Blackberries and Yogurt Cream

So, last week when we hiked the Salado Greenway Trail along the stretch between Tobin Park and Rittiman road, we noticed that there were a great many thickets of berry brambles, especially in the sunny stretch along Holbrook Road. We had seen a man standing out in the middle of the thickest patch of brush, and asked what he was doing - ‘blackberries' he answered, and held up a plastic Tupperware container nearly full of them. So, this week, I was prepared; Tupperware, and plastic bags, gardening gloves, long-sleeved shirt, long pants - banded at the bottom with rubber bands, and a tube of ointment for treating a close encounter with poison ivy, just in case.

I waded into the tangle of brambles and low-brush at the first place where it looked as if there would be enough berries to reward the effort easily - and oh, my! That's the thing about blackberries; there may be two or three, four or five showing at first glance, but when you start working down below the level of the leaf cover, there are tens more. In one place - and I had not gone more than fifteen paces from the path, I could have stood in one place and filled up a quart-sized plastic container, just with those berries in reach. They are perfectly ripe at present, and being so dry the last couple of months, they are very sweet as well.

And this is what I will do with them - really, not very much more than to wash them gently, and serve them with a version of panna cotta that I found the recipe for, years ago in the Stars & Stripes; it's called Yogurt Cream Mold

Soften 4 tsp unflavored gelatin in ½ cup cold water. Combine in a saucepan over low heat, 1 ½ cup heavy cream and ½ cup sugar, stirring until cream is warm and sugar dissolves. Add softened gelatin and stir until that dissolves also. Remove from heat, allow to cool and stir in 2 ½ cups plain unflavored yoghurt and 1 tsp vanilla. Pour into a 1-quart mold and chill for at least one hour. Un-mold and serve with fresh fruit - any sort will do. For this version, with the fresh-picked wild blackberries, I will make a syrup of ½ cup water, and 6 Tbsp sugar and cook about 1 cup of fresh blackberries in it, until the berries are softened and syrup is slightly thickened. Then add another cup of berries, and a dash of raspberry vodka for flavor. We'll be back, and soon, for they are just now ripe, and probably won't last too much longer.

And we also noticed - there are tangles of mustang grape vines all over the place. I have a friend who makes mustang grape wine - I wonder if he can share the recipe with me, when the grapes are ripe?

San Antonio Water System (SAWS) Reports: Stage One Water Restrictions? No problem.

As you've likely heard by now, Stage One watering rules are in effect. While some may consider drought restrictions to be a bad thing, you – our loyal subscribers – know it simply means making a few adjustments to your watering schedule.

The advice in this newsletter is designed to help you maintain a landscape that weathers dry conditions and restrictions, so there's no need to despair.

During Stage One restrictions:

• Watering your lawn with an irrigation system or hose-end sprinkler is allowed once a week on your assigned day, before 10 a.m. or after 8 p.m. (No drastic change here since our watering recommendations are to water your lawn only as needed and never more than once a week.)
• You're encouraged to reduce your overall water consumption by targeting outdoor irrigation more precisely. This is easily accomplished by watering with a hand-held hose, watering can, and/or soaker hose (these methods are allowed any time, on any day). The same applies to drip irrigation, just be sure to program it to run only as needed.
• Water features in your landscape must be turned off, unless they use 100 percent non-potable water.

Get a detailed rundown of Stage One rules or a printable flyer (pdf) at www.saws.org. Of course, following the advice in this newsletter will help your landscape weather the dry spell.

Juan Soulas is a conservation consultant for San Antonio Water System.

HEB-domain

Pretty generally and for as long as I have been paying attention - and it first came up in the 6th grade when Mr. Terrenova was explaining about company stores, and went all the way through my military service overseas with the Commissary and BX - everyone generally agrees that a monopoly of any market is a bad thing when it comes to consumer goods. Essentially, you are stuck with whatever the establishment chooses to offer; if they choose not to offer it, or are unable to offer it, you have no place else to shop. While not absolutely true in the case of the Commissary/BX - as there always was the local economy and/or mail order - there is in Texas a special case of a benign and bountiful monopoly in the matter of grocery store chains.

That would be the HEB grocery stores, which as nearly as I can see is unequalled by any other store chain in this part of the world. I knew that even when I was jokingly referring to them as the Huge Enormous Big-ass Grocery. Over three hundred stores in Texas and northern Mexico, one of the largest privately held companies in the United States . . . and is headquartered here as well, so that counts for the mega-big footprint around the highways and byways of San Antonio. HEB is the initials of the original founder's son, Howard Edward Butt, who would be treated horribly if he were an elementary school student today; presumably the early 20th century was kinder to kids with tease-worthy names. The founder, I might add, was one Florence Butt who in an attempt to provide a living for herself and her children, opened a simple storefront grocery store in Kerrville in 1905

The HEB has some local competition when it comes to specialty groceries - from Whole Foods on the high-end organic front, Sun Harvest Farms on the medium-range organic, Specs' and World Market as far as exotic imports. At the budget oriented end there is always Super-Target and Wally-World - but that's it. There is no other national chain in town; no Trader Joes, no Food Lion, no Smith's. No Vons, no Krogers. And no Albertsons - although they had a go of it a couple of years ago; I liked going to the Albertsons at Nacogdoches and Judson on weekends because it was never as crowded as the nearest HEB. Alas, that should have been a clue to me right there about Albertson's fate.

There are excellent reasons for HEB's supremacy: excellent choice of goods, high quality in the house brands, and awesome customer service. We didn't realize how very good that we had it, until I made one of my rare post-retirement out-of-state journeys to South Carolina in 1999 to see my daughter graduate from USMC basic training. She had been at Parris Island for nearly six months - and on her first night out, we decided that we wanted to celebrate by having something that she hadn't had for all that time: some nice deli cheese and crackers, maybe some good bakery bread and a bottle of wine. I found a chain grocery store, in a nice upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of Savannah - a Food Lion, if memory serves - and we ventured in, quite sure that there would be a deli counter, maybe even an in-store bakery. There wasn't. We made do with a box of Triskets and a tiny slab of Kraft, of course, but it wasn't anything like we had been anticipating. We felt sorry for the Savannahites who didn't know what they were missing, and have appreciated the heck out of HEB ever since.

Urban Street Food – Erick’s Tacos

While I’m not nearly as willing as Anthony Bourdain is to risk my health eating exotic foods in . . . ummm . . . exotic and off the beaten track venues, and I certainly draw the line at consuming tid-bits that I would have to muscle past my gag-reflex . . . I’ve always been pretty adventurous about street food, and taking a chance on a restaurant venue that may not look all that promising and first or second glance. I will always remember the little Chinese restaurant in my hometown – a tiny wooden shack, with peeling paint and a sagging roof, which appeared as if a good sneeze would bring it down all together.

We went past it for years, assuming that it was the kind of place where you’d get ptomaine poisoning from the water glasses, until finally we had just heard too many glowing recommendations from friends, who insisted, positively and over and over that it was the best Chinese food in town, ever! We ventured in, at last – the place was shabby on the inside, but scrupulously clean, and the food was divine – crunchy, spicy, savory, crisp, aromatic, perfectly flavored – everything that good Chinese food is supposed to be. It was even good as leftovers, warmed up the next day.

So – lesson learned: pay no attention to what the outside looks like. And we learned the lesson again, after having driven by Erick’s Tacos on Nacogdoches for I don’t know how many years. It’s next to Cordova Auto, which is mostly painted vivid yellow – but Erick’s is painted a shade of vivid orange that you can see vibrating against the inside of your eyelids for some time after you close your eyes. The dining room of the original Erick’s is a group of folding tables and chairs in an open bay that was part of the garage, although there is how a nice little patio area adorned with potted palm trees. The cooking is done in a taco truck parked on one side – and the drinks and fruit cups and ice cream bars are served from a tiny enclosed area on the other. The menu is basically Mexican street food, sort of like La Gloria Ice House, but without a shred of pretensions to atmosphere. Heck, the atmosphere consists of looking at the traffic on Nacogdoches, but oh, the food . . .

I tried out the special, which was pork carnitas, and my daughter had chorizo con bifstec, which came with lashings of fresh cilantro, and crumbled cheese and sautéed onions. The menu is painted on the side of the truck, essentially. Both of our orders were served up on tiny corn tortillas, doubled – so as to have something to scoop up the goodness that fell out, as we ate. There weren’t many other diners on the evening we ate there, but we were early. It’s open until four in the morning, apparently. They have also just opened an indoors extension of Erick’s, in a little house next door which used to be something else. Perhaps they have something like a proper menu inside, but if they do, it’s probably just as good.

But beware of the green condiment sauce, and add it judiciously. That’s the stuff that is a pale creamy green, which at first glance might look like guacamole. It’s not – it’s nuclear fission by the spoonful.

Statement by Gov. Rick Perry on Federal Judge Banning Prayer at Texas High School Graduation

Friday, June 03, 2011 • Austin, Texas • Press Release

"This reprehensible action taken by a federal judge underscores the increasingly inappropriate federal encroachment into the lives of Americans by unconstitutionally banning prayer at a Texas high school graduation. The First Amendment prohibits governments from interfering with Americans' rights to freely express their religious beliefs, and accordingly the U.S. Supreme Court has maintained that Congress may convene every day with a prayer. I fully support Attorney General Abbott's efforts to defend the right to pray, and Texas will continue to stand behind all those who wish to pray in our state."

Created Monday, 25 April 2011 14:39

Moo the Closet Cat

When my younger sister's parakeet, known as Bird - my sister did not have much of an imagination when it came to naming her pets - was accidentally killed, my father immediately took Pip to the pet store to find a replacement parakeet. My sister, sniffling slightly, returned from the pet store, having selected from their parakeet stock the plainest, gawkiest, motley-ist parakeet in the lot. He was so ugly and awkward, my sister explained, that no one would ever pick him out and take it home, and so she felt sorry for him. She named him BT, which stood for Bird Two, and although he did fill out a little as he matured - he remained rather plain and gawky.

My daughter feels the same way, about animals. Some years ago, a void in the catosphere had opened at my parent's house with the death from extreme old age of their very elderly Siamese. They had indicated a willingness to have a pair of kittens, and from a shelter - so my daughter, who was then stationed at Camp Pendleton, had volunteered go through the shelters for them. She eventually did find a likely pair - but the one cat that she felt the sorriest for, during her search - was a particular older cat. This cat was some years old; and his owner had died. No one among the friends and family wanted this poor cat, and so it had finished up at the shelter. It was a very nice no-kill shelter . . . but this poor cat just curled up miserably in the corner of the cage; wouldn't respond to overtures from any other animal or human. It's Human had gone away, and it had been exiled from a familiar home and routine, and didn't know why. My daughter said that it seemed this cat had just given up on everything. Likely, it would not be adopted because it wasn't appealing, or cute or young . . .

So, at the beginning of the year, while I was in California helping my mother deal with the loss of my father, an acquaintance of my daughters' wanted to get a Yorkie pup. This acquaintance already had a cat, called Moo, for no other reason than she is brown on white, rather like a cow. Moo is ten, declawed, near to blind, not of a particularly easy-going nature . . . and did not take to the Yorkie pup. The acquaintance decided unilaterally that Moo should go, and the sooner the better. And my daughter knew very well that a ten-year old, declawed, almost blind and relatively unfriendly cat would not fare very well at a shelter. So . . . We got another cat. Moo has mellowed a bit with us: she purrs when we cuddle her, a great improvement on the first couple of weeks when she would snarl and bite. Unfortunately, she gets along about as well with our other cats as she did with the Yorkie pup . . . so she lives in the master-suite bathroom and walk-in closet, with her very own dedicated cat-basket, food, water and litter pan. It's working out pretty well - I certainly don't need to worry about mice in that part of the house, or palmetto bugs, either. But the last time I said - absolutely no more cats, it lasted eight months before we had another cat. Sigh.

Monthly Review of Texas Economy

Sweet Poteet

So, my daughter and I went down to the Poteet Strawberry festival this last weekend; we've been to it before, at least twice - but it now seems to have grown, and grown on steroids. Wow - we didn't recall having to wait in a line of cars for about a mile outside of Poteet to get up to one of the parking lots. There weren't near as many vendors, lining the walkways of the festival grounds . . . and there certainly weren't as many outside the grounds in previous years. Across the street from the festival grounds was am unbroken row of street-food vendors, everything from aqua fresca, to tacos, to gorditas, to fruit drinks in hollowed out pineapples, freshly cut slabs of watermelon, fruit cups, shortcake, roasted corn, BBQ brisket, sausages and roasted turkey legs.

This was not confined to the streets of Poteet, either. All the way from 1604 to Poteet along Route 16, everywhere there was a church or a business, or a cluster of homes, there were pavilions set up, barbeques smoking away, and tables and chairs set out, invitingly. This is Poteet's once-a-year-big bash, the celebration of strawberries - strawberries that were for many years, the main cash crop. Well, one has a feeling that the strawberries are just the excuse, the starting-point, and an ongoing decorative motif. There are only a few local growers of the sweet red heart-shaped fruit these days; only those local growers are allowed into the grounds, to advertise their harvest as real, genuine, for-real Poteet strawberries.

So - why has the Strawberry Festival gotten ever bigger, even if the strawberries in the market are more likely to come from California, or Mexico, or someplace else than Poteet? Ah - I theorize that the real purpose is to have a midway and carnival rides, to listen to live music and watch the fire-eater, to eat kettle corn and cotton candy, to engage in games of skill for the prize of a stuffed animal, to look in wonder at the display of white Bengal tigers, and generally have a good time. In the era of cable television, of movies and Disney World and other such permanent, carefully designed and gorgeously appointed amusement parks . . . this is a throwback to another and a more simple time, that of the late 19th century, when folk living in a rural area had neither the time or the money to travel very far.

So amusement had to come to them, and not stay for very long, for the traveling lecturers, the traveling circus, the Chautauqua and the revival meeting - well, they could not afford to stay in one place for very long, either. This was a big country - still is a big country - and just as our ancestors did, we crave loud music and bright lights, exotic animals and excitement, to meet with our friends and encounter strangers, to consume interesting varieties of foodstuff-onna-stick . . . but in carefully metered and regulated doses. Not too many of us can stand it all on a 24-7-365 basis . . . so for the great most of us, local festivals like this will do very nicely.

Annals of 1836: The Runaway Scrape

The 175 anniversary of the war for Texas independence is being observed this year, I've been to commemorative events at the Alamo, and at Presidio La Bahia . With the price of a gallon of gas already reaching towards $3.50, I'll probably have to give a miss on the drive from my San Antonio home to Houston to the reenactment event there on the weekend of April 16th. The war was fast, furious and relatively brief; barely six months from the start of open hostilities at the ‘Come-and-Take-it Fight" in a watermelon field outside of Gonzales, to the shattering of the Mexican forces under the command of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, in a grassy meadow by Buffalo Bayou, in 18 minutes of pitched battle. Kind of fitting, actually - as went the war, so went the final decisive battle.

So, most of the major events have their commemoration - but not so much the event that hit the Texian settlers the hardest - the terrifying Runaway Scrape. The San Jacinto reenactment (April 16, 2011) will touch on it a little, which is only suitable, but it would be difficult for a day-long event to do the experience justice. It was a pell-mell evacuation of all the Anglo settler families, first from all settlements and farms west of the Colorado - and then, as Santa Anna's three columns kept advancing east, it seemed as if there would be no safety anywhere on the Texas side of the Sabine.

Fear drove the settler families, fear of the implacable Santa Anna, who had put down similar federalist-inspired rebellions in other Mexican states with considerable brutality. Upon defeating the federalist militia of Zacatecas, Santa Anna had allowed his victorious army to pillage, loot and otherwise abuse the citizens of the defeated town for two days. What happened in Zacatecas would have been well-known, among the Texian rebels; the executions of the Alamo and La Bahia garrisons were just proof that Santa Anna was running true to established form.

The direct orders of Sam Houston also provided a motivation, as if any more were needed. He had barely arrived in Gonzales on March 11, with the intent of rallying an army to him to relieve the Alamo, when word arrived that it was too late. Within hours, Houston gave orders for his army to retreat east, back to hold a strong line along the Colorado River. He also ordered that civilians evacuate as well . . . and that the town be burnt. It was a cruel plan, but one with a purpose. Santa Anna's supply lines were stretched to the breaking point as it was. Failing necessary supplies arriving from Mexico, they could manage in the short term by forage and local requisition, but Houston's plan was to leave a scorched earth as he retreated back and back again. Gonzales burned, so did the fledgling settlement of Bastrop, and San Felipe de Austin, although there is controversy as to who actually fired San Felipe. Refugio, Richmond, Washington-on-the Brazos - all emptied of the Anglo-American settlers and their families. Santa Anna burned Harrisburg, possibly out of frustration at not being able to catch members of the Texian government. All the way through March and into April, settler families straggled east. Some had only a bare few minutes to gather their belongings and leave. Many families buried those things they valued, intending to return when they could. It was the rainiest spring in years, which put many of the rivers at flood-stage and bogged down the Mexican army . . . but added to the sufferings of the refugees. Disease broke out, especially those intensified by cold, hunger and bad sanitation. The dead were hastily buried where they died, and their kin moved on, seeking any safety they could.

Along the (Other) Riverwalk

So in the process of exploring Phil Hardberger Park a little bit at a time over the last three or four Sundays - being that we have taken the dog to the dog-park there for a vigorous romp, followed by a brisk walk along one of the trails - last week, we thought we should explore the Salado Creek Greenway, which rambles from the old Voelcker farmstead buildings more or less north towards Huebner Road. The trail is completely paved, and winds a gentle way through stands of oak trees, along and over and back and forth along the bed of Salado Creek. Which - rather as the joke used to be about the Los Angeles River - only seems to have water in it when it rains. However, there is plenty of evidence that when Salado Creek does have water in it - it has lots of water. There are a number of places where the creek-bed is eroded down to stone, and one long stretch where the intermittent watercourse has also eroded away a line of hills to produce a fairly steep, rocky face, pitted with caves.

There are houses on either side of the creek-way; many of the back yards either open to it through gates, or with a private view from a back yard overlooking the creek, but it is just barely possible along some stretches to even see houses at all. When the seasonal trees leaf out a little more, such houses will be even less visible from the paved pathway. That pathway was very popular on a Sunday, by the way - joggers, and people like us, walking their dogs, families on bicycles. I suppose that eventually it will be possible to cross all the way across San Antonio on a greenway path - from 1604 on the north, all the way to downtown and the best-known stretch of the Riverwalk, along the San Antonio River, through the south-side and out at Mission Espada at 410 and South Presa.

The one thing that I did notice, somewhat wistfully, as we walked along - was what a wonderful un-constructed playground all this would have been for kids. My brothers and sister and our friends would have been all over a pocket wilderness like this, so temptingly close to the backyards of the suburban houses so very much like the ones that we lived in, growing up. When there was water in the creek, there would be tadpoles and minnows to watch. The temptation to dam up an ankle-deep stretch of the creek to make it a little deeper would have been overwhelming - our very own swimming hole. Trees to climb and make tree-houses in the lower branches, thickets to hide in; to play hide and seek, to pretend to be Indians, or play an extended round of capture-the-flag, to build forts out of scrap wood, or to deepen some of the caves and make a den out of them . . . oh, that would have been the best kind of playground for us ... I don't know how children could be kept from that kind of romp, even though free-range play and the concept children being permitted to amuse themselves for hours on end unsupervised by adults seems to be a concept now well out of fashion.

Anyway, I hope that those kids who do live in the San Antonio homes along the creek-way do get some serious play-time in. And for those of us, sadly grown-up and years beyond tree-climbing and minnow-catching - we can still enjoy it the greenway trails, too.