As holiday revelers lift their glasses at office parties and New Year’s bashes, they may want to keep one rule of thumb in mind: the darker the liquor, the bigger the hangover. People who drank bourbon reported more severe hangovers than people who drank vodka, but they weren’t any less alert. Compared to clear liquors, brownish spirits like whiskey and rum contain more congeners. People who drank bourbon reported more severe hangovers than vodka drinkers.

Although it sounds like an old wives’ tale, it’s actually true — to a point, according to a new study. Compared to clear liquors like vodka and gin, brownish spirits like whiskey and rum contain greater amounts of congeners, substances that occur naturally or are added to alcohol during the production and aging process. Congeners — many of which are toxic — contribute to an alcohol’s unique color, odor, and taste, but they can also interfere with cell function and punish your head and belly the morning after – Read full article…

So there’s a detente for now, peaceful co-existence.  These large neighbors have the run of the garden and they don’t mind me as long as I don’t bring along the dog.  Today I put out food and they stood around like hungry cats, waiting for me to turn away.  They clean up the garden, desposit some fresh fertilizer, then fly up onto the carport and move on to the next stop on their progressive lunch.  Today it was a group of eight, four adults, four youngsters about half size.  All have the array for  brown hues frlom bronze and tan to burnt umber.  I got that one from Crayola.

I’ve noticed they eat the tops right off the tender young weeds and leave our perennials untouched.  So far, so detente.

Last Friday the rain gods were busy, so instead of tramping the mud on the fire trails, I decided to take a walk up Centennial Drive to the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) in the Berkeley Hills above UCB campus.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the desert, but I love walking and hiking in the rain. The colors of the plants and earth seem more vivid, and the gray skies somehow make the green hills seem even more green. I’ve also noticed that I usually see more wildlife on a rainy day than a sunny one. Maybe it’s because there are fewer humans out, or maybe some animals like foraging in the rain.

So, I expected to see some animals on the hike, but was happily surprised to come upon this on Stadium Rim Way just above the California Memorial Stadium:

Wild Turkeys—not your typical Thanksgiving gobbler!

Wild turkeys! I am a huge fan of this native American bird. I consider it the American peacock:

But I didn’t always appreciate what amazing birds turkeys really are. Like a lot of people, my early impressions of turkeys were from the standpoint of Thanksgiving. I remember being told as a kid that turkeys were so dumb, they’d look up in the sky during rain and drown, and other nonsense. (See the debunking Snopes site: http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/turkey.asp)

The problem is, as the Snopes article points out: “Domesticated turkeys are not necessarily ’stupid,’ but because they have been bred in captivity for so many generations, they lack the survival skills of their wild cousins: They’re weak, they’re fat, they’re not agile, they can’t run very fast, and they can’t fly.”

The turkey—one remarkable bird

The wild turkey is the very antithesis of our domesticated Thanksgiving bird. It’s wicked smart (“cunning” is a term hunters often use), illusive, and agile. And it’s a big, powerful bird.

An adult wild tom turkey typically weighs between 10 and 25 lbs and can be over 4 feet tall.  That’s one big bird!  Females typically weigh half as much and can be up to three feet tall.  The wingspan of turkeys range from four to nearly five feet.  The record-sized adult male wild turkey, according to the National Wildlife Turkey Federation, was 38 lb!

Despite its size, a wild turkey can run over 20 mph and uses that five-foot wingspan to hits speeds of 55 mph in flight. The wild turkey can defend itself, too. The spurs on a 20 lb. tom turkey make it a formidable foe, as many a hapless dog has found out when cornering one.

The turkeys one encounters in the Berkeley Hills are fairly used to humans, and it’s amazing how close you can get to them. This rafter (flock) of turkeys seemed to be all the same size and age —they seemed to be from the same brood. They walked up Stadium Rim Way for several hundred feet and then nonchalantly moved up the hill away from the Stadium, feeding as they went.

Centennial Road—beautiful lichen and black-tailed deer

As you head up Centennial Road up Strawberry Canyon, you’ll see some wonderful examples of lichens on most of the trees. I plan on doing an in-depth post about lichens later. They are fascinating plants, but identifying lichens is much more difficult than identifying vascular plants. Each lichen is a complete microscopic world with unique characteristics, and they can be very hard to tell apart.

The rain made the vivid green and yellow of two species of lichen quite striking:

About a quarter of a mile from the Berkeley Botanical Garden, I spotted two black-tailed deer grazing on the new grass that’s been springing up with our late fall rains:

Late Fall storm from Lawrence Hall of Science

It’s a pretty steep hike up to the Lawrence Hall of Science, but the view is always worth it. Even on a stormy day, unless you’re fogged in, the vistas can be wonderful, especially if you’re a fan of dramatic clouds.  In these shots, you can see Sather Tower just coming out of the low clouds, with the distant San Francisco Bay mostly hidden:

Compare these views to this one from midsummer:

And here’s a view looking over to Oakland:

That golden stream in the distance is Highway 24, the Grove Shafter Freeway, curving through Oakland. This picture doesn’t do it justice; It looked like a river of molten gold—magical!

Going home—caressing clouds and a talisman

On the way back down Centennial Drive from LHS, the rain lifted some, and there were beautiful views of Strawberry Canyon. I alway love to watch the interplay between low clouds, fogs, and the Berkeley Hills.

Finally, in the grass along the road, I found one this lone feather, a final reminder of the rafter of turkeys I’d seen earlier. For me, it was a talisman of a remarkable bird that makes the Berkeley Hills such a wonderful place to explore.

A couple of unusual birds at Ashland Pond recently.  A Green Heron in the tiny unfrozen end of the pond on Friday.  Usually that species heads south for the winter.  This one was eating a fish.  Then today I looked up and…

Turkey Vulture passing over.  Another bird that is usually somewhere south of Mt. Shasta this time of year.

The Black Phoebe and Red-breasted Sapsucker are still at Ashland Pond.  Today’s mild daytime temps, over 40 degrees, have the ice melting and ducks returning.  That includes 3 Wigeon now and 2 female Shoveler.

This Anna’s male was the first I’ve seen there in weeks. 

On the east side of the Medford Airport at mid-day I found two Cooper’s Hawks, two Harrier, one White-tailed Kite and a Red-tail.  Here’s a pic of one of the Coops.

At Denman Wildlife Refuge I found both a White-throated Sparrow and a California Towhee among the more common birds.  The small ponds west of Agate Road were all still largely iced over.  No ducks.

In our garden the Wild Turkeys continue to be regular visitors.

Shoveler on Ashland Pond.

Wigeon on ice…on Ashland Pond.

Late today I saw a Dipper on Asland Creek behind Munchies on the plaza.

He thinks he’s hot stuff now, but I know him and early this spring he was just an egg.

(1276)

Ingredients

• Wild Turkey
• Whiskey
• Canadian Whisky
• Southern Comfort
• Jack Daniels
• Coca-Cola

Quantities

• 1 Shot Wild Turkey
• 1 Shot Whiskey (Black Velvet)
• 1 Shot Canadian Whisky
• 1 Shot Southern Comfort
• 1 Shot Jack Daniels
• Fill With 1 Coca-Cola

Blending Instructions

• Use a glass that this will fit in
• add one at a time

*Serve in an Old Fashioned Glass

**Good for one drink

Photo #114:  Tracks I found on the Swinging Bridge trail between Bridwell and the bridge.  This was taken in the morning before the girls started using the trail.  The reason I was at camp was for The Great Amazing Race Event for Cadettes, Seniors, and Ambassadors – Girl Scouts. 

Not a vintage book, but one of my books — since I have a “wild” theme going on here this week, I thought I’d toss it in.

I wrote this one hot lonely summer in 1999, sold it to Tor/Forge in 2000, and it waspublished May, 2001 with little fanfare as I had become orphaned at the publisher (my editor left to become a concierge at SoHo Grand — better money than publishing!)

A bookstore in Santa Monica dubbed it “surburban noir” and that stuck…they top-billed it for their customrs that month as did a few other speciality bookstores.  Reviewes were mixed, some good, some not so good.  The paperback cane out in 2002.  It won the Best Published Novel of 2002 from the San Diego Book Awards Association and has been optioned for the movies (or one movie, the other cable) twice, but never developed. Blurbs from John Lutz, Maxim Jakubowski, Don Webb, Larry McCaffery…

Tor Books was not happy with sales. It went into the black, at least, but was no giant seller.

Wild Turkey is vintage inspired, tossing in some Rear Window, some Joe Lansdale, some Crying Game, and some David Lynch.  It begins “normally” and gradually gets absurd, more violent, surreal, and ultra-violent, and probably more sexual than your usual Tor/Forge novel.

Now, ten years fter I wrote it, I see it differently: some things I still like, some makes me cringe, and I certainly would have written it differently today.

You can find it pretty cheap, hardcover or paperback, on Amazon, ebay, biblio.com, half.com, etc.

So if you’re intetested in this blog guy’s fiction…there are others, plus two forthcoing from Black Mask Books, Shabbytown and The Trouble with Tramps, both set in the past and vintage-y in feel.

Okay, this probably won’t work right, but…. Here are my 30 characters, but I linked them to my site. Sorry. I couldn’t do all of the links twice, I don’t think….

Again, thanks to everybody for the encouragement and/or other comments and for Tyler for putting this whole shindig together… I hope everyone keeps creating and gets the success that they’re after (unless you’re doing it just for grins…keep grinning, I guess) It’s been fun! It’s always neat to interact with other artists/creative types even if it is only through the internet!

*Obligatory Shameless Plug: Please check out my Zuda entry whether it’s on Zuda or my own site…. I should know one way or the other 2 weeks from now…

http://crashlanden.wordpress.com/

November is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). To celebrate, and in typical fashion, I donned my “Screw You” hat and refrained from blogging almost entirely. Take that mass organizing!

Besides hosting NaBloPoMo, National Georgia Pecan Month, and of course National American Indian & Alaska Native Heritage Month, November is also a month revered for its segue into Winter and the dreaded cold season, dare I say flu season.

Today I offer a list of the things that keep me from getting sick. I absolutely NEVER get sick, and swear by this list. I know, I know, there’s always some idiot who runs around saying “I NEVER get sick,” though they do, in fact, get sick as often as anyone else. I actually do not get sick, so, here is my list of simple preventative and/or proactive measures for staying healthy all winter long:

goodtimejohnny’s list of
simple preventative and/or proactive measures

4) Citrus
Squeezing lemons and limes into water is tasty, and most likely a good source of vitamin C. Everyone knows that’s a good thing for some reason.

3) Garlic
Put it on everything. It’s one of the best additions to a dish, and does wonders for the ‘ol immune system. Let us not forget that vampire related crap is unnecessarily popular now, and possibly more dangerous than the swine and avian flus combined. And SARS. Vampires are really lame.

2) Hot Sauce
The hotter the better. Hot sauce raises your metabolism. That is important. If you consume enough hot sauce, it will probably kill every virus-thing inside you. There’s probably even facts to back this up. They might even have a website.
Goya makes a fantastic green hot sauce, similar to a Tabasco, that you can put on anything. Anything.

1) Whiskey.
Yes, after all Pappy was right. While  citrus, garlic, and hot sauce all help prevent harmful attacks from viruses, whiskey has a bad (ass) habit of bursting through the door and kicking the shit out of them before they even know what happened.  Where hot sauce attempts to slowly roast your illness, whiskey just shoots it. “I’d rather waste a bullet than cough all #@%$ing winter,” said a shot of Wild Turkey during a recent interview.

Now get out there and show the world what you’ve learned!

disclaimer:

*Excessive and mixed quantities of preventative measures numbers 1 and 3  may lead to smelling, if not acting, like a pirate.

*Excessive and mixed quantities of preventative measures numbers 1 and 2 may lead to excessively hairy chest, mustache.

Wobble Gobble The ‘Wild Turkey’ is the world’s greatest stunt-bird/daredevil. See his show and you will believe that a turkey can fly (and just like his idol, he carries a cane filled with his favorite beverage:Wild Turkey).

Hope everyone had a GREAT Thanksgiving Day today…

Wobble Gobble The ‘Wild Turkey’ is the world’s greatest stunt-bird/daredevil. See his show and you will believe that a turkey can fly (and just like his idol, he carries a cane filled with his favorite beverage:Wild Turkey).

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. I had a pretty good one. Hopefully next year this time will be even better.

A Cooper’s Hawk sped from some elevated perch down into the birch tree in our neighbor’s garden.  It’s where many of our Mourning Doves loaf between meals on the grain on the ground.   This time the Coop missed but she sure scared all the smaller birds out of our garden for half an hour.  Except the Bushtits who seem to operate in their own parallel universe.  Sixteen or more come and go, twittering amongst themselves, ignoring all other birds.  They favor only the suet feeder.  There have been eleven turkeys in the flock that has gleaned our garden this week.  A mix of large males, some females and some immatures that are still but half-sized.

Their rich plumage shows what you can do with a palette of browns: cream to dun to tan to chocolate to bronze to brown-black.

Herit Thrush in brush near Ashland Pond.

Spotted Towhe being difficult to spot.  Peeking over the leaves.

Wrentit in motion.

Location:     243 Granite Street, Ashland
Observation date:     11/24/09
Number of species:     15

Wild Turkey     11
Cooper’s Hawk     1
Mourning Dove     18
Northern Flicker (Red-shafted)     1
Steller’s Jay     8
Western Scrub-Jay     2
Black-capped Chickadee     4
Mountain Chickadee     1
Bushtit     16
White-breasted Nuthatch     1
American Robin     1
Spotted Towhee     1
Song Sparrow     1
Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon)     8
Lesser Goldfinch     3

Location:     Ashland Pond
Observation date:     11/24/09
Number of species:     28

Canada Goose     2
American Wigeon     10
Mallard     8
Pied-billed Grebe     2
Northern Harrier     1
Red-shouldered Hawk     1
Red-tailed Hawk     2
Mourning Dove     2
Acorn Woodpecker     4
Red-breasted Sapsucker     1
Northern Flicker (Red-shafted)     2
Western Scrub-Jay     8
American Crow     8
Common Raven     3
Black-capped Chickadee     1
White-breasted Nuthatch     1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet     2
Hermit Thrush     3
American Robin     35
Wrentit     2
European Starling     2
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon’s)     6
Spotted Towhee     14
Song Sparrow     5
White-throated Sparrow     1
Golden-crowned Sparrow     16,        Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon)     8
Lesser Goldfinch     2

To friends and family near and far, I wish to you a Happy Thanksgiving.

Openin’ up a can of wild turkey this Thanksgiving

“thanksgiving” is one word.

Not the shoes (if you have a shoe-licking fetish I am sure there are Web pages where you can knock yourself out) but those caulk-textured, filling-extracting nougat candies that usually only turn up on Halloween, if even then.  Squirrel Nut Zippers are a close cousin, but easier on the dental work. The flavor I’m trying to pin down is somewhere in between the two, and it hovers like a ghost behind the glass-cleaning ethyl pong of “Evan Williams Honey,” which I picked up today on a gamble, having about run out of Wild Turkey’s “American Honey” bourbon liqueur.

I don’t even like bourbon. Bourbon is the nasty stuff that grownups poured into perfectly good soft drinks when I was a kid, turning the accidentally exchanged glass at a party into a violent emetic. I’m sorry — single malt Scotch is what they drink in heaven, but bourbon is for cleaning the linoleum. Weirdly, though, I like American Honey. I’m not sure why. Certain people I otherwise respect, even love, drink bourbon in the wintertime, and I compromise on keeping the liqueur around the house.

So here comes Christmas and I am due for a refill. The Evan Williams stuff was down around two-thirds the price of the Wild Turkey offering, and that made it cheap enough for an experiment.

Somehow, though the alcohol content is the same, this stuff hits your membranes with a cauterizing broadside. Once that evaporates, however, you get this complex nutty molassesy flavor that brings back the dregs of Halloween hauls of my youth, after all the chocolate had been exhausted and we were not yet desperate enough to eat Necco wafers. I could get to admire it. Ice and a little time for melting and diluting might soften the initial scorch; the Wild Turkey product, in contrast, snarks you on the way out, delivering a little gag-ya saccharine fume that says “Yeah, it’s really made from bourbon.”

I don’t know how the fuck people drink that stuff. I guess I’m a Northerner.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I thought up this recipe one day while I was shopping for calvados at my local liquor store. They had a little bin of liquor nips to choose from for only $1 each. I ended up picking up a tiny bottle of honey flavored Wild Turkey liquor on a whim. I’d never really heard of this brand before, but I loved the fun name! One day when I was brainstorming for possible Thanksgiving flavored ice creams, my mind suddenly wandered back to the little unopened bottle of Wild Turkey in my cabinet. Eureka! The perfect flavor for Thanksgiving and a playful homage to the big roast bird. I added pecans because not only do they complement the Wild Turkey, but they remind me of good ol’ American pecan pie, another Thanksgiving staple.

I tamed the Wild Turkey!

I actually live in area that has lots of real wild turkeys roaming around. The first time I saw them I was intrigued and  foolishly tried to call them over to me. Big mistake. As I soon discovered, wild turkeys are very aggressive and territorial. They tried to attack me and had I not found a stick to defend myself with, I surely would have been turkey-chow. Whenever I see a turkey now, I can’t help but chuckle to myself in revenge and think of cranberry sauce and gravy.

Toasted pecans

As always, I recommend toasting and cooling the pecans before adding them to the ice cream. Toasting nuts and spices is an incredible flavor booster. It somehow makes them taste more buttery and definitely adds a succulent roasty flavor.

Churn it up!

The Wild Turkey, a type of bourbon, tasted wonderful in the vanilla scented ice cream. The use of honey flavored Wild Turkey paired particularly well with the sweetness of the ice cream and the buttery crunch of the toasted pecans. It ended up tasting like a very adult, frozen reimagined pecan pie. As you may have noticed, I tend to use a lot of liquors in my recipes (I’m not a boozer, I swear!). My reason for this is that liquors are simply one of the greatest flavor enhancers you can use in ice cream. And let me tell you, this fun and delicious Thanksgiving recipe proves it. Needless to say, at my house we all “gobbled” it up! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and have a happy Wild Turkey Day!

Wild Turkey and Pecan Ice Cream Recipe

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 cups whole milk

2/3 cup white sugar

5  large egg yolks

pinch of salt

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2/3 cup toasted chopped pecans

      1.) Combine milk and heavy cream in a medium saucepan and set over medium heat.     Heat until bubbles appear near the rim of the saucepan and steam begins to rinse, but do not let it boil.

2.)    Meanwhile whisk the egg yolks together in a large bowl and gradually add the sugar. Whisk the mixture until the yolks look fluffy and turn a pale yellow color.

3.)    All the while whisking the egg yolk mixture, slowly and gradually add milk mixture and when fully emulsified, pour the mixture back into the medium saucepan. Over low heat constantly mix the base with a spatula or wooden spoon until it thickens slightly and can coat the back of a wooden spoon, about 6-7 minutes.

4.)    Immediately remove from heat and transfer to a large bowl. Add the pinch of salt, vanilla extract and bourbon and refrigerate 4 hours to overnight. Freeze according to your ice cream machine’s instructions.  When ice cream is ready, add chopped pecans. Enjoy!

Make it a sundae!

You could bring out the pecan-pie flavors in this ice cream even more by creating a pecan pie sundae! Drizzle this ice cream with homemade butterscotch sauce or dulce de leche flavored with a few pinches of ground cinnamon and cloves. Top with more toasted pecans and whipped cream. Garnish with a few pie crust pieces, baked until golden brown and cooled. Enjoy!

The lighter side- Feel to substitute whole milk or half and half for the heavy cream in this recipe. If anything it will only make the flavors more intense, which is the reason gelati is often made this way in Italy.

This holiday season, keep your spirits high with a fun flask that will be the envy of everyone at the dinner table:

Step outside for a minute with the BoozeBerry, a sneaky little container designed to resemble a BlackBerry. Perfect for all occasions, even business meetings! Well, maybe not. $24.95 at Amazon

Invest in a timeless style with needlepoint and leather cover from Smathers & Branson. QUEST loves the Jolly Roger Flask in Navy and the Block Monogrammed Flask. The perfect accessory for tailgating! $65 – $100 at Smathers & Branson

… and don’t forget to pick up a festive, if not challenging, bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon! Chin, chin!

EQB

For most Americans “Turkey Day” is Thanksgiving.  But at our house this year it came five days earlier than expected.

Altogether there were eleven Wild Turkeys in our garden Sundat afternoon.  Both adults and smaller juveniles.  They politely stayed away from the planted part of the garden and concentrated on a barren area where the Juncos had not cleaned up the sunflower seeds.  The turkeys did. 

In late afternoon I found few ducks at Ashland Pond but there was this Red-shouldered Hawk overlooking the scene.

Happy holiday, safe travels, and thank you to all who are keeping our family in your prayers this week.

The beast pictured here is from the museum at Pere Marquette State Park in Illinois.  The small sign next to it says, “The wild turkey was extirpated from this area in the late 1800s.  Reintroduced into the park in 1979, the turkey has again become common in the area’s open woodlands and forests.”

Extirpated, huh.  Pretty drastic.