Ramblings of a Non-Native Texan

The Fort Worth Zoo is one of the top zoos in the United States, and last week, I had the chance to visit it with my son and his kindergarten class. Field trips ftw! As bus after bus rolled up to the zoo, coming from as far away as Dallas, I realized that this really MUST be a great zoo (Dallas has its own zoo, but it must be pretty disappointing if the school systems there are bringing kids an hour away to Fort Worth).

Even with every school in the metroplex apparently in attendance, my son and I had a great time and managed to see almost everything before it was time to go. Here are some pics of the animals we got to see… lions and tigers and parakeets!

Lions relax at the Fort Worth Zoo.

Even in Texas, there are penguins.

A couple of tigers play in the water.

My son got to feed a few parakeets!

If you’re ever in North Texas, I highly recommend visiting the Fort Worth Zoo. It’s not quite at the level of San Diego, St. Louis or the National Zoo, but it’s pretty awesome on its own.

Donuts... So very yummy...

I’ve lived in a few places during my life: I grew up in the St. Louis Metro area, went to college in Virginia, had my kids in Florida, and now live in Texas. I also have a wanderlust that pushes me to travel whenever I can, so I’ve seen many corners of the country, and all of them are unique. But I have never been anywhere that has as much of a fascination with donuts as Texas.

When I first moved here, I remember thinking, “Aw, how cute, the local strip mall has a little donut shop!” And then I noticed that the next strip mall down the road also had a donut shop. And then the next one. Donut shops here, as it turns out, are as plentiful as dry cleaners and nail salons. I was floored by the sheer number of shops where anyone can buy fried, sugary dough.

And these aren’t chains we’re talking about… There are very few Dunkin’ Donuts or Krispy Kremes here. Most of these shops are little mom-and-pop places where the locals come for their pastry fix. And come they do, in droves. Most mornings, there’s a line at the counter in every shop I pass.

The shops all open early (around 5 or 6 am) and close by noon every day. If you want a donut at 3 pm, forget about it. But if you come when they’re open, you can get everything from kolaches and sausage rolls to eclairs and glazed donut holes. Near my house, there’s a Starbucks and a donut shop a few doors down from each other, coexisting in harmony. It makes for some amazingly tempting smells when I walk past them on Sunday mornings.

It really seemed to me when I moved here that the donut shops were taking over, but I had only my perception to go on. A few days ago, I decided to test that perception. First, I went to Wikipedia and looked up the population of Dallas and that of St. Louis, Missouri. Sticking with just the cities and not their greater metro areas, I found a population of 1.3 million in Dallas and 360,000 in St. Louis. Fair enough. Then I went to yellowpages.com and did a search for “donuts” in both cities. Using just the raw search results, I came up with this:

Number of donut shops in St. Louis: 33.

Number of donut shops in Dallas: 435.

If you account for the differences in population by taking a per-capita measure, the comparison works out like this:

St. Louis has one donut shop for every 10,900 people.

Dallas has one donut shop for every 2,988 people.

Now, I’m not saying that St. Louis is a mecca of healthy eating. Far from it! The city that brings you toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, frozen custard, barbecued ribs and its own style of pizza cannot be considered a nutritionist’s delight. But clearly, the fascination with donut shops is unique to Texas, or at least the corner of Texas that I’m in.

So if you want toasted ravioli, head to St. Louis. But if you want a white paper box full of greasy, sugary, fried goodness, Texas is the place to be. You can’t miss the nearest donut shop… It’s as close as the nearest strip mall.

Before I lived in Texas, I’d never been to Galveston. Now, my boyfriend and I try to get down there at least once a year. It’s about a four-hour drive from here (which is nothing at all in a state this big), and we get a nice taste of the coast without having to fly anywhere. I love taking my kids down there, too, as they get bored with the space center after half a day, but they NEVER get bored with the beach!

Galveston Beach

Last year, Hurricane Ike came through and caused some major damage. It didn’t get as much press as it probably should have, but the mess was widespread, and the locals are still rebuilding. Now that it’s been almost a year since then, it sounds like a lot of the area has been rebuilt (where it could be, at least), and we’re eager to go back down there again. I hope we take a weekend in June or July to traipse down there and soak up the culture. And the kids are eager for another trip, too (but they say they’d rather fly to Houston this time, as the four-hour drive is still too long to their young selves).

More fun pics of Galveston trips in years past…

The garden at the B&B we love

beautiful colors on the rooftops of the Strand

The very historic, slightly creepy cemetery

If you ever get a chance to go to Galveston, I recommend it. It’s not Florida or California (if it’s just beaches you’re after), but it’s got a charm and history all its own!

The Biggest Loser on NBC

The seventh season of the NBC show “The Biggest Loser” just ended. In case you live in a bomb shelter in rural Iowa and haven’t seen TV (or anything else) in a while, the point of the show is helping obese people lose weight and develop healthy habits for diet and exercise. It tends to be drama-filled, emotional television… Parts of it feature intense workouts and physical challenges for the cast members, but other parts depict heavy conversations and “who doesn’t get along with whom” hysterics. And each show has at least one significant product placement, like Multigrain Cheerios, in a Truman Story-esque sponsorship that encourages the show’s cast members to incorporate the product into their now-healthy lifestyles. Someone is kicked off the show each week, and in the end, whoever loses the highest percentage of their body weight wins a big cash prize and the title of “The Biggest Loser.” As you no doubt know (except for you, Mr. Bomb Shelter Guy), it’s a wildly popular bit of entertainment.

Before this year, I had never watched this show. I don’t know why… I was out of the loop on most TV shows for a while after moving to Texas a few years ago (I’ve still never seen an episode of Lost), and maybe that’s why I never picked up on the “Biggest Loser” craze. But this year, I caught a few episodes, and then a few more. I could do without the drama, tears and “I just don’t know why so-and-so doesn’t LIKE me!” speeches, but the parts about exercising, overcoming obstacles and eating right were enough to keep me tuned to the channel. It was fascinating, watching these unhealthy, dangerously-overweight people lose half of themselves (and gain a lot of self-esteem) over the course of a few months. Lest the change be too gradual to really notice, the show’s producers included first-week footage of each contestant every time they weighed in, showing the dramatic difference between “then” and “now.” According to the San Francisco Examiner, this season featured the oldest, youngest, heaviest and sickest contestants to date, which made for pretty extreme improvements for those who stuck with the program. 

Helen wins The Biggest Loser, from realitytvworld.com

The woman who won last night, 48-year-old Helen, was not the person I expected to win. I thought the much younger, slightly sneaky former model, Tara, would take the crown. But Helen persevered, and in the end, she had dropped 140 pounds, or 55% of her starting body weight. For all you English Lit majors who suck at math, that’s MORE THAN HALF of her body that she lost on the show. She got $250,000 for her efforts, but even better than that, she got health, a longer life, and a much better outlook. Things like that are priceless. If you want to read more about Helen, her bio is at Huliq.

Most of last night’s episode was about weighing in the contestants who had gotten kicked off earlier to see how well they did at home. I think that’s where the charm of this show lies: These are just regular people, people with weight issues who are used to feeling bad about themselves and who manage to turn it around and get healthier and happier. It’s a very simple message to those watching the show. If these people can do it, anyone can, and the info you need to get started is part of the show itself. Here’s what you eat, here’s how you exercise, here’s how you change your way of thinking and living so that you can actually LIVE. It’s inspirational, and with the growing (no pun intended) obesity epidemic in this country, it’s timely.

I’m not overweight, but I’m not as healthy as I’d like to be. I don’t eat much junk food, but I do have a sweet tooth, and I’m not a big fan of exercise. I keep telling myself I’ll start an exercise program and stick to it eventually, and I’ll go a few weeks at a time of keeping up the jogging and weight lifting, but something always comes up that diverts me from making a true lifestyle change. It’s easy to put off getting healthier when you’re generally pretty healthy… you can convince yourself that you’re “good enough.” Living in Texas doesn’t help, since there seem to be a lot of people here who can’t or won’t maintain a healthy weight. And since no major health issues run in my family, I don’t even have the motivation of risk factors to get me off my butt. But “The Biggest Loser” actually does motivate me. The contestants sweat, strain and suffer through really tough workouts, but they survive and come out healthier and better off. It makes me want to do that, too. They make me think that it’s worth it. Because, after all, it is.

The next season of “The Biggest Loser” starts this fall, and they’re already casting for the season after that. Potential cast members must have at least 100 pounds to lose, but even those who don’t fall into that category (or who don’t make the show’s cut) can benefit from tuning in. I think I’ll add this show to my fall TV rotation. And maybe I’ll watch it from the treadmill, where I’m making my own lifestyle change.

If you don’t live in Texas, you probably know many of the same stereotypes about Texans that I used to know. I NEVER thought I’d live here. And now I do.

Some of the stereotypes are rooted in truth… others were surprisingly false. I’ll use this space to talk about my experiences as a Northerner living in this pretty fascinating state. I’ll also babble about anything that catches my fancy, from my dogs and my chocolate fetish to current events and news. Enjoy!