World Bird Sanctuary

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Originally uploaded by FotoMeister

Spent a lovely day with Rachel, her mom Claire, and Martha at the World bird sanctuary here in St. Louis.

They have a variety of birds and some other critters too, like a couple of hedgehogs, some reptiles and even a bunny.












After looking around the sanctuary, he had a picnic in Lone Elk park, which just across the road.

Jim the Wonder Dog

While looking around Marshall, Missouri, I stumbled across an amazing monument to Jim the Wonder Dog.




This incredible dog lived from 1925 to 1937.

He was a purebred Llewellyn Setter (also known as an English Setter). He had a many talents including understanding commands in any language. Being able to pick out a person in a crowd with a certain characteristic (Like find the newly engaged woman). Being able to predict things, like horse race outcomes, and winners of elections.





The memorial was beautiful, with a waterfall, koi pond, gazebo, many plants, and a statue of Jim himself.








The interesting thing about the memorial, is that it was created (or dedicated) in 1999. I do not know if a previous incarnation was there before.





On a weird note, across the street from the memorial is an ice cream shop that sells.... "Wonder dogs".

Cookin' Indian

Took a cooking class on Indian food Saturday evening at the Viking Store on Brentwood. On the menu was food from the appetisers to the main course.
It started out a little awkward as started making the Samosas (curry vegetable pastries). The feeling mostly came from an unfamiliarity. Luckily, that soon passed and the evening became fun. We had three people on our team, Martha and I, and Susan. Splitting up the tasks of cutting, grinding, dicing, grating and stirring was easy.
The samosas look kind of like pot-stickers, but are deep fried. After cooking the stuffing, we made our own dough, patted it out into small sections and wrapped the stuffing.
We then made Dhal (split pea curry). This one was easy to make.
We also made basmati rice, this mostly consisted of soaking the rice for 30 minutes then cooking it (wow ;)
Finally, we made chicken with roasted coriander in a coconut curry sauce (Dakshini Murgh). This had a new trick for me that we roasted the seasonings in a dry pan until they browned a bit.
There was a twenty five minute break after getting the chicken simmering when we got to look through the store. Funny, on the tv, live, was Emeril cooking an indian dish, browning his seasonings.
At last, we all sat down and had the full dinner. I thought every thing tasted good. The overall experience was fun. I did learn some things, and it did not end up like an info-mercial on all the great Viking products.
Overall, if you have already made (successfully) some indian dishes, I probably would not recommend it, unless you were going as a group to have some fun. It is nice though to test drive the utensils and things before you buy.