First Bite of Ostrich

For Carmen's birthday, we went to her parents' house in her home town of Rensselear, IN. We got in late on the night of the 3rd and we went to the Trail Tree Diner which is the only place open 24 hours around here. I had a specialty sandwich with mashed taters & gravy with probably an extra 1200 calories. In the morning, we had breakfast then Carmen, her dad, and I bagged about 50 pounds of acorns for her to use in her research (trying to get voles to eat them). After that, I rode her dad's comfort hybrid bike for a little 10 mile jaunt. It had a speedometer and I was able to push it up to 32.21 mph. Maybe a slight downhill, definitely some wind at my back, but it was a comfort hybrid...I'm impressed.

Next, we went to Valparaiso for lunch. Ate at Maria Elenas. I had lasagna and everyone else had ostrich. Naturally, I had to try the flightless bird. Tasted kind of like beef. It was served like a steak would be. You don't want to cook it much more than medium rare or it will get really tough. It was still a little tough prepared as suggested.

We were going to go to the great lakes shore or something to see sandhill cranes or sand dunes or something. We didn't. We came back home then C, Mr. B., & I went through the woods looking for animal tracks so that we could make plaster casts. We stayed out until dark and got two deer prints and a cool double-raccoon-paw mold. She's got to do those for class.

I'm going to wake up in the morning and get breakfast out, have a tour of the town, then head back to Bloomington to watch a lecture on invasive grass.