Category Archives: on the road

good food, fun sights, and adventures when traveling

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Matanuska Glacier in Alaska

One of the benefits of traveling is be able to do fun things in new places. I was teaching in Anchorage last week and was able to take one day and drive to the Matanuska Glacier. It was about a 3-hour drive. This is one of the few glaciers that is easily accessible from a major highway. A short walk/hike and I was able to walk on the glacier. It was fun. I do wish I had more appropriate shoes so I could have walked closer to the main glacier wall. Oh well…

Here is a short one-minute video of what I saw as I was standing in the middle of the glacier. If you listen closely you can hear the sound of water running off the glacier as it melts. Everywhere I’m standing is ice. The rocks and stones you see have been moved with the ice over literally hundreds of years.

Colorado does have competition. Alaska is beautiful, just quite a bit harder to get to!

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The Best Crab Cakes?

I’m a crab snob. I moved to Montgomery County, Maryland (just outside Washington, DC) when I was in the 7th grade and lived there until we moved to Texas in 1990, so I grew up eating Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs. Bushels of them. One of my fondest memories was going to a friend’s parents’ house on the lower Potomac River on a Saturday morning. We purchased a couple of bushels of fresh cooked crabs and ate them all afternoon. My youngest daughter Stephanie was given her own crab picking tools when she was 5!

Now, if you have had the pleasure of eating these crabs you know they are not very big and do take some work to get the meat out. But oh my! The meat is so sweet and succulent, the work is worth it. When I pick crabs, I am a piler. I pick the whole crab and pile the meat in front of me. When I’m done, I add a little melted butter, a little Old Bay Seasoning and savor the meat. Yes, I am that patient. Just ask Karen!

So, when anyone tells me that the Pacific Northwest Dungeness crab are better, I turn up my nose. I do eat all kinds of crab, including Snow Crab and King Crab, but in my book there is nothing better than Chesapeake Bay Blues.

So, my cuisine of choice when I am in the Maryland area is crab, of any kind. I am always on the lookout for the “best crab.” A couple of months ago I was in Baltimore staying at a hotel next to BWI. For dinner I looked online for some recommendations for a good crab shack. When I asked at the hotel they gave me the name of a place just a couple of miles away. That restaurant is G&M Restaurant and it advertised it had “Baltimore’s Best Crab Cakes.” Being the skeptic that I am, I had to try it myself.

It was a very good crab cake. If fact, I might not call it a crab cake at all. It was more like a crab mound. It was filled with large lumps of back fin (the best of the crab) and it had just enough filling to hold the meat together.  This place is highly recommended if you are in the vicinity of the BWI airport outside of Baltimore. Just understand, it’s a crab shack. It is nice but certainly not fancy.

G&M Restaurant
804 N. Hammonds Ferry Rd
Linthicum, MD 21090
(410) 636-1777

www.GandMCrabCakes.com

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Good Kansas City BBQ

I really do love good barbecue. Karen and I moved to Texas in 1990 where we learned the culture that surrounds good Texas barbecue. (Texans think there is no other kind) We learned about smokers, and rubs, and barbecue sauce, and how good brisket can be.

We also learned about the different kinds of woods needed to create the smoke that makes for the best barbecued brisket, ribs, and chicken. We learned that good Texas barbecue is created by low heat over a long period of time (with some beer along to pass the time).

The pastor of our church had a “smoker” that was on a trailer, which he towed behind his car. Yes, it was that big. Because we had a big backyard, there were many parties and church picnics with the smoker as the centerpiece.

This barbecue education has allowed me to enjoy the many different types of barbecue found in various parts of the country, like Kansas City. One of my favorite places to go when I am in Kansas City is Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue. It is an institution in Kansas City and is always among the top of the best barbecue places in the city.

I always order: Lamb ribs, burnt ends, coleslaw, and baked beans. I have never found lamb ribs at any other barbecue joint anywhere. If you enjoy lamb, they really are quite good. Burnt ends are the tapered end of the brisket that often gets more well done than the other part of the meat. But, they are far from burnt, are very tender and very good.

If you are in the Kansas City area and like good barbecue, Fiorella’s is highly recommended.

Fiorella’s Jack Stack BBQ – www.jackstackbbq.com