Good Eats in Kentucky

I spent last night in Lexington last night, doing a hotel mystery shop. I love these mini-vacations - just a few miles out of town in a different part of the world. I managed to find a couple of interesting places to eat while I was away. I've no intention of trying to become one of the multitudinous restaurant-reviewer-wannabe bloggers, but I'm happy to share a good place or two in the hopes of a) supporting local restaurants and b) sharing my finds so others can have a good meal too!

Billy's BAR-B-Q was my stop for dinner on Friday night. I am not a big meat eater, but when I do eat meat, I like it to be barbecue. Personally, I'm not fond of what passes for barbecue in Cincinnati, which tends to be some sort of meat (which doesn't ever have to be near a flame) doused in a thick, sweet, syrupy sauce. I like my barbecue smoked, and if it's sauced at all, it should be light and vinegary and spicy. Think Carolina style barbecue. That's what I found at Billy's. I had the mutton barbecue sandwich - I had to. It's the only time I've seen mutton on a menu anywhere. I loved it, it was smoky, tender and the table sauce was the perfect sour and spicy accompaniment . I also tried the Kentucky burgoo (I also had to try that, with a blog named Cincinnati Burgoo) and it was great. Meat, meat and more meat, with a couple of lonely lima beans and cubes of potatoes. It had a slightly sour edge to it - I'll have to look up some recipes for burgoo to figure out what that might have been. For a side dish I ordered 'sliced tomato with cucumber dressing'. I felt a bit silly paying three dollars for a tomato, but it was such a treat to see a simple vegetable dish on a restaurant menu that I had to order it. It was delicious - but local summer tomatoes at the beginning of September are truly a great reason to live in the midwest. Billy's is fun. I loved the stuffed fish and boar's heads on the wall - even the plastic ones. Oh! I almost forgot to mention the beer! On tap they had a couple of locally brewed beers from Kentucky Ale, including one that is aged in former bourbon barrels. Sublime.

The place I'd chosen to have lunch on my way home on Saturday was closed for business - permanently from the look of the it. I'd already decided I was going to take Route 27 home instead of getting on the highway, and I knew I'd be able to find some food on the way, so I didn't fret much about that. Sure enough, as I was passing through Cynthiana, Kentucky, I saw a restaurant downtown that advertised "Since 1894". Any place that has been in business for 115 years must be doing something right, so I stopped into Biancke's. I was late for breakfast and early for lunch, so I was one of the only people in the place. For my lunch I ordered fried green tomatoes, corn pudding and the vegetable of the day, which was tiny baby potatoes roasted with garlic. I felt like I'd won the lottery with my choices - it was all so very good.

I think it's always a good idea to order the thing on the menu that you don't see every other place you go - that's probably the thing the restaurant gets really right. It worked for me this weekend in Kentucky.

Goldenrod Soldier Beetle

I had no idea what sort of beetle this was when I photographed it in Glenwood Gardens last week, but as it was helpfully perched on a goldenrod flower, that did help me narrow it down. I was able to find it by looking through the beetle families on Bug Guide's helpful web page.

Soldier beetles are a large family, there being somewhere around 450 species in North America alone. The larval stage lives in leaf litter and is carnivorous, while the adults are nectarivores feeding primarily on nectar, pollen and sometimes aphids. Soldier beetles are also nicknamed "Leatherwings" for their soft, cloth-like wing coverings. In shape and size they resemble fireflies, to which they are closely related.

The Goldenrod Soldier Beetle, as the name suggests, are often found on goldenrod flowers but they'll also feed on other late summer blooming flowers such as asters and sunflowers. They are welcome addition to any garden as the larva eat other pest species and the adults are great pollinators.

International Vulture Awareness Day!

Today is International Vulture Awareness Day, which makes it the perfect day to dust off this old blog and get it up and running again.

I happen to love vultures. I never get tired of seeing them patrol the skies and I still get a little thrill when I spot a black vulture among the more numerous turkey vultures in my area.

My last memorable encounter with vultures happened in July in the Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, Pennsylvania. The zoo has a lovely open exhibit of bald eagles near the entrance, the sort of enclosure that relies on moats and walls rather than fencing to keep the animals in. They have two bald eagles in the exhibit and I was snapping pictures of them, wondering why in the world they had so many black vultures in with the eagles. Then the sun came out from behind a cloud and the vultures, as if on cue, opened their wings to catch some rays. I then realized the vultures were neither pinioned nor banded and therefore had to be volunteers. The wild vultures had figured out that the bald eagle exhibit was a safe place to hang out and pick up some fishy snacks.

Vultures won't be in the Cincinnati area much longer this year; they wander down south for the winter months. So get outside and have a look at the skies, especially on a warm sunny day and you'll almost certainly be rewarded with a vulture sighting.