Eating Worms

Saturday I was at Anshu Pathak's Exotic Meat Market and one of his employees asked if I'd ever eaten worms. I never have and I've never had any desire to. He showed me the worms they buy to feed to Anshu's chickens and says he's eaten them and they're not bad. 

The worms were dead and dry and looked fairly innocuous, so a took a pinch of them and plopped them in my mouth. There was nothing disgusting or gross about it. No slime, no horrible taste. In fact the taste was almost buttery. So he gave me a small quantity to take home. 

That was a thresh hold I've never anticipated crossing, but it was pretty painless. 

Cambozola Triple Cream Soft Ripened Blue Cheese

Cambozola is a triple cream, brie-style blue cheese made in the German region of Allgau by Champignon.

The Cambozola we got was put out under the Trader Joe's label.

It is injected with both Penicillium camemberti, the mold used to make Camembert cheese, and Penicillium roqueforti, the mold used to make Gorgonzola, Roquefort and Blue Stilton. Thus the name is a linguistic blend  of Camembert and Gorgonzola, as well as Cambodunum, the Roman name for Kempten, Germany, in the Allgua region, where Champignon is located. Extra cream is added to the milk to give it a rich consistency. It has pockets of blue veining, which give it a very mild, slightly blue taste, much milder than Gorgonzola, and an outer rind of whitish/gray mold similar to Brie. The texture and taste is much closer to Brie or Camembert, than to Gorgonzola, but the slightly blue flavor makes it much more interesting than plain Brie. It is a wonderful combination and I like it an awful lot. 

I love this cheese. 

Mull of Kintyre Scottish Cheddar

The Mull of Kintyre is the southwesternmost tip of the Kintyre Peninsula in southwestern Scotland. The coast of Northern Ireland is visible from there on a clear day. 

The Mull of Kintyre is where the red dot is on the map. It is part of the Kintyre Peninsula. The Isle of Gigha is the island further north, up the coast, and to the west of the peninsula. Campbeltown is located just off the lowest large bay on the eastern side of the peninsula  

Paul McCartney has a farm there and while he was with the band, Wings, he wrote a song, "Mull of Kintyre," that was released in 1977. The lyrics of the first verse are:

          Mull of Kintyre

          Oh mist rolling in from the sea,

          My desire

          Is always to be here

          Oh Mull of Kintyre

Mull of Kintyre Cheddar Cheese is made from the milk of cows from from a cooperative of 34 dairies on the Kintyre Peninsula and 4 dairies from the nearby island of Gigha. It has been processed in the Campbeltown Creamary since 1923. They make three cheddars: Mature, Extra Mature and Vintage. I've seen various aging lengths for each of the cheddars, but it appears that the aging is from about 12 months for the Mature to 18 to 20 months for the Vintage, with the Extra Mature somewhere in between. 

Trader Joe's is selling some of the cheddar aged 14 months, which would be either the Mature or Extra Mature. It has a nice cheddar taste, but without a real bite that some cheddars have. I've had it on sandwiches and in salads and it is marvelous. 

California Brown Pelican II

I started out with this being a post about the blue-footed booby. I thought I'd seen one mingling among the brown pelicans and gulls on the sea rocks of Puerto Penasco, Mexico on the Gulf of California. As I went through my pictures I saw a picture of a large bird I'd thought was a pelican, but then determined must be a blue-footed booby because its coloring was so much different than the other brown pelicans on the rocks. After second thoughts, I've re-determined that the bird I thought was a blue-footed booby was an immature California brown pelican, a subspecies of the brown pelican.

Here is the bird I though was a blue-footed booby, doing contortions with its head.

In looking through my pictures further, I found a picture of this pelican with other pelicans.

The pelican to the bottom right is the same one in the picture above. Note that it has a white breast, and a dark brown upper body and is missing the yellow crown, unlike the other pelicans that are left of it. 

Here is a cropped picture which isolates it. 

One of the tricky things about identifying birds is that immature birds often look completely different than mature birds and mature birds during mating season often look completely different than they look outside of mating season. 

Here are some pictures of mature California brown pelicans from Puerto Penasco. 

The dark brown neck and head, red on portions of the bill and around the eye and yellow on its crown and portions of its bill. 

This stretching pelican reveals other colors: a yellow patch at the base of the neck, a brilliant red at the base of its pouch, white surrounding the red, then separated from the yellow by dark black and a better view of the yellow crown. Spectacularly beautiful. 

The pelican at the upper left reveals how much more extensive the red at the base of the pouch is. 

Here is a grouping of 8 pelicans with the one with the particularly red neck at the top center. 

Finally, the pelican to the upper left has a completely white neck, missing the brown of the other pelicans. I'm assuming it may be in the process of maturing, just further along than the one at the top of this post? 

Mariscos El Malecon - Puerto Penasco, Mexico

During our visit to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona, Sam and I drove into Mexico to Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point) at the edge of the Gulf of California. We followed Mexico Hwy 8 all the way to the coast and then went one short block further to Circunvalacion y o Malecon Kino (which I understand to mean the bypass to the breakwater), the last street before the ocean. One of the first restaurants is Mariscos El Malecon, which happened to be the restaurant in front of the parking space we found. As we got out of the car we were surrounded by several men holding up raw shrimp and asking if we wanted some. We mentioned we wanted some cooked and one of them led us upstairs to a restaurant/bar on the second floor with a tremendous view of the ocean. 

View from the restaurant, the rocky beach next to the restaurant and hotels in the distance. 

We ordered some food and then spent time looking at the birds on the rocks below us, including various types of gulls, brown pelicans and even some blue-footed boobies, which I have always associated with the Galapagos Islands. 

First we got an 18 ounce octopus cocktail. A-1 tremendous, right up there with the best cocktail I've ever eaten. The octopus was cut into small pieces and was not chewy at all. The flavor of the cocktail is hard to describe, but it was almost a chipotle flavor without the heat, definitely a little bit different taste than most shrimp (or similar) cocktails I've tried.  

Octopus cocktail

Lots of octopus, no skimping here. 

Next we got some shrimp cooked "devil style" which was in a chipotle sauce (smoke-dried jalapeno). The salsa that went with the chips they brought to our table was very mild, so I decided hot would be the way to go to get some spice. It worked well, the sauce had a nice spice to it and was not too hot. The shrimp was cooked just a bit more than I prefer, but was still very good. We could have eaten many more.

Finally, we got some fish filets, we were told sea bass, but I would not be surprised if it was not sea bass, cooked in garlic. The fish was a little mushy, but the garlic and butter on it was very nice and we enjoyed it never-the-less. 

I love to eat seafood when the restaurant is right on the ocean and you know you are getting fresh ingredients. When I go back to Puerto Penasco, which I would love to do again later this year, I would like to go back to this restaurant both for the food and the view of the ocean. 

Not too far from the restaurant, further east down the same road, is a plaza with a large statue dedicated to the shrimpers of Puerto Penasco.

The shrimper riding a large shrimp.

Thayer's Gull

Thayer's gull breeds in the Arctic islands of Canada and winters on the Pacific coast from southern Alaska to the Gulf of California. While in Puerto Penasco, Mexico, on the northern portion of the Gulf of California, we encountered some second year immature Thayer's gulls. 

Second year wintering immature Thayer's gull.

The adult has a pale gray mantle, blackish wingtips, pink legs and extensive brown streaking on the head and neck. The head, neck breast, belly and underwings are primarily white. In summer, the head and neck turn white and the bill turns yellow with a larger red spot on the lower mandible. Juveniles are variable from light grayish brown to deep smoky brown. the wingtips are darker than the back, and the bill is all black. The juvenile has black legs that fade to pink, During the second winter the body and head are mostly white, the back has some gray, the wings are still mottled with brown, the bill is dark but has developed a pale base and the wingtips and tail are darker. 

Note the pale gray upper back and the brown mottling on the breast and neck. 

This bird has no mottling on the neck or breast and the feet and legs are a little lighter. 

This out-of-focus shot shows the light gray back.

This shows the contrast between the darker tail and the lighter mottling on the wings.

Several years ago I got pictures of these immature Thayer's gulls at Canaveral Seashore in Florida. These appear to be younger juveniles as they have more brown in their wings and on their heads.

Heermann's Gull

Heermann's gull is one of the more distinctive and beautiful gulls. We saw them recently along the rocky coast at Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico, at the northern end of the Gulf of California. 

A large group in the rocks along the coast. 

Flying near the restaurant we were eating at.

It has a medium gray body, blackish-gray wings, a tail with white edges, black feet and legs, and a red bill with a black tip. In breeding season the head is white, and in non-breeding season the head is dusky gray. Immature birds have flesh-colored or pink bills and are darker and browner than non-breeding adults. 

Beautiful, beautiful bird.

Distinctive red bill with black tip, and this one has a red ring around the eye. I assume that may be a breeding phenomenon. 

Even the inside of the bill is red. 

There are about 90,000 breeding pairs and 90% of them nest on the island of Isla Rasa in the Gulf of California, east of Baja California about the same latitude as Hermosillo. After breeding they will usually go as far north as central California, although they occasionally get as far north as British Columbia, and as far south as Guatemala. 

Front view of bill.

The IUCN rates it as "near threatened."