Tie Dye Travels with Kat Robinson

The Case for Possum Pie.

2011-11-23T08:46:00.000-06:00

Awesome Possum Pie at Front Porch Diner in Springdale.

I have been on a quest over this past year -- to discover the best pie in the state of Arkansas. Turns out, there’s no really good way to determine this. Our pies are as varied and unusual as our crops. You can’t compare a grain of rice to a watermelon, and you can’t really compare a fried pie to a meringue pie.

But you can bring together a list of pies that contain all those tasty items, as I have done for the Arkansas Times. The list contains five fried pies, over a dozen meringue pies and seven of the best possum pies I’ve found anywhere.

Sweet Treats in Lamar adds a vanilla pudding layer on top.

And it’s about this possum pie I want to speak. See, it’s everywhere… and how we do it here in Arkansas is different from how it’s done elsewhere. Elsewhere it can be any sort of white topping that obscures a layer of, well, anything -- peaches, pecans, apples, you name it.

In Arkansas, the Possum Pie consists of three layers -- a cream cheese layer (sometimes substituted with a sour cream or vanilla pudding instead), a chocolate custard layer and a whipped topping layer. Most places serve theirs up on a pecan sandy crust -- ie, an unsweetened flour crust dotted with pecans. Many scatter pecans over the top of their pies.

It’s served up in so many restaurants but is more prevalent in said restaurants in western Arkansas. For those who are interested in making their own, here’s an easy recipe for two pies. Yes, you’ll want two.

Stoby's classic Possum Pie.

Possum Pie (1 or 2 pies)

1 ½ stick butter
2 cups crushed pecans, separated
2 cups flour
1-8 ounce package cream cheese, room temperature
12 ounces Cool Whip, divided
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 box milk chocolate instant pudding
1 box chocolate fudge instant pudding
3 cups milk

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut butter into flour to make crumbly pastry dough. Add 1 cup crushed pecans. Press into two 8 or 9 inch pie pans or one 13"x9" casserole. Bake 15 minutes or until flour starts to brown. Remove and cool.

Cream together cream cheese and confectioners sugar. Add six ounces of Cool Whip and beat until fluffy. Spread over bottom of both pies.

Blend together both pudding mixes with milk. Pour in on top of the cream cheese mixture and allow to set.

Spread remaining Cool Whip over the top of both pies and sprinkle with pecans. Serves 16, if you’re lucky.

Barr's Junction's Chocolate Torte contains the same ingredients.

The pies can be frozen, though I recommend if you do so freeze them before you put on the Cool Whip and dot it on later. Just looks better.

One more thing. There is a case that can be made for the Possum Pie to become the state pie of Arkansas. We have a state dirt, a state grape wine, a state bird, a state slogan -- why not create the Possum Pie as our state pie? Comments welcome.

Do Up Your Deer.

2011-11-11T17:14:00.007-06:00

November is apparently the best month for me to share recipes, and on the request of KARN’s Dave Elswick I’d like to share some of the recipes I’ve used with venison. They’re a little off the beaten path, but they do offer a different take on the animal -- and after all, if you take a deer, you’ll have quite a lot to deal with. At Dave's request, I'm also including recipes called in by listeners.

I love this recipe for Venison Stew. It combines deer meat with red wine for a nice, deep flavor best served when the weather is cold. It also has mushrooms, which I love.

2 pounds cubed deer meat
1 pound mushrooms (any sort), sliced
1 cup red wine
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 packet French onion soup mix.

In a cast iron casserole or Dutch oven, sear the venison cubes. Add the mushrooms. Mix the remaining items and add them to the casserole. Set in the oven at 250 degrees and allow to cook for four or more hours until the venison cubes fall apart. Can also be made in a Crock-Pot, just sear your venison first.

Venison Philly Cheesesteaks
For this one, you want a meat slicer and a nearly frozen deer roast -- or when you get your deer butchered, ask that your deer roast be sliced wafer thin. You’re looking for cross-section slices no more than ¼ inch thick.

1 pound wafer-thin venison roast cutlets
2 bell peppers, seeded and sliced
1 onion, sliced
1 tablespoon Worchestershire sauce
1 clove garlic, smashed
Salt and pepper to taste
Bread of choice (6 inch hoagies work well)
Provolone cheese slices

Slice open hoagie rolls or spread appropriate bread. Lay Provolone over the inside surface.

Bring skillet to medium high heat. Saute peppers, onions and garlic until onion is translucent. Add venison and Worchestershire sauce. Cook for one to two minutes or until cutlets are cooked through but still moist. Add salt and/or pepper if you like. Remove from heat but do not drain. With tongs, drop meat and vegetables into rolls on top of cheese. Serves 2-4, depending on how hungry you are.

I talked about cooking venison in a medieval fashion on the show. Here's a great recipe on the Gode Cookery website for Venyson in Broth, or more properly Venison Ribs in Wine.

John Philpot called in with this great venison recipe. He and Phyllis Speer hosted "Arkansas Outdoors" on AETN for 20 years, and they always had great things to share and eat. John says this is the most requested venison recipe they had.

Grilled Chili Crusted Venison Steak

1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1 ¼ teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon ground red pepper
One venison steak, one to three and a half pounds, 1 ½ to 2 inches thick

Trim any fat off the meat and rub the mixture onto both sides of the steak. Place it in a shallow glass pan and cover it tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate it at least overnight. It's better if you give it a full day -- and 36 hours is still all right. Every 12 hours, turn the steak over.

Get a charcoal fire burning, and once the coals are covered with ash put that steak on the grill six inches from the heat. Flip it once while it's cooking. Give it 25 minutes for rare or 30 for medium. Slice it up and serve it.

John says you can slice it with a fork.

Not a deer recipe, but John also gave this recipe for Mexican Eggs.

A pound of sausage
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon cumin seed
1 can Rotel
salt and pepper to taste
4 eggs
1 eight ounce package grated cheddar cheese

Crumble the sausage in skillet, brown it and drain it. Add the onion, pepper, garlic and cumin and cook until the onions are soft. Add Rotel and, if you like, salt and pepper and cook it all together.

With a large wooden spoon, make four little wells in the mix. Break an egg into each well. Cover tightly with a lid and cook until the egg is firm. Sprinkle the cheese over the whole mess and let it cook until the cheese is melted. Makes four servings.

John says Phyllis would crack the eggs in gently so they'd cook up where the yolks were still whole and runny -- but you can beat the eggs first if you wish.

One of our listeners, Fred, told us about a breakfast treatment for tough deer meat. Take cubed up meat and throw it in a crockpot with garlic, black pepper, onion and white gravy. Let it simmer all night long and serve it up the next morning over biscuits.

It's similar to what parts of my family has been doing for years for breakfast...

Skillet Fried Deer

1 pound deer minute steaks (1/2 inch thick)
2 cups + 1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 stick + 1 stick butter

Heat skillet to medium high. Drop in a stick of butter to coat the bottom.

Get yourself a meat mallet and pound the holy fire out of the deer steaks until they are less than a quarter inch thick. Sift together flour, salt and pepper. Dredge deer steaks in flour. Drop steaks into the browning butter and cook for a minute on each side or until golden on each side. Remove steaks.

Add second stick of butter. Whisk in remaining flour and continue to whisk until roux becomes the color of chocolate milk. Serve over biscuits or grits.

Listener James called in with a different recipe -- for duck rather than venison. Sounds good, too.

Stuffed Duck Breasts

2 duck breasts, butterflied
2 cups soy sauce
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/2 cup Worchestershire sauce
Cream cheese
Sliced jalapeno pepper
Bacon

Take duck breasts and butterfly them. Marinate them overnight in a combination of the soy sauce, Worchestershire sauce and vinegar. Next day tuck cream cheese and jalapeno slices inside, fold over and wrap in bacon. Cook to medium heat.

Alas, I didn't get the name of our last caller, but he gave us these instructions for Venison Tenderloin.

6 inches of venison tenderloin
Marinade of your choice (Cajun marinade prefered)
1 stalk celery, cut into sections
1 carrot, cut into sections

Pierce the tenderloin with a knife. Slide pieces of carrot and celery at intervals into the tenderloin. Add marinade, wrap tightly and marinate overnight. Bake in aluminum foil for three hours at 350 degrees.

And then there was the contribution from Grav Weldon, who has become pesce-vegetarian but who still loves to hunt. He referred me to this recipe for Venison Shepherd's Pie.

Have a venison recipe you'd like to share? Add it to the comments!

The Mecca.

2011-11-11T15:28:00.001-06:00

Mack’s Prairie Wings isn’t just another sporting goods store. It’s a destination for duck hunters across the country.

When you go to Wings Over The Prairie, you may hit a traffic jam in the vicinity of the intersection of Highways 165 and 63. People will pull off on the shoulder and leave their cars to walk half a mile or more… because there just isn’t any free parking anywhere near Mack’s Prairie Wings the weekend of Thanksgiving.

This sporting goods store has become a destination, the must-go place for duck hunters across Arkansas and across the country to gear up and get gone before hitting the swamps and fields for duck season. It’s geared especially for the duck hunter, with everything from waders to duck calls to duck blinds and insulated oversuits to keep you warm.

Mack’s Prairie Wings is the vision of the McCollum family. Back in the ‘30s, M.T. “Mack” McCollum had a hardware store in Stuttgart. About that time folks started to come to Stuttgart en masse for the bountiful duck hunting they’d heard about. McCollum found he had a lot more business for guns and whathaveyou than he did for his hardware, so in 1944 he opened a duck hunting store called “Mack’s Sports Shop” right next door to the hardware store.

In 1970 the McCollums moved out to Highway 79, and in 1993 that’s where “Mack’s Prairie Wings,” the mail order business, was born. It grew and even more people started to make the pilgrimage to Stuttgart to visit. In 2000 the operation moved to its current location on Highway 63 into a 50,000sf facility -- and that’s kept growing, too. Today the whole shebang is more than 104,00sf and packed top to bottom with anything a duck hunter might need.

And I’m not just talking about hunting. On my recent visit I walked in under the giant elephant head inside the front door and past cougars, bobcats, coyotes and all manners of ducks to explore the place. The center, of course, is one of the best gun shops you’ll find in the United States, with actual gunsmiths and armory experts on-hand to make sure you get what you need. To the left is everything you might ever need to gear up for going out to duck hunt -- waders, coveralls, headgear, socks and of course duck call after duck call.

The fun stuff is on the right hand side of the store. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that this is where Stuttgart teenagers get decked out for

their Wings Over The Prairie socializing -- with all manners of designer jeans, coats and knee high boots in evidence. There are several aisles of T-shirts, belts and accessories. And then there’s that one special department -- you know, the one with home furnishing such as camouflage couches, the best knives for filleting your duck, salsa and sweet jalapenos in jars and camouflage lingerie.

The variety and good humor makes Mack’s Prairie Wings just about the best place you can go to shop for your family and friends who believe duck hunting is more than just a hobby.

Mack’s Prairie Wings
2335 Highway 63 North
Stuttgart, AR 72160
(870) 673-6960
www.mackspw.com

Everyone Has A Cornbread Recipe.

2011-11-03T06:51:00.000-05:00

With the Arkansas Cornbread Festival coming up, I thought I might share two of my favorite cornbread recipes. This first one is the closest thing I have to a Heritage recipe. Great with PurpleHull Peas and a little iced tea.

Arkansaw Cornbread

2 cups War Eagle Mill White Cornmeal
2 cups War Eagle Mill unbleached all purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ tablespoons baking powder
1 tablespoon honey, preferably local
2 eggs
4 cups buttermilk
1 cup butter, melted
Vegetable oil

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Blend together dry ingredients with a fork (or sift if you prefer) in a bowl. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and add honey, buttermilk and melted butter. Incorporate the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Let sit five minutes.

While the batter is sitting, heat up a 12 inch skillet on the stovetop. When it’s hot, pour in about an eighth of a cup of vegetable oil and roll it around the inside of the skillet. Pour in the batter and cook over high heat until the batter bubbles.

Place in oven and let cook 40-45 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Place a cloth over a cutting board. Invert the pan over the cutting board and allow cornbread to fall out. Use the cloth to turn the cornbread right side up and wrap tightly until ready to serve, warm.

And for something a little different, this is a soft spoon bread type cornbread, almost a pudding bread, that serves up well with stews or chili. Add jalapeno pieces and a slug of garlic cayenne sauce if you want it spicy.

Sour Cream Cornbread

2 cups War Eagle Mill White Cornmeal
2 cups War Eagle Mill unbleached all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ tablespoons baking powder
2 eggs
2 cups sour cream
1 can creamed corn
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup Cheddar cheese
Vegetable oil

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl, blend together dry ingredients with a fork. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and add melted butter, sour cream and creamed corn. Incorporate the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

While the batter is sitting, heat a 12 inch cast iron skillet on the stovetop. When it’s hot, pour in about an eighth of a cup of vegetable oil and roll it around the inside of the skillet. Pour in half the batter, spread the cheese over it and pour over the rest of the batter.

Place in oven and let cook 40-45 minutes or until the cornbread is completely set. Serve directly from the pan.

Hey Light! A childhood encounter with the Gurdon Light.

2011-10-29T18:46:00.000-05:00

I have very vague memories of the light myself. Honestly, I still couldn’t tell you if I’m remembering something that actually happened to me or if it was told to me and I just remember the tale. I hope you enjoy it.

The boys were excited -- uncles and cousins of mine, all whooping it up out on the back side of the house. There was a spur of excitement going through the tight little pod of young men hanging out on the carport.

One of them came in the house and strode past with big steps, crossing the dining area and swiping the phone handset off its cradle in one long swoop. He spun the dial five times and paused, then started talking rapidly into the phone. There was laughing around.

“Hey! Yeah, we’re taking the kids out to see it. How about your bunch?” He paused again, listening as I stood by the bar, peering up at him. “Well, if you want to send the boys that’s fine. The girls will be too scared.”

“I’m not scared,” I piped up.

“We won’t be out too late, but there are ticks out there.”

“I’m not scared at all,” I told him.

He looked down at me and kept talking. “We’re about to head out. Send them over.” The phone handset went back down on the cradle and he bent over. “You’re too young.”

“I’m not scared of anything!” I insisted. He took off back towards the carport, and after a moment I decided to follow him. I must have been just five or six, but I was certain I was ten feet tall and bulletproof.

The trucks were being loaded up. One of my cousins, still a teenager, saw me coming out and picked me up, setting me in the back of the truck. They were all yammering on but I wasn’t paying much attention.

One of the guys wasn’t a relation but a friend of one of my cousins. I knew his name was Marcus. He had dark hair that swept over his eyes, and he had assumed a perch sitting on the wheel well. “Y’all know the story, don’t you?”

Some of the boys nodded. I nodded too, though I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Marcus continued anyway for the benefit of those who had shaken their heads.

“There was a lineman named Will McClain. He worked on the MoPac line back in the thirties. He got in a fight with one of his guys, a fellow named Louis McBride. Fella beat him to death with a rail spike. We’re gonna go see his ghost!”

I shivered, but I didn’t want the boys to tell I was afraid so I didn’t say anything. Several of them yelled their approval, and two of them climbed back over the side of the truck to go hunt up a few more flashlights. I checked to make sure my little Snoopy flashlight was working and tucked my legs up under my arms.

I heard my grandmother come out and call my name, but I didn’t answer because I knew she’d make me come back in the house. It was getting on full dark and I didn’t want to wuss out. I saw her go back in and walk past a few windows. She was probably looking for me.

One of the cousins was passing a quart size glass Coke bottle around. I reached out and grabbed it and took a sip of the hot Coca-Cola when it passed, just like the boys. It went on, and I heard one of the uncles holler at Marcus -- “now don’t you throw that down, you drink that and put it on the carport. There’s a deposit.”

The other truck started, and I crouched down even further, afraid my grandmother would come pull me out of the truck before we left. Then the truck I was in started up too, and we were crunching down the gravel and out to the highway.

It was cold and quiet now. The older cousins had migrated to the other truck for the most part, and I was sitting with a bunch of pre-teen boys hunched down against the stinging cold wind. There wasn’t much point in talking, since the wind just whipped our voices away.

We drove through town, over the big set of railroad tracks through town then out onto Highway 67. We made another turn on Stickey Road and drove until we got right by the interstate. The trucks were parked end to end along the side of the road and we all piled out.

I paused for a moment, looking up at the interstate bridges overhead and wondering what sort of trouble I was going to get into. There were already some of the older guys with their big Coleman flashlights walking east up the tracks, and they just kept pushing on. No one argued the wisdom. No one wanted to show they were yellow.

I turned on my little Snoopy flashlight and was bothered by how little it actually lit. I decided my best bet was to stay in the middle of the tracks, and maybe I’d hear well enough to get off the tracks if a train came. I couldn’t see much more than two or three feet in front of me with the little light and I kept it angled towards the ground. There was some light cast ahead of me by the couple of guys behind on the tracks, and way ahead were the dancing lights from the big Coleman flashlights.

I could hear the older boys talking ahead of me, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. The screech of frogs and crickets was almost overwhelming, at first accompanied by the sound of passing cars on the interstate behind us. The latter died out in favor of croaking and the occasional deep woods owl as we progressed further down the line.

The noise ahead changed as the guys reached the first trestle, the hollow thump of their shoes on the wooden crossties denoting the location. I was extra careful on the ties, fearing I’d fall in the ditch below. I wasn’t really worried about being hurt, I was more afraid of the embarrassment of falling in the mud. If I was going to be as smart and strong as the boys I had to keep on going.

We weren’t far past the trestle when one of the guys hollered “Whoa!” He clicked off his light and we all followed suit, standing as quietly as we all could in the sliver of crescent moonlight along the train tracks. We listened, hearing a little rustling that could have been us or the wind or any sort of passing animal. And then, someone hollered

“HEY LIGHT!”

… words that about knocked me out of my skin. I bit down on my tongue to keep from crying out. I was suddenly very scared.

But there was nothing. We all looked around, then different male voices from around the track started chiming in. “Nothing.” “I didn’t see it.” “Naw.”

“Nothing,” I chimed in.

“Who is that?” one of the guys asked, but no one answered. I figured I was already in big enough trouble and started back towards wherever we were going, snapping on my light and angling it at the ground.

“What light is it, Marcus?” one of the guys behind me asked.

“It’s supposed to be Will McClain’s lantern you see, but I think it’s his head. Don’t ghosts glow?”

Another voice piped up “how far along is it supposed to be?”

“It could be about anywhere,” he replied. “We gotta keep going.”

And on we went. Two more times we paused, cut our lights and waited for some sort of light to appear. It was a long trek. My tennis shoes were starting to get damp inside and mosquitoes kept buzzing my head. I saw the Coleman flashlights suddenly aim up -- seems we’d reached Highway 53 and had gone past where we were supposed to see the light.

And they all turned back, a few of the uncles heading past hurriedly, talking betwixt themselves about which trestle it was past. We headed back down along a low incline hill a bit. This time we were quicker, and I was nearly running to keep up.

And then I tripped. My flashlight landed on the tracks and then fell over the side of the embankment. My knee hurt from scraping the gravel between the cross ties. I tried not to whimper.

Right about that time another halt was called. The lights went out -- all but my little Snoopy flashlight, which was just out of my reach. I crawled forward and finally got over to it, clicking it off just as one of the guys hollered “hey, there it is! See it?”

“What? Was that it?”

At first, I thought they were talking about my light, but then it was followed by “no, there it is!”

“Where?”

“Ahead! See it bob?”

“Hey, Light!” two of them hollered. I tried to tell whether I could see a light ahead on the tracks or not. I stood up and brushed myself off, peering into the darkness ahead. I could see a little movement, but whether or not it was a light or the shadows of the guys on the track ahead of me I couldn’t tell.

For a few moments we were all quiet and still. I think everyone was trying to determine whether or not what they saw was real. And then Marcus again. “See? There he is!”

There was a whooping amongst the men, and I heard a couple of hands clapped on shoulders. I was scared to move forward to try to see it better, since the lights were off. But I didn’t want them to leave me out there in the dark, so after a few moments I turned my flashlight back on.

“Hey!” I heard from a couple of directions. I scuttled down the tracks until I could see forms in front of me and killed the light again. By this point other lights were flashing about and the moment had passed.

“Are we going to see it again?” someone asked.

“Naw,” Marcus shouted for all of us to hear. “We’ve probably done spooked him back to his grave.”

No one argued with that. We all just kept walking down those tracks in the dark, slapping mosquitoes and trying not to trip.

When we got back to my grandparent’s place there was an affirmation from everyone that yes indeed, we had seen the ghost of Will McClain. But I wasn’t convinced. I was relieved to be able to sneak in with everyone and not get in trouble for going, but I kept my mouth shut and went and got ready for bed. I scratched those mosquito bites until I fell asleep.

Years later I learned more about the light. I also learned that folks from Gurdon have all sorts of different ideas about it. Some say it’s light from Interstate 30 bouncing through the trees… but we were way deep off the interstate and besides, that light’s been seen since the thirties and I-30 came through years later.

Some, like my mom, swear it’s just swamp gas. Others believe it’s light emissions from compressed crystals underground.

There have been all sorts of paranormal folks who have headed out and who say they’ve figured out that yes, there’s some ghost out there. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be convinced.

I went out there a few weeks ago and took a look at the old tracks, both from Stickey Road and from Highway 53. The tracks have been abandoned in the intervening years, and they’ve grown up quite a bit. But while I was out there on those tracks, I heard a train approaching. I heard the rumbling along the tracks and the whistle as the train approached a crossing, and it sent chills through me.

Of course, it’s from the line that still runs through the city of Gurdon, a town that had few claims to fame outside of the Gurdon Go-Devils. the International Order of the Hoo Hoo and Jimmy Witherspoon. A town that’s earned a spot on the paranormal map. Go figure.

The Starting Point.

2011-10-24T15:15:00.001-05:00

Gibbs Grocery and Hunters Outpost south of Sheridan has been the place where hunters prepare for modern gun season in the area for 36 years.

Used to be folks from all around central and south central Arkansas would migrate to one particular area the morning of the start of deer season. They’d come by truck, some with four wheelers, all with their hunter orange and their guns and line up dutifully at checking stations like Gibbs Grocery and Hunters Outpost for the annual right of passage -- registering their first kill of the season.

Some would have bucks in the back of their trucks, other does. A few lucky guys might have two in the back, ensuring the deep freezer at the house would be full for the winter. Once they’d parked they’d come up and go find someone to register the kill for Game and Fish and then head off to get the deer processed or to butcher it at the house.

It’s a little different these days. This, like the past couple of years, will be a lot quieter for the Gibbs and their kin at the little store south of Sheridan. Sure, there will be all sorts of folks coming through at oh-dark-thirty in the morning to pick up a little breakfast and maybe some pimento cheese for later in the day, but since Arkansas Game and Fish put the registration of taken deer in the hands of the hunter with online and phone registration, there’s no need for the grand display of deer huntery that had happened before -- no trophy shots, no big brags, no photographs, just maybe an email here and there later on down the line from a victorious trip to leased lands along the river bottoms.

Yet still Gibbs Grocery remains and even thrives, with a fresh coat of bright green paint and the ever-buoyant attitudes of its staff. It’s a place for family.

***

The Gibbs bought themselves the place along Highway 167 South some 36 years ago, when their son Alan was getting ready to go into the second grade (and when I was about, oh, two years old). They offered a place to get some gas and a quick bite for down the road.

But the place grew. Buddy and Barbara got the place up and going and added in the feed and seed, the various camouflage apparel, the scopes and guns and whatnot. Taxidermied examples of what could be found in the woods out that way were brought in, mounted and displayed on any available surface. Buddy’s son Alan grew up and started his own business, Gibbs Archery Manufacturing, which took off on its own and whose Easy Sling has become one of the top selling bow slings in the world.

Over the years, Gibbs has seen its biggest boom over two days in November -- the day before modern gun season and the day it starts. It never fails -- the Friday before the start of the hunt folks come in from everywhere to provision up, grab a bite to eat and get their license for the year.

That particular Friday usually starts off around five in the morning. There’ll likely be a few guys already parked out front, waiting for the store to open to get their cup of coffee and their license for the year. Some will sit at one of the little yellow booths in the middle of the store and start swapping hunting lies and big buck stories.

They sit in an environment wallpapered with hunts of the past. When this place was still a checkpoint for Game & Fish, Polaroids were taken of just about every trophy deer, turkey, boar or duck. The Polaroids are beginning to fade, though.

We dropped in at Gibbs Grocery for a bite and noticed one thing right off the bat -- since last year, the Gibbs have painted the exterior bright green. Inside it’s not much different, though amidst the stuffed deer heads, foxes and the eponymous deer butt on the wall there was spotted the head of a small T-Rex. We hope that’s a joke.

Sat down for a quick bite to eat before the next stop, which my photographer was just snapping away. The girls behind the counter looked at him for a moment, but paid him no mind. Miss Barbara, on the other hand, made fit to comment about the action.

“You shoot a pretty camera,” she said.

“Yeah, I was wondering just what it was like around here on opening day,” he asked as he took another shot.

“Y’all aren’t from around here?” she asked. When he replied in the nugatory, she started on about all the hunters that would stock up here. “We get people that come back every year, only right the day before. It’s like family. They always come back.”

I noticed that in amidst all those Polaroids there were now emails taped to surfaces like the walls and the deli counter. “The internet makes it different, I bet.”

“They don’t bring them deer here any more, no, they go do that on the computer or the phone now,” she told me.

We ordered a snack… my photographer choosing a Lemon Icebox pie. I wanted a slice of pecan pie but moreover I wanted some of the pimento cheese from inside the deli case, and Miss Barbara obliged.

We went and picked drinks out of the cooler, but when I started to offer to pay she waived me off. “You can pay whenever, as long as you pay before you go. I’m a pretty good shot,” she said, indicating she could pop off a couple of rounds at a deadbeat customer from the counter to the edge of the parking lot.

Over that marvelous old-fashioned pimento cheese on wheat, we chatted back and forth. She told me people still came out right before hunting season began, but it’s not like it used to be. “There’d be people lined up all along the road back a ways, waiting their turn in. It was like homecoming.”

“Do they still do that?”

“Not as much, but they still come. Day before the season we’ll have our busiest day of the year.”

We shopped around a little while we were there and found all sorts of stuff beyond the convenience and grocery store up front. There were all sorts of displays of things like Remington knives, duck calls, gun scopes and various guns. There were also motorcycle leathers, bags and feathered leather vests. You honestly could fuel up, dress up and dress out for a real adventure here.

When we were headed out the door, Miss Barbara hollered after us. “Y’all comin’ back for hunting season?”

“I think we just might,” I hollered back. And you know, I think I will. I want to see what it’s like right before the big day. I want to hear some of the tales that will be shared over hot coffee and sausage biscuits and pimento cheese, and see if whomever got that deer butt stuffed and mounted will be back to explain that particular sense of humor.

I know the place will be packed, no matter what year I return.

***

Technology and the internet has changed the nature of the hunt over the past decade. Instead of the check points around the state a decade ago, today checking a kill is just a click or phone call away.

Steve “Wildman” Wilson of Arkansas Game and Fish says it’s been a logical progression. “We started out changing the system by allowing certain deer camps to check their own deer, before we all had computers. Now they can call in to Telecheck (the AGFC hotline phone number), they can go online or even now, there’s an app for that.”

Has the change affected the number of deer taken each year? “It’s actually gone up. We think the new system is easy, it’s what customers want. Most people comply now, we make it so easy. It’s also helping us gather statistics easier, year to year.

AFGC's Deer Checking App

“It makes it easier for us to set special seasons, too. Used to be, with all those checkpoints out there, our guys would visit every one of them and get done with everything about the time it was time to hunt again. Now we can make a better determination on when to schedule hunts.

“We have a special hunt this year in several zones, a doe-only hunt before the regular season. We’ve determined from the numbers that there’s too high a doe ratio down in those areas.”

You can learn more about how to check your game by visiting the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission website at www.agfc.com. There you’ll find the link for online checking and a link to the AGFC game checking app.

The Sound of Horns.

2011-10-21T09:21:00.002-05:00

I wrote this piece last year for my syndicated column... and the other day passed by a rehearsing marching band, which reminded me I hadn't posted this piece here.

I was winding my way down Highway 25 and absorbing the cool spit out by my vehicle’s air conditioner. It was grow-some-gills hot outside, and I needed a big glass of iced tea and an igloo in the Artic something fierce.

Coming around a corner, something caught my eye -- out in a front yard, a guy playing a trumpet. A teenager, I guessed, wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts and flip-flops. One movement of his foot, I knew what he was doing. He was preparing for marching band.

Miles down the road, I still had that image in my head. I’d been there myself. I played French horn from junior high through college, and for seven of those years I was out in a field every August, trying hard not to pass out from heat stroke or bust my lip with the mouthpiece.

It’s a right of passage, anyone who plays brass or woodwind or drums. While friends enjoy the final days of summer and get their stuff together for the first day of school, the typical band geek is already in the bandroom, picking up an instrument and learning how to roll step and hold position. The first day with instruments sounds like a stomping of trains and wind, but before the instruments go out teenagers learn how to get six or eight steps from one five-yard-line to another, what hash marks are and how to keep an eye on the drum major while progressing.

First day of school, the knot of the band has already formed. At some point each day kids are in the bandroom, learning the music and tapping toes. When school buses take off with their classmates, they’re back on the field.

Students are matched with uniforms that may or may not fit. Schedules are set. Band parents get together and develop a plan for how to feed the kids on game nights.

I can remember how those practice days felt. The last bell would ring and I would head down the stairs to the bandroom, open my case and pull out my horn; the way the flags would rattle in the wind as I passed the flag line on the way out to the field. At Parkview, it was a treacherous course down to the practice field; we played our games at Central High’s field, so there was no need for stands. It was over a berm and down a hill and through the gate onto the track.

I can remember hours spent standing “at attention,” instrument up and still as possible til someone would give in and move and the band director would holler.

Was it rough? Always. In high school we trained for the perfect sound and the marching came second. At Arkansas Tech in 1991 we were expected to know how to march, so it was all about sound. And what a sound. There would be this reverberation all through the air when we were at our best, that resonance between the 20 yard lines. Sometimes it was unbearably hot. Sometimes it was damn cold. Sometimes it was mucky; I recall one year where several of us left at least one white patent leather shoe sunk in the gloopy, pasty field after a hard rain.

The best part, though, wasn’t the music or the thrill or the quiet of the bandroom at night. It was the people met, friendships forged, memories made and shared. I met my best friend my 10th grade year. He played French horn at a nearby junior high. My band director went there to recruit, I went along because I was curious. After the concert I searched out the lone horn player and talked with him. A few weeks later he was in the bandroom at my high school, picking up his school instrument. More than 20 years later, we’re still giving each other hell.

We don’t play anymore. My last concert was back in the spring of 1994. I’d switched tracks from music education to journalism, and I was about to get my wisdom teeth out. I never played in a band again, though sometimes I pull my horn out and see if I still have it. I believe I do.

That kid I spotted with his trumpet might never take his music to the collegiate level. Or he could end up being a band director. Undoubtedly he has hard months ahead of him, peppered with bus rides and concession stands and the low roar of a stadium crowd. I kinda envy the trip he’s about to take.

The 2011 Arkansas State Fair Food Guide.

2011-10-16T14:06:00.001-05:00

This is it. Take along this handy guide with you to the Arkansas State Fair to find all the crazy, weird and wonderful fair foods.

Candy and Caramel Apples. The best candy apples come from the Colonial Nut Roll Folks inside the Hall of Industry. They lay the thick red sugar coating on tight. Caramel and Caramel-Nut Apples are also available here too -- the easiest to eat, though, is the Caramel Apple Slices in a Bowl.

Fried Bacon Cream Cheese Balls. These are tempura battered savory bombs of goodness that should see a lot of popularity with fair goers. Like their cousin the Bacon Cream Cheese Bomb (also sold at Hot Wisconsin Cheese) they’re cream cheese that has been infused with pieces of bacon, but the smaller portions will encourage sharing.

Battered and Deep Fried Bacon on a Stick. It's like a corndog... but... well, it's bacon. I don't know how they manage to get the bacon to stay so straight, but it's a decent sized piece of bacon under that batter. Comes out extra crispy. Find it at L and M Concessions, where you'll also find Cheeseburger on a Stick.

BBQ Parfait. It’s a meal in a cup -- layers of baked beans, mashed potatoes, smoked pork butt and barbecue sauce served up with a spoon. Easy to eat on the Midway yet substantial enough to be a full meal in itself. You'll find it at Smoke Stack BBQ at the end of the Midway, the red trailer in sight of the Swine Facility.

BBQ Pork Sandwiches. Available at Smoke Stack BBQ with an Oklahoma-style thickish sauce or over at Gold's Boss Hog with a spicier blend.

Beef Brisket Sandwiches. Mickey's Grill is bringing serious meat to the fair, and this is one of many examples. The well-flavored smoked beef brisket sandwich is a handful of meaty goodness that you can have with barbecue sauce or without. A two-hander. You’ll find it at Mickey's on the northwest corner of the big Food Court intersection.

Beer Butt Chicken. The best thing to have at the fair quadrupled with a Coke, but grilled and not deep fried. (Sorry, I felt the need to make a Blues Brothers reference there). Back from last year. You'll find yours at Gold's Boss Hog.

Bigmouth Burgers. The best you're going to find at the Arkansas State Fair are located at Mitch's Grill just east of the Swine Facility in the big gray building. Grilled right in front of your eyes, these are thick half pound patties spiced just right with salt and pepper and served up on

buttered buns with your choice of condiments, vegetation. American cheese is used here. These burgers could stand against some of the state's best any day of the week.

Fried Butter. Okay, here’s another idea from other fairs that has arrived in Arkansas somewhat adulterated. Yes, it’s fried butter -- but instead of being a sweet butter like the cherry butter and cinnamon honey sugar butter at the Texas State Fair, this is literally a stick of butter that’s been battered like a corndog and deep fried (these are half-size versions). What you get is a half-melted stick of butter in the middle of a mass of cornmeal -- or, you could look at it as a big piece of cornbread on a stick with the butter in the middle. You’ll find it at the Steakhouse booth right next to the Hall of Industry.

Cabritas Wraps. Yes, they’re back. These scrumptious tortillas full of shredded goat meat are one of the healthiest foods of the Arkansas State Fair. The goat is roasted rather than deep fried, and goat is typically lower in fat than other meat on the hoof. Find it at the Feed Trough back down by the Rabbit Barn.

Fried Candy Bars. Snickers are of course the big favorite, but there are also Milky Way bars, too. Find them at Grater Tater in the Food Court.

Celery and Carrot Sticks. Am I serious? Yes I am. Served up with Ranch Dressing, this is the perfect side dish to go with all those wings (spicy or not) offered at the Silver Bullet Saloon over by the Hall of Industry (it's the big red pavilion).

Cherry Covered Chocolates. The next logical progression beyond Fried Oreos and Fried Kool-Aid, these are Oreo cookies that have been dipped in funnel cake batter infused with Cherry Kool-Aid, deep fried and sprinkled with sugar. I was very surprised to find they were not only palatable but addictive, and they're one of my top choices for best new fair food this year. Find them at the Fried Dough Booth along the Midway.

Fried Cheese. Boy, you can find fried cheese a lot of places, but you can’t find it done in any greater number of combinations than what you’ll find at Hot Wisconsin Cheese. This year the stand is on the Gate 5 side entrance of the Food Court, and there will likely be a line. Among the many options available are Cheddar, Swiss, Mozzarella and Jalapeno Cheese. The Jalapeno Cheese is a white cheese with embedded peppers that has a late and strong heat to it.

Cheeseburger on a Stick. Yes, that's cheese within ground beef within a corndog. Yes, it's good. Dip it in ketchup and be happy. At L and M Concessions on the south side of the Food Court.

Chicken and Beef Kebabs. You can’t get more meaty than meat, right? Mickey's Grill is cooking up nicely spiced Chicken Kebabs and Beef Kebabs at their stand inside the Food Court. You’ll smell and hear the sizzling meat from a distance. These folks use their own spices to offer a great meat-on-a-stick experience.

Chicken Doughnut Sandwich. It’s exactly what it sounds like -- a chicken breast served up on a sliced doughnut. Instead of mustard or mayo, it comes with a raspberry sauce for a condiment. Sweet and savory at the same time. Find yours at L and M Concessions, the trailer serving up Cheeseburger on a Stick on the south side of the Food Court.

Chinese Food. There is indeed, as there has always been, a stand for Chinese Food at the Arkansas State Fair. When I was still in single digits I recall how unique and rare it was to get an egg roll anywhere. These days Chinese restaurants are everywhere, but you can still get your Potstickers, Lo Mein or General Tso's Chicken at the Chinese and American Food trailer on the Midway near Gate 1.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Bites. Decadently rich, this is definitely something to share with the chocolate lovers in your life. They're back for a second round at Hot Wisconsin Cheese.

Chocolate Funnel Cake Sundae. It actually has another name, I think -- but I kept trying to write it down and it kept getting garbled. In essence, this is a sundae made with a chocolate funnel cake as its base with strawberries on top. And it is very, very good. Find it at the Steakhouse next to the steps to the Hall of Industry.

Corndogs. You can get them a lot of different places, but really, the best ones come from Superdog. End of story. I mean, really -- it can be just a little dog or a Mega Dog (18" of weiner in there), it's going to be good in that great perfectly sweet and salty cornmeal-based mix the Superdog folks recreate year after year. Right by the Wendy's Main Stage and the corner of the Food Court. Can't miss those big flags.

Deep Fried Corn-on-the-Cob. My photographer’s favorite dish, it’s a big long cob of corn given the corndog treatment. It’s a good combination. The one complaint -- it’s so big and heavy (we’re talking a two pound dish) that it might fill you up before you can get to the other fair food out on the Midway.

Deep Fried Egg on a Stick. Yes, those hard boiled eggs treated like weiners getting the corndog treatment are back again thanks to the folks at Hot Wisconsin Cheese.

Deep Fried Egg Rolls. In my opinion, the breakout neat new and tasty fair food at the Arkansas State Fair. They are meatless egg rolls packed with cabbage and carrots tempura battered and deep fried and served up with sauce. Somehow, the battering process makes these egg rolls less greasy than their non-battered average counterparts at Asian restaurants. A real winner. You’ll find them at Sissy’s next to Paizi’s in the Food Court.

Frosted Popcorn. It's Kettle Corn, but with a thicker sugar coating on those kernels and in many different colors. Pick up a bag at Candy Tower on the Midway.

Funny Bones. They’re just a funny name for something else -- chocolate peanut butter injected deep fried Twinkies. As if a fried Twinkie wasn’t sweet enough. Seriously, though, the on-a-stick creation from the folks at Fried What? is a cross between a deep fried Twinkie and a deep fried Reeces Peanut Butter Cup. Where’s the milk? You’ll find Fried What? next to the Pineapple Whip people by the Wendy’s Main Stage.

Fried Gator. You know, it kinda tastes like chicken -- but it doesn’t. Sissy’s is putting out fried gator on a stick for you to try at this year’s fair, and if you haven’t had it before it’s not a bad deal. The gator benefits from the battering and deep frying process, somehow coming out juicier than with other applications elsewhere.

Fried Green Tomatoes. Yes, they’re back this year, same as last year at Sissy’s on the Food Court.

Gyros. We’ve talked about Paizi’s before; for Central Arkansas, here’s your chance to enjoy great gyros, chicken pitas and vegetable pitas in the Food Court. Paizi’s has a magnificent tzatziki sauce and won’t hesitate to throw on some extra onions or lettuce for you. Another healthy fair option.

Hamburger Steak. The Big Show Diner at the Arkansas State Fair makes up big dinners for hungry folks (including a rarely ordered lobster dinner -- they only sell about 10 pounds of the six ounce tails each year). The 16 ounce hamburger steak comes grilled with peppers and onions and is served up with two sides and a roll. The big steak is a favorite with return visitors.

Hot Beef Sundae. We last caught up with these folks at the Arkansas Oklahoma State Fair. Enjoy a "sundae" made from a bases of sliced roast beef, a scoop of mashed potatoes, a drizzle of gravy, cheese "sprinkles" and a cherry tomato, at the stand right next to the restrooms across from the Center Stage Grill.

Hubcap Burgers and Hubcap Chicken Sandwiches. These are massive one pound burgers and sandwiches that will feed a crowd -- or one very hungry fairgoer. A mainstay of the Arkansas State Fair, you can have yours topped with any of the traditional toppings such as lettuce, tomatoes, onions or pickles -- or add on cheese, jalapenos or chili. Located at the Hubcap Burger Stand in the Food Court (where you can also find Pig Lickers).

Hubcap Steak Fried Steak. Similar to the Hubcap Burger, it's a pound of chicken fried steak on a bun. Introduced last year, it's still offered at the Big Show Diner.

Ice Cream Treats. Best place to get them is at Kookie Kookies and Cream to the south of the Big Show Diner on the way to the Hall of Industry. Sundaes, cones, floats and more, topped with sprinkles or cookie crumbs or caramel or chocolate or whipped cream or all of it.

Italian Sausages. So popular with state fair folks, these come from a couple of different Deggeler-related booths along the Midway. Watch the big coils of meat roast on the griddle with all those vegetables.

Jalapeno Lemonade. Well, it’s something else. The folks at Fried What? have combined the thirst-quenching beverage with one thing that makes most people reach for liquid refreshment. There’s not a lot of jalapeno flavor on the outset -- but within a moment of your first gulp you’ll feel the whiskey burn at the back of your throat. It's next to Superdog.

Fried Kool-Aid. Okay. I had the Kool-Aid Balls at the State Fair of Texas, which was a similar idea, taking Kool-Aid and deep frying it. But in Dallas, it’s infused into funnel cake batter that’s fried up and then dusted with powdered sugar. There’s a different consistency to what the folks at Fried What? are doing. Somehow their version comes out harder and much stronger in flavor, rendering these powerful little bombs with flavor with what you might get if you deep fried Pop Rocks (and if you’re thinking about that, then please, don’t). I’d suggest skipping these and getting a Funny Bone instead.

Lemonade. The best lemonade at the Fair that I've found has to be the folks with L and M Concessions (the Cheeseburger on a Stick people) -- who make it extraordinarily strong. Get ice. Lots of ice.

Moink Balls. A great idea from the folks at Smoke Stack BBQ, these are beef meatballs wrapped in bacon, cooked up in barbecue sauce. They come five to a stick and have a fantastic flavor. Available only at Smoke Stack BBQ -- the red trailer down in front of the Swine Facility.

Monkey Nuts. NOT WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE. These are hollowed out coconut husk cups decorated like monkey heads. They're filled with one of the many neat beverages by the folks at Coco Bongos -- drinks such as the Miami Vice (strawberry, pineapple, coconut and cream) and the Jamaican Me Crazy (strawberry and tropical lemon). A neat souvenir to take home -- they can also be used as coin banks later.

Fried Oreos. It's hard to imagine, but Fried Oreos were only introduced six years ago. Now they're a fair staple. The Fried Dough stand about three quarters of a way back down the Midway (where you turn left to go up to Barton Colliseum) has the best I've found on the fairgrounds.

Fried Peanut Butter Cups. Rolled up in biscuit dough, these cups pack a heck of a punch with ooey gooey peanut butter and chocolate inside. They're also surprisingly filling. Get them at the Feed Trough by the Rabbit Facility.

Pecans. The folks at Ozark Candy and Nuts are set up inside the Hall of Industry this year, hot roasting and candy-fying pecans on the spot. These smell heavenly; the praline pecans are lovely and sweet and totally addictive. The cinnamon pecans are pretty tasty, too.

Pepperoni Pizza Puffs. Another returning champion from last year from the folks at Sissy’s, these are sections of pizza dough with mozzarella cheese, pepperoni and a little marinara sauce rolled up and deep fried. Nice and satisfying.

Fried Pickles. The origin of the fried pickle traces back to a little restaurant (that no longer exists) in Atkins, AR -- which used to be Pickle Central. Atkins doesn’t have the Atkins Pickle Plant any more, but fried pickles are ingrained in Arkansas culinary tradition, and you’ll find several versions available -- at Fried What? at Sissy’s, at The Big Show Diner and who knows where else. Spears, chips or chunks, if you want a tart treat you can’t go wrong here. Most are served with Ranch dressing.

Pork Chops. Available a couple of places. For you early morning risers, pick one up at the Pork Chop Shop located right outside of the Swine Facility. Once the grills get started, you can get one at Gold's Boss Hog near Gate 5, right down from the Wendy's Main Stage.

Big Stuffed Potatoes. These one pound potatoes come in several varieties, from the traditional Baked ($4.50 with cheese, sour cream and butter) to the Supreme (shown, $6 with butter, cheese, bacon, onions and sour cream), the Roast ($7 with roast beef, carrots, butter, cheese and sour cream), Taco ($6.75 with taco meat, salsa, butter, sour cream, cheese, onions and tomato), Pollo Mexicano ($7, just like the Taco but with grilled chicken instead of the taco meat) and Chili ($6.75 with chili, salsa, cheese, sour cream and butter). You can find them at the Big Show Diner.

Rabbit Sandwiches. Last year the folks at the Feed Trough offered up BBQ Rabbit Sandwiches. This year they’re offering up the rabbit and you can choose whether or not you want the barbecue sauce. It’s good, savory rabbit and really doesn’t need that much sauce. You’ll find the Feed Trough in the yellow trailer over by the Rabbit Barn.

Reuben Sandwiches. An Arkansas staple, it’s a popular treat at the fair. No one really knows for certain why natives dig the corned beef and sauerkraut sandwich to the point where it’s almost everywhere -- but for certain it’s at our celebration on the fairgrounds. You'll find yours at Hot Wisconsin Cheese.

Ribs. Gold's Boss Hog there near Gate 5 offers all sorts of grilled goodness, including a four bone dinner for $14, half a slab for $12 or a full slab for $22.

Deep Fried Rolos. From the same folks that brought us Chocolate Smooches last year (which of course will be available this year as well) here come battered and deep fried Rolos. The deep frying process makes the caramel soft and a little runny -- which is just about perfect. Share a bunch with your friends.

Sassy's Awesome Blossom. Yes, it's a mostly-sliced-through onion battered and deep fried. Yes, you can get one at Outback Steakhouse or Chili's or 12 other big chain restaurants. But isn't it fun to attempt to juggle one while sharing with friends on the Midway?

Deep Fried S’Mores. It’s exactly what you think it is -- a marshmallow and chocolate bar pieces pressed between graham crackers, battered and deep fried. It’s a pretty big concoction but it has a very good and sweet flavor. You’ll find it at Fried What?

Southern Fried Chicken on a Stick. Another item that might have another name -- it’s a couple of sections of chicken breast meat with a couple of peppers and onions for good measure. At last, something battered and deep fried that was meant to be battered and deep fried! Get yours at Gold's Boss Hog.

Spanish Candy. It’s an unusual option, but these sweet-tart European candies are available from Sweet and Sour USA in the Hall of Industry. Several flavors are available, including sour watermelon, sweet watermelon, bubble gum, strawberry, sour apple and more. Bright and cheerful and easy to take home with you -- they come in long whips for a couple of bucks each. Do yourself a favor -- if you must have sour, purchase a value pack for $5 with snippets of all the best.

Steak Boats. Paper boats filled with cubed steak, cubed potatoes and veggies all roasted in big cast iron skillets. Tasty. Right outside the Hall of Industry at the Steakhouse Stand.

Steak Doughnut Burger. It's exactly what you think it is -- a burger patty served up on a sliced-in-half doughnut. Served up with your choice of condiments and such. You'll find it at L and M Concessions.

Swiss and Rye on a Stick. Forget fried cheese sticks... this is an entirely different experience. A big hunk of Wisconsin Swiss in a special rye flour batter deep fried -- best served up with stone ground mustard. You'll find it at Hot Wisconsin Cheese across from Superdog.

Taffy. The easiest food to take home with you from the Arkansas State Fair, the Colonial Nut Roll folks have been offering it up in so many flavors and colors for years there. I honestly can't remember back to a time before their stand, to the left as you first enter the Hall of Industry.

Tater Dog. You'll find it at the Texas Tater Twister trailer, across from the Center Stage Pavilion.

Tater Twisters. Ever popular, it’s a spiral cut potato thrown into the deep fryer and then sprinkled with salt. You can even get yours covered in nacho cheese sauce. The folks at Grater Tater on the Food Court can set you up (while also offering you a Fried Snickers Bar).

Iced Tea. Available in several locations around the Arkansas State Fair -- most places serve it sweet, but we found the Ice Tea Box over between the Pig Licker stand and L and M Concessions offers up the strongest regular tea (that's unsweet). Also popular with LRPD officers, apparently.

Texas Twister. My favorite beverage at this year's Arkansas State Fair. It's a blend of lemons, limes, oranges and Maraschino cherries, sweetened with sugar (the red version) or Splenda (the yellow version). Refreshing, especially for those of us who aren't so excited about consuming mass quantities of sugar.

Tropical Fruit Punch. A recipe dating back to the 1850s is still in use at the Big Show Diner (a throwback from when Mexico Chiquito operated the State Fairgrounds location). Deep red and redolent of pineapple juice, it's a favorite that comes back year after year.

Turkey Legs. You can't throw a stick on the Midway without hitting someone eating a turkey leg. There are several vendors selling the legs this year. The best ones can be found at Smoke Stack BBQ -- they wrap the legs tightly after smoking and let them heat through some more. The meat just falls off the bone.

Walking Taco. Introduced at the 2009 Arkansas State Fair, the popularity of the item has grown enough for it to be introduced at the State Fair of Texas this year. Unlike its Texas equivalent, Kathy's Kabana does it with big round tortilla chips, right in the bag. Find it on the east end of the Food Court, between the Pizzaria and the Silver Bullet Saloon.

Deep Fried Watermelon. The version at the State Fair of Texas didn’t impress me. This one from the folks at CM Steakhouse outside the front door of the Hall of Industry does a better job. For one, you can actually tell it’s watermelon inside. It’s a substantial chunk of watermelon, dipped in a flour based batter and deep fried. And somehow, it retains most of the juice. It was not offensive, though I’m not sure it’s what I’d normally order as far as fair food goes. These guys also serve up Grilled Watermelon on a Stick, for those watching their fried food intake.

Wings. The Silver Bullet Saloon and Cafe is your place to pick up lots of different chicken wings -- large juicy chicken wing sections in a variety of flavors. I found the Chili Sweet Wings to be pretty darn good. The Golden Garlic was my favorite. There are also Sweet BBQ and Teriyaki Wings. But the one to watch out for are Nuclear Wings, wings so hot they might make you cry.

The 2011 Arkansas State Fair Food Preview.

2011-10-12T01:30:00.007-05:00

Want to know what's being served up at this year's Arkansas State Fair? I tried a bunch of the items that will be for sale at a special media preview -- which allows me to be able to tell you about all these crazy foods, and to remind you of other foods we talked about in the past that will be making a comeback this year.

Fried Bacon Cream Cheese Balls. These are tempura battered savory bombs of goodness that should see a lot of popularity with fair goers. Like their cousin the Bacon Cream Cheese Bomb (also sold at Hot Wisconsin Cheese) they’re cream cheese that has been infused with pieces of bacon, but the smaller portions will encourage sharing.

Beef Brisket Sandwiches. The Ormics are bringing serious meat to the fair, and this is one of many examples. The well-flavored smoked beef brisket sandwich is a handful of meaty goodness that you can have with barbecue sauce or without. A two-hander. You’ll find the Ormics on the northwest corner of the big Food Court intersection.

Beer Butt Chicken. The best thing to have at the fair quadrupled with a Coke, but grilled and not deep fried. (Sorry, I felt the need to make a Blues Brothers reference there). Back from last year.

Fried Butter. Okay, here’s another idea from other fairs that has arrived in Arkansas somewhat adulterated. Yes, it’s fried butter -- but instead of being a sweet butter like the cherry butter and cinnamon honey sugar butter at the Texas State Fair, this is literally a stick of butter that’s been battered like a corndog and deep fried (these are half-size versions for the preview). What you get is a half-melted stick of butter in the middle of a mass of cornmeal -- or, you could look at it as a big piece of cornbread on a stick with the butter in the middle. You’ll find it at CM Steakhouse next to the Hall of Industry.

Fried Cheese. Boy, you can find fried cheese a lot of places, but you can’t find it done in any more combinations than what you’ll find at Hot Wisconsin Cheese. This year the stand is on the Gate 5 side entrance of the Food Court, and there will likely be a line. Among the many options available are Cheddar, Swiss, Mozzarella and Jalapeno Cheese. The Jalapeno Cheese is a white cheese with embedded peppers that has a late and strong heat to it.

Cheeseburger on a Stick. Yes, that's cheese within ground beef within a corndog. Yes, it's good. Dip it in ketchup and be happy.

Chicken and Beef Kebabs. You can’t get more meaty than meat, right? The Ormics are cooking up nicely spiced Chicken Kebabs and Beef Kebabs at their stand inside the Food Court. You’ll smell and hear the sizzling meat from a distance. These folks use their own spices to offer a great meat-on-a-stick experience.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Bites. Decadently rich, this is definitely something to share with the chocolate lovers in your life. They're back for a second round at Hot Wisconsin Cheese.

Chocolate Funnel Cake Sundae. It actually has another name, I think -- but I kept trying to write it down and it kept getting garbled. In essence, this is a sundae made with a chocolate funnel cake as its base with strawberries on top. And it is very, very good.

Corndogs. You can get them a lot of different places, but really, the best ones come from Superdog. End of story.

Jalapeno Lemonade. Well, it’s something else. The folks at Fried What? have combined the thirst-quenching beverage with one thing that makes most people reach for liquid refreshment. There’s not a lot of jalapeno flavor on the outset -- but within a moment of your first gulp you’ll feel the whiskey burn at the back of your throat.

Fried Kool-Aid. Okay. I had the Kool-Aid Balls at the State Fair of Texas, which was a similar idea, taking Kool-Aid and deep frying it. But in Dallas, it’s infused into funnel cake batter that’s fried up and then dusted with powdered sugar. There’s a different consistency to what the folks at Fried What? are doing. Somehow their version comes out harder and much stronger in flavor, rendering these powerful little bombs with flavor with what you might get if you deep fried Pop Rocks (and if you’re thinking about that, then please, don’t). I’d suggest skipping these and getting a Funny Bone instead.

Moink Balls. These are beef meatballs wrapped in bacon that are then dipped in barbecue sauce or rub.

Pecans. The folks at Ozark Candy and Nuts will be set up inside the Hall of Industry this year, hot roasting and candy-fying pecans on the spot. These smell heavenly; the praline pecans are lovely and sweet and totally addictive. The cinnamon pecans are pretty tasty, too.

Pepperoni Pizza Puffs. Another returning champion from last year from the folks at Sissy’s, these are sections of pizza dough with mozzarella cheese, pepperoni and a little marinara sauce rolled up and deep fried. Nice and satisfying.

Fried Pies. The folks from That Place in West Fork, AR are serving up those great Letha’s Pies, great fried pies in flavors like coconut cream, apple, peach, pecan and cherry. I particularly like the pecan pie -- which has a perfect crust and plenty of meaty pecans in a delicious and sweet custardy syrup. The coconut cream is delightfully creamy.

Pig Lickers. They just won't go away -- though last year they were just $1 for a chocolate-coated bacon strip, not a bad price to try out something that decadent.

Pineapple Whips. But of course -- one of our favorites.

Pizza. Yes, indeed -- you can get a whole pizza at the Arkansas State Fair from the folks at Leimon's Pizza. The tradition of pizza at the fair goes back to the 1970s and is continued on today. Get a whole pie and share it for a better bargain, or just get a big fat slice right in the Food Court.

Rabbit Sandwiches. Last year the folks at the Feed Trough offered up BBQ Rabbit Sandwiches. This year they’re offering up the rabbit and you can choose whether or not you want the barbecue sauce. It’s good, savory rabbit and really doesn’t need that much sauce. You’ll find the Feed Trough in the yellow trailer over by the Rabbit Barn.

Reuben Sandwiches. An Arkansas staple, it’s a popular treat at the fair. No one really knows for certain why natives dig the corned beef and sauerkraut sandwich to the point where it’s almost everywhere -- but for certain it’s at our celebration on the fairgrounds. You'll find yours at Pat's Kitchen in the Food Court.

Deep Fried Rolos. From the same folks that brought us Chocolate Smooches last year (which of course will be available this year as well) here come battered and deep fried Rolos. The deep frying process makes the caramel soft and a little runny -- which is just about perfect. Share a bunch with your friends.

Sassy's Awesome Blossom. Yes, it's a mostly-sliced-through onion battered and deep fried. Yes, you can get one at Outback Steakhouse or Chili's or 12 other big chain restaurants. But isn't it fun to attempt to juggle one while sharing with friends on the Midway?

Deep Fried S’Mores. It’s exactly what you think it is -- a marshmallow and chocolate bar pieces pressed between graham crackers, battered and deep fried. It’s a pretty big concoction but it has a very good and sweet flavor. You’ll find it at Fried What?

Southern Fried Chicken on a Stick. Another item that might have another name -- it’s a couple of sections of chicken breast meat with a couple of peppers and onions for good measure. At last, something battered and deep fried that was meant to be battered and deep fried!

Steak Boats. Not featured at the fair preview (hence, no photo), this is a boat constructed of steak full of potatoes. Or a potato full of steak. Hey, I'll let you know.

Spanish Candy. It’s an unusual option, but these sweet-tart European candies are available from Sweet and Sour USA in the Hall of Industry. Several flavors are available, including sour watermelon, sweet watermelon, bubble gum, strawberry, sour apple and more. Bright and cheerful and easy to take home with you.

Tater Dog. You'll find it at the Texas Tater Twister trailer, across from the Center Stage Pavilion.

Tater Twisters. Ever popular, it’s a spiral cut potato thrown into the deep fryer and then sprinkled with salt. You can even get yours covered in nacho cheese sauce. The folks at Grater Tater on the Food Court can set you up (while also offering you a Fried Snickers Bar).

Walking Taco. Introduced at the 2009 Arkansas State Fair, the popularity of the item has grown enough for it to be introduced at the State Fair of Texas this year.

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.

2011-10-10T11:25:00.002-05:00

Lazzari’s Italian Oven (sometimes Lazzari’s Italian Kitchen or Lazzari's Italian Restaurant) is one of my favorite restaurants anywhere. That’s saying something, ya think? There are reasons for this that go far deeper than the food.

It was September 1995. I was a radio producer and master control operator at KARN Newsradio, working weekend overnights. I was also working a full time temp job during the weeks. I was tired. I wasn’t sure what life had in store for me. I’d graduated from college a few months earlier and had found no upward moves in radio anywhere.

I’d sent out 90 cassette tapes and resumes all over, several different states. 89 of them reached radio stations -- most of which politely declined to consider me. One of them asked for an interview. It wasn’t a radio station. I didn’t know that until I actually drove up to the station and discovered that KAIT-TV was a TV station.

So, September 1995. It was a Monday. I’d left KARN at the end of my shift at 5:30 that morning, gone home and dressed, then woke my boyfriend up. We left at 8 a.m. for a 10 a.m. appointment, not realizing just how far away Jonesboro really was. I was nearly an hour late for my interview and had gone in and had to admit I had not TV experience. I was hungry and tired and frazzled and needed some comfort food. Not knowing anything about Jonesboro, we stuck with main roads until we saw this building that looked like a former Western Sizzlin on the side of Caraway Road.

We went in and sat down and commiserated. I just knew I had flubbed the interview. I knew there was really no chance of me getting the job and I was bummed. Our waiter came over and wrote his name upside down on the paper in orange crayon in front of us and dropped off a loaf of the saltiest Italian bread I had ever encountered. It was delicious, especially with the whipped butter provided.

The menu was affordable. The staff was friendly… and I discovered that the food was irresistible. Even on our limited budget, my boyfriend Paul and I managed to share an entrée and salad and a piece of tiramisu that was to die for. I felt better by the time we were done. There would be other interviews. I’d get my chance elsewhere. And I thought I’d never step into Lazzari’s again.

I was wrong. I was back there two months later. I was offered the job and, after about two weeks of chewing my liver over leaving Little Rock, I took it. My first week at KAIT was the week of November 6th, 1995 -- and I had my first meal as a resident of the city at Lazzari’s, on my own. I was seated in the back next to the window, and I watched the world passing by. I was 22 years old and was really out on my own for the first time. And the pasta was fantastic. I didn’t know what was going to happen, being a single woman in a new town, but I had pretty much decided that Lazzari’s was going to be a regular place for me to dine.

Three months later, my boyfriend showed up on my doorstep on a cold January night. He missed me and wanted to move in. It was a surprise. We talked it out the next day over that hot Italian bread at Lazzari’s. Yes, that was Paul. He ended up moving in and doing some radio work up there. He proposed to me on a March night that year, when Comet Hyakutake was streaking through the sky.

Paul got work at KAIT as a producer, and we’d go every week for lunch at Lazzari’s, usually on a Friday. We were still poor, sure -- television doesn’t pay as much as you might think -- but we could afford a once-a-week lunch there. We’d share a Mista, then each enjoy an entrée (which, thanks to the bread, was always more than we could eat. We’d always take a box home) and then share a tiramisu. We usually sat at the same table, towards the center of the restaurant at a table next to the kitchen entrance. That’s where we shared so many stories, talked about work and music and what we planned to do with our lives. Paul almost always got the Beef Ravioli, and I got the Chicken Cannelloni -- though sometimes, if we had an extra dollar I would get the Seafood Cannelloni instead. Back then, with tip, we usually got out of there for $15.

We had friends that worked their, too -- and when we’d have get-togethers they’d sometimes bring bread and such as their contributions. Our close friend Leif worked several of his college years there as a cook. Leif’s a great cook.

Of course, we moved on from there. I left Jonesboro in September 1998 to come back home, and Paul followed me a few months later. We’d visit our friends a couple of times a month… for about a year there. And then in August 1999 we made our last visit. I don’t know what we ate that time, but I do remember thinking I was going to miss that cannelloni and that salty bread.

Somehow, we didn’t go back. First it was planning our wedding (we wed in November 1999), then it was work (Paul was a morning show producer at KARK when I started at Today’s THV) then it was… well, so many things.

In fact, I didn’t return to Jonesboro until 2007, with my brother. He was trying to figure out what he was going to do with his life, and I took him up to meet the folks at KAIT. My former director, Tim Ingram, is now the general manager; my former assistant producer, Hatton Weeks, is the news director. We had a good meeting and a good tour of the station, and then I took Zack out to lunch at Lazzari’s. He agreed how great a restaurant it was.

I don’t get up to Jonesboro so much, maybe once or twice a year now. Last year when I went through I was hard at work on my breakfast story for the Arkansas Times, which left me full of eggs and pancakes and really not interested in eating again. But this year, it was different. Working on a completely different story for the Times, I had already stopped in at seven other restaurants and was about to head home. I had a backseat full of Styrofoam clamshell boxes from so many places where I’d breezed in, ordered food, had a bite and boxed it. Then I was passing by Lazzari’s and I was suddenly madly hungry. Go figure.

It was packed. I was fortunate enough to get a seat up near the coffee bar. There were no eyebrows raised by me dining alone. There never had been.

I noticed portions of the restaurant had a new red paint job. The coffee bar hadn’t been there in the 90s. And there were framed crayon pictures here and there. But essentially, it was the same restaurant.

Even the menu was virtually the same. I was surprised that the prices hadn’t increased that much -- and then realized hey, this was the dinner menu, so really very little has changed. There are some more expensive items on the menu now such as the Crabmeat Stuffed Tenderloin ($16.95) but there are so many more that are under $10 each.

There was even a special going on where you could have unlimited pasta and salads and bread for $8.95 -- but I couldn’t even imagine that. I mean, I could never get through more than one pasta dish back in the day, and you can’t take home your leftovers if you get it. That being said, the choices include Beef Ravioli, Fettuccini Alfredo, Pasta with Grilled Chicken and Linguine with Meatballs.

I almost didn’t have to look at the menu. I knew what I was going to order -- the Grilled Chicken Cannelloni ($8.99). I was glad to know it still came at night with the Lazzari’s Special Mista Salad. I was just hoping it would all be as good as it used to be.

And I knew it was… when I sliced into the loaf of Italian bread brought to the table. It smelled like a friendly memory. It was crusty with little sesame seeds on the surface on the outside and soft and pliant within, pliant but still substantial, perfect for spreading that whipped butter. A plate with cracked black pepper had also been provided and there was olive oil on the table, but I knew better than to go there. I ate a third of the loaf while sipping my tea and waiting for dinner.

This time it was a little different. It was so busy that my Mista was delivered a few minutes after my entrée. But that was okay. I was very cool with that. By the time my salad was delivered I’d finished taking photos of my entrée, and by the time I was done shooting the salad the pasta had cooled enough to eat.

That Mista… that Special Mista ($5.99 without the entrée) is just the sort of things good memories are made of. Salad greens soaked in the sweet vinaigrette I had forgotten I loved so much from before, sweet and garlicky and with a touch of lemon… with bits of artichoke hearts and red onion. Big chunks of tomato and fresh croutons and Kalamata olives. I didn’t remember the soft white cheese on it, but it was also good, just salty enough to balance it all out. It is still, after all these years, one of my favorite salads.

And then there was the cannelloni. It was salty… Lazzari’s never skimped on the salt, I fear. That’s all right. It was just as tasty. The three long cannelloni were packed with finely chopped grilled chicken -- which had been cooked with peppers and onions and lots of spices. They had been wrapped, tucked and covered with the best asiago cream sauce I have ever encountered in my travels, then topped with mushrooms and little scallion bits and covered with a bit more asiago and provolone cheeses. They were just as good as I remembered, too.

And, as I also remembered, I could not finish it. In fact, more than half my dinner went in the box to take home. This time I even skipped the tiramisu, though I did shoot it on my way out. It was hard to pass on it, but I’d had so much pie…

But as I dined, as I enjoyed this meal from my past, I looked around and realized one thing had changed. At more than half the tables within my eyesight, there were small children -- all under the age of four. There were families here and there. At the table next to me there was an older couple (I believe the gentleman was a faculty member at ASU, he looked familiar) discussing the merits of “No Country For Old Men.”

And back in the mid-section, just about the limit of what I could see, there was a couple in their 20s sitting at that table by the kitchen door. They weren’t trendy or upscale but they were clean and they appeared to be happy. He was gesturing wildly with his hands, and she was giggling demurely into her napkin. I noticed her slicing their loaf for the two of them.

I have missed this place. It has been 16 years since I first darkened the door but I still feel drawn back to it. I have to go back again, soon. I need to take others with me and share my stories and I need a slice of that tiramisu something bad. I can still, if I think about it, recall the textures so clearly -- the soft top dusted with cocoa, the custardy bits, the mushy soft espresso soaked ladyfingers that came in two layers, the dollop of whipped cream. Soon. Soon I will try that again.

Lazzari’s is where it always ever was -- at 2230 South Caraway in the parking lot of the K-Mart and what used to be Perkins but which is now some sort of Mongolian-American buffet. It’s open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday and is closed on Sunday. The phone number there is (870) 931-4700.

A Texas State Fair Food Primer.

2011-10-05T16:40:00.004-05:00

So, have you been wondering what you'll eat when you head out to the Texas State Fair, or are you just wondering what sort of strange and unusual stuff you can find there? In 10 hours, we chronicled all these edibles under the Texas Star.

A is for Apple, as in Fried Apple Pie. The classic handpie gets a deep fried treatment at the hands of the folks with Carousel Concessions on the east side of the Cotton Bowl. For 7 tickets ($3.50) you can take away a crisp apple filled confection that will likely far surpass any typical fried pie in the area. My photographer, Grav Weldon, says “That is exactly what the crust of a fried pie should be, absolute perfection.”

It's also for the new sensation this year, the Deep Fried Taste of Autumn Pie, which is pumpkin pie filling between two layers of ginger snaps, battered, rolled in more ginger snaps and deep fried, topped with cinnamon and sugar and spice and whipped cream. You'll find it at the Stiffler Brothers stand on the east side of the Cotton Bowl, catty-corner from Hans Mueller's.

B is for Bread Pudding, which shows up a lot of different places at the Texas State Fair. Newton’s Concessions (several locations all over the fairgrounds) has a version called the Awesome Bread Pudding. It’s a cinnamon packed pudding that’ll fill you up. This is what it looks like “naked;” it also comes with a nicely spice-full rum sauce.

Another version can be found at the Caribbean Foods place over north of the Magnolia Beer Garden, where they sell a Fried Bread Pudding. It’s a condensed slice of bread pudding fried in butter and sprinkled with powdered sugar. It’s a small sweet, but at 5 tickets ($2.50) it’s a cheap treat.

Then there’s El Bananarita -- one of the hot new foods at the Texas State Fair. It’s a banana wrapped in a flour tortilla, deep fried and covered with Sugar, cinnamon, honey whipped cream, chocolate sauce and a cherry. We’re talking serious dessert here for 10 tickets ($5) at the Funnel Cake Stand on Fun Way in the Midway area.

And then there's the Deep Fried Biscuit and Gravy. This is actually more of a soft roll filled with white cream gravy (no meat) like a filled doughnut, dipped in batter and deep fried. We were surprised to find it was actually a meatless entry. The frying process brings the cold gravy up to medium warm temperature. Created by the Belgian Waffle people who brought you Fried Beer last year.

C is for Cereal, which gets its own wacky entry. You’re not going to hear much about the Cereal Bar. No, it’s not a pre-made cereal bar that's been chocolate coated or deep fried or anything like that. Nope, it's cereal. Seriously. You have your choice of Frosted Flakes, Captain Crunch, Lucky Charms, Froot Loops, Raisin Bran, Cookie Crisp or Pop Tarts (yeah, the last one's not a cereal but it's up there) -- and that's it. 6 tickets with milk... that's $3. But here's where it gets fun. For an additional 2 tickets ($1) you can have added in bananas, peaches, strawberries and/or chocolate syrup. Unusual, especially since nothing is deep fried. At La-Kam's Bar and Grill in the Coca-Cola Food Court.

C also stands for cornmeal batter -- which is always popular. This year Fletcher’s Original State Fair Corny Dogs (by far the best known of the corn dog vendors at the fair) is selling Jalapeno Cheese Corn Dogs for 11 tickets ($5.50). They’re the original dogs, but with jalapeno seasoning and cheese inside. You can even have yours dipped in nacho cheese sauce. Fletcher’s also offers a Bird Dog that’s made with a turkey weiner for 9 tickets ($4.50).

Then there’s the Critter Fritter, a cornmeal-packed ball of goodness. Start with a jalapeno pepper, stuff it with ground beef and Cheddar cheese, wrap it in cornmeal and deep fry it and cover it in nacho cheese. You can pick one up for six tickets ($3) and have a ball.

And there's the Cowboy Philly. It's a cheesesteak loaded up with lots of ground beef, onions, bell peppers and mushrooms. Comes in varieties, too -- you can have it with chicken instead, or have it spiced with lemon pepper or barbecue sauce. This is the Hot Hot Hot version, as evidenced by the pepper seasoning. It's 16 tickets ($8) at Cowboy Style Philly's in the Coca-Cola Food Court.

D is for Dolmas, as in the gigantic Dolma you’ll get at Thanasi's Authentic Greek Fare. This is a seriously large dolma made in a seriously large grape leaf, six inches long and served up with Greek sauce on a homemade pita. It’s filled with beef and lamb and rice and it’ll fill you up. It’s just 12 tickets ($6).

This is Mizz Ruth

It's also for Donkey Tail. The folks at Smokey Joe's BBQ came up with the idea that won a Big Tex in 2006. It's still popular -- a beef weiner split and stuffed with Cheddar cheese, wrapped in dough and deep fried. Ms. Ruth from Smokey Joe's has been making an award-winning chili for 49 years and if you ask real nice I bet you can get some of that on there, too.

E is for Enough Already with Fried Butter. Not only can you get fried butter this year, you can get it in three separate flavors -- honey cinnamon sugar, garlic and cherry. Did we really need fried butter? Thing is, unless you happen to bite in right at the moment it’s served up, it could be just about any buttery pastry. That butter melts quick. Let’s hear it for the novelty, though. If you must find them, they’re at the Big as Texas booths for 11 tickets ($5.50 for four).

F is for the Frozen Arnold Palmer, a new twist on an old favorite that combines a little Southern Hospitality with the brain freeze of a Slushee. It’s a nice cooling and refreshing treat that isn’t a day-glow color for 10 tickets ($5) from the Frozen Sweet Tea stands around the fair.

If you’re going to talk about frozen things, you should mention the Deep Fried Frozen Margarita. Jake at Desperado's Mexican Restaurant was explaining this to me. He takes the restaurant's signature frozen margarita mix (complete with tequila) and blends it with funnel cake mix. It's deep fried and served up in a margarita glass... with more frozen margarita mix (complete with tequila) poured over the top.
Comes topped with whipped cream. You have to be 21 to try this -- it has about the equivalent of a shot of tequila in it. It’s one of the finalists for this year’s Big Tex Awards, and it’s 12 tickets ($6).

F is also for Deep Fried Frito Pie, another delight you'll find at Bert's Burgers and Fries. Last year's Best Tasting Big Texas Award Winner is a collection of Fritos topped with chili and cheese, battered and deep fried and served up with salsa and sour cream. Still just as tasty as always. At Bert's Burgers and Fries in the Midway Food Court.

G is for the Great Dane at Thanasi's Authentic Greek Fare inside the Coca-Cola Food Court. It’s a splendid foot long dog covered in some of the best chili you’ve ever had in your life (and I’ve judged professional chili competitions, it’s that good). It’s topped with your choice of Feta or Nacho cheese -- or you can do a half and half like this dog. It’s a show dog, and it’s 12 tickets ($6) -- the small version is called the Chihuahua and it’s 10 tickets ($5).

The same stand offers up another fantastic deal that will feed two people for 16 tickets ($8) -- it’s the Greek Salad, and it’s excellent. Shredded green leaf lettuce, chunked tomatoes, finely sliced cucumber, Kalamata olives, croutons and finely grated cheese. It’s a big bowl and worth the money. Oh, and while you’re there try another G -- the green filled Spanikopita (9 tickets/$4.50).

G also stands for a sandwich. Both simple and complicated at the same time, the Deep Fried Grilled Cheese Sandwich is just cheese between two slices of bread, battered and deep fried. What makes it rock are the side items -- shoestring fries, a small bowl of tomato soup for dipping and a big dill pickle spear. It can be found between the north end of the Exhibit Hall and the Magnolia Beer Garden.

H is for the Heavenly Deep Fried Brownies. Dough is wrapped around a small portion of brownie, it’s deep fried and served up with a drizzle of chocolate four to a paper boat. Your serving will cost 10 tickets ($5) and you can find it on the north side of the Cotton Bowl at Ranchero Pizza.

I is for Ice Cream, as in the Viva Las Vegas Fried Ice Cream. A big ball of vanilla ice cream rolled in cornflakes, dipped in batter, deep fried and then drizzled with whipped cream, chocolate syrup and sprinkles and topped with a cherry and a guitar shaped piece of pastry dough. It’s a lot of sweet, cold and hot together -- but you need to eat it quick or you’ll have ice cream soup. 14 tickets ($7) at Barrera’s on the Midway.

J is for Jerk Tofu. I kid you not, there is indeed such a thing as jerk tofu. It’s slices of grilled tofu topped with a jerk barbecue seasoning and accompanied by three corn-packed hushpuppies. Vegetarian friendly, the tofu is all right but the hushpuppies are incredible. You’ll find it at the stand selling all the Caribbean food north of the Magnolia Beer Garden for 7 tickets ($3.50).

K is for Kraut Balls. Oh, how I dreaded the idea of tasting these, and oh how I came to adore them. It’s tightly packed sauerkraut in a cornmeal batter, and it’s perfect -- combining the tartness of a good sauerkraut with the caramelized buttery flavor of fried cabbage. I could eat a dozen of these with some Russian dressing and be set. 10 tickets ($5) at the Hans Mueller pavilion east of the Cotton Bowl.

K is also for Kool-Aid Balls. Impossible, I say. The weren’t entered in the Big Tex Awards (the vendor entered two other items). I have to tell you, these deep fried dough balls are a real surprise. The Kool-Aid infused funnel cake batter comes out tasting like a really strong and delicious strawberry cake. Underrated and filling. You can pick up a boat of them for 10 tickets ($5) at Bert’s Concession on the south end of the Midway.

Can’t let go of K without mentioning Kebabs -- but not the normal meat-and-veg on-a-stick we’re all used to. No, I need to talk about Berrie Kebabs. The bad spelling aside, I can’t see how anyone could really turn down one of these strawberry and banana packed skewers drizzled in white and milk chocolate. They’re 14 tickets ($7) -- as are the chocolate dipped cheesecake on a stick you can get there. Inside the Coca-Cola Food Court.

L is for liquid things -- as in the Lemon Shake-Up. Yes, it is really just lemonade, and there’s been lemon drinks sold at fairs for decades. It’s still awesome, especially after you’ve consumed mass quantities of fried things. You can pick up one just about anywhere concessionaires are selling stuff for five to seven tickets ($3.50-4.50).

Also, if you’re looking for cheap beverages, you’ll find a variety of fruit juices, milk, flavored milk and tea at the Oak Farms kiosk in the middle of the Coca-Cola Food Court for 3 tickets each ($1.50). The only other drinks you’ll find cheap are the water guys selling a cup of water or the Fried Bubblegum people who have coffee -- both at 3 tickets apiece.

L also stands for one of the great food finds of the past, still just as good today -- Deep Fried Latte. The latte here isn’t actually deep fried, it’s implied, but remarkably well. The 2007 Big Tex Award Winner for Best Tasting is a collection of ingredients that come together to create a decadently espresso-and-milk flavored dessert. It’s a sopapilla topped with cappuccino flavored ice cream and whipped cream, drizzled with maple syrup and instant coffee flakes… and yes, it does taste just like a designer latte. It’s 10 tickets ($%) at Desperado’s Mexican Restaurant stand east of the Cotton Bowl.

M is for Fried Meatballs. Made by the Bert’s Burgers and Fries folks, this is the latest entry from the same folks who won the 2010 Big Tex Award for Best Tasting with the Deep Fried Frito Pie. Big fat meatballs cut in half, dipped in batter, deep fried and served half a dozen at a time with marinara sauce and shredded cheese, it’s like eating a meatball sub without the bread. You’ll find Bert’s Burgers and Fries in the Midway Food Court, where it’s been for longer than I’ve been alive.

M is also for Deep Fried Mashed Potatoes and Gravy… yeah buddy. No joke here. Big balls of mashed potato injected with gravy and then battered like you’d batter fried chicken, deep fried and served up hot. If you look really close there you can see the gravy oozing from that ball on the left. If they started offering these at KFC it’d be their biggest seller. For now, you can get it at Eat Crispies on the Midway for 12 tickets ($6).

And it's for the Deep Fried Moon Pie. Another Stiffler Brothers invention, the original calls for a full size banana cream Moon Pie, but now they also have chocolate and vanilla. The deep frying process makes the marshmallow explode a bit, so it comes out huge. 10 tickets ($5) will get you an exploded pie... the chocolate ones are almost like Fried S'mores.

N is for nuts, as in the Texas Fried Pecan Caramel Plate. If you look closely, you can see the shape of Texas. The little thing is 14 tickets ($7) but it's actually a densely packed deep fried candy. Really. It's a hard pressed caramel between those tortilla-like crusts. Powerful. You'll find it at Barraras on the Midway.

Then there's the Chocolate Nut Fudge. This is a log of chocolate fudge being cut up at the fudge stand inside the Exhibit Building. I don't think I've ever seen something so massive before made of fudge. Probably weighed 25 pounds or more and it smelled sinful. $6 a slice, two for $10 or buy 3 get one free ($18 for four) -- and it's one of the few places at the fair where you must pay cash, not tickets.

O is for “oh, why didn’t I think of that?” As in Fried Chicken Skins. I kid you not. For 12 tickets ($6) you get yourself a boat of hot, crispy, fresh out of the deep fryer breaded and deep fried chicken skins and nothing else. You know you wanna. I cannot think of a more evil yet tasty item.

And then there's the Fried Cheesecake. I mean, how else could you make cheesecake better than to heat it up? Wrapped in a wonton-like dough, this popular dish from Bert’s Burgers and Fries on the west side of the Cotton Bowl is both tasty and easy to eat. We loved the melty flavor of the real cheesecake and the fact that it didn’t go all over the place. Bert’s, by the way, has been at this location for 35 years at the Fair, though the Bert family has been participating in the Texas State Fair since 1919, originally with a cafeteria and roller rink.

P is for Pig Poppers -- Similar to the Pig on a Stick we found at the Arkansas Oklahoma State Fair, but with a gourmet twist. These are bacon-wrapped section of Hans Mueller sausages that are deep fried and served up with jalapeno slices the folks at Bailey’s candy themselves. They're 14 tickets ($7) and you'll find Bailey's inside the Coca-Cola Food Court.

Then there's pudding, as in the Deep Fried Banana Pudding. The pudding is wrapped in the tortilla, it's fried and then whipped cream and powdered sugar are added. I heard someone going on and on about how it was this fantastic crepe. Face it -- it's a banana cream hand pie. Really. But sweet. It's 8 tickets ($4) at BW's Famous Fried Ribs in the Coca-Cola Food Court.

And of course there's another finalist from this year's Big Tex Awards -- Deep Fried Pineapple Upside Down Cake. One of my favorites. It's actually quite small. It's a thick ring of pineapple dipped in cake batter, deep fried and served up with cherries and whipped cream -- and it is dead on right. I could inhale these things. They're 6 tickets ($3) so they're not exactly going to break the bank. Find it at Big as Texas booths.

P is also for pickles. Pickles are in this year. In addition to traditional pickles and the Kool-Aid Pickles that came out at last year's North Carolina State Fair, there are now Sweet Tea Pickles, which are somehow more tart and flavorful. We only found this variation at Cassie’s Fun Food along the Midway. It’s tarter than a Kool-Aid Pickle but with an additional sweetness that anyone who loves sour suckers is going to adore. Four tickets each ($2).

Q is for the quirkiest food we found, Buffalo Chicken Flapjacks on a Stick -- this year's Big Tex Award winner for Best Tasting. It looks innocuous enough, but that right there is a Buffalo Chicken Flapjack... on a Stick. It's chicken that's been marinated in Buffalo sauce, battered and rolled in Jalapeno bread crumbs, deep fried and served up with a side of maple syrup. Well now.

R is for the red pair of Salsa Balls. These are interesting and tasty. Two of these 3 inch Salsa Balls are served up in a pool of queso in a paper boat. Found in the Magnolia Beer Garden. They taste like balls of just tortilla chips and salsa. 10 tickets ($5) and they're yours.

It's also for ribs, as in Fried Ribs. Found at BW's Famous Fried Ribs in the Coca-Cola Food Court, these are literally just seasoned pork ribs deep fried and served up hot with French fries for 18 tickets ($9). Either original or hot and spicy. There's usually a line at this stand.

S is for the Sweet Jalapeno Shrimp Corndog from the Belgian Waffle folks. That's right, the folks that brought you fried beer have come up with something far more palatable this year -- a corndog with three shrimp instead of a weiner inside the batter. The whole mess is dipped in a sweet jalapeno sauce right before serving. Tastes a bit like General Tso's Shrimp. At 12 tickets ($6) it's more expensive than a regular corn dog -- but it's still pretty darn unusual.

Another strange S food on a stick is the Deep Fried Shrimp Cocktail on a Stick. Shrimp, cocktail sauce-infused tomatoes and onions are battered and deep fried and served up on that stick. That... is further than I think I'd go with shrimp cocktail, but that could just be me. It's 10 tickets ($5) at Festival Foods on the Midway.

S also stands for sweet potatoes -- and there are two big sweet potato purveyors out there. One is Mama's Fried Sweet Potato Pie in the Coca-Cola Food Court. It's a big fried pie that usually comes with brown sugar and whipped cream, and it is packed with sweet potato filling. Get yours for 7 tickets ($3.50).

A better and more unique application -- the Praline Sweet Potato Poppers. The filling of a sweet potato pie is paired with the goodness of a great pecan praline coating. Almost candy-like. They're 9 tickets for three ($4.50) and they're just divine.

Of course, if you're going to talk about sweet potatoes you might as well talk about stuffed potatoes -- and that means Barbecue Stuffed Potatoes at Little Bob's. Little Bob passed away just a few weeks ago but his crew is still going strong. This is a barbecue stuffed baked potato offered at the Little Bob's booth at the Coca-Cola Food Court. If I'd had room I would so have been about picking up some of that Barbecue Beef Bologna on the menu.

And then there's the Shaggy Dog (12 tickets/$6 regular, 14 tickets/$7 footlong). This is a Nathan’s beef casing-free hot dog (regular or foot-long length, topped with a Frito chili pie. We’re amazed no one ever thought to combine the bread and meat combination of a hot dog with a corn chip, cheese and chili combination of a Frito pie before. It works. You’ll find it at the Texas Chili Parlor inside the Coca-Cola Food Court.

T is for the Torta-- It’s like a taco, but it’s not. Ground beef, seasoned beans, cheese, jalapeno peppers, tomatoes and sour cream served up on a section of French bread makes a very hearty two-handed sandwich. You’ll find it at Ranchero Gordita in the Coca-Cola Food Court for 13 tickets ($6.50). They also do Gorditas (10 tickets/$5) which is a gigantic soft taco with the regular fixings served up in a handmade tortilla. The Torta and the Gordita both come with your choice of ground beef or grilled chicken.

T is also for Twisted Tators -- and you have to see this. While we were taking a short break off our feet at the Food Court, the lady sitting across from us brought over her Supreme side order of Twisted Tators. The photo really does speak for itself -- she had put some ketchup on the side but barely had room because of the plethora of potato-ness on the plate. Impressive.

Another T would be Turkey Legs -- which you'll find all over the fair. The best ones we found were at Benavidez, across from the swings on the Midway. Big, fat, juicy and fragrant, it's the best way to feel like a caveman (plus, if you wrap yours up tight it looks like an aluminum club).

T also stands for Tamale Balls. One of the oldest cool foods we discovered this year, Tamale Balls have actually been served up by the folks manning the booth inside the Exhibit Hall since 1989. These masa-wrapped seasoned ground beef balls are served six to an order for 11 tickets ($6.50)

And then there are Mini-Taquitoes -- four fried corn tortillas topped with beans, lettuce, cilantro, onion and Cheddar cheese with a little bit of lime. They're 16 tickets for four little four inch rounds ($8), so choose accordingly. Located at Lupita's Gordita's in the center of the Midway.

U is for the Ultimate Fried Burger. Everything about this burger is fried save the bun and lettuce. The flat third-of-a-pound patty is griddle fried. Deep fried pickles, fried green tomatoes, fried onion strings and fried cheese triangles are added along with a big slice of green-leaf lettuce. The whole thing comes out similar to a Fat Darryl in flavor; we suggest you load up on the condiments offered at the counter, it’s a little dry. You’ll find it for 15 tickets ($7.50)at the Oasis Restaurant inside the Auto Show, behind the Toyotas and such.

V is for vegetarian fare, such as Blackeyed Pea Soup. Is there a truly vegetarian item at the Texas State Fair? Several, actually. This is Blackeyed Pea Soup from Bailey's in the Coca-Cola Food Court. It's a nice thick soup with carrots, celery and onion along with spices and a jalapeno pepper float, served up with a corn muffin. A filling hot meal for the meat-less set for just 8 tickets ($4).

W is for the Walking Taco. Introduced for the first time at the Texas State Fair this year (introduced at the Arkansas State Fair in 2009), this is a bag of Nacho Cheese flavored Doritoes opened up along a side and topped with ground beef, lettuce, tomato, cheese, onions, black olives and jalapenos. Constructed when you order it, if you’re meat-free they’ll hold the ground beef for ya. It's 12 tickets ($6) and you'll find it at the orange booth on the south side of the Cotton Bowl, right next to the Fried Bubblegum stand.

Then there's the Belgian Waffle... I'm really not sure about the allure, but waffles are popular enough at the Texas State Fair that there are a couple of Belgian Waffle stands. It's like breakfast in the palm of your hand -- a foot long waffle topped with a selection of items, usually whipped cream and a fruit of some sort. No plates here -- they're just handed out with a napkin and it's your turn to deal with them.

And then there's Black Walnut Taffy... as in Sutter's on the south side of the Cotton Bowl. Another place that's been there longer than most of us can remember -- and a big 14 ounce 20 ticket ($10) box will last you a long time. Pick and mix from Vanilla, Chocolate, Banana, Strawberry, Black Walnut, Pecan, Peanut Butter, Cinnamon or Peppermint.

And then, there was Deep Fried Watermelon. I really don't know what to say about it... except it looks like an excessively deflated fried dumpling. Somewhat tart, considering, the water from the watermelon just seems to evaporate right away. Also available in the Coca-Cola Food Court, from the same folks who bring you Fried Peach Cobbler on a Stick.

X is for the extra long name we found for a simple treat… the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich in a Graham Cracker dipped in Chocolate. This here is a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich in a Graham Cracker dipped in Chocolate. I think the Chocolate Covered PBJ would be a better name. Tastes like a Peanut Butter Twix Bar. It's 9 tickets ($4.50) and it can be found at Benavidez next to the swings on the midway.

Y is for, really, WHY did we need Fried Bubblegum? Pink bubblegum infused batter over pink bubblegum flavored marshmallows, deep fried and drizzled with blue bubblegum icing and sprinkled with more bubblegum. I thought this was bad but not too bad on first bite -- but it stuck with me for hours. Awful. You should go read what I wrote for Serious Eats on the subject. If you really want to try it, you'll find it at the orange booth on the south side of the Cotton Bowl. It's 9 tickets ($4.50) for those three little balls, though I can't imagine why you'd want to try it unless you're under the age of 10.

Z is for the be-all and end-all of fair food, Fried Oreos, one of the first things to ever be battered and deep fried for the Big Tex Awards years ago. It's nice to be able to enjoy a classic. What can I say? These, by the way, we found at Barrara's on the Midway for 8 tickets ($4).

For more information and to see the 25 best, check out the article we did for Serious Eats.

Egg Custard Pie and Pan Fried Chicken.

2011-09-29T22:33:00.001-05:00

Big families aren’t the norm any more. Used to be a family of ten or more would be common -- since families needed to be big to run big homesteads and the like. Not these days. As a mom in a single child family, I’m kinda the standard there.

How about a couple that had seven kids just over a year after they got married -- and then went on to have 14 more? No, it’s not some sensational crazy multiples story. It’s the story of the Jefferys out of tiny Casscoe, AR. George and Girstine Jeffery started off shortly after their marriage as surrogate parents to seven children. They then went on to build their own family, having ten girls and four boys along the way. Girstine was known as “Dew-Baby,” and it’s after her this little restaurant in Stuttgart is named.

I went on a Friday to seek out something fantastical -- an egg custard pie of some renown. I was very happy to see it on the menu. Egg custard is one of those great cultural pies that doesn’t seem to ever have caught on with the frou-frou set. It’s very pedestrian, very rural… and very comforting. A good egg custard pie is filling, too.

We pulled up to the well-used building on Michigan Street (next door to, of all things, a gyro shack) and went on in. Dew-Baby’s is two separate dining rooms… the one you walk into with the counter and the buffet bar, and the one on the side where the restrooms are. It was 11 o’clock dead on and we were apparently the first customers of the day.

I talked with the ladies a bit before ordering that pie. They’re all daughters (and one daughter-in-law) of Dew-Baby, and they work together lovingly.

Thing is, even though I was planning to dine somewhere else (I had a busy day planned) I couldn’t resist the scent that struck me when I walked through the door. Fried chicken. Pan fried chicken at that, the sort that comes from a cast iron skillet. Oh, I was having lunch.

I asked for dark meat chicken with my meat-and-three ($7.25) -- and the two sisters working the counter that day mentioned they always preferred the breast meat, I suspect since they make theirs nice and juicy -- but I got my dark meat chicken and three sides. I chose French fries, baked beans and a pre-made lettuce-based salad that had a number of items in it. My other choices were corn on the cob and hush puppies, and fried catfish for the main course.

And of course I ordered up that egg custard pie. I was going to have me some of that. Desserts are $2.50 each, well worth it. The other choices that day was sweet potato pie, Pineapple Upside Down Cake, Chocolate Cake and Cream Cheese Cake.

My photographer and I had a seat while we waited for the plate to be made up. We sipped briefly on iced tea before one of the sisters brought the plate to the table. It smelled heavenly.

The fried chicken… okay, we’re going to have to put some debate to this. I have eaten what I thought was the best fried chicken in the state -- which has been either at AQ Chicken House in Springdale or at the Monte Ne Inn Chicken Restaurant. This chicken… wait for the blasphemy here… was BETTER. It had the tenderness and flavor of being buttermilk-soaked, a very light bit of spicing that I felt had to have included some lemon pepper, it was juicy, it was flavorful, it was tender and it was golden. And yet still it was nothing in comparison to the pie I was about to receive.

The side dishes were odd but good. The baked beans were of the same sort you normally find in Pork N’ Beans but were flavored instead with brown sugar and ground beef, almost identical to the Settler’s Beans my mom makes each Thanksgiving. The fries were about average. The prepared salad was interesting -- bacon (which I avoided), shredded Cheddar cheese, iceberg lettuce, cucumber, slices of hard boiled egg and English peas in what tasted like a version of Miracle Whip.

And then there was the egg custard pie. It was pretty. It had sliced clean, indicative of a balanced hand in its construction. It was substantial… I mean, well, it’s like eating an omelet as far as the cholesterol and calories go, frankly. But I tell you -- I was won over by three facts. The pie was created with a homemade, folded over flour pastry that was slightly salty. The custard was homogenous and perfect -- very firm and very smooth. And the top had been browned to an almost crème brulee perfection. I have yet to find a better pie.

We talked with one of the sisters, who came over to talk with us about The Lord and how He takes care of us, no matter our troubles. It was a bit of good conversation to have while enjoying a good meal, and we saw it repeated with the only other first-time visitor who came in the door. Regulars they all greeted by name, asking about families and how work was going and all sorts of things like that.

We had to finish up and get on the road, but I made a note I need to return, probably on a Tuesday when all the vegetables like the PurpleHull Peas and such are out. I was thrilled to finally find a really great restaurant in town, and I’m looking forward to going back and hearing more about this neat family.

Turns out there’s a book on the matter called “Ten Sisters” by Rose Stovall, one of the sisters, a collection of stories from each of the sisters about their mom and dad and growing up in Casscoe. I’m going to seek this book out and read it. I think it might give me more insight into life in the Delta.

You’ll find Dew-Baby’s at 813 E. Michigan in Stuttgart. It’s open 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on Saturday. (870) 672-7333 or check out the Facebook page.

How to Start A Green Market, Right.

2011-09-20T09:34:00.000-05:00

Fairhope, AL’s Windmill Market takes green to the extreme.

With the advent of the locavore movement, more farmers markets are springing up. Groups like our own Certified Arkansas Farmers Market are making sure that what comes from the field and ends up on your table is as organic and pure as possible.

But what about the physical structure of the farmers market experience? Need it be just simple pop-up tents and pickup truck beds?

Fairhope, AL has gone a step beyond. Opened in October 2009, the Windmill Market takes advantage of a facility vacated by a car dealership. Architects and owners Marc and Gina Walcott built into the existing structure and outfitted it with green ideas of all sorts. Today the market is home to Westside Grocery, which purchases all of its offerings from local farmers, fishermen and livestock producers. It’s also home to a great barbecue joint called Moe’s Original and to a four day a week arts and crafts market utilized by home and regional crafters.

It’s the building itself though that provides the most interest. With just $200,000 in pocket, the Walcotts retrofitted the 6600 square foot dealership into a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-approved structure. Walcott Adams Verneuille Architects in Fairhope designed the project with the assistance of their green consulting firm Watershed.

The Walcotts wanted to go as green as possible with the project. They enlisted the help of Gulf Coast Green Power in bringing in the windmill that stands today not only to reduce the market’s draw on the power grid but which serves as a landmark to guide visitors to the market itself. It’s almost silent as it oscillates in the wind. The 45-foot towering windmill provides all the power the market needs -- and more. There’s even a jack available to power your electric car with windmill energy.

The building itself was reconstructed with use of recycled and repurposed materials to cut down on construction costs and waste. When it’s hot, a geothermal air conditioning unit cools the area. The roofline was extended out to create more shade, and solar panels reside above to collect even more energy. Low VOC paints were used for the interior. Skylights throughout reduce the need for lighting. Busted up parking lot asphalt was used for low walls around the garden.

Westside Grocery composts all vegetative matter collected at the Market. Rainwater is collected and used not only for the community garden available on site but to flush the low-water toilets in the restroom. The gardens themselves host a variety of great produce, herbs and flowers available to Fairhope visitors and natives.

It’s an interesting project that’s already grown. Not even two years old, Windmill Market has become a destination for eco-tourists who are looking for ideas to take home with them. Westside Grocery is now open seven days a week, taking in fresh produce, baked goods, eggs and meat to sell as well as providing a marketplace for local packaged goods such as pizza sauce from the popular Ravenite Pizzaria around the corner and locally combed honey. There’s always a packed house on market days, when local vendors come in and utilize booth space for a small fee.

Windmill Market has become part of the community, with evening concerts scheduled during the weekend and an open gathering space that draws folks together. It’ll be interesting to see if similar structures pop up in our market.

Best Place To Chill in Eureka Springs: Sparky's Roadhouse Cafe.

2011-09-15T09:12:00.000-05:00

I have been holding out on you for a long, long time. And I’ll tell you why. I like going to Sparky’s Roadhouse Café anytime I am in Eureka Springs -- and once I give it an official review, then I don’t have a reason to go again, right?

Of course, I still will. Sparky’s is a nice, comfortable casual place that always feeds me well. And the burger? Make that burgers… are always good. And so’s the cheese dip.

But that’s not all the goodness served up at the popular red and white and black dive on the main drag (Highway 62, for non-locals). There are fine dishes and common dishes and truffles, too. And the place is always open -- even when it snows.

It was recommended to me by Edwige Denyszyn over at Keel’s Creek some great time back… which was funny, since I had expected asking the great French winemaker where to go eat that a more expensive locale would be recommended. Not at all. She told me I had to try the cheese. And I have, so many times over.

Last summer I went over to Sparky’s for lunch with the hubster. We wanted something light to deal with the heat, so he chose the Miami Tuna Dinner ($12.95) and I went for the $6 Lunch Enchilada special. His tuna was a beautiful pink thing under a canopy of peppers and onions and spices that went awesomely well with his rather large dinner salad. Yay.

Still, I got the much better deal with the special. The lunch special is one enchilada and two sides… yet the portions were large. The enchilada was about double the size I expected, filled with tender shredded chicken and a creamy sauce. There was a whole pile of black beans, and the fries (my other side) came out in a full size basket.

I went by myself while covering the Chocolate Lover’s Festival in 2010. It was a blustery cold winter night and snow was on the ground, but I knew I’d find my warm solace inside at Sparky’s. I was right, of course.

I found that solace in a bowl of the restaurant’s Queso Rojo (at the time both Queso Rojo and Queso Verde were sold, the latter later being taken off the menu), served up with a basket of tricolor chips. The only red cheese dip I know of, it’s actually more of a yellow but with a nice color from paprika, cayenne and cumin. This… this is my favorite cheese dip in the world, better than anything I have ever found in Little Rock.

I had my cheese dip and chips served up on the side with my Rockin‘s Deluxe Cheeseburger ($7.95). What makes it rockin’? The cheese -- your choice of pepper jack, imported swiss or New York State Sharp Cheddar, the latter of which I chose. SHARP Cheddar. Ah, wow. Good sharp cheddar served melted atop a prime Creekstone Beef half pound hand patted patty grilled to medium. Yes, the cheese was slightly overpowering. That’s fine. It’s so dang good. It like all the burgers at Sparky’s was served up on a soft Kaiser roll with green leaf lettuce, pickles, tomato and white onion ringlets on the side, along with a pile of potato chips. You can upgrade to French fries for a buck more, by the way.

I even had a Chambord truffle, which was fabulous. At $2 you might wonder how the place is able to sell these tiny chocolates, but they are very, very good.

Well, this past January I was back in town to work on a story… and it was snowing. There was more than a foot of snow on the ground, and Sparky’s Roadhouse was the only place anywhere still open at 7 p.m. on a Friday night. And it was packed. There was little space to do much of anything for that 20 minute wait, but the staff was still happy and friendly and joking about the “immobilizing” storm and all the people who’d come out of the woodwork to come out to the restaurant. That was something.

My dining companion and I were seated at a booth in the corner of the main dining area and were almost overcome by the voices -- so many people crowded into the restaurant, communing. Still, we were able to place an order for a Havana Heat Wave Burger ($8.95), a Barbara’s Reuben ($8.50) and a basket of fries between us (our side item on both, which came out to $1 more each). We also ordered that cheese dip again, since I wanted someone else to taste it.

Now, we had debated on a hotter burger… there are a whole string of hot burgers on the menu, ranging from the Kid Creole Burger with its Cajun butter to the Stupid Hott Burger that requires a waiver to be signed. Not having an idea of the scale of heat, my dining companion went midway and went with that Havana Heat Wave Burger -- which turned out to be about a little bit of sweat on a very cold and snowy winter night. The onions were
nice and grilled soft, the habanero and red pepper salsa was smooth and the burger was its usual half pound of greatness.

But that Reuben… oh my. Instead of the traditional corned beef-Russian dressing-sauerkraut, it had been tampered with. The corned beef was there and fresh on the nice fresh and toasted rye bread. The sauerkraut had been grilled and had achieved a nice caramelization. The whole thing, though, was tagged together not with Russian dressing but with Remoulade sauce, a different take on it all.

And of course my skin-on fries went right in the dip, that great red cheese dip that’s now stood the test of time and will hopefully always be available at Sparky’s.

Does this mean I’m done eating there? Nah. While I always choose to sample as many of the great culinary offerings as Eureka Springs will throw at me on each visit, I still have a soft spot for Sparky’s and things I want to try on the menu -- like the Chicken and Goat Cheese Quesadilla. I still haven’t gotten around to Edwige’s suggestion for the cheese platter, so that might eventually happen. One way or another, you should consider this an endorsement. Sure, when you’re vacationing go do the frou frou and the unusual. And when you’re done with that and want some real food, stop in to Sparky’s Roadhouse Café.

You’ll find Sparky’s Roadhouse Café on Highway 62 east of downtown. It’s open Tuesday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and an hour later on Friday and Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday. Call (479) 253-6001 or check out the website.

One more tip. Go use the restroom. For some strange reason, the folks that run Sparky's thought it'd be a great idea to decorate the women's restroom in less-than-classic album covers. Wow, man. Albums such as Banjo Spectacular! String along with the Banjo Barons! Like the All Star Color TV Revue. Vinyl-known little-spinners such as the Jimmy Peace Singers' He Rescued Me. Music for Listening and Dancing. The Julie Andrews Christmas album. Caribbean Holiday by the, I kid you not, Gay Desperados Steel Orchestra. The Four Prep's less-than-popular Dances and Dreaming. Phil and Louis Palermo's We Want To Sing. Finally, children, we now know where bad LPs go to die.

Traveling with a Toddler: Last Day at The Woodlands.

2011-09-08T09:49:00.002-05:00

After a full week of dawn to dusk family time, the hubster and I made a deal. He was going to sleep in Sunday morning in our room at the Fairway Pines at The Woodlands Resort and Conference Center -- and I was going to go enjoy the spa.

It had occurred to me the day before that except for when Paul and Hunter had gone for their swim Tuesday night, we’d been together as a family unit the entire trip. That’s not necessarily a bad thing -- but I love the spa experience and wanted to get in at least one sweat during my trip.

The sweat, though, started the moment I stepped away from the Fairway Pines to catch a cart to the main building. I’d called right before I left the room around 8 a.m. to request a pick-up. There are carts on call at all hours of the day to take you from one part of the resort to another -- which is great, since it’s huge.

Problem was, the moment I walked outside my camera fogged up. Totally. It was extraordinarily humid, and with a forecasted high of 101 I feared I’d already made a big mistake.

That didn’t keep me from taking a few photos, hoping that having my shutter open a bit would clear out the haze from my lens. I was delivered to the lobby and walked back about half the length of the building, almost to The Woodlands Restaurant, where a full buffet was underway.

There I found an elevator to the second floor. Up there I encountered no one as I followed signs further and further back. I realized the building had to be several football fields in length.

At the far back southwest corner there was an entrance to the spa. It was secluded and quiet, and there was a very friendly attendant who met me on arrival. She set me up with a locker, robe and flip-flops and showed me around the facility.

Sadly, this is the only photograph you are going to get, since it’s improper to take photos of folks in a spa. This was my locker, and I had plenty of room -- plus, I had an oversized robe, which is a rare thing for someone of my size. A very welcome rare thing.

I started out with a shower to cleanse myself before utilizing the different stations within. From there I went directly to the steam room. Now, I’ve been in many steam rooms -- both in hotels and in spas and even one on a cruise ship. This was one of the larger ones… and its most defining attribute was the fact I have never encountered one quite so hot. I mean, exhaustively hot. I usually manage 15 to 20 minutes of steaming in a single sitting, which is on the upper side. I think I managed six on my longest sitting this time.

In-between steams I took advantage of the offered cucumber-infused water. There was also citrus-infused ice water and a container of cranberry-nut trail mix for snacking. I went into the back area past the showers and had a seat on a couch in front of a roaring gas fire for several minutes, cooled down in comfort and repeated the cycle again, four times in all.

I did get a glimpse into the massage studio section of the spa. Very relaxing. The subdued lighting, comfortable tables and almost delicious music were nicely matched. I also noticed that there were fabulous loose-leaf teas available for post-massage consumption.

After the four rounds of steam-beverage-sit, I gave the sauna a single whirl. The sauna is just as big as the steam room but otherwise rather average. It wasn’t as hot as the steam room, either.

From there I went to the whirlpool, which is on an elevated deck above the front desk. There had been three women in the whirlpool when I arrived but they had all departed by the time I got my chunky butt into the water, letting the water loosen up my sore shoulder and rib. I spent just a few minutes in each time, stepping out and lounging on one of the padded chaise lounges in-between and enjoying the chance to let my mind be quiet.

Still, I had responsibilities, and around 10:30 I took one more shower to remove the sweat and chlorine and dressed again. I can highly, highly recommend the spa to guests of The Woodlands; it is complimentary with your stay and a great place for moms to retreat when dads have the kids. Also, there’s a men’s spa on the first floor underneath the ladies’ spa.

I discovered on the way back that my camera was no longer fogged up. I picked up a hot paper cup of lemon tea outside the restaurant and took some photos here and there. Of special interest to me was the game room. It contained pool, air hockey and shuffleboard tables -- which will be something Hunter will likely have an interest in when she’s older. That’ll be fun.

I also passed by a business center, the Lobby Bar and through the Lobby, which has what I can only describe as particularly Texan décor. I mean, after all, how many places do you go where you can sit in a cow fur armchair? Really?

Even though I hadn’t called for a golf cart before leaving the spa, it took no time at all for the next one to arrive to transport me back over to the Fairways. Those golf carts are everywhere.

When I arrived back at the room I discovered that Paul and Hunter were just stirring. Everyone was slow. I think we were all experiencing a little trip fatigue.

Rather than try to get up and over to eat breakfast, we took our time and snacked on what we’d brought -- our snacks and beverages and such. We still had a few containers of milk, soft drinks and packages of mandarin orange slices along with some of the fruit we picked up at Moody Gardens. A good snack and then we were getting ready to head out again.

Our intended destination had been the massive Woodlands Mall. It’s not just a mall, it also has its own children’s museum, the Xploration Station satellite location for Houston’s Museum of Natural Science and a soft indoor play area. We figured we’d let Hunter have a great time there, then grab a bite to eat before heading back to the resort.

Here’s the problem. Sunday, noonish, The Woodlands. What are you going to do? Go shopping! Where are you going to go? The Woodlands Mall. Where are you going to park? Ah, that was the problem. We should have taken advantage of the free courtesy shuttle around the area, but instead we were left trying to find a parking spot for the van. And there was nothing. Nothing. Not a single parking spot. We went around the entire mall a time and a half and couldn’t find a single space to park.

Well, what now?

We decided to drive over to Market Street to the west of the mall, and found a parking spot right away. It was a lucky thing, honesty, we caught someone else pulling out. And the moment we had pulled into the shopping complex I knew where we were going to go.

We were going to a French bakery.

La Madeleine is a short-range Texas chain that offers French baked goods and inspired dishes. I’ve been meaning to go to one for years -- every time I passed on in Dallas my mouth would water. Finally I was going to get that chance.

We walked over to the restaurant and found seats inside. I had Paul and Hunter decide what they wanted, then went and stood in line for my order to be taken. They take the orders, give you what’s already prepared, you check out and they bring the rest to you. Oh, yeah -- instead of a numbered card to put at your table, it’s a numbered wooden spoon in a standing block.

That’s on one side. After I went through the line and picked up Hunter’s yogurt and my Chicken Friand I dropped off my tray at our table, and Paul got Hunter into eating her yogurt (with strawberries!) while I went and obtained our beverages. I also picked up some fresh bread. Slices of bread and butter are available to all La Madeleine customers complimentary, and I took good advantage of this. I could live on bread and butter.

I liked how they had the kids meal there. All entrees are served with a choice of fruit, yogurt or a cookie and juice, soda or milk. Since Hunter wanted pizza, it had to be cooked. So she got her yogurt first. She loved that. Hunter eats yogurt every single day, and having fresh yogurt with big fresh strawberries in it was the bomb.

Her pizza was huge -- a 10” cheese pizza all to herself, for $4.69 for the whole shebang. Yes, we ended up eating some of it, too -- later that evening. That was a lot of food for a little girl.

Paul got a special, a Chicken Salad Sandwich on croissant with a serving of Tomato Basil Pesto Pasta Salad ($6.99) -- a very good chicken salad with a nice dill flavor to it, served up on a buttery and crispy croissant. I like the pasta salad, too, what Paul let me try of it. It was very rich for a pasta salad, served cold and very tomato-y.

But it was nothing compared to my Chicken Friand ($5.99), which was just better than I can express. Puff pastry filled with a couple different sorts of mushrooms and shredded chicken in a gorgeously luxurious cream broth. It was so phenomenal I almost cried. Outside of being served something similar by French friends, I haven’t had anything like it anywhere. Why can’t we get one of these La Madeleine restaurants in Little Rock?

While Paul took Hunter to the restroom I went for desserts to share. I settled on a mini Sacher Torte served in a square-cut shot glass and a piece of Tiramisu. When they came back Hunter claimed all the chocolate she could claim, letting us feed her bits with our spoons. I thought the tiramisu was a lot thicker than I was used to, but the Sacher Torte was extraordinarily rich. They offer a bigger version of it, too.

Now full, we ventured out and down a block to head over to Borders. We don’t have Borders Books in Arkansas (at least, not to my knowledge) and since the chain was going out of business we saw a chance to score some bargains. And yes, there were bargains to be had. There was also massive craziness in the kids area, where all the Pillow Pets had been thrown in the floor and which now made a strange play area for parents and kids alike. I took a single clandestine photo of the action.

Thing is, we did find some great deals. We also had to stand in line for close to 45 minutes to take advantage of those deals, because apparently everyone else had the same idea. Well, that was our luck.

We were done with shopping. It was time to head back to the hotel and take advantage of the fantastic waterpark area. Thing is, Paul and I were both pretty tuckered out. It had been a busy week. Was that going to deter Hunter? Of course not. So into our bathing suits we changed and off we went.

Hunter was so excitred I thought she was going to come right out of her skin. It was all we could do to keep her from running away from us as we headed out that way. She wanted to be in the water right then.

We started out intending on letting her play in the little splash pool for a while, but she spied the dancing fountains and had to investigate. This is a big round area with a relatively soft surface between the splash pool and the big pool with its waterslides. There are several small spigots that shoot up water every few moments in patterns.

At first, Hunter tried to figure it out, wondering why some of the jets went off at different times while others had a different pattern. Then she gave into it, squealing with delight, running through the different jets and dancing. It was an extraordinary amount of fun for a two and a half year old girl.

She played in that fountain a good 15 minutes, and then suddenly darted towards the big pool. We got onto her about that. Paul volunteered to take her out in it and I acquiesced, knowing Hunter wasn’t going to be happy until she tried it out.

They swam in the big pool for over an hour. I went out after a while with them. They were particularly enamored with the enamel lizards that graced the side of an island in the pool. Hunter wanted to name each one and pet it.

The water in this area was surprisingly deep -- and made me realize that everywhere we’d gone, we hadn’t been anywhere where the water was over our heads. Not at Schlitterbahn -- at least, not where we’d been at the park. Not at Moody Gardens. Not at Galveston, where I’d waded out the length of a football field and the water never got over my chest. Not even at the Embassy Suites, where the water in the pool only reached about four feet deep.

This pool… well, it was different. There were shallow sections but there was also this one deep section near the island where I could not touch bottom. It might have only been six feet, but I’m 5’9” and it was deep enough I had to tread water.

That made it perfect for older kids -- who donned goggles and went looking underwater for “buried treasure.” And they could find it, too. The Forest Waterscape includes those lizards, different items on the bottom to categorize and even a “sunken chest” that can all be goals for the kids to find.

Hunter? Not quite there yet. But she’s getting there. On our trip she’d learned the rudimentary bits of floating and dog paddling. I’ll be getting her into swim classes next summer for sure.

Once we’d had enough of the big pool, Paul and I took Hunter over to the splash pool to relax. Hunter spent a good portion of the time picking up the tiniest pieces of debris (mostly bits of leaves) from the bottom of the splash pool and made a pile.

She also met other kids, some of which were close to her age. I discovered she could be a bit bossy with them. She was directing them around here and there and they were paying attention. But they all seemed to be having fun, trying to figure out which of the jets in the splash fountain were going to go off next.

She also played with a younger child in the splash pool. The boy’s mom had floats and toys and gladly shared them with Hunter… I wonder if part of it was this look my daughter was giving her son. My daughter can be pretty scary sometimes.

We were out there until sundown, and even then it was hard to pry Hunter away. She was starting to turn into a little raisin. If I’d had the energy, I might have spent more time out there with her. But we had to get ready for the next morning. She tearfully left the swimming area to head back inside with us.

When we returned, we found our beds turned down for the night. Mats had been put down for our feet (our wet feet? Maybe) and on each bed there were cards with the forecast for the next day and a couple of chocolates -- which Hunter claimed, of course!

After we’d showered, we turned on a movie on the TV and let Hunter watch while Paul and I started to pack. There was so much to take back with us; despite having left a bag of dirty clothes from each destination in the van and not taking about a quarter of the rest of our stuff, we still had plenty to put up. We went through it all -- the clothes, Hunter’s toys, my press materials, everything. Paul went and took two loads to the car -- he had wanted to grab a cart so he could make it all in one trip but there wasn’t one available. We sent everything to the car except my computer (I wanted to work right up until we left), a change of clothes for the each of us, the cooler, Hunter’s bag and our toiletry bag.

We ate leftovers -- Paul ate Hunter's pizza, she ate her leftover half of burger from Coal Burger and I ate the leftover bread and butter from La Madeleine, and we kicked back and watched Three Men and a Little Lady, which I had forgotten included the fantastic and underratred Fiona Shaw.

It took a lot for us to get drowsy early. I think Hunter and I fell asleep around 10 p.m., Paul a short time later.

The following morning I managed to actually wake up when the alarm on my phone went off at 2 a.m. So worried we wouldn’t make it back to Little Rock in time for Paul to get to work, I was instantly wide awake.

Our planning had worked fine. By taking everything except a few easily carried items to the car the night before we were able to leave without multiple trips. Paul scooped Hunter up and carried her out while I pulled along the cooler and carried my computer. She woke up about halfway down the length of the hotel and quietly watched what was happening.

We got out to the van, slid her in and she was out like a light. Everything fit in the back and I took the first stretch. It was 2:30 a.m.

By 3:30 we were back in Cleveland, TX and to Highway 59. Paul took over, now knowing the way back home, and I crawled into the back seat with Hunter, where I slept until we got to Texarkana.

We stopped in at the Broadway Railroad Café in Prescott for breakfast, then boogied on up to Little Rock and made it in right after 11 a.m., just enough time for Paul to help me unload and shower before he had to be in at work at noon. My intention had been to spend the afternoon writing about our trip, but I fell asleep not long after Hunter asked to crawl up into my lap, and pretty much the rest of the day was spent snoozing and doing laundry. It had been a tiring trip.

Up next: What I took from my experience.

Traveling with a Toddler: Houston to The Woodlands.

2011-08-27T16:19:00.000-05:00

It took a whole lot to get Hunter up the next morning. I think she was getting a little weary on our trip, too. She hid in the bedcovers while we got about and got ready.

Breakfast again at the Embassy Suites. I have to admit, I am really impressed with their made-to-order breakfasts. Hunter ate four pancakes and was just overjoyed at having them available. I had another veggie omelet and oatmeal while Paul… well, Paul ate just about everything.

I like the set-up -- a station where you can choose sweet rolls, Danish, toast, bagels and oatmeal; a hot line with eggs, hash browns, bacon and sausage links; a made-to-order station for omelets, fried eggs and pancakes; a fruit station with cantaloupe and honeydew melon pieces and whole Red Delicious apples and oranges; a drink station with hot and iced tea, coffee, four different juices and white or chocolate milk. It’s gotta be one of the better included hotel breakfast I have enjoyed.

We got back to the room and completed our packing, intending to head out as soon as possible. But we had a problem. A problem named Punchy. Hunter had grown attached to this fake plant and had taken it with her everywhere in the suite. I called downstairs and spoke with the front desk and housekeeping, but the general idea was the plant could not be purchased.

So we had a little ceremony. Hunter got to play with Punchy for a few more minutes, take some photos with the plant, hug it and say goodbye. We made a big deal about how Punchy needed to stay there, that the hotel suite was his home and he needed to stick around so he could make other people happy.

After our little ceremony Hunter said she’d be just fine, but as we finished bringing all of our stuff to the living room section of the suite for pick-up on the cart we noticed she was still talking to Punchy, sitting on the table in the bedroom. When we said it was time to go she gave the plant a hug and came out to us.

After the scramble to get the cart to the car, the accidental dropping of both her potty and my computer (the latter causing me a big scare, the former having happened at EVERY SINGLE STOP along our journey), we headed to Main Street and then down into the Museum District. We were bound for the Museum of Natural History, which Paul and I had visited in 2000 and which we were looking forward to because there was a butterfly exhibit there.

We drove around more than 45 minutes looking for it. I mean, the signs would point in a direction and then they would disappear. I suspect the museum is undergoing a facelift or something; we never did locate it.

But we did pass the Children’s Museum of Houston a couple of times, and decided since we had a Houston CityPass that we’d go there instead. We parked on the bottom of the two-story deck and went on in.

Thing is, it’s very easy for a first time parent to lose sight of the real goal on a trip like this. Because when you have a child, it’s no longer all about you. It’s all about your child, and sometimes you do things that might not be high entertainment for yourself because it delights your child. This is one of the lessons that was borne home to me this week, and I am glad to have learned it -- because just watching Hunter at the Children’s Museum confirmed it for me.

In the Mexican Village area, there was this van, an old VW type fan that’s open for kids to climb into. Hunter crawled in, got in the front seat and hollered for us to come join her. We sat in the back while she “drove” around the village and pointed things out to us.

And then there was the villa. Hunter had a great time playing “guess that food” before one of the little mops caught her eye. She went right over to the bucket, picked it up and started to “mop” the floor. It was just bizarre -- not because she did it, but that I noticed every single child that entered the area while we were there did the exact same thing. Makes me wonder if it’s part of our hard-wiring.

There was a neater section of the museum, though -- which I thought was just genius. That was Kidopolis. Each child is given a card when they come into the museum. Turns out this is a version of a kid’s ATM card. You enter and check your ATM card and set your pin number. Each account has $20 in it to start.

Each station is different. There’s a government building, where you can spend your time doing forensics in the crime lab, or work as a police officer or city planner. There’s a stock market where you trade stocks. There’s a restaurant where you can “cook” and serve food. There’s even a TV station where you can be a producer or an anchor or a camera person.

After “working” at each station, you can clock out and receive pay for your work. The kids take that check to the bank, where other kids are working on exchanging the checks for cards that resemble cash. Those go to the ATM, where they go on the cards.

And then there are place to spend that Kidopolis money. Like the restaurant, where you can obtain a “hot meal.” You can spend it picking up groceries in the HEB grocery store -- or puchase photos (which are actually black and white prints you can take with you).

It’s a neat experience, where kids can play at real life. I thought it was phenomenal. The kids apparently loved it, too -- this was the most crowded part of the Children’s Museum, and everyone seemed engaged in the process.

Hunter also went over to the art studio in Kidopolis for a few minutes. While she didn’t create a masterpiece of her own, she added to one in the making left up on an easel. This wasn’t discouraged.

After this, we went upstairs to the Tot Spot, an area specifically meant for kids 35 months and under. At 32 months, Hunter is almost aged out of this sort of playground, and she was by far the tallest child in the area. She and Paul took off their shoes and went to play in their socks in the area specifically designed for toddler play. They must have spent 45 minutes in there, and when the time was up she did not want to go. She’d had fun climbing over the varied terrain, playing with everything there was to play with on the level and having a good time.

While she and Paul were in the Tot Spot area, I went back down to the Fiddle Sticks Toy Shop, the gift shop of the Children’s Museum of Houston. I was surprised how affordable a lot of the items were. I looked through all sorts of stuff, like stuffed puppets, tubes of medieval knights, classic games like Tiddlywinks, dozens of plastic bugs and such. And I found something very specific we’d been missing.

After we put her shoes on, I pulled the gift out of the bag and handed it to her. At first she seemed confused. Then she concentrated, smiled and looked up at me with this overjoyed expression. “Momma, you found it!”

I wish I’d had my camera out. In the Children’s Museum’s gift shop, I had found the river otter we’d searched for so hard. It was $7. It was so worth it. She named it River Song (after one of her favorite Doctor Who characters) and wouldn’t part with it for the rest of the day.

We left out shortly afterwards, ready to head to The Woodlands for the final part of our vacation. After paying to get out of the Children’s Museum parking deck, we found our way to the interstate and headed up I-45 to our destination.

Of course, I took a wrong turn and ended up on the wrong side of the planned community, just at a time when I really needed a restroom. I spotted a Culver’s and ran inside. I came out with a family sized box of fried cheese curds -- something I absolutely can’t resist. I had no idea there were Culver’s in Texas -- I thought the furthest location south was in Branson. A lucky turn, for sure.

We arrived a short time later at The Woodlands Resort and Conference Center on the southwest side of town. It was out in the woods (fitting). As we came up the drive we noticed the golf course, horseshoe pits and buildings dotted out on the edge of the golf course here and there. We pulled in, I ran in and got our informational packet and we drove over to our accommodations at Fairway Pines.

It’s an unusual set-up. I’m used to being able to park relatively close to the place where I’m staying. There’s a valet set up at the front entrance of the Fairway Pines between the buildings. We unloaded what we were taking into the resort (leaving behind dirty laundry packed into bags for taking home) onto a cart and I rolled it into the building with Hunter tagging alongside. We had a long way to go, too… about five sections down to our room on the inside of the wing, with the elevator to the second level about halfway down that length. Paul went and parked the van.

Our room was smaller than what we’d had at our other two stops, but was perfectly acceptable. In fact, this was more what we’d expected the entire trip, a room with two double beds, a bathroom and what you normally get in a hotel. By the time Paul got back I’d taken my pictures and started packing away our stuff so the cart could be returned.

He took the cart back and Hunter and I explored the room a little. There was a balcony out the sliding glass door, and over a stone half-wall we could see water through the trees. It seemed nice and secluded… though we could hear a band playing and children in the pool in the distance.

Paul had just come back and we had started to debate who was going to rest and who’d be taking Hunter to the pool first when there was a knock at the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, so I didn’t really know how to respond. There were two nicely dressed men at the door. They swept into the room and set up a presentation on the desk -- a wine cooler packed with ice and a magnum of fresh, cold whole milk -- and a plate of nine hot chocolate chunk cookies.

Hunter, who had been clamoring to go out to the pool, stopped. We poured her a glass of milk and handed her a cookie, and she was sated and happy. The graciously provided snack bought us about an hour of downtime before our next round of activity. The cookies were full of chocolate chips and chunks with dark, semisweet and white chocolate, pecans and black walnut chunks. And they were divine. I want the recipe.

After we’d had our shoes off for a while and had freshened up, we went out to the pool area, where dozens of people were enjoying the Forest Oasis Waterscape, a series of pools and water features that extended the length of the interior between the two wings of the Forest Pines complex.

Towards the back we saw a line of people waiting patiently as four of the resort’s staff members worked in tandem. We joined the line.

They handed Paul and I both these long two-pronged forks with big marshmallows on the end. We followed other guests over to a big firepit, where we helped Hunter toast the mallows over the fire. Then we walked back over, and the staffers took the marshmallows and sandwiched them between graham crackers and pieces of chocolate bars to make S’mores. There was no limit to how many you could make and consumed.

We found a big swing that was the size of a twin sized bed and sat on it together and watched folks go for more S’mores. Hunter wasn’t so interested in the confection; she’s a marshmallow purist, and I think she was a little confused why we’d singe a marshmallow and then add things to it!

From there we went back to our room, grabbed a few things and headed out to the downtown area of the community. The Woodlands, in case you didn’t know, is a planned community created in the seventies. It’s very neat. If you want to live in the suburbs, there are houses in different neighborhoods where you can do that. Then there are apartments and town homes built to very specific designs closer in to the center of town. There are retirement villages, small complexes and such, all tucked back in the trees away from the road.

There’s also a massive Woodlands Mall and a big shopping area that strings along side the Woodlands Waterway, which offers a water taxi. There’s a shuttle that goes all around Town Center, with its collection of shops and restaurants and movie theaters.

We were on a mission. I’d been told I needed to try out Coal Burger, a coal-fired burgeria (burgeria?) right off the Waterway that had been noted for its green mission. I dropped off Hunter and Paul by the restaurant and went to park in a nearby deck.

When I came back Hunter was standing at the edge of one of the fabulous fountains along the way, gasping every time the lights under the water changed or the fountain spewed high. It took some effort to extract her from the area, with a promise to go look later.

Inside we ordered at the counter and had a seat. I went to get us a beverage -- and discovered that instead of the regular Coke or Pepsi products, Coal Burger serves Boylan sodas -- sodas that are sugar based and have no high fructose corn syrup. Winner! They also have China Myst iced tea.

We had a seat at a table next to one of the big windows. Hunter immediately got into playing with the grass plant on the table… that is, until the Black & White gelato milkshake ($5) we’d ordered came out. We each tried it -- first Paul, then I, and then Hunter -- who pretty much claimed it as her own. To me and Paul it was a bit weird -- a little icy-grainy with a very unusual flavor. I figured a lot of it had to do with the use of gelato, which is made from milk instead of cream. Part of it, too, was the chocolate, definitely a special blend of cocoa powder and what have you. Wasn’t my thing or Paul’s thing, but Hunter was all about it, even more than the nine ounce milk she already had on the table.

Her kid’s meal looked great, too -- great skin-on potato fries and a small patty burger on a small bun. It was served up in a recycled paperboard container tray, which really is a good idea for kids, to be honest. She had a good time dipping her fries in ketchup, which was dispensed into paper cups rather than through packets.

And then there was the ½ pound Classic Coal Burger ($5.99) Paul and I had decided to split between us. We’d gone for Cheddar cheese (an additional buck) and sweet potato fries on the side (another $3, but there were a bunch of them). It was one big burger, two nicely charred patties one on top of each other with these great specialty pickles and chopped iceberg lettuce. There was no tomato or onion slice on the thing, which is how it comes. We got the CB sauce on the side, a mayo-chipotle based sauce that I dabbed onto the bun’s edge for a taste. Neither of us cared for the sauce.

But the burger? What a fantastic burger. I mean, it needed to be good -- with the big brag that the burger was made from All-Natural Niman Ranch Beef with big bold letters. And it was. Not much on the spicing, but it didn’t need it. The coal-firing had given it such a nice caramelized crust with searing that kept in the juices. We hadn’t asked for it to be prepared in any particular fashion, but it had come with the top patty cooked a medium to medium well and the bottom patty a solid medium rare. That was a little odd, but we liked it.

The burger’s almost wood-smoky notes were fantastic, and on the house bun it was just divine. The pickles really stood out to me too, dill-ish pickles but thick with a fresh crunch.

I tried one of Hunter’s regular French fries and was pleased with the firm crunch and soft center. It had been dusted with just a little salt but had a little different flavor to it, sort of nutty but in a distant way. Might be because they’re fried in rice bran oil. Our sweet potato fries were on the savory side, dusted liberally with salt and ketchup-friendly. That was also welcome; I don’t know how often I’ve had sweet potato fries that are overly sweet or served up with honey or the like -- not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. These were sturdy and strong crisp sweet potato fries, half the thickness of a #2 pencil with just enough give to not be tough.

We had considered sticking around for a while in the Town Center area, but a small bathroom emergency sent us back to the resort, where Hunter got a bath and we all kicked back for the evening. The constant travel was really starting to take its toll on us, and Hunter asked to go to bed before 10 p.m. We had one more day before we needed to head home and get back to our ordinary world.

Coming home.

2011-08-26T13:02:00.000-05:00

B.J. Sams and I at Empty Bowls 2008

I don’t talk much about my television days… at least, not here. Maybe at one point that was by design; I started this blog just weeks before I left the station and I was making a new start in my world. But maybe it’s time I did.

The station was Today’s THV. I spent eight years there, all of it on the morning show, producing Today’s THV This Morning. There are a lot of morning shows out there coast to coast, but this one was special. Different.

I started at Today’s THV in July 1999, just months before I married and after 10 months of drifting in Little Rock trying to figure out what I was going to do. I’d been in Jonesboro before that, a three year stint at KAIT-TV, where I got my feet wet in television and learned a lot about the world -- some good things, some very bad things.

When I came to Today’s THV I’d spent 10 months in different jobs. I’d been an executive assistant, a banking clerk, a radio traffic reporter, a receptionist, about 20 other things -- all while being a professional temp. I was waiting for my big break, and I thought it would come with KKYK-TV -- which my fiance worked for at the time.

I’d “settled” for working at Ron Sherman Teleproductions as a producer and production gal for about two months when I got the call to come back to Today’s THV for a follow-up interview. My first interview in September 1998, three days after I’d left KAIT, got blown when I was asked what a five o’clock news program should be. “Evrerything to all people,” I had said, and apparently I was wrong. The answer the management had been looking for was “caters to women,” and I failed.

But Lane Michaelson kept me in mind when a position came open on the morning show. It was supposed to be a temporary position -- three months as the third producer on the show while it went through an expansion. It had been 6-8 a.m. for a few years, but with CBS creating The Early Show for the Fall 1999 lineup the management had decided to start Today’s THV This Morning at 5 a.m., and they needed three producers instead of two.

It was a crapshoot, really -- leaving a job that was a certain steady paycheck for one that might evaporate a few months later. But I’d made myself a promise. See, at KAIT I had spent a year and a half producing the morning show. I enjoyed it -- the overnight hours, the quiet, the freedom to put together a show within a very loose frame. After the Westside School Shootings and the Manila Tornado I was given an involuntary boot up to the 10 p.m. producer spot -- which, frankly, bored me. I made myself a promise that if I ever ended up in television again and ever got the chance at a morning show, I would never leave it.

I guess it’s fortunate, then, that there was a stirring of the pot at the station. One producer left, another moved up, another… it came down to the morning show, and our lead producer Amy went to the 6 p.m. show, leaving me to step up. It wasn’t long before my co-producer and reporter Christa Olsen moved up, too.

Robyn met Bobby Vinton on our 2005 Branson trip.

The producers changed, but everything else stayed the same. It was unusual for any market, frankly -- for any group of people to keep working together on a morning show like we did. It started with the anchors, of cours. B.J. Sams was a veteran of Little Rock television dating back about as far as I could remember. Robyn Richardson (the former Robyn Lowry) had recently married and had started the show about the time I was finishing up my radio days. Tom Brannon had been there for a short while and was still getting used to (at the time) being the third wheel on the show. They didn’t know it then, but they’d be doing this for all the eight years I was there, together… in fact, until about three weeks after I left.

There was the director, Jerry Don Burch, who had been at Today’s THV for close to 40 years at that point. He used to come in every morning at 3 a.m. with his lunchbox, then come start up the printers. There was Hal Mitcham the audio guy, Brian Frazier the graphics guy, Robert Settles and Jimmy Staton (who started the same week I did) and Badi Galinkin and Sidney Woodbury on the floor, with Gary Burgess as the floor director. Mark Denny was in master control.

One of my favorite photos of Rich Gunter.

Then there were the editors… there was a string of editors, actually, but there was always Bill Ritter. And then Richard Gunter would come in each morning and shoot what needed to be shot. Sometimes one of the other photographers would come in for the morning show. Sometimes we’d have several people. One morning that first summer there were 21 people between the studio and the newsroom, all putting that show together.

We never got back to that number again after the first summer. But on the other hand, there weren’t a whole lot of new faces here and there, either. In the director’s box, Hal stepped up when Jerry Don retired, and Rob Hatfield came in to be the assistant director. Tim Sullivan became our man in the audio booth… they all developed nicknames, too. Tim was “Eric Clapton.” Hal was “Antonio Banderas.” You get the idea.

Tom thought he’d blown his interview
with Ray Stevens about 30 seconds in.

And there were the co-producers. After Amy and Christa there was Zrinka Rukavina, who went on to become a lawyer in Chicago (and who’s doing quite well, I’m happy to say). There was Sarah Holliman and Monica Rued (who’s still a web producer at the station) and Becca Buerkle, the last one I worked with. I always forget one… there were seven in all. All of them (with the exception of Sarah, who I believe ended up doing something with the police force, I’m not certain) moved up and onward at the station.

We called the Hogs with Dave Price.

There were a few here and there who were with us for a month or a year -- Davy Craft, Win Noble, Holly Terry, Larry Kreif -- I am startled I remember any of the names after all this time. They were all people who really influenced my life.

We had a lot of good times on the show. The station had this idea of creating this Weather Garden, and we took it and ran with it, filling it up with people and things and ideas. We came up with all sorts of neat promotions and contests and what have you. Probably the most famous of these were the Weddings of a Live Time we held -- three of them, crazy contests that culminated in nuptuals at dawn. Wow, huh?

I got to meet White House pastry chef
Roland Messnier when the Clinton
Presidential Center opened in 2004.

There were also the Zoo Tuesdays, the Breakfast with Tom segments, the Summer Cereal Drive and the road trips. There were seasons, too -- August, for instance, meant competing watermelon festivals, while every May we had Toad Suck Daze, Greek Food Festival, Riverfest.

Yet some of my favorite times from the show were when the anchors just had a chance to chat and relax and share a bit of their lives with us. I quite clearly remember the day after Game & Fish Night back in the summer of 2000, and that Robyn was supposed to race in it. We showed the footage, and then she mentioned that it was her husband Keith driving the car. She handed baby booties to B.J. and Tom, her way of letting everyone know she was pregnant.

I do believe I was the first person who told Robyn she was pregnant with her third child, Parker. She had just returned from maternity leave after having her son Lowry, and she kept having this flu that would not go away. One morning it struck me that we’d been to this rodeo before, and after the show I told her “Robyn, I think you’re pregnant.” She told me it wasn’t possible… and the next day came in and almost hissed at me… “how did you know?” Well, we’d been there with Lowry and with Olivia before that… go figure.

Our viewers got to know them as BJRobyn&Tom… it’d all run together, and everyone assumed they were a happy family. But it didn’t start off that way. I recall how Tom really didn’t rub the others the right way at first, and the friction between them. Way back in the day, Robyn would sometimes show irritation working with B.J. and vice versa. It didn’t blossom overnight.

But when it did, it was great. There was a chemistry between the three of them that just made the show. Yes, producing the show sometimes felt like pushing around an elephant, but at least with the three of them it was like pushing that elephant around on a dolly, instead of plain brute force.

I used to remind Tom about his wedding anniversary. I got married exactly a week before he did -- and so I’d always make a point to tell him not to forget LeAnn on the 20th of November.

I married Paul in November 1999.

B.J. used to read me his junk email… “I can get breast enhancements with this simple exercise, huh huh huh,” he’d laugh. He’d work the crossword and the Scramble in the paper between cut-ins after the show.

Boy, I am rambling on. I’d meant to just write a few paragraphs, but I suppose my time at THV just can’t be summed up that way.

Tom with Yakov Smirnoff.

When I was there, I felt like I was ever so lucky. I was working the coolest job in the world and I couldn’t ever see leaving it. There are about 12 reasons I did… but it still wasn’t an easy decision. I was tired of working up to 60 hours a week. I wanted to start a family. I felt like I was in a rut -- a fun rut, but a rut nonetheless. Wanted to try something new. Felt I was getting old.

Rich and I on his retirement day.

The kicker for me was the lurking spector of what would have turned out to be a huge paycut had I stayed. I’d negotiated in my contract when I started that I would be paid hourly; though my contract actually expired in 2000 no one ever asked me about signing a new one. Gannett’s blanket ruling to make all producers salaried workers would have cost me an estimated $12k a year in pay. It was, in the end, the deciding factor.

My last day was September 7, 2007. Walking away from the morning show was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I left behind my security, my friends and the career I thought I would follow for the rest of my life. I had no idea when I left that Friday morning if I’d ever enter that building again. I though I had a future in public relations, but hadn’t made up my mind. I was being courted heavily by the competition, but after about a week I realized my days in television -- at least on the reverse side of the camera -- were over.

You probably know the rest of the story… it’s documented on this blog. The places I’ve been and seen have been fabulous. I have, for the most part, created an entire career from scratch. I’ve gone through an interesting pregnancy and have started the process of raising a beautiful daughter. I’ve grown. As one of my friends recently put it to me, I’ve come into myself. I know who I am. Another friend says I’ve become my own brand. I can accept that too.

Yesterday I received a message from Tom, asking if I’d come stop by this morning. I wasn’t sure what it was all about, but I figured that hey, it was about time. I’d missed out on the morning show the day B.J. retired and I felt bad about that -- but Hunter was still very young and it was outside her comfort zone. I did come for a gathering at the station later, though.

This morning was the first time I went back to the morning show in nearly four years. To say I was apprehensive would be mild. I really didn’t know what to expect.

But when I went through the gate, there was very little different from before. Well, there was the weirdness of having my name checked off by a list. I almost found myself doing the whole “do you know who I am?” to Tyler, one of the producers of the show today. But seeing so many other faces I recognized sort of soothed that over.

Rich Gunter was there -- he had retired about a year before I left and I hadn’t seen him in so long. I missed Rich. We used to spar a bit on our thoughts on live shots and the like, but he’s a great guy and he was usually right. Married life is treating him well. He told me they’d just got their first computer… I find it amusing.

James Staats from Golden Corral was there, as was Anthony Michael from Cross Eyed Pig BBQ, who was grilling up pork ribs for the occasion. The four of us were comparing notes and sharing memories when Robyn and B.J. passed in front of where we were standing and joined Tom and Alyse and Ashley. At one point Tom pointed us out to them, and I thought Robyn was going to flitter.

The show was different from what it used to be. We never really had an audience during my times. Sure, we might have a Weather Garden full of Taekwondo kids or Foodbank volunteers, but just folks who watched the show? Not often. There were maybe 30 in-garden guests and the whole cadre of us, talking with each other and sharing our memories. I talked with Dr. Bob Hale the veterinarian, with Derrick Rose the magician and with state trooper Cpl. Alvernon Rogers. Becca came in early (she now works upstairs from the newsroom, good for her!) and Matthew Carroll, the guy that replaced me (bless his heart) poked his head out.

I went in for a bit and walked around the control room -- which has changed a lot. No more clunky tubed video monitors. Now it’s all plasma screens and computer interfaces. Robert Settles was manning the cameras. Hal and Rob were still calling the shots and punching the show, and Tim was in the booth.

At the end of the show all us old-timers got together for one last shot, just for a minute. And then it was over. Some hung around for another hour, while others had to take off immediately. That’s life for ya.

I went to the newsroom to take a look around. It looks very similar and yet some things are different. The big computer monitors have been replaced with flat screens. There’s a new editing system that allows producers to put stuff together at their desks and make it all work.

This was my desk. You know, I think the only photo I have of my desk is from when I received the Employee of the Quarter my last year at the station. It doesn’t look that much different, just a lot cleaner. B.J. sat at the one across from this one, and Robyn’s desk was to the right on that side.

The dedication of the new studio, I think in 2005.

I wish I could have taken the photo with me that had been in the employee case back then, back when my hair was chin length and strawberry blonde. There is still one photo of me there, a group photo from when we debuted the new set back in 2005.

While talking with Matthew and watching the new producers Martha and Tyler and while catching up with Becca, I missed the big group photo apparently taken outside. But I did get this one. All those years, there was never a photo of me with my three anchors. I was always behind the camera and a little camera shy. I wanted to make sure there was one. This is it.

I thought I’d cry this morning, I really thought I would. I did cry, and profusely, the morning I left. I was pretty damaged back then. I didn’t know, couldn’t know, that in many ways I was emerging from my chrysalis that last morning. Most of the time I spent at Today’s THV I was a hermit, content to let someone else step in front of the camera and grab the glory. Don’t get me wrong, I loved what I did. It’s part of me. I spent longer there than anywhere else I’ve ever been.

But this morning I realized not just how much that time meant to me, but that it is a time long past. I have grown, as have my fellow former co-workers. Life has proceeded apace and we have all moved on in our own ways. In just a few weeks I’ll mark my fourth anniversary away from the station, and it’ll be a happy one. I can finally hold my head high and confirm that I have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams at this next segment of my life. Today’s THV This Morning wasn’t the zenith of my life. But it was important to me.

I may go back again. I don’t know. Going back this time, though… paved the way for more moments in my life. I have moved on. I am thankful and grateful for it all.

Traveling with a Toddler: Houston and the Space Center.

2011-08-22T22:04:00.000-05:00

After four nights away from home, I was determined we’d get out and about early on Friday to take in the sights around Houston. To this end I managed to get everyone up and out of bed and down to the second floor of the Embassy Suites for breakfast.

Hunter was more than a little groggy. She was practically hanging onto us for dear life. Once we finally got her untangled, I acquired for her a plate of melon pieces, scrambled eggs, hash browns and raisins with a side of yogurt -- all the sort of things she’d eat for breakfast at home. We also set her up with a treat of chocolate milk, which she took to immediately.

After Paul went and picked up his plate of unholy pork (a pile of bacon and sausages with a little bit of eggs) I went back and ordered up a vegetable omelet and a couple of pancakes. Hunter eyeballed those pancakes when I came back, and so I ended up sharing them with her. We decided the next morning we’d be getting her pancakes.

Back in our room, Paul went about getting ready while Hunter lounged on the couch. She watched TV and sprawled on the neat furniture. I think she really enjoyed it.

A bit later, we headed out to the Space Center, down in the Clear Lake area. It took us about 40 minutes to negotiate traffic out that way, $6 to park and about a minute to find a good spot in the parking lot.

The first thing I noticed was different were the security details. Paul and I had come out to the Space Center in 2000 and there had been none of that. Now you’re checked for explosives and weapons. I was pleased we were able to keep our cold beverages without any issue.

We scooted Hunter around to where there were lots of little experimental stations set up, showing things like centrifugal force, flight simulation and how air could hold up an inflatable ball. I noticed it was time for a showing of the film in the Destiny Theater and we headed right over.

Hunter was initially impressed with the film that showed the history of the U.S. space program. But when it got to Challenger’s explosion, she wanted to leave. It made her sad. Honestly, it made Paul and I tear up, too. But we stayed through the end of the production.

One thing you should note if you go -- there’s a podium in the theater. It’s the same podium from which John F. Kennedy made this famous statement at Rice University in 1962:

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too ...

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the Moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”

From there we went into the darkened gallery of original and replica artifacts from the space race -- like the original Apollo 17 capsule and space suits from several generations of the program. Hunter was at first fascinated and scared by the Skylab trainer -- it is an impressively large piece of work, I have to agree. But when Paul and I both insisted, she went in with us. She told us seeing the mannequin in the “space shower” “that guy is all wet!” and she got a kick out of the mannequins shown “spinning” in the space.

We took some time to look around the place. There is now a large maze-like vertical playground for the kids called the Martian Matrix just outside the gallery entrance, though Hunter wasn’t able to utilize it (kids must be 48 inches or taller to play there -- Hunter is in the 38 inch range). There was a large physical sports section in the middle of the building -- at first I didn’t know what it had to do with the space program but later figured out it was a fun way for young astronauts to “train” and get their bodies in shape. We also saw the “Adventure,” the nose and cockpit of a shuttle mock-up you can actually enter and experience.

Then it was off on the tram ride. The Space Center offers two different tours each day that take you into Johnson Space Center to visit Mission Control and other areas of the facility. We went through another security sweep -- this time having to pull everything out of our pockets and have a bag search -- before boarding the open air tram and heading over to the real space center. They didn’t have the search or any of the security last time we came -- but that was way back in July 2000.

We could barely hear the announcements overhead, but it’s not like it mattered. Hunter was fascinated not just with what she was seeing, but what she heard. There was a Latino family behind us, a couple of twin boys and their parents, and they were all talking back and forth. To me it sounded like the boys were asking their parents questions and their parents were answering. Hunter listened intently.

We passed by the little Texas Heritage Farm on one side and a long building with a painting of a Saturn 5 rocket on the other. I recalled having seen a Saturn 5 rocket right there, and hoped it hadn’t been scrapped. We also passed by one building where the narrator told us the new Orion project was underway, our next big segment in the race to space.

When we got to Mission Control we all quietly disembarked and headed up a staircase of 54 steps to one of the Mission Control studios. Hunter was insistent that she take every step going up, so we let her. In the observation area, we walked down to the front row, sat and listened as a NASA interpreter told us all about Mission Control, the history of the space program, the purpose of each console in the room and the mission patches on the walls. She also talked about the ongoing International Space Station mission, being monitored from a different Mission Control Room, and pointed out a live feed from the station itself.

I noticed that she stopped at one point and said “We’re still here, we’re not going anywhere. NASA may have lost three or four thousand employees, but we still have a mission to accomplish.” That made me sorta sad. When we’d last come there was all this excitement about what was ahead. We’d been in to see the X-33 in its design station and had been into half a dozen different location around the space center. Not this time.

We went down the 54 steps back to the tram -- Hunter took all but the last dozen before we scooped her up and headed down. Back aboard, we went past the reconstruction effort on the administration building, noted lots of bicycles parked outside each facility and paused as the announcer told us about building 31N, which houses all the moon rocks brought back during the Apollo missions.

And then there was a pause on our way back, as we passed a stand of trees on each side of the road. On one side were a grove of seven trees planted one year after the Challenger explosion, each in remembrance of one of the astronauts. We were told there was also one planted when astronaut Gordon Cooper died of natural causes. On the other side of the row there were seven trees planted in memory of the seven astronauts that died in the final flight of the Columbia in 2003. It was a somber stop.

I thought this would be the last stop, but it wasn’t. We were dropped off with little explanation (just that “another tram will be along in a few minutes”) outside the Saturn 5 building. There were a couple of old smaller rockets and a shuttle engine outside the structure. We went in quickly, seeking and finding air conditioning -- and the Saturn 5 rocket that had been there all along. This one is just one of three of the rockets in existence; it’s on loan from the Smithsonian and has resided at Johnson Space Center since 1977.

It’s kind of sobering, realizing just how big the rocket is, especially after seeing the Apollo 17 capsule earlier in the day. Most of the three stage rocket held fuel. This one had sat in the “yard” at Johnson Space Center for over 20 years and had started to rust and fall apart. An effort was made to save it, and in 1999 the funds were sought to protect it. Today it’s been fully restored and sits on Astroturf in its own climate controlled building. On the far side there’s a small exhibit on its restoration, then a series of exhibits on the astronauts from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. Each one talks about what the mission accomplished, who was on it, what the capsules were named. Apollo 1’s is a memorial to the three astronauts that died on the training pad. Apollo 13’s talks about the heroism and do-it-to-it-ness of its astronauts. Apollo 17’s quote about returning to the surface of the moon saddens me; it was spoken before I was born, and no American has been back on the surface since.

We missed the next tram to come along and sat out in the 100 degree south Texas heat waiting for the next one. Hunter took a few drinks from a proffered juice bottle. Once the next one came along we boarded and headed back.

The facility, which had been just packed earlier, had started to weed out. I changed Hunter in the restroom and then we went over to the area for small kids by the big kids playground, but she balked at being in there. She wanted to play with the bigger kids in the big athletic complex in the middle of the building. So Paul took her while I perused the gift shop.

When they were done, they joined me, and I showed Hunter a lot of different gift shop items. She didn’t have much interest in most of them (the Barbie-doll clones of female astronauts with luggage cases turned all of us cold) but she did show an interest in an astronaut refrigerator magnet. In the end, we left empty-handed. I think she looks at gift shops as an extension of the museums and such. If she keeps that point of view then we might save money. If I weren’t photographing and chronicling these trips I think it’d be different, and a souvenir might be sought.

There was a lot of traffic on the way back into town -- lots of folks driving into Houston on a Friday night. We discovered the Astros were playing, and that there was an NFL pre-season game set for the next day between the Saints and the Texans at Reliant Stadium. When we arrived at the hotel it was packed out.

We briefly joined the Manager’s Reception again and listened to the crowd about us. There were more children about, and that was kinda cool. We went from there upstairs, where we got refreshed and took a few minutes down time.

A short while later, we decided to take a recommendation left by the general manager to try out a Houston burger. The hotel shuttle took us to Christian’s Tailgate on Bigby Street and dropped the three of us off.

For a moment I inwardly cringed, wondering why I had brought my child to this bar. But on entering I saw a sign saying it was a family place, and the waitresses were sweet on Hunter.

We ha a seat and looked through the menu, even though we’d already decided on what we were going to eat. The waitress returned and we ordered up a hot dog kids meal for Hunter and a one pound burger to split.

Hunter was just singing along with some song in her head right there in the middle of the restaurant, but no one cared. There were several different games on the overhead TV sets and several large groups of people gathered here and there. The cacophony covered up just about any utterance she was likely to give.

Our dishes came out. Her hot dog had a great char on it -- not black, just definitely roasted instead of microwaved. She was all into her dog, right off the bat.

We’d asked for the condiments on the side on our burger and they’d left everything off -- in a basket on the side. The burger was two massive patties forced down onto a regular sized burger bun. I photographed it, cut it in half, photographed it again and let Paul doctor up his half.

I think pink in the middle is the default for Texas burgers, and that makes me happy. The middle of the burger was a good medium to medium rare, light on the spice with a definitive flavor of Worchestershire sauce, a little cumin and a lot of black pepper.

Thing is, the burger was so tall that even without the other toppings you almost had to unhinge your jaw to get your mouth around it. It was a singularly tall double burger -- and somehow we’d forgotten to have cheese added to it. No matter. It was pretty good.

Dinner done, we called the shuttle and took it back to the room, where Hunter played with Punchy and her triceratops and “Jelly-Pus” from Moody Gardens until we started to dwindle down for the day. After five days on the road we were starting to weary, and it didn’t take much for me to convince her to come crash in bed with me. This time, though, before we went to bed we clipped her fingernails and toenails, which had kept me up the night before.

We had planned to take her to the pool that night, but the wind was kicking up again and somehow on that third story terrace it seemed a good 20 degrees cooler than the rest of Houston. I guess that’s something for us really to keep in mind for next time.

It was all right. We had more packing in the morning, and a trip to Houston’s Museum District.

Traveling with a Toddler: Galveston to Houston.

2011-08-19T12:38:00.001-05:00

Thursday was our big water day. We thought we were going to hit Schlitterbahn Waterpark just as soon as it opened at 10 a.m. Well, that didn’t happen. And it wasn’t because we slept all that late, either.

I was working on my regular writing when Hunter got up around 9:30. We got through our morning routine, got the hubster up and started the packing job.

I have to tell you… I have become a master of the quick pack. When I go from city to city working this job, I know exactly what I’m carrying with me. I can pack down the computer, get everything into my small rolling back and be out of a room in five minutes flat. I’ve always added another 10 minutes to get Paul up and out. For a toddler, though -- let’s try an additional hour. If not two!

Part of that is my need to be organized. That means separating out all the clothes -- the clean ones, the dirty ones and the ones worn once that aren’t so dirty. The really dirty ones are easiest to figure out -- those go in the laundry bag, and they’ll stay in the car when we go to the next hotel. The clean ones are carefully repacked, the others on top. There’s a sock check, to make sure every sock is retrieved, even if it’s wrapped in a sheet or duvet. There’s a swimsuit check, too -- I’ve left far too many swimsuits over the years on the back of hotel bathroom doors.

There was getting all the materials together for my research. There were all of Hunter’s toys to scoop up. There was getting the ice chest packed with ice and the contents of the refrigerator, packing the dry stuff, putting up the computer and packing up Hunter’s potty. There was making sure our stuff for Schlitterbahn was packed separately -- towels, clothes to change in afterwards (we all wore our suits over there), camera, sunscreen, snacks and pool shoes.

And then there was getting a cart, packing it and taking it downstairs. I estimate it took us just over an hour to complete all of that. That number startled me. It took us about 30 minutes to pack up after our one night at the Livingston, TX Holiday Inn Express (a very nice property with nice people, btw) so I hadn’t expected the delay.

And then there was the small matter of acquiring a snack that wouldn’t fill us up too much but would satisfy our hunger. After all, I’d had my breakfast of fresh fruit and cheese at 6 a.m.; Hunter had her yogurt and banana at 9:45 and Paul hadn’t eaten at all. In the end, with the car already packed, we drove into town and hit the drive-thru at Whataburger (not to be confused with Feltner’s Whatta-Burger) and then drove back.

Technically, we didn’t need to repark at all -- Schlitterbahn Waterpark is right next door to the Moody Gardens Hotel. But I am glad we did. We found a family just leaving and pulled into their spot, which was about a half block from the entrance. It didn’t matter much going in but it sure mattered a lot coming out.

Now, while I’m at it, I need to mention something to you. We had our deal in hand when we went up to the Guest Office and got our wristbands. But I did see the rates on a day at the waterpark. It’s about $45 if you just walk up and pay and go in -- $63ish if you go online and get admission and a souvenir cup and towel.

Let me say this: If that’s what you pay, you’re not paying attention. There are deals everywhere. You can get a package deal if you’re staying at the Moody Gardens Hotel. I bet you can get deals at other area hotels too. Online it’s $2 less for admisssion. If you decide to go later in the day, you can get in a lot cheaper -- for about $34. Just do an online search for “Schlitterbahn Galveston Deals” and you’ll have all sorts of possibilities. There you go.

So we get over there and through the gates (funny, on one side it says “No alcohol allowed inside the park” and on the other it says “No alcohol allowed beyond this point.”) and the first thing we really notice is the big tiki style pavilion in front of a wave pool with a big overhead sign announcing the park. And it’s all that Swiss-German sort of design. Crazy.

We rented a locker, found it and deposited all of our belongings, including overwear worn into the park. It was just enough room, if I smushed it a lot.

Now, there aren’t a lot of photos from here on, since I didn’t have a waterproof case for my camera and frankly, who carries a camera in a waterpark, anyway?

We found the kids area first, and got Hunter accustomed to the idea of being in the water. Paul and I were both nervous Hunter would balk at the water, after her experience at the beach a few days ago. Not to fear -- she saw all those kids roaming everywhere and jumped right in, running up to the top of the pirate ship and staying there… not sliding down, not climbing down but just playing on the top of the amusement, just out of reach.

We did talk her into going with us to the lazy river, and I’m glad we did -- because I think that’s what we liked the most. We started off by boarding tubes at the Torrent River beach. Schlitterbahn offers these two-seater tubes along with the one-seaters, and we found one that was marked “Child Safety Seat.” This one had been adapted with the addition of a plastic bit across the second hole -- a great place for a child to sit. Paul helped me get Hunter into it, then he boarded a single tube and we all set off down the stream.

The Torrent River is connected to the other two lazy rivers on site to make up one big circuit. We went around the Torrent River once with Hunter, just to make sure she was okay with the whole setup. The Torrent River has waves and can be swift in a few places, but is for the most part a typical lazy river style attraction. Our next trip around we took the option of heading out on the Krystal River, which goes around a good section of the park and which is slower. We got around to the Whitewater River and took a neat flat designed escalator for tubes, which took us up in elevation and dropped us off at the top of a set of rapids.

I was apprehensive about taking Hunter on the rapids, but she’d been hollering “faster!” for some time, so I wrapped my feet around her and instructed her to hold onto the handles. And she did. And she loved it -- so much we went around the whole Whitewater River course twice in a row. We would have gone a third time but I was concerned about Hunter and I getting sunburned. We’re both very fair, so it’s a concern.

We wound back around the Torrent River to the beach where we had originally boarded and then walked back over to the Wasserfest Kids Area, where we had started. Hunter was so enamored with playing with the other kids that we decided to stay there. Paul was going to originally take on some of the many slides around site, but we were both already starting to wear out. I retrieved the sunscreen and beverages and got us cooled down and sunscreened up.

The Wasserfest area of the park, as it turns out, becomes the winter version of the park. During the colder months, a selection of screens and windows and plastic windows are put in place to hold in heating. It’s a neat and novel concept. Rates are lower in the winter, since you don’t get as many attractions, but it’s still pretty awesome.

Paul and I wore down quick. After four hours at the park we were both toast, but Hunter was still going. It took a lot of talking and a promise to let her take a dip in the next hotel pool to get her to come out of the water and get changed.

The only complaint I had about the Schlitterbahn Waterpark were the changing area/bathrooms. They were hot. So hot, in fact, that I had to change me and Hunter in stages. I know, it’s hot outside and maybe the idea was to keep people comfortable, but boy wouldn’t a fan or two have made things better!

By the time we got Hunter in her sundress and out of her swimsuit she was starting to show a little drain, too. We slowly made our way back to the van, where I pulled cold beverages out of the cooler and passed them around. Hunter was asleep before we got on I-45 -- I suspect she was asleep before we left the whole Moody Gardens compound.

That was a long trip - the one from the waterpark into Houston to where we were staying. Those 48 miles felt like six marathons. We were all beat!

That being said, when we got to the Embassy Suites in downtown Houston, we were received cordially. The parking option is valet, just so you know. I went in and checked in, hair all stringy from the park, t-shirt and shorts… but they still treated me as if I was their special guest.

And our room. Wow. Another neat room. The Embassy Suites Downtown Houston is a new property, LEED certified and just nifty as all heck. Our room consisted of a living area with a desk and an L-shaped couch, flat screen TV and a couple of very strange tables. There was a little kitchen area with a half-sized refrigerator, microwave and coffeemaker, a huge bathroom with vanity and walk-in shower and a bedroom with a huge king-sized bed.

That description really doesn’t cover it, though.. It’s just neat. Neat neat neat. The doors are painted with that hard shellac sort of yellow paint that will never need to be touched up. There are great design elements everywhere -- beautiful Millenium Eco designs featuring reflections of plant life. There was this fabulous mirror with a modern Celtic knot design over it.

And then there was “Punchy.” Hunter walked through the room with me when I was taking my photographs. She thought the couch was neat and the sink in the kitchenette was cool, but what she most took a shine to was a little decorative plant. She named it Punchy and started carrying it with her everywhere around the suite. I was concerned there would be an issue with parting with the plant when it came time to leave.

We went down for the Manager’s Reception, where free snacks and beverages were being served. This was actually quite nice, since we were rather road weary and a snack was well in order. Hunter perked up a bit with some hummus and chips.

Still, we were exhausted, so exhausted that when I went through the options for dinner and mentioned delivery, Paul and Hunter BOTH breathed a sigh of relief. We found a Thai place that delivered to the hotel called Padthai Thai (I kid you not) and ordered some Pineapple Rice and Beef Pad Thai and Spring Rolls. The $30 for food and tip was a little over our budget, but since we hadn’t had a full meal anywhere else throughout the day it still kept us under the $50 a day food allowance I had hoped to stick with (and which we’d busted the night before with that $87 spent at Landry’s).

Afterwards we went to the pool, but were surprised at how cool it had become. Officially it was 80 degrees, but the wind whipping across the pool on the 3rd floor made it seem much colder. Paul and Hunter took to the pool, a neat long pool that goes from three to four feet deep, changes colors with special lights and which has heated jets of water arching into it. Hunter also loved the little fountains at the end of the pool. I had a nice soak in the hot tub before coming back upstairs. I think I started to fall asleep before they returned a short time later.

And all would have been perfect -- except for the oddity of all three of us sharing a bed. I had thought it would be fine, since Hunter regularly crawls into bed with us each morning. However, I didn’t take into account her fingernails and toenails, which were due for a clipping. Egads.

Still, I had to suck it up and get some coffee the next morning for the trip to the Space Center.

Traveling with a Toddler: Galveston, Day 2.

2011-08-19T07:20:00.085-05:00

One bit of advice when you’re traveling with a toddler: they set the schedule. Sure, that’s within reason. Obviously you’re not going to let your toddler hold you up on checking out of the hotel on time or determine certain mealtimes. But there are battles you have to pick.

The battle I don’t pick is on wake-up times. If I wake Hunter too early I know I’m going to have a cranky kid on my hands -- exactly what I don’t need when I go on vacation. There is the fear, of course, that we’ll miss things we want to do. The lesson I learned myself on this particular day was this: this vacation and its story aren’t about all the things we could have done. It’s about what’s reasonable and possible to do with a young child.

So instead of starting our day at 7 a.m. and heading to Moody Gardens at 9 a.m., Hunter didn’t rise until the bright shining hour of 10:30 a.m. Yes, this did cause a little consternation for me, but it also allowed me to get my work done (as a writer, I write every day, even during vacation… so you can read stuff like this!). On the other hand, when she woke she was happy, dry and raring to go.

We decided to catch an early lunch instead of heading straight over to the attractions. We had a recommendation to check out a little joint on 61st Street called Cajun Greek. I’d seen it when we came in and had wondered if it was a fish market -- indeed, the sign actually says “Cajun Greek Fresh Gulf Seafood.” Without the recommendation, I wouldn’t have gone.

And that would have been a shame. You’ve heard the phrase “do one thing, do it well” at some point in your life, haven’t you? The folks at Cajun Greek don’t get that at all. They do everything well, as far as I could tell. The place packed out while we were there. We had a seat at a window table and placed our orders with a waitress. The menu actually says “We are not a fast food restaurant. If we are busy, the wait may be up to 45 minutes.” I was utterly copasetic with that. The hubster got antsy after a few minutes, but I pulled up the menu image on my camera and reminded him of what it said. That cooled his heels.

Hunter was very observant, looking out the window and inspecting what was inside, too. She was extraordinarily impressed by an inflatable crawfish holding a bottle of beer and a package of crab boil hanging from the ceiling. I was marveling at the really cool bar in the shape of a ship’s hull. There’s not a lot of décor in Cajun Greek but what’s there is amusing.

We split everything. The House Salad came out first, a side for my entrée topped with some of the house Greek dressing. It was very tart and tangy, a blend of a traditional olive oil vinaigrette and tapenade. Hunter immediately claimed the tomato wedges out of the salad, stuffing her mouth full. We should just start ordering her tomatoes on their own in restaurants; she adores them.

Then came the shrimp po’boy with French fries. We’d ordered it with the tartar sauce on the side -- Paul can’t stand any mayonnaise based condiment -- and got it with both the tartar and a cocktail sauce on the side. I mention this because I’ve never tasted such a cocktail sauce -- tangy with an underlying flavor to it that ranged somewhere between a hoisin sauce and duck sauce in sweetness, very fresh and very tasty. We both ended up putting it on our po’boys.

The shrimp was marvelously fresh, nicely battered and decently drained out of the fryer. The French bread was a little softer than crusty but was buttery and pliant too. Very nice.

Hunter, of course, absconded with about half the fries. These were battered fries and they were just salty enough for comfort. She dipped them over and over again in ketchup and decided that was about all she wanted.

Too bad for her -- because the gyro showed up. And it was fat. The pita had been packed with chunks -- not shavings, not strips, chunks -- of gyro meat heavy on sage. It came doused in just enough tzatziki sauce, tomatoes, lettuce and white onion ringlets. We divided it and ate it with forks -- there was no use attempting to pick it up by hand. Hunter was offered some but declined, and since she’d already feasted on tomatoes I wasn’t so worried about that.

Hunter has apparently become camera-shy.

Our lunch with beverages was $19.86 -- not bad and well within our budget.

We made a quick trip back to our room to pick up a fresh shirt for Hunter and to give her a chance at bathroom time. Then it was off to Moody Gardens -- a nice little jaunt right across the parking lot.

We started off with the Rainforest Pyramid. I understand it was damaged not by Hurricane Ike but by the storm surge that followed. The surge loosened up the sand between pavers, allowing water to get into the basement and form sinkholes. I can appreciate the efforts Moody Gardens took to shore things up -- not only fixing what needed to be repaired but adding in a skywalk that includes a section of sky-high butterfly garden.

The Rainforest exhibit started with a series of stations where you could hear the different animals found in the forest. Hunter laughed at a display of Pygmy Slow Loris before we moved to the next station -- her favorite, the river otters.

We must have spent 15 minutes there. She was just so thrilled with the long skinny creatures and watched them with interspersed laughter. After a short while they started noticing her, and one of them kept playing right by her at the window.

We went on up to the skywalk, which takes you high above the “floor” of the rainforest section. Here there are plastic vents that bring a little cool air to the otherwise extraordinarily moist, hot air. Hunter and Paul enjoyed spotting birds and other creatures high amongst the treetops.

We kept going and entered the butterfly section. Here screens keep most of the butterflies in a protected environment, though we did notice several who had made their way out of the enclosure. Children flocked here, seeing if they could get the butterflies to land on them. There are several plants about to attract the flutterbys… one of which Hunter squatted down to watch for a while as it collected more and more of the big winged creatures.

We passed by a module that showed how hot it was -- an astounding 107 degrees with 100 percent humidity! That’s even hotter than outside! But it’s necessary to keep all those rainforest creatures and plants surviving just like they would in the while.

We passed through an indoor section where spiders, snakes, frogs and other reptiles, amphibians and insects were shown off. At the end of this section there were nocturnal animals such as a civet cat and this beautiful prickly porcupine nursing its young. There’s something about the look on that creature’s face.

We exited to an area that showed off Asian creatures, followed a bird we couldn’t identify for a while, gawked at a monitor lizard and a gecko sunning itself on a rock.

We briefly stopped at a station that offered scents of the rain forest. Hunter apparently liked what she smelled... she had to smell each and every one.

We saw more parrots and macaws and other birds than we knew names for, stopped to watch a monkey and then skedaddled over to the MG3D theater for a showing of “Wild Ocean” -- Hunter’s very first ever movie to be seen in a theater. We realized that after the fact. She did ask questions a lot at the beginning, but once the movie got underway and she got down the fact she needed to wear the glasses provided she really got into the whole production!

We took a break for a beverage and then headed over to the aquarium -- where we ended up spending an hour and a half. The Aquarium Pyramid appears to be the largest of the three, and it’s packed with all sorts of sea life. It’s organized along several divided levels with ramps to get you from one place to the other. There is a suggested route involving following the schools of fish on the wall, but we were on Hunter’s terms, and she guided us through all the way down to the exit before we came back up to see everything.

Hunter had a lot of favorites there. She started out by petting a live starfish, then moved on to the seal enclosure, where she laughed at the seals playing for a long time. It took some convincing to persuade her to move on.

We headed down a ramp and found a big aquarium with a lot of different fish. There were also all sorts of different this and that sort of creatures here and there. For instance, we spent a good deal of time looking at baby seahorses of different colors and shapes. When we gazed into the big tank of exotic fish that extends a couple of stories up and down, she asked about the big silver and yellow fish. We told her they were yellowfin tuna and she started calling “here, sushi!” Where does she get this?

She was also mesmerized by the penguins. She loves penguins, and the variety of penguins on view ensure lots of things to see. When they would pop to the surface and suddenly be slowly waddling around she’d point and holler. A few found her interesting too, and they bobbed on the surface in front of her at the viewing theater.

She also had the chance to reach into a tank and touch different items, such as a spiny lobster and coral. She was told she could touch anything in there but only with one finger. She must have spent 10 minutes trying to touch one of the darting fish.

I have to say, I've been to a lot of great aquariums around these parts -- the Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans had been my favorite, and I liked the big aquarium at Atlantis in Nassau, Bahamas (though I didn't care for the "added history" section of that attraction).
The Aquarium Pyramid at Moody Gardens is right up there. It's very comprehensive and I like the fact that you don't have to worry about following some straight line to see what you want to see.

By this point we’d been at Moody Gardens for nearly four hours. And still Hunter was not done. We went over to the Discover Pyramid and were a little discouraged that the Happy Feet Ridefilm wasn’t a possibility for Hunter -- the minimum ride height is 42 inches and Hunter is just 38 inches tall, tall for a toddler but not tall enough. So instead we went upstairs and played around in the Bones exhibit. We watched old Schoolhouse Rock bone songs, viewed the human skeleton encased in clear plastic in different poses, looked at some bug exoskeletons and did a little exercise in front of a mirror.

Paul was thrilled to find a lifesize Operation game… something Hunter’s not yet familiar with. She thought it was a little weird to be pulling parts out of a body. Well, if you think about it, it kinda is.

And then she decided she was hungry, and it was time to go. We walked back over to the Visitors Center, expecting to purchase a stuffed otter or something of the like for her as a special souvenir -- it’s what we had budgeted for. Strange thing is, she wasn’t interested. My daughter is a cheap date. She eschewed the t-shirts and the plush toys and chose a little plastic triceratops as her souvenir instead. My daughter.

We went back to our room to freshen up then headed out to dinner at Landry’s over on the Seawall. I was glad we’d made reservations -- there was a 45 minute wait for tables! We took advantage of the online special we’d found, the Distinctive Dining Menu, where you get a three course meal for $19.99. Paul chose the Redfish Verona as his entrée, while I had the 15 Shrimp Three Ways.

His fish, by the way, a parmesan encrusted redfish fillet topped with artichokes, seafood and a lemon butter sauce? Awesome.

Not that I minded my three types of shrimp meal. Hunter even liked it -- since I passed along fried shrimp and fried onions to her to go with her macaroni and cheese.
At $4.50 it was a singular substantial mass of very cheesy macaroni. She got through about half of it, but that was fine. She was full and happy.

While we were waiting for our meal, Hunter got to playing with her new toy and somehow managed to get it tangled in Paul’s hair. I have to say, it was amusing to watch. I’m terrible, I know.

But he still let her play with his hat afterward. I have to admit, she’s a cute kid.

It was 9:30 by the time we got out of there. We went back to our room, changed and went down to the pool, where Hunter floated and practiced her swimming with Paul while I soaked in the hot tub. The pool at the Moody Gardens Hotel, by the way? Mondo cool. It only gets to five feet under the bridge, but as far as floating and playing goes it’s great. I also love the swim-up drink bar.

We had a late night of it, not getting to bed until about midnight. But what a time to be had. I kinda wished we had time to check out Palm Beach at Moody Gardens, but it just wasn’t in the cards. Besides, Schlitterbahn Waterpark was on the agenda for the next day. That was bound to be a blast.