Wordcraft -- Show us the mac and cheese!

The Casserole Queens Cookbook

by Crystal Cook and Sandy Pollock

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The thing that most caught my eye the first time I visited A Real Bookstore in Fairview was the cooking demonstration theater. But I had to wait until the women behind Austin’s Casserole Queens food delivery service dished out the mac and cheese last Sunday to see the kitchen in use.

When I entered, Sandy Pollock and the appropriately named Crystal Cook were already whipping up a recipe -- Lunch Lady Doris’s Spicy Mac and Cheese (page 122 in their cookbook). It was nothing like any school cafeteria I ever ate at!

For one thing, it had veggies -- broccoli and sun-dried tomatoes.

For another, well, the Queens do like their cayenne. The recipe calls for two teaspoons for a 9x 13-inch casserole dish, but Crystal (the one with the cayenne-red hair) just shook it from the container. “When you get a little too much, you can feel it up in your nose,” she told the crowd.

And then there’s the cheese: sharp cheddar, Gruyere, and Gouda. “But whatever cheese you have,” brunette Sandy said, “just use the right amount.”

“I don’t know how casseroles stay together without cheese,” Crystal added.

The amazingly slim duo -- they have to be, to fit into their trademark retro fashions -- offer tips in their book for cutting calories in the recipes. And although they’re okay with using canned items to save time, they also provide recipes for “from scratch” versions of kitchen staples.

The Casserole Queens have been delivering their one-dish dishes (their broad definition of “casserole”) in Austin for more than four years and have appeared on the Food Network’s Throwdown! With Bobby Flay. Sorry to report to Austin residents, they’ll be on tour for their book until September 3.

Until then, or until we all move to Austin, we’ll have to cook our own food -- maybe Gooey Apple Butter Cake (page 166). Can you smell the cinnamon and Granny Smiths?

In the Austin area, see www.casserolequeens.com/ for information on the delivery service. In North Texas, The Casserole Queens Cookbook is available through Barnes and Noble and A Real Bookstore, www.aRealBookstore.com/

Totally Texas -- Sixty-eight degrees of cool

Barton Springs Pool

Zilker Park, 2100 Barton Springs Road

Austin

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If there’s a single place that constitutes the soul of Austin, it’s got to be Barton Springs Pool. The same land shift that created the Balcones Fault millions of years ago opened the underground springs that keep the three-acre pool at an average temperature 68 degrees Fahrenheit year round. Doesn’t sound too cold? Believe me, a few minutes’ dip will have you appreciate warming up again in the heat of a Texas summer.

The swimming holes around the springs (three in all) were used by local people for decades, perhaps centuries, before the main pool became a city park in 1917. Since then, Austin has enlarged the irregularly-shaped pool to its thousand-foot length with upper and lower dams and sidewalks on both banks.

Despite -- or because of -- the pool’s popularity with the area’s human population, it has been the subject of an environmental petition. The springs (there are three, including the one feeding the main pool) are the only known surface habitat of the Barton Springs salamander. The City of Austin was sued in 1998, plaintiffs alleging that routine pool cleanings killed the salamanders. (The pool is not chlorinated.)

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks refused to stop the cleanings. He issued his ruling, in typically idiosyncratic Austin style, in a poem stating “Both salamander and swimmer/enjoy the springs that are cool./ And cleaning is necessary for both species in the pool.”

Austin and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are developing new cleaning methods. Because of the cleanings, the pool is closed Thursdays from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. , when floodgates are sometimes partially opened to lower the water level.

Except for Thursdays (and at other times as needed) normal operating hours are 5 a.m. until 10 p.m. daily. During the summer there is a $3 daily entry fee for adults. Lower fees apply for seniors and children. Please see www.ci.austin.tx.us/parks/bartonspings.htm/ for additional information. And enjoy the cool!

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This in my email since today's post -- dollar days are back at the Dallas Arboretum.  August 1-31, admission is only $1 per person.  (Parking fees still apply).  In view of this, I'm changing next Monday's post about water features to the toad fountain at the Arboretum.

　

Totally Texas -- Water, shade and friendship

Taniguchi Japanese Garden

Zilker Botanical Gardens

2220 Barton Springs Rd., Austin

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I wonder how many of us, by age seventy, would long to dig a three-acre garden out of a Texas hillside. But that’s what Isamu Taniguichi did for his adopted city of Austin. Donating his services to the city, the native of Osaka, Japan, spent eighteen months near the end of his life transforming a rugged landscape into a thing of beauty. Whether because of his Japanese heritage or his experience in the Texas climate, Mr. Taniguichi understood the value of shade and water that make the make his garden an oasis during the summer heat.

Trails and steps lead from the entrance of the Zilker Botanical Gardens to the jewel box garden of pools landscaped in Texas and Japanese plants with its “Walk over the Moon” Togetsu-kyo Bridge, and shaded teahouse within a setting of native caliche rock. The stone gates are a gift from Austin’s sister city of Oita, Japan.

The Taniguichi garden itself, opened in 1969, is one of several within the thirty-one acres
of Zilker Botanical Gardens, just north of Zilker Park near downtown Austin. Other theme gardens include the Hartman Prehistoric Garden recreating local dinosaur habits.

The gardens are normally open daily from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (During daylight savings time they are open until 7 p.m. but a sign at the entrance warns that the final entry is at 6:40 p.m. Weekday parking at the gardens is generally free for garden visitors, but there is a $3 fee per car on weekends and holidays from March through Labor Day. See www.zilkergarden.org for a calendar of events, which may include special admission fees.

For more information about the Taniguchi Japanese Garden, and to hear Mr. Taniguichi’s own words, go to http://taniguchigarden.org/

(Next Monday -- Culture-wise and temperature-wise, the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas is cool. Price-wise, it’s free.)

Wordcraft -- BookPeople standing tall since 1970

603 N. Lamar Blvd. (corner of Lamar & Sixth)

Austin

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Writing friend Robin -- the one who used to be a real estate agent -- looked around our favorite book store gathering spot in Dallas and said something only a person who calculates square footage could say: wasted space. Hard to believe when every bookstore still open seems to have cut back on the space allotted to tables and chairs such as those we sit at to sip, diss, and yes, sometimes, write.

So when I was in Austin recently for the Writers League of Texas conference, I went by BookPeople to see what it does to retain its title as the state’s premier independent bookstore. Ceilings were mostly low -- why waste space only dust motes can use? No spacious, uncluttered stairways. BookPeople stocks its stairs so thickly with merchandise I could barely push my way past all the other customers to get to the coveted second floor children’s section. All the other customers? On a weekday evening? Ka-ching and halleluiah! It’s a book lover’s paradise.

Of course it helps that BookPeople also has a great selection of books. Reading the many index cards of staff recommendations taped to the shelves was enough by itself to make my mouth water. And one of the things contributing to the traffic jam on the second floor was an author signing. Chain stores in my current city probably have to take orders from management at the national level on whether to host readings by local authors. BookPeople goes out of its way to sell books written by locals.

And don’t even get me started on the magazine section, with a significant stock of literary publications I haven’t seen on shelves in Dallas. And yes, there’s an unglamorous but functional coffee shop conveniently near the racks. If you need more sustenance, Whole Foods is located across the street. Read, leave to eat, and come back to read and buy.

BookPeople is open daily from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m. They’re closed on Thanksgiving Day and close early on a few holidays. For more information and the calendar of events, see www.bookpeople.com/

(Next Wednesday -- Larry McMurtry's all Booked Up, in his hometown of Archer City, Texas)

Totally Texas -- Our wonderful pink Capitol

Texas State Capitol

1100 Congress Avenue, Austin

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I arrived in Austin during a motorcycle convention. For much of the drive from Dallas I’d marveled at the numbers of motorcycle riders. Some wore protective gear , others only wore enough to avoid ticketing for indecent exposure -- apparently preferring a quick death in case of accident to a slow broil under the Texas sun.

At check-in, the staff at my hotel handed me a flier that explained things, including an offer to wash the chrome on my motorcycle -- if I had one -- for free. The Writers League of Texas was holding its convention the same weekend as the Republic of Texas motorcycle rally, with more than 45,000 motorcycle enthusiasts expected to attend. And I thought downtown Austin was just crowded because it was the weekend.

I didn’t expect to meet any bikers on a quick sightseeing tour at the state capitol. For those of you not from here, the first thing you’ll notice about the beautiful state capitol of Texas is that it’s pink. Pale dusty pink, sunset pink, rosy almost-red. Depending on the light, the season, the time of day. Built predominantly of pink Central Texas granite, its appearance seems incongruous for a state so concerned to with its macho image. But a picturesque couple asked for my help. The woman explained that holding her camera -- also pink -- at arm’s length just didn’t give a good enough of view of them. They let me take a picture for myself as well, with the beautiful pink dome in the background.

At the time of its late nineteenth-century construction, the capitol was said to be the seventh largest building in the world. That seemed like quite a feat for a state still recovering from the cost of being on the losing side in the Civil War. Not to worry, the state legislators said. We’ll just trade land for it.

And trade they did. The builders got more than three million acres of land in the Texas Panhandle, which became the largest cattle ranch in the world, the XIT. The famous brand -- “Ten in Texas” -- I learned as a schoolchild, refers to the fact that the ranch included all or part of ten counties.

The capitol has undergone several renovations, with the most recent extending underground to avoid competing with the historic façade. It is open for free tours daily except on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, New Year’s Day and Easter. Please see the Texas State Preservation Board’s site, www.tspb.state.tx.us/spb/ for specifics.

(Next Monday -- After this Capitol Fourth, July’s Totally Texas focuses on ways to beat the heat, starting with the Dallas Museum of Art’s reduced price attractions )

Totally Texas --- Going batty in Austin

Austin bat colony

100 Congress Avenue , Austin

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I slipped out early from the recent Writers’ League of Texas convention in Austin to see the bats. Maybe the traffic was unusually heavy because it was a Saturday night in June -- when females of the Mexican free-tails are joined by their recently-born young -- but it was hard to find a parking place close to prime viewing spots. A staff member at the convention told me the closest spot was in the parking lot of the Austin American-Statesman newspaper, which had a designated bat-watching area. But it was already full by sundown. Fortunately I wore comfortable shoes so neither the trek further down the street nor the steep climb from the bridge to the grassy area below was a problem.

And the bats, billed as the largest urban colony of the flying mammals in North America, were amazing. They emerged in spurts from under the bridge, flittered around and joined foraging parties whose undulating formations at some points stretched across a good portion of the skyline. Their numbers are estimated to reach up to a million and a half after the pregnant females who migrate to Austin each March give birth in June and July.

Watchers jammed the bridge’s pedestrian walkway, but having watched both from on and under the bridge, I found the best spots for photos and video were below, allowing the bats to show in silhouette against the still lighted sky. Riverboat cruises and kayak rentals also cater to viewers who want to watch from the lake.

The bats arrive each spring and spend the summer fattening themselves and their pups on tens of thousands of pounds of insects before migrating south in the fall. Although Mexican free-tails are endemic to the Southwest, their numbers in Austin increased tremendously after renovations to the Congress Avenue bridge over Lady Bird Lake (formerly Town Lake) made it prime bat real estate.

The Austin American-Statesman’s hotline, 512-416-75700, category 3636, gives approximate flying times, but come early to get a good viewing spot. Bat Conservation International’s site, www.batcon.org/discover/congress/ has more information about these creatures.

Final word -- although I did not experience any personal discomfort, some sources suggest wearing a hat or carrying an umbrella to keep things that aren’t raindrops from falling on your head.