OK. I give up...

...at least for now.

I'm taking a time out on the heels of the latest loony political pronouncement in a generally lackluster campaign year. This gem comes from whackjob Todd Akin of Missouri, the hands-down winner of the monthly Republican Dumb Comment sweepstakes. It is so dumb it could have come from Texas.

As the whole world knows by now, when asked whether women can become pregnant when they're raped,  Missouri's Republican Senate candidate reportedly said that pregnancy from rape is really rare. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,"  he explained.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the icing on the cake for me.

I have always wanted to leave town when election time rolled around, then get home just in time to vote and be done with it. Maybe I'll tune in here and there while I'm away, but for the most part, electioneering has become so vapid, so devoid of integrity and so intrusive that I'm doing what I've long wanted to do: I'm spending a month abroad to see how we're viewed from someplace far, far away.

To get into the spirit of my trip I booked British Airways to fly me across the Atlantic to England, where I'm reuniting with a former neighbor. Ron and Cathy Young and her husband lived across the street from me when I lived in Leicester, a decent-sized town in the Midlands. We cooked together, argued politics and on more than one occasion she had to step in and mediate when her husband and I got a little to wound up.  It took almost a year for me to realize his greatest pleasure in our discussions was baiting me.

For years I promised to visit. Year after year there was always something: my mother was dying; Molly was dying; I was broke from traveling back and forth to visit the both when I lived in Denver. There was always something. When I retired and move to Austin I got involved in writing the book. Then there was touring with the book. Still, they said, please come to England.

Once again I promised. I'm coming I said.  When they said they'd bought a house in a little town in France, I absolutely promised to visit. We'd hang out a bit in Wiltshire, in the beautiful, historically wonderful Cotswolds, then we'd take the Chunnel to France or fly from Bristol to La Rochelle, then drive to Antezant. This went on for a while and suddenly I heard nothing. Figuring they had tired of me and my empty promises and given up, I wrote a pleading email asking for one more chance.

No answer.

One day I learned why I hadn't heard: Ron had died suddenly and Cathy was alone in their Wiltshire dream house. I bought the ticket I should have bought months before. I called Susan Concordet, Molly's former roommate in Paris and said I would visit her too. Then I called the reporter to had lived with me when she had a fellowship to work a summer at the Dallas Morning News. We'd stayed in touch, but not seen one another in 20 years. I'm taking the Chunnel to visit her, her husband and two sons.

They will all poke fun at our political process and the pathetic performance of Congress over the last four years; they'll laugh and cringe at the presidential race, what with the Romney-Ryan ticket sounding increasingly like a bad parody of a real campaign. They'll ask me why no one is addressing economic issues and I won't even try to make sense of the forthcoming debates.

Just as we wished for a presidential White House like the one portrayed in Alan Sorkin's wonderful "West Wing," I'll tell them how much I wish we could have a political debate like the mock one in HBO's  wonderful series "The Newsroom." I'll listen to them excoriate the idiocy of political candidates like Todd Akin and hope that, if nothing else, Akin's comments will stir women up enough to storm the polls to vote against him and his ilk.

A bientot.

How Much Crazier Can We Get?

 

Let me count the ways in which recent events have turned my brain to mush..

First we have a congressman who thinks it would have helped in that Aurora shooting if more patrons had had guns. Louie Gohmert, the Phi Beta Kappa candidate who thought more guns would be a good idea -- reminds me of a lost gopher, no insult to rodents intended). Then, in a runoff election we Texans got a nobody named Ted Cruz, a Tea Party candidate who will possibly become the other clueless senator from the Loon Star State. He reminds me of a snake -- no insult to reptiles intended. Moreover, if you can believe it,  he's worse than the guy he ran against who was, trust me, bad enough.

I'm drowning in a tidal wave of not-good news. Stop scratching your head over the Romney-Ryan ticket long enough to consider what's going to happen to our food if we are unfortunate enough to get saddled with these two come November. Both are superbig on deregulation.

So consider this, especially if you love corn: you're about meet genetically modified corn in a can. Or frozen. Or on the cob. If it isn't here already, it's en route to a grocery shelf of the nearest Wal-Mart. Sure, some stores have refused to carry this GMO stuff, but if you can't afford to shop at Whole Foods, or there's no Trader Joe's in your neighborhood (although if it helps, General Mills has promised not to incorporate the genetically engineered corn in its products) what do you do? And why should you care?

Well, as reported in a clear and concise article by freelance writer Diane Petryk Bloom, here's why: the corn is from Monsanto seeds, which produce a plant a pesticide that will kill insects that feed on the plant. It's coming to Wal-Mart from farms in the Midwest, Northwest, Southeast and Texas. Bloom is among the most recent writers to cry 'foul' over this fact.

Bloom goes on to say that in addition to the toxin consumed by those who eat this, there are serious farming issues as well. Just ask some of the small farmers who have complained in court when pollen from Monsanto's corn crops have cross-pollinated their heirloom corn. Monsanto has sued for theft, and they such deep corporate profits the little guy doesn't stand a chance. And those

Now that we are released from the 2012 Olympics, let's get to stuff that the right-wing nuts hoped we'd forgotten about in the two weeks since the torch was lit in London: and we fail to notice at our peril. Let's look first a California's Proposition 37 -- which would require all products containing GMOs be labeled as such. We'll know in November if the Golden State will set an important precedent in this country.And guess who doesn't want that to happen?

So you eat crap that has poison designed into its DNA. Sure it kills bugs. How can we know what it will do to humans down the line? A link between sterility in rodents has already been linked to GMOs.  Do you really want to find out what it might do to your children, especially if you want grandchildren? And hey, where is our great protector the FDA in all this? Anybody seen the FDA?

If we can't wait for the weather to cool down before we take to the streets, we can at least write or email our members in Congress. Even if we know the probable response; we can still worry the daylights out of them. We can write letters to editors and company executives. We know they don't read their own mail, but by God, unless their minions are complete cowards, they'll pass it on. They'll know we're out here mad as hell and not willing to take this nonsense anymore.

Oh, and for your information, we watchdogs stateside aren't the only ones who fear genetically engineered stuff -- Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia. China and the European Union require the labeling California seeks. It's a sad, sad day when China is more concerned about food toxicity than the good old U.S of A. And one more thing: Monsanto isn't the only booger in this. The  creatively titled Council for Biotechnology Information  lists among its members BASF;  DuPont, Switzerland-based Syngenta and Dow AgroSciences (remember Dow, the wonderful people who brought us Agent Orange?).

And yes, as I read each new article and post each new clip on my overburdened Facebook page, I wish anew for the feisty Molly Ivins voice, although I'm inclined to believe that by now she, like so many of us, would be shaking her head in something midway between horror and despair. In one of her last columns she wondered how we became so mean, so senselessly violent, so apathetic,  so unwilling to care about one another, so resistant to hearing any opinion other than our own.

By now she would have to asked how many deaths will be enough for Congress to stand up and face down the insanity that allows automatic weapons into the hands of anyone -- let alone those eligible for white coats and institutionalization; how many travesties will we permit companies like Monsanto, Dow et al to perpetrate upon us?

Finally, because this is too much of a downer to continue much longer, one last thing: Remember when a symbol represented the person formerly known as Prince? Well, according to news out of Ottawa, Canada, via the Huffington Post, Canadian troops and police were trained for two years by the international security contractor formerly known as Blackwater. And in the best Blackwater tradition, it was done without the permission of the U.S. State Department. This revelation appears in U.S. federal court records, unsealed in North Carolina as part of a $7.5 million settlement of criminal charges against the company now called Academi LLC.

Yeah. So lest anyone of us still wonder who's really running the country look no further than Yertle the Turtle; Gohmert the gopher; the NRA; Monsanto, Blackwater/Academi LLC and all those fanatics lacking a sense of irony who call themselves pro-life but support capital punishment.

I'm taking off for a month, but I'll be back in time to vote. And I just might find something cheerier to write about while I'm away.

In my absence I'm counting on you to keep stirring it up.

SRO on The Crazy Train

So far this year, was there even a one-day hiatus from mean-spirited attacks on our president? I mean, we're almost three-quarters through a year marked by one of the most vitriol-filled campaigns leveled against an American head of state in memory. The poor guy doesn't seem to be able to do anything right -- at least according to those paragons of rational thinking whose initials are Boehner, Issa, Cantor, and McConnell.

The subject of presidential trials and tribulations surfaced at a small dinner gathering I had for out-of-town friends a while back. One couple was here from New Orleans, the other from Columbia, Mo. They were in Austin for the annual fancy-schmancy Texas Observer fundraiser that has come to be known as the Molly Dinner. Named for Miz Ivins, the event usually features a bit of entertainment, a decent meal, a prominent speaker (this year it was Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman), an honoree or two, and journalism awards for writers who most reflect Molly's spirit and sense of social justice.

I mention all this because my little cornbread-and-chili supper on the evening preceding "The Molly," as it has come to be called, was almost a repeat of a dinner gathering my living room a few months earlier. As usual, we ended up talking politics during a momentary hiatus from our feeding frenzy. One of my guests was from Scotland, that Anglo-Saxon country we rarely think about unless there's a golfer in the family. Greg the Scotsman said his relatives across the pond couldn't make heads or tails of any reason to vote for any of the goofballs chasing the Republican nomination at the time.

(Remember now, Scotland is also home to a bunch of people named MacDonald. Greg regaled us with his recounting of a Scottish nobleman who rented rooms in his castle and had an in-house restaurant called MacDonald's. Our McDonald's threatened to sue. Their MacDonald threatened to sue our McDonald's -- despite the fact that their MacDonald had been around some 400 years. Check and mate.  Our McDonald's backed down. But I digress)

The free-flowing conversation that evening made me wonder anew how Molly might have responded to our Texas governor who thought Congress should only meet every other year, like the Texas legislature; or to Newt, the semi-aquatic amphibian who characterized President Obama as "the best food-stamp president ever," who probably never in a million years intending any racial innuendo.

And let's not forget Time magazine's Mark Halperin calling the president "a dick" on MSNBC -- not to mention that bizarre episode of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wagging her bony finger in the president's face as though scolding a recalcitrant child. At least Newt is finally political toast, Halperin got suspended and Perry only emerges periodically from beneath his rock to make some goofy speech or other, as he did on a recent goofball appearance on "Face the Nation." As for Brewer, if there is karmic justice, hers will be ugly.

We lamented the loss of Molly's singular voice, recalling some of her more acerbic observations as aapplicable today as in years past.  "If his IQ dropped any lower we'd have to water him twice a week"; or "It's like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you're wrong";  One of my personal favorites, and one perfect for our times is, "Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of government, is on the high road to permanent glory."

So, in a way, she is still with us. Anyway, halfway through the more recent 5th anniversary of Molly's death, we are once again reminded how few voices like hers remain. I wonder how she would react to the level of meanness to which congressional activity has risen. I suspect she would despair of how few voices fearlessly speak truth to power anymore -- although she owuld be delighted that Bill Moyers is still in fine form on PBS -- which continues to give congressional boos the heebie jeebies.. For the most part, though, reporters who once spoke for the voiceless now parrot a corporate line mandated by media moguls. We're left instead with the stunning new HBO series, "The Newsroom."

Just as the slightly overwrought opening episode addressed newsroom ego clashes, I'm hoping that at some point a story line will deal with the extraordinary bigotry reflected in the behavior of so-called law enforcement officers, especially in the wake of President Obama's executive order allowing children born in the U.S. to remain here with all the rights of other American-born citizens. Specifically in mind is that guy out in Arizona.

Somewhere in that treasure trove of wouldn't-it-be-nice-if-we-still-had-an-Edward R. Murrow-among-us scriptwriting there must be a character based on Joe Arpaio, Arizona's dreadful Maricopa County sheriff. He has got to be the sorriest excuse for a law enforcement officer since Bull Connor. The only satisfaction to be derived from his miserable presence on planet Earth is the knowledge that somewhere down the line karmic justice will bite him on the butt so thoroughly that he'll wish it was a pit bull instead.

Alas, reporters who covered every minute of the Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papers trial decades ago are long gone -- mainly because the spirited editors who put themselves out there are also all but gone. Important publications like The Texas Observer, The Nation, The Progressive, The Washington Spectator and Mother Jones struggle to survive. A handful of truly brave web sites track, collate and disseminate accurate information about a crazy Congress, loopy candidates and avaricious corporations, but they too operate on a shoestring. If anybody believes we still have mainstream media that consistently speak truth to power, also believes, like the song says, eggs ain't poultry,  grits ain't grocery, and Mona Lisa was a man.

So here we are, rocketing toward a national election with standing room only on the crazy train.

Rage, Race and White Trash Cooking

My friend Bonnie and I are so much on the same wavelength much of the time it gets scary. Our biggest point of departure is the fact that she is not only a voracious reader who retains roughly 95 per cent of what she reads, but she formulates ways in which she can translate her information into action rather than rage.

When she does get exercised, it's because of this country's continued use of torture, the lies that are spread in defense of it, the people who perpetuate it and those who practice it. I'm angry about just about everything, from official abuse of authority, to pollution, to political lies to Texas heat, so I sign petitions, send certified letters and emails couched in the most temperate language I can summon to corporate bullies who are unworthy of temperate criticism.

When we get together over lunch or dinner, Bonnie and I come to earth long enough to talk about Molly and/or food. And so it came to pass that in a conversation more than a year ago we decided to have a party that would celebrate the culinary traditions of a group of people who have been long lost to our social consciousness.

The idea came about, as near as I can recall, because we were sitting in some fabulous Mexican dive of a restaurant that served the most exquisite ceviche and tacos, tamales and empanadas. Hardly anyone spoke English, and you waited while your food was prepared because everything was made to order. Nothing fancy, just good solid food as good for the soul as it was for the body.

Somehow, we detoured into favorite foods growing up and I told her about the onion sandwiches my father and I used to make -- a slice of Bermuda onion and a slice of Beefsteak tomato between two slices of Wonder bread slathered with Miracle Whip and finished with a generous sprinkling of black pepper. No, not mayonnaise. I mentioned that I had been surprised the find a recipe for the same sandwich in a 1986, spiral-bound volume of "White Trash Cooking." Turns out Bonnie had the same Ernest Matthew Mickler book (Ten Speed Press has since published a 25th anniversary edition). The Mickler family had the good sense to know their foodways were to be treasured, not ridiculed.

We then got into a conversation about how white trash cooking is not much different from what has come to be known as "soul food." Which then made us wonder why one iteration of the same foods should have one name and the other a different name. But before we could get too existential about it, our Mexican food came and we had decided to do what we often do when we eat: have a party.

An homage to white trash cooking.

It took a year to convert conversation to action. We scoured recipes from White Trash volumes I and II. We came up with far too many components, winnowed them down and sent invitations. As expected, some recipients were, at best, ambivalent; at worst, horrified. We decided that those who didn't get it, oh well. Others began to reminisce about their own roots in Texas, or Kentucky or West Virginia or Maryland or Missouri. They told of Jell-o molds with bananas and canned fruit cocktail and lime Jell-o with cottage cheese. Greens cooked with fatback. Okra and tomatoes. Black-eyed peas, pickled okra,  peas and smoked ham hocks. Buttermilk cornbread. Red soda. RC Cola and Moon Pies. Macaroni and cheese made with Velveeta. Fried chicken. Biscuits. Potato salad. Cole slaw. Corn Pudding. Hamburger Gravy.

OK, so even though we found a place to buy dressed possum, squirrel, alligator and raccoon, we bypassed the opportunity in deference to our budget and the fact that nobody would eat raccoon stew even if we did make it with locally sourced, organically grown herbs and vegetables. Willie's Swamp Cabbage Stew didn't make the cut, nor did Jail-House Chili, Esther's Five-Can Casserole, Lady Divine's Chicken-Asparagus Pie, or Mama Leila's Hand-Me-Down Oven-Baked Possum.. It might be The People's Republic of Austin, but, well...

Anyway, this dinner party would be a tribute to the resilience of a group of people who had to make do all their lives with foods that generate upturned noses among the well-heeled, especially those lacking the empathy gene. Again, we figured folks would either get it or they wouldn't. As it turned out, about 60 people did get it. They realized you didn't have to be from Hot Coffee, Mississippi or Dime Box Texas to relate. They came, they ate, they talked politics they talked food. They were young, old, Democrats, Republicans, black, white and Asian. Some allowed as how they also came with Tums and Alla-Selzter. Eri Weinstein made peach cobbler in a cast-iron skillet with peaches picked from the tree where he is co-owner of a massage therapy school and spa.

Yes, there were Moon Pies and fruit pie and red velvet cake.

A year or so ago, when Bonnie and Gary, my brother Fred, his wife Denise and I were in New Orleans with a group of friends, we sprung our white-trash dinner plan. Bonnie asked Fred and Denise, "Will you come?" To which they replied, "Sure; we'll come as friends of white trash." They too grasped the concept.

In the best white trash/soul food tradition, we had too much food. We still have leftover Orange and Grape Crush. Some guests entered so thoroughly into the spirit of the occasion that they brought not Cotes du Rhone and Pinot Grigio, but cheap beer and Boone's Farm Strawberry wine. The first guests arrived right at 6, and the last left at about 11. By then we had already decided to do it again next year. We haven't exactly decided on a theme, but two of the guests, a couple displaced by Katrina, brought shrimp and white beans. It set us to thinking...other than Native Americans and Afro-Americans, what group's culinary traditions survived to become among the trendiest of recent food trends?

Stay tuned. We'll be stirring it up.

You CAN Go Home Again

I should know. I never miss a chance to go back to my home city, the place I couldn't wait to leave, to see people I've missed ever since departing.  This time I came to St. Louis to the home of my almost-sister, Rose. She and I go back so far in food years it isn't even funny. And here we were again,  stirring it up. Only this time it revolved around what we've come to call "The Book."

She actually flew me into town to prepare a meal based exclusively on recipes in The Book: carrot soup, Caesar salad, Cajun meal loaf, green beans and, of course, butter-laden garlic mashed potatoes with sour cream (which should have been in The Book but wasn't) and Ina Garten's sinfully splendid brownies.  The occasion was her turn to host the book club she joined four years ago. They've been going strong -- with the occasional dropout and replacement.  Appropriately called "The Laughing Ladies," we gathered around Rose's eight-seater of a mahogany dining table, amply fortified by red and white wine.

As guests arrived they immediately gravitated toward the kitchen --- as seems to be the case at any get-together.

Sara, whom I hadn't seen in years, promptly assigned herself to adding butter and sour cream to the mashed potatoes as I mash-squish-mash-squished the addition of heavy cream and more butter.

Robin set about mixing the salad and topping it off with freshly grated Parmesan.

Rose assumed her natural role as gracious hostess while I tried not to sweat over the meatloaf as I removed it from the oven and transferred pan juices into the skillet that would soon be filled with the Cajun sauce (we call it gravy in Texas) loaded with the trinity of chopped onions, celery and bell pepper. Garlic is a given.

Soup was actually served in soup bowls, part of a set Rose brought from her visit to the Czech Republic. We decided to dispense with salad bowls and assign lettuce to plate, alongside the meal's main components. Our sole concession to calorie counters, bless their hearts, was an absence of bread.  That was more than compensated for by brownies and French vanilla ice cream. Of course there was fresh fruit -- raspberries, strawberries and grapes -- which I interpreted as being part of the brownie-ice-cream configuration, not an alternative.

Oops. When you're a charter member of the Too Much Is Never Enough Society,  well, too much really is never enough.

Now it should be noted here that this was a celebratory meal. Few of us would recommend so much butter, cream, butter, sour cream, butter, and more butter in one sitting, but there are times when, in preparing a meal from a book, caution gets thumped sideways: a little fruit of the vine and a lot of  fruit of the cow makes for delicious merriment.

It was the kind of evening I enjoy most; friends sitting around talking asking questions, discussing ideas, reminiscing about favorite meals and talking about Molly.  "Wonder what Molly would have to say about (fill in the blank; the options are endless)"; "What did you leave out?" (personal stuff from conversations she never meant to be public and that had nothing to do with cooking together);  and the most frequently asked -- "What was she really like?" (Private, surprisingly shy and very funny even when she wasn't 'on'.

Finally, as the evening wound down conversation inevitably veered toward politics. How could it be a dinner devoted to Molly and not head in that direction, for cryin' out loud. This much I know for sure: she would have loved the idea of some knucklehead arranging to have Rush Limbaugh enshrined in the rotunda of the Missouri state capitol, if for no reason other than the fact that it would have given her ample material for one of her eviscerating columns dedicated the addlepated troll of the airwaves.

From there we zig-zagged to more politics, international travel, fun vacation spots, and finally wound down to who would host the next book club gathering -- a sure sign that the two and -one-half hour meal was coming to a close.

So see, Tom Wolfe, you can go home again.

Road Food, Not Road Kill

 One of the saving graces of being on the road in pursuit of book sales is the occasional soul-soothing food encounter. It doesn't come along all that often, but when it does, boy, does it ever.  And since I've gone and lost April altogether, I've got some catching up to do in the road-food department.

When last I mentioned food finds I was in Seattle, where I felt slightly out of place because I am not rail-thin, sinewy, an exercise enthusiast or a coffee drinker. But never mind. Shortly after Seattle came San Francisco, and if you can't find good food there you don't know good food when it's looking you square in the taste buds.

But where to start?

That question was easily answered because I was berthed in Mill Valley, a pastoral enclave across the glorious Golden Gate Bridge and close by some pretty swank Marin County real estate, including Tiburon, Larkspur and Sausalito. Since my reading was at Book Passage in the picturesque town of Corte Madera, I had the good fortune to stay with a Sandy, a friend cultivated in Austin who now lives in her home state of California.  I also learned a thing or two about where residents eat when they eat out in t-shirts and flip flops-- as opposed to fancy-pants places otherwise populated by the well-heeled.

Now, if your hostess happens to have at one time lived on a Sausalito  houseboat, you  find yourself ordering a late lunch at Fish, a nondescript place on Richardson Bay and just a few dozen kayak strokes across from the aforementioned water homes. Fish is seriously devoted to sustainability  and serves nothing that is at risk in the oceans. As you might imagine, the bill of fare is dedicated to whatever was caught that day.  Protocol  requires you to stand in line, peruse the chalkboard and order when your turn comes.

We lucked out.The daily special was a whole grilled salmon trout (yes, there is such a thing) grilled to perfection, stuffed with sprigs of cilantro, wafer-thin slices of cucumber and lemon and served on an over-sized platter and accompanied by little heads of grilled baby Romaine dipped in a tarragon vinaigrette; big fat bulbs of roasted garlic; and honkin' great slices of sourdough. Washed down with a pint of Anchor steam on tap (served in pint Mason jars), it was one of the most wonderful restaurant meals I'd had up to that point.

Tucked into a corner of the limited seating indoors, we lit into that lovely lake trout specimen with a vigor that might have proved embarrassing if our table had had a tablecloth on it. We launched lunch with Hog Island oysters on the half shell, so fresh you could taste the gentle brininess of its California origins.

In between San Francisco and Denver came a Saturday in Galveston, the fun and funky island community on Texas' Gulf Coast. It has a rich history of pirates and hurricanes and remarkable resilience -- as evidenced by the return of the Galveston Book Shop after the one-two punch of hurricanes Katrina and Ike. I not only met the head of the bird-watching society there, I met tourists from New Mexico who had met Molly..

After the signing we could have gone to Benno's on the Beach, or Boudreaux's on the Bayou, but we opted for Gaido's -- Galveston's iconic seafood stopping place. Only we went to the low-rent version. Same kitchen, different staff, different vibe, same food. For less. A semi-snack of a dozen oysters on the half-shell held us until we made the 50-minute drive back to Houston where my friend Connie had reservations at  a culinary treasure called Just Dinner.

At home in a renovated house built in the 1920s, the menu, ambiance and service are worthy of anything found in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, or -- dare I say it -- New York.  Dining rooms are segmented, so that Just Dinner seats more than it would seem at first glance. There were only four four-tops and two two-tops in the room where we ate.

The lights and the music are soft and low. The menu is tantalizing but compact.  Seven inventive appetizers included a  special -- shrimp, goat cheese and quinoa croquette -- but my heart belonged to the Gulf crabcake served with a basil pesto aioli. Three salads and two soups rounded out the starters. The tomato was nicely basil-tinged, light and lovely; Connie opted for the white asparagus, which, it should be noted, was rich and flavorful and not at all possessed of the blandness I usually associate with that sun-deprived vegetable.

Then we were on to entrees, bypassing consideration of pasta choices, speeding by braised boneless short ribs; Moroccan-spiced lamb shanks; pan-roasted duck breast; crispy chicken breast with blue cheese polenta and straight to the  evening's special: pan-seared salmon with asparagus risotto and asparagus-pea-fennel salad. I detoured. coming to a screeching halt at the rainbow trout fillet in brown butter sauce accompanied by Parmesan risotto served with a melange of julienned carrots, red bell peppers, shallots, and celery.

We brought along a Temperanillo and happily popped for the $8 corkage fee.

We probably had dessert. I'm sure we did, and I don't want to offend the pastry chef by not remembering, but  I also didn't want to do anything to interfere with the residual loveliness of my recently devoured brown butter-laced trout.

Two  trouts, two road trips. Two divine dining experiences: good food on the road, and nothing even reminiscent of road kill.

Next time: Denver dining and outstanding Salvadorean food where you'd never expect to find it.

Until then, whenever the opportunity presents itself, stir it up.

On The Road Again

Yeah, well, Willie Nelson might not be able to wait until he's on the road again, but I can't wait to be off, despite going home to Left Bank Books in St. Louis for a warm welcome and good turnout. I love it when they sell out.

People think this book-tour business is the coolest thing since sliced bread -- and it is if you have money and time to truly enjoy being in these truly cool places. Otherwise you're pinching every penny and depending on the kindness of strangers.

Fortunately, there is an upside. For instance, I never tire of being in New Orleans. So when my friend Diana Pinckley arranged a book signing at Octavia Books, one of the loveliest little bookstores ever, it wasn't her fault that it rained. I still got to eat good food and meet lovely people. It especially helps if the sun shines for the duration of a stay in Seattle.

Knowing I'd be in Seattle with next to no money, I sent out a distress call to friends in Columbia, Missouri, who were previous residents of Seattle and still who still had friends in the Emerald City. They hooked me up with not one, but two households who offered bed and board during my 6-day stay.

My first stop was at the home of Margaret Barrett and her husband Joe Cail. He works part time on a salmon fishing boat; she's and aide to her sister who's an attorney. Joe showed me around several favorite haunts that tourists probably never see, including a neighborhood storefront that stocks an estimated 1,000 beers from around the world and local microbrews. Daily draft specials can be consumed on the premises. Margaret served me a delicious rigatoni dinner made with some of the salmon Joe had caught.

Marie Caffrey, who knows practically everybody who's anybody in Seattle (and who, with her late husband the late Walt Crowley founded HistoryLink.org), hosted a lovely dinner party where guests pitched in and we all prepared recipes from the book.

Marie, a dynamo who is also president of the Seattle Library's board of trustees, walked me through all nine floors of the stunningly sculptural central library designed by Rem Koolhaas. She also took me to the famed Seattle Locks and let me hang around long enough to see a series of little boats pass through -- including a drawbridge that had to open for a high-masted sailboat. A nearby 4-year-had nothing on me for wonderment in simple pleasures.

In San Antonio the turnout was sparse, but it coincided with the Saturday farmers market and connected me with Darby Ivins, Molly's niece, who lives there. I wandered around the market before the signing until landing at a counter serving chicken and waffles. Yes: fried chicken and waffles with butter and real maple syrup. It was one of the best breakfasts ever.

A successful signing in Dallas reunited me with people I hadn't seen in years, thanks to a lovely event planned by Liz Baron, who owns Blue Mesa Grill.

Houston took me to Brazos Bookstore. You know you've come to the right place when you walk in and Philip Glass is quietly playing in the background. That was was only a few days after I spoke to the Walker County Democratic Club in Huntsville. For those of you unfamiliar with Huntsville, it is where Texas' infamous executions occur and where there is a cluster of seven (or is it eight?) correctional facilities, called "units," are planted. It is a very conservative community, but the Dems soldier on.

So here they were on a recent Saturday evening; 140 progressive Democrats, gathered to hear Molly stories and chat as I signed and signed until there were no more books. Other than a Houston restaurant experience that brightened my stay with Bill and Connie Habern, two encounters remain standouts.

So Houston first: Connie and I had lunch on the very first day of Gulf oysters on the half shell went on sale for $5.95 a dozen at Pappas Seafood House. Hallelujah! Sweet, plump, fresh-from-the-water oysters. Praise the Lord. I don't care what you scaredy-cats say about risky post-BP seafood, the Pappas family has its own oyster beds and I totally trust their oysters and I scarfed them so there.

Now Huntsville.

Dear Huntsville: Other than its dark side, it has a quaint town square that houses Walker County's Democratic headquarters. So, after a late start from Austin, I embarked on the three-hour drive to the lovely, slightly spooky piney woods of East Texas. As usual I missed a turn and got lost. Reverting to my tried and true method of resolving such mishaps, I stopped at a service station to verify my route, seeking help from the first driver I saw in a busted-up panel truck -- a good way to identify a local resident.

"Excuse me, sir, but can you tell me how to get to Huntsville from here?" He looked me over for a second or so. "Yes ma'm," he replied solemnly (manners are still important in most of Texas).

"Which unit y'lookin for?"

Next stops: San Francisco, Colorado and Galveston.