ARIZONA TO ALASKA

You probably didn't see the UL/Rutgers game with our injured quarterback. It was quite a game. Bridgewater was amazing to be able to throw while dealing with a broken bone in his left wrist. He had a huge cast on it. Also had a gimpy leg/ankle but he managed.

Then yesterday, UK played Baylor and got their clock(s) cleaned. Disappointing but they are a young team and have a lot to learn. UL played Illinois State and was so bad the first half - just couldn't score but they picked it up in the second half and in the last 5 minutes pulled away and won by 3 points!

I know - too much information but we watch a lot of sports around here.

Also, we are trying to put up those fairy lights in between stuff.

I, too am wondering about UK and the flood.

I am also wondering about the MINCED OX - are you pulling our leg(s)?

I actually have been watching a bit of college football, but I can only get NBC and ABC...no FOX, no ESPN, so I am limited to whatever they give me on Saturdays, and Sunday Night Football (pro). I keep telling myself if I got all the channels again, I would waste a lot of time watching games. I don't consider college football a waste of time because I can read too.

I have also been walking on the beach each day...unless it's a day like Friday when we had ice pellets hitting us in the face...dog's HATE that. We have been lucky to have some breaks in the rain, so the dog and I dash for the beach and seem to hit it a lot at high tide...when the big waves are running right up to the base of the dunes. Fresh air freak...I just love that wind and fresh-smelling salt air.

Glad you are getting a break, Joe. It can make you old before your time.

I saw the foxes in the 63mph winds video. Interesting.

I have a question for Joseph.

Does your bushy tail ever get caught in the gales and involuntarily park your arse on the frozen stony drive like that?

I have a second question for Joseph.

Is that why you bought a hair trimmer?



DECS DAY took place here last Friday. So I too am officially SEASONALLY FESTOONED.

The new Christmassy snake lighting is curling around the guttering and is creating a nightly 70's discotheque vibe in my sleeping quarters which I find quite pleasing.

“I am the dancing queen, feel the beat from my tambourine”

I may need a new mattress in the January sales...


The floods receded over some thankfully drier days last week. I drove down the 17 miles of main road (that had been closed for the previous 48 hours) shortly after it reopened and spotted a very bored looking man, standing roadside, coercing an uncooperative muddy puddle into the back of his tanker so that the traffic cones may be fully removed.

So the roads are now all clear, but the fields are still largely only passable to shipping. Ideally ice breaker type shipping since the -6c/ 21f stuff arrived after the rain buggered off and delivered a crusty topping.

It all looks very pretty but it is causing lots of headaches for the farming community whom I suspect are now housing much of their livestock within their farmhouses. I shall ask them when I see them at the January mattress sales.

I can't know for certain but I suspect 800 LBS of OX mincing about your bedroom has lasting effects on ones king size pocket sprung divan...

You think YOU got problems PUD?

The land slippage issues are still causing trubba. I'm thinking that sodden ground that then freezes for a week or two will have more tricks up its sleeves for the near future, but already there have been major problems on the railways with embankments giving way. A local journalist tried travel on the direct train between Plymouth and Derby early last week and was asked to disembark the train for replacement bus services no less than 4 times. All due to slippages. That's a £116/ $186 one way ticket, normally a little over 4 hour ride, that turned into a 13 hour long trudge.

They used to advertise train travel here with the famous phrase 'let the train take the strain'.

Now it's more like 'get off the train and don't complain'...

In the pretty North Yorkshire harbour town of Whitby a row of 5 cottages, which are 150 years old, have been declared structurally unsafe after the hillside on which they are built MOVED and took their gardens on a slippery 30ft ride into the houses below. Residents had to evacuate leaving all their belongings behind. The homes are now being demolished brick by brick by brave men in harnesses working, somewhat gingerly, on a still moving soggy hillside. Story with video clip on link - Link

Still, if they have a TAHOE at their disposal I'm sure it's all doable.

Dot mom don't tell me you've not had minced ox being a farm gal and all?!

Nice pics JA

We like our football too but its even harder to get the games here than what you guys go through. Because of the Wisconsin connection we follow the Badgers and the Packers.
They are rarely on free to air TV here. We have pay TV (satelite dish) but they dont always put the games we want to see on for us. We have ESPN3 as well which is an internet station put on by our pay TV company. They have most of the college football games on but not always the Badgers. We spend a lot of early mornings looking at the computer screen. You wouldn’t want to know it but this last weekend they didnt have the Packers game on and the Badgers game wasn’t on TV or ESPN3 either. We spent a while watching the Game Tracker on the cocmputer screen. Nebraska werent in it. Im not sure if the Badgers were so good or if the Cornhuskers were so bad. Oh well a win is a win.

Being bored at work yesterday, I attempted to look up minced ox, just in case Joe wasn't joking. I couldn't see his facial expression, so I wasn't absolutely sure. Seems people don't eat ox, except sometimes the private parts.

I ran across a really funny blog where a Dad described how he got his son to eat ox genitalia in a foreign restaurant--he generalized and simply told him it was beef. The son asked for more, and Mom was gagging across the table.

Are the blinds new (see in Joe's pictures)? Seems like we were teasing Joe awhile back for having bare windows. Or was that the neighbors?

This is the 3rd year in a row (as long as I have been following this blog) that serious snow has come much later to Dutch than one would think at that latitude. So, I am thinking this is normal.

Assuming Joe is able to take Dutchie with him when he moves to Arizona, AZ is going to have quite an act to follow for her, I am thinking.

Cybersuze - never a minced ox - never even saw one up there in Ohio. Sheltered life you know! But then I suppose those all around were dining on them and we were left out.

Ox used to be mostly draft animals, used for really heavy road work or other hauling that a horse or mule didn't have the heft for. My dad grew up in Mississippi in the early 1900's and he remembered oxen hitched to the road graders there. They could take the heat better than a horse and were stronger than a mule.
I doubt that ox was the best meat in the market. A valuable draft animal wasn't going to be eaten until it was too old or sick to work. Minced might have been the only way to make them tender enough to chew.
I'd love to know where Joe orders his minced ox, I don't think there are many oxen left in the US other than at historical theme parks or the blue ones in Minnesota.
Paul Bunyon is going to be really ticked.

UK, you need to put loudspeakers on the outside of your house, and fix it so the rope lights flash rythmically to the Christmas music blaring from your house at 2AM....

hanfyh, I'm guessing you're not caring for the news that the Badgers head football coach is taking the money, and running to Arkansas....

I had mixed emotions about the UL/Ill St. game, since Ill.St. has a guard from Owensboro that was giving the Cards what for!

I love the way this blog goes off on tangents that nobody could even hope to predict, much less control...

SOME people in the UK eat OX tails and OX tongues. Since these would only constitute a relatively small section of a very large beast there must be people in another part of the world that have a use for minced up oxy midriff.

Sounds like something you could extend an airport runway with at a push.

Ox tail is cooked very slowly, braised in stock over a low heat. It looks like a deliciously tender beef stew with the meat falling off the bone, and is said to have the most fantastic texture and richness of flavour. It's a very cheap cut to buy at the butchers shop, but the finished dish is an expensive delicacy available in trendy brasseries and fancy pants restaurants.

I'd rather eat cushions.

Ox tongue very much resembles a giant version of a human tongue. My first job was working in the kitchens of a 5 star country hotel making lunches for the local glitterati. I was asked to produce a platter of sandwiches for a famous sports star who turned up one Saturday, he had specifically requested ox tongue be included. I'd never heard of such a thing, never mind seen one before. It was in a huge tin can which I opened in absolute terror and it slipped out rapidly and clattered into the bowl. It was curled up on itself, whole, cooked and covered in slimy yellow gelatine.

I couldn't bring myself to cut into it. The chef helped me. Get up off the floor...

The sports star star sent a message back into the kitchen saying my sandwiches were the best he'd ever eaten and he bought a round of drinks for all the kitchen staff as a thank you.

He's dead now.

I don't recommend ox tongue to anyone.


I like your hat Ylee. Red is definitely your colour. Don't let anybody tell you it's cruel to dress up wild animals in seasonal costumes. The only thing that's been blaring outside my house at 2am is multiple burglar alarms – a series of short power cuts in the area has been playing havoc with electronics AND my beauty sleep.

I don't believe my Christmassy snake is responsible for the trubba. Though come to think of it, if it is draining the national grid that might explain why it's so bright in my boudoir.


Arbie is correct. We did tease Joe for having bare naked windows a few years back.

No.

Hang on.

That wasn't it.

Being bare naked at windows! Yep. That was the gist of it.

Turned out he had blinds at every window all along. Rarely uses them.

Except when he treats the neighbours to his infamous SHADOW PUPPET show...

I have never seen an OX!!!!!

The Badgers: Hopefully they will get a good replacement for Barry Alvarez. We just have to move on. From my trips to Wisconsin I’ve noticed that they take their football very very seriously and I feel that they will get over this. They are even more serious about their wrestling at some of the wifes friends place. An old guy (ex-coach and commentator) on tv the other morning was talking about coaches leaving and his thoughts were: Don’t leave if your being successful. Don’t leave if your popular. He had a few other good tips on football too. Moving to another coaching job don’t always pay off. I hope Barry does well in his change of job.

We used to have ox tail stew when I was young. I think it was just cows tails and not specifically oxen. It was a cheap meal. Mum put everything in a big pot. Tails and lots of potatoes, carrots, turnips (always hated turnips) and whatever else was growing in the garden. I remember that it was ok except fot the turnips. Havent heard of it or seen it in the butchers here in many years.
Times have changed a lot in our eating habits. Were now eating stuff that my father wouldn’t have ever allowed in the house.

I just realised its Bret Bielema not Barry Alverez. Its still bad but not so bad.

I just re-read the story on the Badgers. Bret Bielema going isnt good either

I remember my mother having an expression saying that someone was "strong as an ox." Now I understand after reading some of the entries here.

You are right UK. Oxtail soup is very flavorful and when you are going to make any soup (beef) it is nice to have some oxtail in it for flavor.

When I was in elementary school, a fellow student brought in some buffalo tongue for everybody to taste for show and tell. I think he got it on vacation. It was cut up into little bitty squares, so you couldn't tell what it was. It was actually pretty good, although I have not felt moved to ever buy any and eat it.

I don't know how widespread it is, but people around here (Texas) are starting to farm and eat buffalo. Many grocery stores now sell it in various forms. I think the scoop is that it is more lean. I have never felt the urge to try it. If they start farming them and developing fattening regimes the way they do for cattle, there soon won't be any point, I would think.

As far as farming goes, ranchers around here are quitting raising things and just renting their ranches out for hunting, fishing, and photography. I guess it is okay, as long as we don't run out of food.

I found out all that open space I saw out in far west Texas is all owned by one family of ranchers--one of the largest ranches.


Back to Alaska...

Arbie, from 1952 through 1962, my family lived in Texas ranching country. My father, though a Presbyterian minister, had great rapport with ranchers. I think it was because he had grown up in Iowa farming communities and knew a lot about cattle and animal husbandry. At any rate, he just naturally made friends with many ranchers, some of whom were quite well known in that world.

One that I recall especially well was Johnny McMurtry. He was Larry McMurtry's favorite uncle and one of about 10 brothers, all of whom were ranchers. I think it was 1954, it was Johnny's turn to host the big annual McMurtry family reunion. Johnny raised buffalo as part of a Federal program to build up herd sizes which were still quite small after the near extinction of the species in the early 1900s. He got permission to cull one animal for his own use feeding the several hundred people that came to the reunion.

About a year before the reunion, Johnny asked my father to come out to his ranch, near Muleshoe, TX to assist with gelding the animal so that it could be fattened up for the feast. It was barbecued by seasoning the meat, wrapping it in clean muslin, then burlap and then buried for several hours on a bed of mesquite coals; one of those old-time wooden picnic forks was all that was needed to eat it.

I also remember that some prudish church folk thought that having their minister involved in such a gross, somehow obscene business was beyond their pale. Johnny also took him on a trip to the Ft. Worth livestock auction that year to help him select and buy breeding bulls. That really got that cohort of the congregation riled up. Johnny thought it was all highly amusing. He even asked one of the church session members if he thought his cattle should all be required to wear pants.

Larry McMurty and I were both present at the reunion though we didn't know it at the time. Dad and I wrote him back in the 1980s and told our version of the affair which was in good agreement with his. Larry wrote a moving tribute to his Uncle Johnny in his autobiographical book, In a Narrow Grave.

Those far West Texas ranchers you alude to, probably belong to a big clan known as the Jones-Espy-Kahl clan. They own huge blocks of land running from Fort Davis down towards the Big Bend country clear over to around San Angelo. Dad was friends with Fritz Kahl from Ft. Davis. The movie Giant was filmed on one of their ranches and one of the Espy daughters did the stunt riding for Liz Taylor! I don't recall whether it was an Espy or a Kahl that lived in a house high on a hill on the outskirts of Fort Davis that most people mistook for a motel.

Long ago and far away.

Dave, you have led a very interesting life...not sayin' the rest of us haven't...but you are beyond the pale! Larry McMurtry is one of my favorite writers; he tells a good story, based on good knowledge.

There is a fascinating story of recent troubles between police/ fire dept and local tribe/ community on St Paul Island - details are on kucb.org.

Link


There is a fairly lengthy but absolutely intriguing report on the disputes that is written by an outsider, someone who was brought in to investigate all the issues in an unbiased way. His report, the Sexton report, is available to read in full via the link.


As an insight into life in such a small island community it is a rewarding read. But given that the islands entire (3 person) police department just walked out of their jobs and left St Paul without explanation I found myself GRIPPED!

If you have a half hour to kill I'd wholeheartedly recommend you read the Sexton report...
Link