Smithy

We're beating feet north as fast as we can reasonably go. Last night we stayed in a Walmart parking lot in Mineral Wells, Texas, and admired the steady stream of cars using the drive-through at a local fried chicken joint. That place was doing a land-office business. We had leftover brisket, cole slaw and potato salad from Cooper's (you've seen that oodles of times already) and some of the alligator toes and brisket poppers from Miller's. They were delicious. I really must learn to make them myself. This morning we were on the road early, our lunch cooler packed with hard-boiled eggs, sandwiches like yesterday's, and fresh vegetables. We stopped occasionally to stretch our legs, and kept commenting on the picnic areas we'd forgotten about along the highway between Mineral Wells and Wichita Falls. Texas does beautiful picnic areas. Like most, this one is spacious enough that we'd be able to stay overnight. Like many, it has fire grates for outdoor cookouts. We let a strong tailwind push us northward, giving us great (relatively speaking) fuel mileage and a quiet ride. It seems as though the gods of mechanical malfunction weren't done with us yet, however: we had another flat tire at a fueling station along the Oklahoma Turnpike. (For those of you keeping score, that's 4 flat tires this trip.) We lost an hour and a half over that, but the delay may have helped us miss the really bad storms that passed through Oklahoma City. Seen along the road: See that weather in the bottom photo? That was a nasty line of storms that passed through ahead of us. More might develop yet tonight - at least, that's the forecast - so we're pressing along into the now-headwind for another 100 miles or so. It's a lot of driving and/or riding, but it will pay off tomorrow. Dinner probably won't be anything to write about, though. Edited to add: just got another tire alarm. We must have really annoyed someone.

As Garrison Keillor said during one of his skits about life in middle Minnesota: "by February you would KILL for a ripe tomato! Not those tomato-flavored things they strip-mine down in Texas, but a REAL TOMATO!" He said that by way of explaining why Midwesterners go crazy overboard with the seed catalog orders in late winter and early spring.

Thanks! I bit on Preserving by the Pint.

Aha! It's an ink pad! Yes, I find that credible.

We've done the final trailer packing-up for this trip, and will be living in half of it only until we're home. Today's road food includes a Tale of Two Sandwiches. I had enough chicken to make 2 chicken salads yesterday: Miracle Whip in his; mayonnaise in mine, with chopped pickles and the last of a jar of capers to give it an extra kick. Today's sandwiches were custom-made. I added some of the chicken-skin croutons to mine for some extra crunch. Note to self: make sure that skin is really, completely crisp! A couple of pieces, thicker than the rest, are most chewy than crunchy. Not very nice. Some road sights: pecan groves near San Saba, trimmed very differently than in Picacho, Arizona; a neat downtown store in San Saba; a bridge that gave us pause. The trailer is 13'3" high. We went very carefully, and still flinched - but didn't scrape.We've been under this bridge before. It makes us flinch very time. I haven't figured out last night's puzzle. Yes, I know we can look it up! But can anyone get it without looking? That thing in the lower left still has me stumped.

I can't tell you how much that means to me! Unfortunately, we're taking the most direct way home possible now: northern Texas tonight, northern Oklahoma tomorrow night, somewhere in Iowa, then into Minnesota and home on May Day. Thank you for the offer, though. I hope, by this fall, assuming we're still doing this, we'll be able to arrange a visit.

It's a warm, sunny day. The activity is dying down now, but there's been a steady stream of swimmers and splashers playing in the river, or families bringing picnic lunches and having their own private tailgate parties. This road of dredged materials, which is built to be reclaimed by backhoe and hauled by truck to the aggregate plant, has made an excellent swimming beach. A bunch of kids came down with their inner tubes and launched off that ephemeral beach. I'd love to have been able to join them. I spent part of the day dealing with the chicken that we hadn't ordered from Cooper's. The first step was to strip the skin from the meat and the meat from the bones. The meat became chicken salad for sandwiches, minus the few bites I snitched during the peeling and chopping. The skin I reserved to try crisping up according to this recent article in Food 52: Why Lindsay Maitlin Hunt's Roast Chicken is Genius. That article advocates roasting the chicken at a low and slow temperature, then removing the skin and crisping it at high heat. Why not? I tried it. It's quite crispy. I like it - I think someone here at eG has called it "chicken croutons" but I may be misremembering. My darling isn't so sure about liking it. It certainly depends on the seasoning and quality of the chicken skin! The bones went for broth in the Instant Pot. I didn't bother with pictures, but I got almost a quart of broth with very little effort. We probably won't need it for the trip home, but I'll need some items when we arrive. Tomorrow we'll leave these wildflowers, and the river, behind. We went into town to refuel the pickup before hooking up the trailer. While we were there, we checked out their beer supply. There must have been a heck of a party somewhere.

OK, then - yay! I can get more beans at Cooper's tonight!

As I eat breakfast this morning, I realize I haven't gotten an answer to an earlier question. It may have been lost in the shuffle of puzzles. What will happen to cooked pinto beans if I freeze them? Will it destroy their texture? Will they come through all right? I have a lot of this delicious stuff (the sour cream is my addition) and we're running lower on refrigerator space than on freezer space.

A little past the middle of the documentary is footage of Oudolf admiring the spring wildflowers during a visit to the Texas Hill Country. They also pay a visit to Cooper's for barbecue. His comment on the wildflowers, "Beautiful, there is only one word." And on the barbecue: "Completely insane. No other word." The documentary is lovely and very much worth a watch if you get a chance this weekend. Not to mis-represent it. It's about a renowned landscape designer and not focussed on Texas or barbecue! Thanks for this recommendation, @blue_dolphin. It really is a lovely documentary. I know nothing about garden design. This was an eye-opener.

I'm getting a pretty good stock of Cooper's pinto beans, which for some reason are much better than the ones I make. I'm running out of refrigerator space, though. What happens to cooked pinto beans if they're frozen? Does it destroy the texture?

I confess, I thought at first that one was "Hang yourself" and it seemed like an odd first clue...and unusually rude!

Green chile cheeseburgers are one of life's pleasures, I think. Nice job on that one, @Steve Irby.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, Cooper's offers ribeye steaks and baked potatoes in addition to their usual offerings. I've been wanting to try that for a while. Last night was the night. I pulled into a slot and this cutie greeted me. (I'm posting his picture with his permission.) Things were winding down, and we had time to chat while I was placing my order. I asked if they're open on Sundays, because my darling thought they weren't. "Well," he smiled, "is it Christmas?" "Nope," I said, "although when this coronavirus thing is over it's going to feel like it!" Laughs on both sides. I ordered a ribeye for myself, a rib for my darling, some beans, potato salad and beer. "Want that beer while you wait?" he asked. "The steak will be about 15 minutes." Gotta love small-town Texas. The order eventually came, I paid, we thanked each other, and I headed the two blocks back to the park. When I got there, I learned that we'd also gotten things we hadn't asked for: An entire chicken! And these plates and flatware that we didn't need. They will be useful along the road sometime when we don't feel like doing dishes, but I hate the waste. It also appeared that we'd gotten the rib but no steak. I went back up to Cooper's. "Did anyone get a ribeye when they'd ordered chicken?" Nope. no ribeyes sitting around, no disappointed customers. They offered to cook me a steak, but it was already closing time and I didn't want them to hang around. We'd paid for the chicken, so that would do. "Come back tomorrow and you'll have a steak on me," said my waiter. I assured him it wasn't that big a deal. "Hang in there," I said, and headed back home. When I got back to the Princessmobile and started unpackaging things, I discovered that the steak and the rib were packaged together. We had paid for it, and we'd gotten it. We'd just also gotten a chicken we hadn't ordered. Well, we like chicken too. It will go well in salads, or for sandwiches. My darling is of the opinion that there is one, and only one, way to cook a ribeye steak: by doing it ourselves, on our own grill. I'm so glad I tried this one. It was juicy, and tender, and flavorful. It might have been a shade more done than I'd have done it, but at worst I'd give it an A rather than an A+. Delicious. It was also huge. We have leftovers! Hooray!

I checked on The Outdoor Kitchen: Live-Fire Cooking from the Grill [A Cookbook] at Amazon, and it does look good. It's quite new! Maybe I can talk my library into purchasing it; in the meantime I've saved it to my list. Thanks for the recommendation!

See what we scored at the grocery store yesterday!

Ready for another rebus? Or are y'all getting tired of them?

Across the way from Miller's is a sit-down restaurant, The Hungry Hunter. We've never been inside, nor were we in its previous incarnation (I think this was the place) as an Italian restaurant. We're too comfortable, even in normal times, sitting on our deck and eating take-out or else eating our own cooking. We favor take-out from places that can do what we can't - or else can do it much, much better. Like Cooper's and Miller's. I do wonder whether this one will survive, though. Even at the best of times we've never seen many vehicles parked there. Maybe we've simply never visited at the right times.

Miller's Meat Market & Smokehouse is another favorite place in Llano. They've been around a long time and probably don't need our financial support, but we do like their products. Come in through the front, and you're in their market/deli area. Go around to the back at the right time of year, and they'll take your game for processing. (We've never had occasion to use that service.) They are set up for curbside pickup from an online order, but customers can also come in and pick out what they want. I didn't see many masks there, but the social distancing was evident. There was a large pump-bottle of hand sanitizer at each cash register. They offer quite a variety of sausages and cured meats, and all the materials necessary for making one's own sausage. I was tempted to buy sausage casings, but have no idea when we'll be getting around to trying that at home. A Texas company named La Boucherie specializes in frozen Cajun dishes - crawfish-stuffed chicken, for instance - and Miller's carries a pretty good line of their stuff in the freezer department. We won't be making it to the Gulf at all, much less to Cajun country, so I scratched the itch here. They also have a gorgeous deli counter. I was there specifically for the Gator Tooes and Brisket Poppers. If they'd had Armadillo Eggs I'd have gotten some of those too. Not shown: a fair amount of produce for such a small store, and a pretty good selection of wine and beer. We didn't need any (you heard it here first). This was the total haul: The poppers and toes will be dinner one night on our way home. Maybe 2 nights.

My darling commented on that too, wondering whether the puzzle-makers have something against the younger generations.

Well, of course...but where's the fun in that? 😆

It was an interesting sort-of lockdown day, but I'll have to tell the stories tomorrow. In the meantime, here's another rebus.

It was only after I took this picture that I realized Lone Star Beer bottles come with twist-off caps. There will be no bends in future photos, I promise!

You got them!