Good news!

The Mediterranean Diet includes at least 7 glasses of wine per week.  Well, if you insist!

Today in the news

“If you were someone mildly interested in cannibalism 30 years ago, it was really hard to find someone in real space to find common cause with,”

From an article in the NYT about a police officer who is on trial for plotting to kill and eat women, including his wife.  Obviously this is pure voyeuristic curiosity, but I really, really want to know what their marriage was like.

Bad Waffel House

We’re having our weekly 30 minute discussion about where to go for lunch as a group (there are 3-6 of us who go to lunch together on Fridays).  I decided to Google Map all of the local restaurants to try to get us out of the Andy’s-Liza’s-Dee’s funk we’ve been in lately.  While perusing, I came across the reviews for one of the (literally) dozens of Waffle Houses in the area.

Food Excellent Decor Very good Service Excellent

Amazing food. Seriously some of the best waffles I have ever had. The service was top notch. We went with a party of 7 including 3 kids. Our food was cooked and served quicker than we thought possible. We read it was cash only. We brought cash just in case but I didn’t even ask if they took cards. Without a doubt I will be back and will recommend this place to others.

This person probably took like an hour to write this one:

Overall Poor to fair

today 6/10/2010 myself, my military husband and daughter went to this location to have breakfast, we order a sweet tea,hot choclate and a hi c fruit punch to start, shortly after we ordered 2 t bone stake and eggs witch states 9.80 menu price come with eggs,toast and grits.we aske to have omlet styled eggs and waffels in stead of toast and grits. my husband ordered the waffle and sausage combo 2.65 on the menu and tripple hash brown with sausage gray 5.60 on the menu. the sever was nice but she brought us waffles then 2 min later my grits and omlet while my daughter waited 30 mins for her omlet, 30 mins later she bring my stake that was well done she had to take it back three times, then 20 mins later my daughter recived her stake.all the while my husbnd still waiting for his hash browns with sausage gravy. 30 mins later it comes.the food was disgusting, they said they had ran out of straws, and there was little black ants crawling on the table. when the sever cae with the bill the meal we had coast 51.93 for the little nasty food we had.I asked to brake down wha we we’re gettin charged for the charged three separate meals for my daughter and i a peice.she said she charged my for 2 grit mels 7.20 each, 2 sides of waffles 1.35 each ,and a t bones for 9.80 each. i ask why did you do that when every thing i asked for was in the 9.80 t bone and egg meal and i exspected to pay just a little more for omlet style eggs instead of regular and for waffle subing the toast but that was crazy the manager was to bust to come talk with us she told the server just give us 10% off witch brougt it to 46.46 but that was redicules. never eat here bad waffel house

And

Overall Excellent

I do not know what people are talking about. It was a great place. Food was amazing.

Liked: Food, Atmosphere, Value

Disliked: Service

I mean seriously, these people are writing reviews like they’ve never even HEARD of a Waffle House before.

Watchin Downton

If you replace one of the women with Simon and another with a cat, this is basically us watching Downton Abbey.

New music Wednesday!

Well, mostly new music.

Sin Fang, Young Boys

Rihanna

This came out last year, but I forgot to put it on my best of list.  Well it’s not really a best of, but it’s pretty good.

NPR is streaming Atoms For Peace’s (Thom Yorke’s other band) new album.

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/18/171939295/first-listen-atoms-for-peace-amok

And here’s some Lana Del Rey if you’re in to that kind of thing.

Hard to believe she looked like this before they invented her.

This one’s actually pretty old, but I love it and want you to watch the video if you’ve never seen it.

 

And, this isn’t new music, but I’m too lazy to make a new post for it.

Just to make your day a little brighter

Me at 13

The bigger the detachable doily collar, the closer to God.

http://meat13.tumblr.com

I have to find the pictures of me at Horseshoe Bay in that EXACT SAME DRESS and with the EXACT SAME BANGS and send it to this person.  Stay tuned.

*UPDATE! Mom sent a picture of the dress!  I actually found a picture (of one of the many times I wore this dress) from my dad and Kathy’s wedding a few days ago.  I’m glad I hadn’t posted it yet because 1) I am not nearly as sassy (no bow), and 2) it is fairly obvious that Jayme was not there to get my bangs to their full potential.  My favorite part of this is Brooke’s fantastic and completely overshadowing doily.

I am disappointed in the napkins for hiding Brooke’s full outfit.

This is us on the boat(?) portion of Meme and Pere’s 50th Anniversary boat/train ride in San Antonio.  I remember getting extremely silly on too many Shirley Temples and telling the waitress that I was drunk.

Nicaragua

Though we hadn’t discussed it previously, when taking stock of our
honeymoon, Simon and I both agreed that we genuinely liked Nicaragua
better than Costa Rica.  We spent a week in each country, and I
suppose we might have come to a different conclusion had we gone to
Costa first, rather than the other way around, but I don’t think so.
Looking back on it, there’s not any one thing I can point to that
brings Nica ahead.  Really it was a combination of factors that led us
to favor the poorer country.  However, we are definitely out of the
norm of most travelers, who prefer luxury over genuine culture (to a
point. We did stay in some “spa hotels” along the way, and I’m not
going to lie, they were fabulous).  That’s not to say that Costa
doesn’t offer genuine experiences, but the prevalence of “eco tours”
that are actually giant tour bus excursions turned us off a bit.
Costa Rica has really taken charge of their own fate (for the most
part, excluding the land grab that is going on right now) and provide
some excellent and easy access adventure tourism. For a price.

However, I was talking about Nica.  Up until the whole Ollie
North/Contra affair in the 80’s, Nicaragua was actually the richest
country in Central America.  But, the communists (Cuba) started
sniffing around, and Regan couldn’t abide that sort of thing in his
back yard.  Long story short, there was a semi civil war, and all of
Nica’s vast resources were spent fighting off the American-funded
Contras (it’s really fascinating, you should read up on it).  Today
Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere
(Behind Haiti).  Oddly enough, Nicaraguans don’t seem terribly hostile
to Americans, but they’re probably too busy working to feed their kids
think about it.  There have also been some amazingly corrupt
politicians along the way, and one local guide told us that 3 families
own all of the major money making ventures in the country (including
the presidency).  I’m fairly sure the move “Moon Over Parador” was
based on Nicaragua (see William Walker’s biography for an example).

The fierceness is offset a bit by the Nativity.

Which brings me to the first thing that was amazing about Nica.  ALL
of the work was done by hand.  From cutting the grass to chopping down
trees, machetes were the most common tools we saw.  It’s an
agricultural country, so obviously there was some heavy machinery on
the larger farms, but for the most part, the heavy lifting and
dragging was done by men and horses.  Sugar cane was cut down by hand
and taken away by horse and cart. Horses pulled carts on the highways,
kids rode horses, kids led horses down the highways and city streets,
kids led horses down highways while riding bikes, horses pulled pipes
and culverts to wherever they were going.  Obviously I’m not the most
well-traveled person ever, but this is one of the only countries I can
think of where horses are still predominantly working animals.  And
while they were definitely skinny creatures (more so in the cities
than the countryside), the horses were mostly well taken care of and
sound.

Horse and rider and rider

Horse and buggy vs truck

There’s a guy in that tree with a machete

Look at the upper left

Being a country kid at heart, I was utterly fascinated by the rural communities we came across/drove through.  Driving cattle, mostly angus beef, was the main occupation.  Pigs were prevalent in the landscape, but seemed to mostly do their own thing.  The cattle were multicolored and well fed. And mostly oblivious to our car.  The thing that most grabbed my attention, I must admit, was the tack.  Instead of bridles, hackamore-type halters and reigns were used on ridden horses, and the saddles had leather coverings with two or more feet of fringe hanging well below the horses’ stomachs.  We guessed that this was to help keep flies off the horses, which was confirmed by some guys who let us ride their horses around a volcano.  It was really impressive, though some horses were more decked out than others.  I took as many pictures as I could (while trying to maintain a respectable distance), and the internet is woefully low on pictures. However, here are some examples.  Excuse the dust.

This is, by far, my favorite horse and rider.

Click here for a video of the rider (for some reason I can’t get it to embed, so I’m giving up). You may want to turn down your speaker volume.

Cows and cart

More herding

City horse

Our tiny horses for the volcano ride

These guys donate “fly fringe” to horse owners in Nicaragua and Honduras: http://www.worldhorsewelfare.org/you-help/flyfringe

The landscape in the western part of the country is, I guess, “dry
rain forest” (which seems like an oxymoron to me, shouldn’t it be an
arid tropical forest?) and we were there during the dry season.  It
was not what I would call hot, but the sun was intense and the
humidity was low despite the proximity to the Pacific Ocean.  The land
cleared for cattle was fruitful, while the existing native forest
consisted of large, though not terribly tall, trees.

The cities of Leon and Granada were built in the colonial style, with
beautiful, and sanctioned, pastel colored buildings and cobblestone
streets.  Nicas are also very proud of their churches, which are all
huge (the largest Catholic church in Central America is in Leon) and
extremely ornate.  Unfortunately, the prevalence of several active
volcanoes means that earthquakes and lava flows are frequent and the
large structures haven’t fared so well.  A fondness for grandeur
coupled with a lack of capital has led to a bit of a “Wizard of Oz”
type architecture for recent construction; very grand entrances, but
if you peek around the corner you’ll see that the front is a facade
hiding the actual tin-roof structure.  Another aspect of city life
that we noticed was the evening social gatherings of people in front
of their houses.  Nearly every house, no matter how spare and small,
had beautiful hand crafted rocking chairs that were moved out to the
sidewalks in the evenings.  Front doors were left open so that you
literally were looking in on everyones’ living rooms as you passed by
on the street.  It took quite a while to get used to, and I’m afraid I
gawked at (and even took a photo of) the grand Christmas decorations
and rocking chairs.

Rawr

Sleepy lion

Sad lion is sad (Ruben Dario’s tomb)

Giant stations of the cross

Rocking chairs on the street

Oops, that’s a living room

A lively, and typical of Latin America- late night social scene meant that street food was prevalent and delicious.  Our favorite snacks were the fried plantain strips, served in a plastic bag with shredded cabbage and a pickled chile salsa on top, but pretty much anything you could point to in a cart or on a food truck was guaranteed to hit the spot.  We dined on chicken taquitos one night in Leon, which were served with cream and the same cabbage/chile salsa that was ubiquitous on the tables of cafes; it made a sort of spicy coleslaw that soaked into the fried tortilla.  And the chicken.  From fried chicken to chicken soup, anything with chicken in it was guaranteed to be good. We loved the sopa de pollo so much, we had to try it once we got back (link).

Taquitos

Plantain chips with salsa and some kind of pastry in a honey sauce

Leon’s night time food vendors

Plate lunch in Masaya with a cacao drink

So, what was our favorite part?  It’s really difficult to say.  It wasn’t so much any one thing that drew us to Nicaragua, as the overall experience and the people.  We didn’t make it to the Caribbean side, so obviously that’s the next thing we need to check out before we solidify our opinions.  And while it seems Costa Rica has the more spectacular scenery, we just can’t stop thinking about getting back to Nica.

Chinchilla scoot

How can rodents be so cute?

This seat is taken