Promised Recap of River Cruise on the Rhine

 The worst part about travel to Europe is getting there. Airline travel is not what it used to be, even 25 years ago. You're crammed into the smallest space possible. There isn't even room anymore for my carry-on and my purse, which I have been sliding under the seat in front of me for all my adult life. My carry-on had to go in the overhead, and that left barely enough room for my purse. We were on United. I didn't know I would be wishing for that itty bit of leg-room when we got on the return flight eight days later.

But....Amsterdam. As we flew in I saw all the canals, but at that time, didn't know what they were for; I would soon learn. My first impression was that it was so flat and feature-less it reminded me of my hometown, Corpus Christi, and the surrounding wetlands there. We found the boys in the Amsterdam airport, and we caught our shuttle to the ship. Boat is really a more correct description, or even barge. They call them longships so I guess I will too. This was our second Viking cruise so we knew what to expect. The rooms are small but adequate. We had a balcony this time, which we used once.

The boys had booked us a reservation to a famous tulip farm and we barely had time to shovel some food into our mouths before our Uber arrived. The drive there was chaotic and traffic-bound, but we made it just in time for our reservation. What we all had forgotten about was that it was Good Friday. The place was absolutely packed with humanity. Soon forgotten, however, when we laid eyes on the spectacular tulips gardens that awaited us. We had to have been there at the peak time. It was almost overwhelming is was so fabulous. 

When we got back to the ship our rooms were ready so we had showers and got dressed for dinner. Two two best things about a Viking River Cruise are the food and the service. The staff onboard these ships are outstanding, as is the food. The third best thing is these ships only hold 125 people roughly, so there are no long lines for anything, no sitting in crowded places with strangers. We grabbed a table for four and that table was ours for the duration. 

The next day I finally learned what all those canals are about, and how carefully the Dutch people manage their water, since they live below sea level, it is a necessity. We drove through a polder, visited a cheese factory, and saw some centuries old windmills. Our guide was fantastic, funny, and really made the excursion memorable. 

The Netherlands turned out to be one of the highlights, as was Cologne, Germany where we had a fantastic Kölsch lunch of pork knuckle and potatoes. Another highlight was Strasbourg, France seeing the storks in their trees, walking through the old town with all the half-timbered building. I had been there before, and liked it even better this second time. A last real highlight was a drive through the Black Forest to the cuckoo clock factory, watching a glass blower at work, and a demonstration of how to make a Black Forest cake. All super fun and all great memories. 

We got sick, both Wayne and I, but it was allergies. Europe was in bloom and a crisp wind was blowing. The Viking staff tested us daily for Covid so we knew we were safe. We love the Viking cruises, but hate the travel days equally. The trip home was murderous, Lufthansa packed us in even tighter than United had, the only saving grace was Lufthansa serves better food. If we weren't such cheap-skates we would have sprung for Business Class seats, or at least Economy Plus. I'll remember it for future trips.

Onward...

High Altitude Cooking

I am about to try to make a pecan pie. Pecan pie has always been one of my specialties, but this pecan pie will be made at 7900 feet above sea level, instead of the usual 200 or so feet.

When we first got this place in the mountains, everything I cooked was underdone, or overdone, or squishy in the middle and done on the sides, or just burnt. I'm a fairly decent cook and this was very disheartening to me, after 40+ years in the kitchen. I had seen those high altitude adjustments on the sides of boxes and packages, but it never occurred to me that this was my problem, until I had a conversation with my aunt, who had also had a cabin near here at one time. Ah-ha! Higher altitudes DO make a difference in how ingredients interact with each other.

This trip I've had better luck with things. Last week, I made a cake that turned out all right. It was kind of crumbly but I was using only ingredients I had on hand. The icing resembled penuche fudge, but it was OK, too. But this time, I'm making a pie for my son who is arriving tomorrow, and I want it to be as close to perfect as I can make it. So we will see how this pie project turns out.

From what I read, you have to adjust the sugar down, the fat up, and the oven temperature either up or down -- this seems to be a matter of opinion. When I've used the oven for various meal dishes, I have been adjusting up by 25 degrees, and this has been working pretty well. One variation on this whole affair was addressed by a cook in Denver, who adjusts up for a while during the baking time on the pie, then adjusts down toward the end. Might try that method. However, we are a good bit higher here than Denver, and every thousand or so feet seems to make a difference.

OK, I'm off to the kitchen to see how it goes. Will report back in a future post.

Onward ....

Baby Birds and Butterflies

Two nests of wrens have been emptied. One was in the baby's breath hanging basket right outside the sunroom sliding door. One of those babies didn't make it. We found the dead one still in the nest yesterday. SO took it out to the pen and dumped it there. It was starting to smell bad. Somehow the baby's breath is still alive, but just barely. I had been giving it sips of water while the baby birds were in there. I have a horror that I may have drowned the dead hatchling. My SO says I should not worry about it too much, that almost every brood loses one, either before they hatch or when they leave the nest. I know he's right but I still obsess over it a little.

The second nest was inside the garage, up on a high shelf, tucked between the handles on a pair of lopping sheers. For the last several days we have been shutting the door on the mother and her babies at night. I suspect that was distressing to her, but after a stray dog got in the garbage cans a week or so ago, we haven't dared to leave the garage open past dusk. Anyway, yesterday when I was letting the pets out, I heard a bunch of cheeping behind the spare fridge out in the garage. I quickly brought the animals inside so the parents could get their babies in flight. Later, when I went out to check, the nest was empty.

Other wrens have nested around me in the past. I had a couple in my Victoria home who persisted year after year to nest on the patio. At first it was inside a pot of geraniums on a plant shelf, but the last spring I lived there, they nested inside the grape ivy hanging right outside my bedroom window. I could stand inside the glass pane and peer through it into their nest. I watched in fascination through the days as the parents fed their young, then encouraged them out of the nest when the time was right. However, the fledglings had a different idea and didn't seem ready to leave the nest. The parents coaxed the five babies all around the patio for one whole day, with none of them willing to take real flight. I kept the cat in all that day while the parents struggled, only to eventually give in and leave the exhausted babies piled up inside a different hanging basket across the patio.

The next morning they were at it again, cheeping in that now familiar way they do when they're kicking out the babies. One of the adult birds would jump from the hanging basket, to the overhang on the roof, to a twiggy limb of the next door pecan, as if showing the kids the way to go. And one by one, they reluctantly followed their parent's lead, going the exact route that had been laid out: hanging basket to roof to pecan limb. All except for one who could not make it up and over the fence to the pecan limb. Each time it tried, it fell down into the side yard. I wanted to go out and help but knew not to interfere with nature. The next day I found that tiny new bird, dead by the back gate. Apparently, once they leave the nest, the parents don't consider it their responsibility any longer to feed the weakest offspring.

We have a boatload of nectarines coming ripe on the tree we thought was a peach in the back yard. The fruit has turned rosy red and ripe along the seam, so we've been picking them, trying to beat the stink bugs to the harvest. I flicked off two bugs yesterday and stepped on them. It's been an incredibly buggy spring this year. Can't say how many caterpillars I've seen, and worms. I step on them indiscriminately. I'm probably murdering would-be butterflies, but I don't trust anything right now. Almost every plant out there has leaves with holes in them from having been eaten by something. A few plants have had their leaves eaten entirely. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all these nectarines, but whatever I decide, I had better do it quickly. We're leaving Friday on another week-long RV trip. It's supposed to rain while we're gone, so hopefully the garden will still be alive when we return.

Speaking of butterflies, I "made" one yesterday. It was my turn to host the birthday group, and so I decided to go with a spring theme. I had seen a diagram of the way to make a butterfly cake, and I followed the directions as closely as I was able. Maybe it was a little childish, but I had fun doing it. I used a lemon cake mix that I already had, cut the layer according to the directions, glued the pieces together with fluffy frosting, then laid on the decorations. I used gel food coloring and a child's Crayola paintbrush to color the sections. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. The rest is colored sugar, candy wafers, and halved jelly beans. My SO encouraged me to take the picture. For some reason, it uploaded darker than it was in reality.

Onward ....