Faith, Family, Food and Dogs

Over Mother's Day weekend I packed up my girls and headed up to see CJ. I love being in Decatur for short periods of time. The food is wonderful and I get to hit the DeKalb County Farmers' Market which is huge. You can count on somethings always being there and other things changing with the seasons. This trip I could not find any Breadfruit nor blood sausage, but I did get other wonderful things. One of which was a whole rabbit. If you can get past the cute and fluffy bunny thoughts, you will find that rabbit is good and it does not really taste like chicken, its milder, in my opinion. Rabbit is also all white meat. Anyway, I got one and paid less for the whole rabbit than I would have for 1/2 of a rabbit at my local grocery store. I have a recipe for Hasenpfeffer which is really good but since I am now, somehow, allergic to red wine I had to find a new recipe. Since I had also purchased leeks when I got the rabbit I decided to try this recipe. Right off the bat I will sa...

In my continuing effort to get being outdoors out of my system before the brutal heat and humidity of summer set in, I ventured off to hit 3 State Parks, a State Historic site, an old club - now state park and an old plantation now owned by the National Park Service. The historic site and the old club are on the same property so they count as one stop on this 6-hour long excursion. Today I started off at the northern most place and really did work my way back south, sometimes going west and then east to do it. The first stop was Amelia Island State Park. As I was walking from the car to the beach I saw this crab. He was one of several who were out enjoying the muddy flat of the low tide. Amelia Island State Park is known for 3 things. 1) Fishing on the beach; 2) Looking for shells, which must be hard to do with a lot of people parked on the beach to fish; and 3) You can go horseback riding on the beach. I was not impressed. Off to the right you can see the main road and behind ...

Meanwhile, as I was hunting down Lego sculptures I got to enjoy a nice, fairly cool day at the zoo. I started out in the riverbank aviary. These birds were just hanging out, probably waiting for the right person they could bless with their droppings. Walking the boardwalk into Africa I saw all these birds nesting, a big rookery. A closer shot of the Egrets nesting. It was a tad messing walking near here. In all the years I had been coming to the zoo, and in the two previous trips to the zoo in 2017, I had always seen just two Rhinos. This morning I saw a 3rd. Rhinos do not lap water like a dog, but it seems they just suck it up. As I was walking I heard the lion roar and the lionesses were replying. Over in the ape section this gorilla was dragging its blanket around with her. A Wallaby. Every time I bring my grand daughter she wants to see them and this was the first time they were awake and active. As I walked the path down towards the Trout River I spied a Manatee...