associated with the whole hauling-water experience.  A person finds himself experimenting with all manner approaches to personal cleanliness honing down the amount of water required.  For instance, it’s actually about 1/3 gallon less water than the pump-up insecticide sprayer to shower using one-gallon orange juice jugs left out in the sun.  Just pouring enough to wet down, scrub down, and rinse.

I’d actually be about a gallon cheaper if I cut my hair, which I’ve considered because the water required to rinse shampoo out afterward.  But my hair hasn’t been cut since Y2K and I hate to bust into a winning streak taking chances of that sort.

But I wanted to tell you about couscous.  I’d never heard of the stuff, but at the HEB store they offered a package coupon deal including it.  Bought a bag of farm raised fish filets imported Vietnam, got all manner of other things free.

Got out my magnifying glass to make sure it didn’t have MSG in it, then eventually made myself fix it.  Herbal chicken couscous.  Doctored it up with ginger and curry, chopped some onion into it, added chopped jalapeno.

Sheeeeeeeze that stuff’s good.

Instant addiction.  Next time I’m in town I’m going to see what it costs.  If it’s reasonable I think I might find myself chowing down on couscous a couple of times a week.

Old dog, new tricks, instant addiction.

So it goes.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2012, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Thrift Stores

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Culinary Risk Taking – MSG – Root Hog or Die

Posted on February 24, 2012 by | 17 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Socorro, New Mexico, isn’t long on good restaurants.  But during the several years I lived there, I had a favorite restaurant, and a favorite menu item.  The place was owned and operated by an elderly Chinese man with whom I was on friendly, bantering terms. 

This lasted until the discovery that MSG in food causes my blood pressure to skyrocket.  A few times per week I’d sit myself down, they’d bring the usual, and a couple of hours later my pulse would be visible almost anywhere a blood vessel showed.  This was accompanied by a pounding in my head, maybe audible, maybe only seemingly so.

After I figured out the connection between my favorite food item and the blood pressure problem I attempted to discuss it with the owner, though we had a language barrier.   The result was an outburst of anger and indignation.  I didn’t know yet the MSG was the cause.  Just that particular menu item.

I solved the problem by eating elsewhere, but eventually learned that Chinese restaurants, particularly, lean heavily on adding MSG to their foods, and that a surprisingly large number of people have reactions to it similar to mine. 

I also began watching the labels on food I bought to prepare at home.  What I discovered was that a person sensitive to MSG had best carry a magnifying glass in his pocket and read those labels carefully.  Almost everything a person might buy in a can is loaded with it, but especially soups and soup-bases.  If a label slips past and gets inside the vehicle it notifies the owner by the rods knocking.

But I was going to say, I love oriental food, and I was in town yesterday, so I clenched my teeth and decided it was a day for risk-taking.  There’s an Oriental buffet I’d never tried, so I pulled in.  I tried asking whether they had MSG in their food, but it was clear she didn’t understand me.  So I went root hog or die.

The food was mediocre, but I didn’t die.  I took a couple of extra blood pressure pills when the pounding in my head started, and by the time I got home my blood pressure was so low I didn’t have any business being alive.

I found myself wondering why the FDA cops who faint and revive themselves over one-in-a-billion risks to human health otherwise haven’t jumped on this like ugly on a monkey.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules: 

Historical Events Duplicated Today?

Old Jules, does any time in history correspond to what’s going on within the US today?

17 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Current Issues, Gambling, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Politics, Senior Citizens, Survival

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Incentives Not to Go Off Food – Rice and Veggie Steamer

Posted on February 13, 2012 by | 17 comments

I’ve been mildly curious watching myself for a considerable while.  Weight was peeling off me and I was forgetting to eat.  My body would notify me I hadn’t eaten anything in a day or two by a dose of the blind staggers, or just a dizzy spell to get me thinking back on when I last ate something.

Most of what I cook around here’s cheap and simple because of the fact I ran out of propane early last year and haven’t refilled the bottle, and because hauling water makes washing cookware an expense measured in hauling trips.  So I was living mostly on potato combinations, yogurt combinations, fruit combinations and various bean concoctions.  I was at the point of hating to look any one of them in the eye.

Then one day in the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Kerrvillle I saw that rice and veggie steamer still in the box for sale for a dollar.  It didn’t appear to ever have been used.  So, I bought it, thinking rice and steamed veggies would at least be different.

Sheeze, the best purchase since my High Roller back in 1972.  The tow bar I bought the other day might turn out to be a better deal, but I haven’t figured out anyway to cook with it.  But I’ve digressed.

What I’ve re-discovered is the absolute, euphoria-laden joy of food.  I’m making better meals on that thing than I could even find in a restaurant in town, but if I could, couldn’t afford them.  I’ll make up a batch of one or another Asian-like mix thinking it will last two days, then find I have to fight a war with myself to keep from eating it at a single sitting.

It does require loads of fresh onion, garlic, jalapeno, cayenne, curry and ginger.  I buy bags of trail mix of various sorts, dried mango, papaya, raisins and cranberrys at the Dollar Tree and pour on top, a little of each.  The food bills went up something awful last month.  But I don’t forget to eat.

And the simple truth is, some of these meals turn out to be classed among the best I’m able to recall having anytime in my  life.

Anyone says an old dog can’t learn new tricks is kidding himself.

Old Jules

 

17 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Country Life, Senior Citizens, Survival, Thrift Stores

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Wheat Flour for Pie Crust

Posted on December 26, 2011 by | 11 comments

About 55-60 years ago I had an experience with cherry pie I thought had ruined it for me for life.  The rodeo in my town was a community affair, had events such as greased pigs for the kids to chase around the arena with a prize for the one caught it, a calf with a bull durham bag containing a dollar tied to its tail, and a pie eating contest.

Might have been the year I was twelve we kids chased the pig, and were covered with grease and manure, then topped it off with the calf and more manure before we lined up either side of a table full of cherry pies.  We were to feed that pie to the kid across the table who concurrently fed us pie.

Across from me was a kid named Jerry Haynes, who’d been out front with the pig and calf, so his hands weren’t a pleasure to look at holding a piece of pie intended to be consumed.  But I gave it my old junior-high try.

And from that day until yesterday I’ve never since enjoyed the sight of, the taste of a cherry pie.

But yesterday Gale and Kay invited me up to share Christmas dinner with them.  Kay had made a pie, but had discovered she was out of white flour.  She’d never heard of anyone using wheat flour, but it was all she had, so she tried it, expecting it to be less-than-hoped for.  A cherry pie.

My heart sank a little when I saw that pie, not because of the crust.  But I took a piece of it prepared to do my best to enjoy it.   But instead of it being forced I was surprised with a crust with a nutty flavor and among the most enjoyable pie experiences of my entire life.  Absolutely delicious.

I’m thinking now it might have broken the cherry pie curse Jerry Haynes handed me all those decades ago.

So if you’re scared of wheat flour for pie crust you might be glad afterward if you take a shot at it.

Old Jules

 

11 Comments

Posted in 2011, Country Life, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Unrequited Love – I Coveted This

Posted on October 21, 2011 by | 20 comments

I watched it sit in a vacant lot I frequently drove past in Kerrville for several years.  Occasionally I’d trip up the hill to it, walk around it, kick the amazingly good tires.

After I began scouting for a new, moveable dwelling I began going snake eyes when I got near it to keep my intentions from drawing the attention of the Coincidence Coordinators.  Sydney Baker is at the other end of town from the lot it was sitting in, so I assumed the Wing King was long defunct and this jewel was waiting for me to chase down the owner, make an offer, and take it away.

But today when I drove to that lot to get the license tag number so’s to try to contact the owner the bus was gone.  I figured someone had called a wrecker to haul it away because they were going to use the lot for something.  I puzzled over my next step toward finding it as I drove to Sydney Baker to see who occupied the address of the Wing King on the side of the bus.

Sheeze!  The Wing King was right there, still in business.  Okaaaay.  Got to prepare myself mentally for this.  I kept driving, furious thinking.  But a few blocks ahead in the parking lot of the strip center in front of Dollar Tree, there it was, parked parallel to the curb.

I walked around it, squatted down to see if it was dripping oil or coolant.  Nothing.  I pulled off my vest and slid under the engine.  Everything was pristine.  No grease, barely any dirt.

What the hell’s it doing sitting here?  Why did they move it?

Nothing for it but to drive back to the Wing King and talk to the owner.  Now.

I sat in the truck going snake eyes a couple of minutes to prepare, then went inside looking for someone who looked ownerish.  Two kids.

“Is the owner around?”

“No, he doesn’t work days.”

“I want to talk to someone about that bus down there parked by the curb across from the high school.”

“The water pump went out on it.  He’s waiting for the part.”  The kid thinks I’m someone in authority about to make trouble.  How the hell could he think that, looking at me?

“I want to talk to him about buying it.”

“He won’t sell it.  He got it for almost nothing, $1500, and it’s only got 10,000 miles on the engine.”  Thanks a lot kid.  I needed to hear that last part.

The other one, a girl chimes in.  “Yeah, and parked there with that sign on it reminds the high school kids we’re here!”

Ahhhh.  And Kerrville has a sign ordinance.  That bus parked there doesn’t violate it.

That’s a bus the cats and I will never live in.  But at least I found out about a place sells chicken wings.  Wonder if they’re any good.

Old Jules

C.W. McCall – Wolf Creek Pass – a song about a truckload of chickens.

20 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure

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Food, Books and Other town stuff

Posted on October 13, 2011 by | 17 comments

FOOD:  There’s an all-you-can-eat pizza joint where you get all the salad you want, a drink and a selection of all kinds of pizza slices as many times as you go back for them and as many kinds as you want for $5.00.  You wouldn’t believe how much salad and pizza a person can eat in an hour-or-so.

Only trouble is I always feel sort of bloated and sometimes have stomach cramps after I eat there.  Maybe it’s something in the food.

Thrift Store 25 cent books acquired:

A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller:  Good SF I read every 10 years or so.

Rebel – Bernard Cornwell – I like Cornwell fairly well but I haven’t read this one.  Civil War historical fiction

Quick Silver – Clark Howard – Never heard of the author.  Taking potluck on this one.

Double Jeopardy – Colin Forbes –  Another potluck.  Never heard of the author.

The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene – I might have read this one sometime.  But the only Graham Greene I’ve ever not liked was Brighton Rock, required reading in some English course.

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco –  Time I read this one again. 

High Sorcery – Andre Norton – I might have read it 40 years ago.  Usually liked Andre Norton.

Fuzz – Ed McBain – Potluck.  Never heard of him.  Looks like an extortion, cops and robbers yarn.

The Third Man – Graham Greene – Once more before I die.

Hobbit and others – JRR Tolkien – Hell, for .25 why not one more time?

Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco – I dunno if I can do this one again.  I ain’t as young as I used to be.

The Blue Hammer – Ross Macdonald – I read all these 30 years ago, loved them but ran spang out.  Nice finding this one.

The Forge of God – Greg Bear – Never heard of him.  Appears to be SF.

Flashman at the Charge – George Mcdonald Frazer – Sheeze.  I love finding these.  I must have read the entire Flashman series a dozen times over the decades.  They never grow old.

Old Jules

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17 Comments

Posted in 2011, Book Reviews, Books, Communication, Education, Reading, Thrift Stores

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