Inverse proportion to fat?

The older I get, the more I'm convinced that there is a calculation out there in the mathematical cosmos that proves that fat increases with age and that efforts to remove that fat become inversely harder.  I am living proof.  I got back from a wonderful vacation in Scotland recently where I indulged - just a little too much - in the Scottish heritage.  By that I mean going to the great pubs and drinking a lot of ale and wine and whiskey.

This was me on my last day trying to get in the final pint of Old Speckled Hen.  I already look bleary eyed and it was only lunchtime.

Anyway, once I got home I was surprised to see that I had only gained about 4 pounds but I immediately set about making up the difference.  In Scotland I walked miles and miles each day but once back in Montana, I only walked about an hour a day - my normal exercise - and still ate and drank like I was on holiday.  Hey, my body got used to a certain lifestyle and didn't want to quit.  I decided that it was time to pull out the big guns.  I started using livestrong.com again.  It had worked a couple of years ago when I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes and helped me drop about 30 pounds. 

The catch is that I have to write down everything I eat.  Everything.  The website uses My Plate calculations and reminds you how much you still are allowed to eat for the day.  BONUS!  If you exercise, My Plate adds calories to your day and YOU CAN EAT MORE.  Yay!  So, after about a week and a half, I am a couple of pounds lighter and I feel better already...OK, I feel smug and virtuous...but seeing all the junk you eat in black and white really does make you think about what you're putting in your mouth.

Of course, I still have a glass of wine in the evening - carefully calculated - and I can't say that I've faced much hardship holding my caloric intake to 1750 calories, especially if I burn a few hundred calories in exercising each day.  The problem that I see in the future is Old Man Winter and his curtailment of my outdoor activities.  Guess that's why I keep the gym membership even though I rarely use it in nice weather. 

Walking in Scotland

  I recently took a trip to Scotland with three other women and had a great time.  We drove, we ferried, we hiked, we looked at castles and it was all wonderful.  We walked miles everyday, altogether and in pairs, depending on our interests of that particular day.  The walks that I cherish most, however, are the two days that I was entirely alone walking around Stirling and around Edinburgh.  Those were the days that I truly got the Scottish experience and the excitement of being on my own in a foreign place.
A week ago I was in Edinburgh  and I walked all day by myself.  Two of my companions were on a birding expedition to North Berwick on the coast, and the other was exploring the city on her own.  We all had very different interests and ideas so we amicably parted and headed out on our own.

Edinburgh is the most walkable city I've ever visited.  From the New Town to the Old Town, from Holyroodhouse Palace to Edinburgh Castle, you can walk for hours and be vastly entertained.  I started from our hotel in New Town and walked up Calton Hill, a rather steep walk that paid off with gorgeous views out over the city in all directions.  To the north and east was the Firth of Forth and the North Sea stretching beyond the New Town full of regimented Georgian crescents.

To the south and west from Calton Hill I could look across the Old Town with its spires and castle looming on the horizon.  Each view seemed unique to two separate cities, which in fact is true.  Edinburgh is divided into the old and new, but the two sides live in splendid harmony.

I walked down Calton Hill and over to Old Town to the Royal Mile, a street teeming with shops and tourists.  The walk up the steep hill was almost like a pilgrimage as I passed traditional Scottish pubs and shops along with the kitschy tourist shops featuring 'Scottish' icons made in Malaysia or China.  I talked to one local shop owner who had been in the same location on the Royal Mile for 34 years.  She bemoaned the fact that local businesses were being run out of town by the less scrupulous sellers of foreign goods passing off as true Scottish merchandise.  It's the same in the U.S.  What we don't manufacture ourselves is outsourced and comes back as another example of a loss for our economy.  It appears to be a smaller world than I thought.




I finally trudged up the Royal Mile past St. Giles Cathedral, the statue of David Hume with his shiny big toe (it's supposed to be good luck to reach up and rub Sir David's toe - of course, I did that every time I passed him), and the Esplanade.  The street got tighter and narrower and I could envision the defensive measures that would be successful in such tight quarters just below the Castle.  The castle itself was immense and impressive on its volcanic crag.  The views were spectacular and I was fortunate to have a sunny day - a rarity on our trip - to enjoy those views.

I also got a lot of views of tourists, hopefully having as much fun as I was.  The crowds were unavoidable, but I chalked it up to the consequences of being in a big city and let the common attitude of enjoyment wash over and around me.  Nothing spoiled my day and I struck up conversations with anyone who stood next to me - a shared series of moments. 

After the castle I walked down to the Lawnmarket where I sat for a while and had tea and a fruity scone.  I loved ordering a 'fruity scone' and it was delicious.  I found a yarn shop just off the Lawnmarket and bought three skeins of Harris Tweed.  This will look great as a sweater vest.  The Old Town is rather hilly and has a lot of steep, narrow closes that are the old streets of the town.  When I say narrow - I mean narrow.  You could probably get a small cart and horse down one, but I don't know what altercation would have occurred if  TWO carts met on those tiny thoroughfares.  Bedlam and much shouting, I'm sure.

I went on a tour of these leftover underground closes - created when entrepreneurs and city fathers needed to build on street level with the Royal Mile.  How did they do this, you ask?  They chopped off the existing buildings and built on TOP of them.  This left tiny dark ex-streets underneath the newer part of Old Town.  What did the poor schmucks do who were living in the chopped-off buildings?  They got shoved into other tenements or relocated to the New Town down at the bottom of the hill.  Ah, Progress.

Oh, one other disgusting fact about the narrow streets of Old Town.  Before the age of plumbing, the city legislated a time of day when it was permissible to throw out the contents of your chamberpots.  These contents were thrown out the window ONTO THE STREET where the rain eventually washed it down to a loch at the bottom of the hill.  Well.  By the late 17th century, this loch was the town cesspool which the city fathers drained to create Prince's Street Gardens.  Beautiful gardens...and well fertilized.

After digesting all the fun facts of medieval life, I walked through said gardens and spent a couple of hours at the Scottish National Gallery.  Fabulous art, Old Masters and lots of Italian teenagers on what looked to be a painting scavenger hunt.  They shoved their way forward of more discerning art critics - ahem, I mean me - and frantically wrote down the details of the paintings on what looked like a class test.  I was getting a little tired by then, so I'm afraid I wasn't as tolerant of youthful studies as I should have been.  I wandered around New Town for a while searching for the Mecca of All Mysteries - The Oxford Bar made famous by mystery writer Ian Rankin as a favorite haunt of John Rebus, Detective Inspector.  I've read all of the Rebus novels and had to see what the Oxford Bar looked like in reality.  Well, it looks like a bar.  Not a traditional pub of imagination, but a neighborhood bar. 

I snagged a half-pint of Belhaven's Best from the young bartender as well as a bag of crisps (chips to you Yanks) and sat down to sink in the atmosphere - and to rest my swollen ankles.  Yeah, beer and chips are good for that.  There was one other patron - a businessman drinking his pint and looking through a newspaper.  I searched around for signs of Rankin or Rebus and did find a couple of framed newspaper articles.  Granted, it was 4:00 in the afternoon, so the place wasn't exactly jumping.  I did get a good rest and I caught up on my journal.

By the time I rested and was ready to go, it was raining a little, so I walked all the way down Prince's Street past the famous and not so famous shops inserted into Georgian houses.  I drank in the architecture and filed it away, hoping someday to return to Edinburgh to continue my walk.

Travel Jitters

I love the idea of travel.  I love reading about far-off places and dreaming myself there.  And I have travelled quite a bit -- and loved doing it.  See, once I'm in the plane, I'm fine.  I take a book and my knitting and look out the window chewing  contently on my teeny bag of complementary pretzels.
It's the week before my trip that gives me the jitters.  I start to regret ever agreeing to go, in spite of my initial enthusiasm.  I walk around my house touching my belongings as if I'll never see them again.  Instead of thinkng "Yippee! In a week I'll be in Scotland!" I find myself saying to myself, "Just three weeks and I'll be back in my own bed."

What the hell is wrong with me?

Other friends have told me that they feel the same way before they travel.  I hope so.  I'd hate to think that it's a phenomenon unique to me.
However, it causes me a lot of uselessly annoying anxiety that I would like to avoid.  Gutting out the upcoming three days before I actually leave home will be difficult.  At least, by the time I get on the airplane, exhausted, dragging my little carryon behind me, I might be able to get some sleep - something I never seem able to do on a transatlantic flight.

Ah, Summer in the Park

The Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park finally opened a couple of weeks ago and yesterday we (my husband, Lucky, and my son, Eli) decided to brave the crowds and drive to Logan Pass.  I found the park to be even more beautiful than ever - green, sunny and sparkling with a few snow fields on the peaks.  And, unfortunately, very crowded.  I don't know why I am so surprised each year to see the hordes of people in the park.  It is, after all the literal Jewel in the Crown of the Continent, the apex of beauty in the Rockies.  Because I live so close to it, I sometimes forget that Glacier NP is a worldwide tourist destination.  People come to gaze at its beauty, hike its trails and marvel at the incredible engineering feat that is the Going to the Sun Road.

The road itself is constantly being repaired, of course, due to the harsh winter conditions that pile foot after foot of snow on it throughout the winter and then punish it with thawing in the spring.  It's no wonder that several people per year are killed or injured from falling rock or just from falling off the edge of the precipitous slopes.  Already this year we've heard of the death of a hiker who slid down a steep snowfield while hiking, and the injury of a motorcycle passenger who was struck by a falling rock while touring on the GTTS road. 

My family and I, however, find it hard to stay away when such raw, miraculous beauty lies right in our back yard.  We patiently waited in line to show our pass to enter the park and then enjoyed the scenery while we were detained for about 15 minutes high on the road just below Logan Pass.  I took the opportunity to snap a few pictures of the surrounding mountains, many views of which I have snapped in the past.  I just can't get enough of the Park.  I took a photo of the iconic Mt. Reynolds mainly to get a view to compare to last year's snow fields leading to the Dragon's Tail.  When I made that hike last year, there were about three large snowfields to cross.  This photo shows a solid field on the trail.  I think I'll pass.

As we stood on the road waiting for the construction vehicles to allow passage, I turned to look out toward Heaven's Peak and the view across McDonald Lake.  Breathtaking.

Then I thought, of course, of the trail directly above us, the Highline Trail, that had just opened to the public that morning.  At various locations along the road, I could see the trail snaking along and it looked fairly clear until we got to Logan Pass.  Then I could better see the broken fields of snow at intervals along the trail, growing more solid as the trail neared Haystack Butte.  My son and I had talked about hiking the Highline later in the week.  If we do, we'll need poles and icewalkers or ice axes.  Those tools are recommended by the park website.  Maybe we'll just hike up to the Snyder Lakes.  No snow to contend with there.

This last photo is of the Garden Wall straight above my head from the road where we were halted by a construction delay.  At the Logan Pass Visitor Center, Eli and I jumped out and Lucky went to park the car.  About ten minutes later, we wondered where he was and walked back down to the lot to investigate.  There he was, still circling to find a spot.  We put him out of his misery and got back into the car to begin our trip down and out over at the North Fork entrance.

Tequila Tuesday, continued...

TIEBUCKERS in Somers, MT

Just before I started down to Somers, MT for our Tequila Tuesday get-together, a huge windstorm/hailstorm/rainstorm moved throught the area.  My son, Eli, was planning to bike down to Somers and join us and, thankfully, the weather improved before he left the house.  I met Linda at our regular carpooling site and we drove down where we met my friend Michelle in the bar.  Turns out that Tiebuckers was short-staffed, so the bar was the only room open.

Michelle was ahead of us - had already ordered a margarita from Barry the barman when we got there.  We sat down and promptly ordered our margaritas (except for Eli who deviated from the spirit of the event by ordering a gin & tonic - what a rebel!).  The drinks were crisp and tasty, although Linda thought that they came from a mix.  We should have asked Barry because he was a character who would have either told us his secret (if there was one) or told us to piss off.  He once ran a bar in Gillette, WY, so I know that would have been in his character.  Anyway, we all had two drinks, so they weren't that disappointing.

I had a wild salmon special with a Caesar salad, baked potato and deep-fried green beans (tasty, but I only got 5 beans with my meal).  Eli had shrimp and chips and Michelle had a blue-cheese covered steak.  I can't remember what Linda had (I blush to admit it, but the second margarita might have had something to do with that), but we were all satisfied with the food.  The portions were smaller than I remember Tiebuckers serving, but that's okay, they were sufficient.

The company was wonderful, the laughter and talk fun, and it was also fun to chat with Barry who was helping out with customers at the tables.  All in all, an enjoyable evening, but I'm afraid not the best margaritas in the valley.  The Quest continues!

Tequila Tuesday, continued...

SCOTTIBELLI'S

I went to Scottibelli's Italian restaurant on Main Street in Kalispell for Tequila Tuesday.  This restaurant has been several restaurants and bars since I've lived here - most recently the KB Bar.  It now serves Italian fare and at first received poor reviews in service from my friends.  Now, it seems, the establishment has worked out its opening kinks because there were a lot of staff working and they were all very solicitous and efficient.  Scottibelli's has a great drinks assortment with an enormous wooden and mirrored bar that looks original to the building (don't know if it is or not).  When Linda and Mary got there, we were seated and told the waiter that we were on The Great Margarita Quest and were brought classic margaritas - no options, apparently.  The drinks were good, however, so we had no reason to quarrel with our choice.

The food was delicioso - I had Mama's Lasagna and couldn't finish it because the portion was huge.  Mary had Gnocchi and liked it a lot and Linda had a ravioli dish.  The margaritas were good, but not the best in our search, but it was a lot of fun to talk to my two friends and give it a try.


 

Tequila Tuesday

One Tuesday before school was out for the year, I subbed in the library and came home hot and tired.  I was looking forward to a nice dinner that I hoped my husband would plan and cook, but NO.  When I asked him what was for supper, he just said, "Leftovers, I guess."

That made me mad.  I fumed for a while, and just when I had decided that perhaps I should take a walk to cool off, my knitting friend, Linda, called.
"You know what I was just thinking of?"
Well, no I didn't but I suspected it was a knitting question.  Linda and I knew each other from our mutual knitting group that met each week, but we really didn't KNOW each other very well.
"What?"
"A big cold margarita."
"Perfect!  I need to get out of here."

NORTH BAY GRILLE

 We decided to meet at North Bay Grille, a restaurant with a full bar in the center of Kalispell and try their margaritas.  We were overwhelmed by the variety of specialty drinks, especially the wide variety of vanity margaritas (pomegranate, mango, orange, lime) and finally asked the bartender if they had a classic margarita on the menu.
"Sure, and they're on special - two for one - for Happy Hour."
That made us very happy.  We both ordered one and it was excellent.  Linda got a blended one and mine was on the rocks.
As the evening progressed, we ordered dinner from the bar menu.  I especially liked their Blues Burger - a big burger stuffed with a bacon Gorgonzola sauce.  Yum.  I even had a second margarita.


APPLEBEES

Linda and I enjoyed our outing so much that we decided to do it again sometime, but that's where we left it until a couple of weeks later at knitting.
"Hey, we should continue our Great Margarita Search,"  one of us said (great minds think alike).  So we planned to meet on Tuesday at Applebees to assess their 'Perfect Margarita.'

Well, in my opinion, Applebees 'Perfect Margarita' is damn near perfect.  It comes in a big bar shaker on the rocks and pours out nearly three good sized glasses of yumminess - tart but crisp - and with green olives as a garnish.  I always order this drink - unless their Moose Drool is on special.  Linda ordered a Perfect as well and we tried the Two for One entrees that comes with a shared appetizer.  Oriental Chicken is what we chose and chips with spinach/artichoke dip was our appetizer.

The Perfect Margarita is never on Happy Hour and is a little pricey, but I'm not sure I could handle two anyway.  We were satisfied with our meal and our margarita and in a 'duh' moment, decided to make our great margarita search a regular weekly event.  Our summer search for the best margarita in the Flathead Valley.  What could be more fun in the summer?

At our knitting meeting that week, we were met with indignation by the other knitters demanding why we had kept our little margarita search to ourselves.  Foolishly, I had mentioned it on Facebook without issuing any other invitations.  Linda and I just looked at each other, innocently, and agreed that the more, the merrier when it came to margaritas.  More people with ideas and locations, that is.  We talked it over and decided on the El Topo Cantina in Bigfork, MT for our next dinner.  I opened my mouth and "Tequila Tuesday" popped out, so that's what our search is known as now.

EL TOPO CANTINA

Linda, Deb and I met at the Rosauer's parking lot and carpooled down to beautiful Bigfork, Montana to the El Topo Cantina.  I had never been there, but had always wondered what it was like every time I drove by.  It's a smallish building.  Inside the bar takes up a lot of space and the chalet-style ceiling echoes noisily as the people crowd in.  Their margarita menu has a classic, a Cadillac and an "Ultimate" margarita and stupidly, we all ordered the Ultimate.  I felt that it was a little too citrusy - due to an orange liqueur - but after a couple of sips, it started to grow on me.  It was fairly pricey but it did pack a punch.

I had the pork carnitas which was excellent.  Deb and Linda each had a different special dish but both included mahi-mahi.  They each complimented the dish that they ordered.  I think if I go to El Topo again, I'd take someone who eats there a lot and follow their suggestions - like our friend Mary who wanted to go but was out of town.

BLUE CANYON RESTAURANT

At knitting the next week, we discussed our next location and decided on the Blue Canyon Restaurant attached to the Hilton Garden Inn in Kalispell.  I had eaten in the restaurant but never really noticed the enormous bar that they have.  It is quiet and roomy and we filled up one of their oversized booths.  Attending the big search this week was Marylane, Mary, Deb, Linda and me.  The bar has an extensive menu, including several margaritas and a great food menu.  I ordered a sugar free margarita (just because they had one) but it was heavily flavored with a citrus liqueur and I didn't like it at all.  Deb, Mary and Marylane got the classic margarita and it was delicious.  Linda ordered the Cadillac which I thought was the best, but it was $12.00.  Gulp.  That's a lot of moola.   We all had a great meal - various dishes from the bar menu at a reasonable price.  I ordered a second margarita - this time one of the classics.  Liked it much better!

SERRANO'S MEXICAN RESTAURANT IN EAST GLACIER, MT

Our knitting group is really getting into this Tequila Tuesday idea.  We went on a knitting road trip to East Glacier, MT to sit and knit on the gorgeous lawn of the Glacier Lodge in East Glacier.  Fun, fun, fun.  When we got hungry we toddled over to the best after-hike restaurant in the area, Serrano's for Mexican food and margaritas, of course.
We sat on the front porch and were the first ones in so we got a big table on the deck in the back.  Carol knew the owners, so she got a 'special' mango margarita that had a big kick.  She generously passed it around for all of us to taste and it was really good!   We heeded the recommendation of those who had been here at Serrano's before and ordered the classic margarita.  Perfection!  It was delicious and that opinion was unanimous.

As to the food, it was excellent too.  Most of us ordered either the Enchilada Especial or the Veggie Combo Plate. 

The Enchilada is on the left and it was wonderful.  Of course we had chips and great fresh salsa, too.  As there were nine of us, the level of merriment was pretty high.  We all just had one margarita because we had to drive back to Kalispell - about two hours away, barring road work, which we unfortunately did have.