Ostrich

Ostrich meat for good sportsHere's a first: a sports- nutrition food made of ostrich. Ostrim meat stick is a high-protein, low-fat, low-sugar snack that looks something like beef jerky. The taste isn't bad, either. Ostrim even has an Olympic gold medalist for a spokesman, wrestler Kurt Angle (above).There's only one catch. If your kids are like my kid, after they find out what's in it, they'll never touch it.Ostrim is available locally at GNC stores.The Fine Grind, a gourmet coffee and tea shop, has just opened at 101 S. Main St. in Bel Air. You can get 30 or so coffees by the pound, plus teas, imported candies and pastries.

His president besieged in the media, Bill Pae felt summoned to action. He had to do something for the Commander-in-Chief.fTC So he went into his workshop in Morrisville, Pa., two years ago, took some clay and made a couple of nice lapel pins smiling caricature portraits of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Then he sent them to the White House with an encouraging note suggesting that being president must be tough.Yes. For one thing, you have to figure out what to do with all this stuff people send you. Portraits in clay, wood, oil. Your face engraved on a whale's tooth or painted on stone.

WHEN I WAS working in Argentina years ago, one of the striking features of the pampas, or the open plains, was the rhea -- a large flightless bird with long legs that looks like a small ostrich.The rhea ran wild on the grassy savanna, mixing with the cattle and occasionally grazing with the sheep. For occasional sport, or for entertainment of city-slicker guests, the cowboys of the estancia might display their skills in throwing the bola (three stone balls on the ends of a leather cord) to entangle the legs of the fleeing birds and bring them down.

Diana Beuchert moves about her kitchen gathering implements and utensils, getting ready to prepare what she hopes will be standard family fare in a few more years: A nice fillet of emu.E-who?For those whose antennae are not yet tuned to the next wave, emu (pronounced EE-myoo) are large flightless birds native to Australia. They look like dinosaur rejects and taste like heaven.The taste, and the fact that emu and its cousin the ostrich are low in fat, low in cholesterol and high in protein and iron are encouraging producers, and a so-far narrow market of health-conscious gourmands, to consider these members of the ratite family "the red meat for the '90s."

Anyone who says the U.S. economy has lost its vim and vision doesn't know a thing about ostriches.The lanky birds with Barbara Bush eyes have set off a speculative boom. Lawyers, real estate agents, antique dealers: all are plunking down as much as $40,000 for a pair of the flightless birds, convinced that on a Thanksgiving not too far off, their fellow Americans will be carving ostrich legs."It's the meat of the 21st century," said Chuck Ball, executive director of the American Ostrich Association in Fort Worth, Texas.

For those uncertain about buying home accessories and antiques, Dan Carithers, a nationally known interior designer, recently offered these tips at a design seminar sponsored by Southern Accents magazine:* Be confident about exploring new styles. "Expose yourself to new things all the time."* Consider all price ranges. "Good design doesn't have to have a giant price tag."* Personalize reproductions. "Begin with store-bought furniture but glaze it, sand it, do something to take the 'new' off."

Washington -- The post-election frenzy of Newt-bashing may be drawing to a close. ''Isn't it time to get past the fulminations and examine why Mr. Gingrich drives his adversaries particularly insane?'' asks a liberal columnist in the New York Times.Another liberal writes, in Newsweek, ''Apoplexy chokes reason. Whatever his excesses of intolerance, Gingrich is not the ostrich -- the liberals are. Until they recognize that, they'll never get their heads out of the sand.''I'm all for figuring out why liberals came out on the wrong end of the November bloodbath.

Two all-ostrich patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles . . . ostrich patties?Maybe not in the United States. But McDonald's is considering using the bird -- which produces a low-fat, low-cholesterol, low-calorie red meat -- in restaurants opening in India, a Union Mills ostrich farmer told the Carroll County agricultural community yesterday."

DUBLIN, N.H. -- Here are some things you might like to know: California can expect heavy rain and snow the last week of March. Eating chocolate doesn't cause pimples. You can have a star named after you for $40. Leeches may be repugnant, but they've become a valuable source of biological insights in the laboratory.If all this is news, then you apparently haven't read the 1993 edition of The Old Farmer's Almanac, the venerable publication that for 201 years has been dispensing weather forecasts a year in advance (accuracy is 80 percent, the editors say)

HINUNANGAN, Philippines -- "Hinunangan is a paradise created by God and destroyed by man," said Noe Dadap, who grew up on this rural coast.The town's name means resting place for travelers. Inviting waves lap at its crescent beach against a backdrop of swaying palms, lowland rice paddies and verdant mountains.Hinunangan offers simple charms: a relaxed pace, small-town friendliness, scenic beauty, chirping crickets, mellow juice from a freshly-hacked coconut and boys playing basketball alongside mats with rice drying in the sun. Daybreak is heralded not by alarm clocks but by roosters crowing, dogs barking and pigs squealing for a prompt breakfast.

On a recent afternoon, close to sunset, there weren't too many visitors at the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of South Africa. I had the blustery beaches nearly to myself, save for a small colony of penguins and a capering pair of ostriches. These ostriches were the first I'd ever seen in the wild. The one with black feathers, I later learned, was male; another, gray-plumed, a female. I was delighted by their odd, loping gait; their small heads jutting about at the end of long, twisting necks; and their protuberant eyes.

If it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken, who could possibly be up to this task: making a $2,500 jeweled evening bag out of an ostrich egg? The tough guy's chick, that's who. While describing some of Nancy Grasmick's fancy-schmancy knickknacks the other day, I mentioned that Frank Perdue's widow makes "faux Faberge eggs," one of which sits in the state school superintendent's living room. Fowl! cried Mitzi Perdue, all the way from Paris, where she was visiting friends. "No, no, no, my goodness, no!"

The Southwestern burger served at Cirella's at Saks Fifth Avenue in Huntington Station, N.Y., is both juicy and uncommonly flavorful. Delivered on a brioche bun, it's revved up with cumin and chile, topped with red onions and a melt of Swiss and dolloped with mango chutney. The surprise? It's fashioned of ground chicken. And, according to executive chef Anthony Colombo, it accounts for 30 percent of burger orders. A number of alluring alternative burgers are almost staples these days on menus and home grills.

It was the 1996 movie Swingers that gave us the immortal words, "You're so money, and you don't even know it." In this season of baseball free agency, it's time to recall some individuals who thought they were more money than they actually turned out to be. In 1993, infielder Jody Reed rejected the Dodgers' offer of $7.8 million for three years, then, after changing agents, wound up signing a minor league contract with the Milwaukee Brewers that was...

IT IS OFTEN said that a teacher learns more from his pupils than he imparts. The adage was proved true for me this summer as I led 19 San Francisco teenagers through a five-week exploration of writing, theater, movement and voice. We gathered in a tiny theater with the mission of developing a play about folks who feel shut out - from cliques, from society, from the norm. We would address the gulf between artistic and athletic prowess, between economic sectors, between the privileged and the repressed.

ACONSULTANT, somebody said, takes your watch to tell you the time. Leave it to the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association to spin new absurdity into the joke. BACVA has hired the consultant, handed over the watch and still doesn't know what time it is. It doesn't want to know. Do not be amazed by the fact that BACVA is conflicted about the highly negative report card it got a few weeks ago from Performance Management Inc., of Stamford, Conn. Reputations and egos are at stake.

ZOO ZONE What's for dinner? Ostrich eat plants, roots, seeds, and insects. Little Brain Big Bird... The ostrich is the largest bird, but it has a very small brain -- one-fourth the size of a human brain, smaller in size than the bird's eye! Ostriches eat vegetation, but they also ingest rocks and stones to help digest their food. WILD FACTS Do you know? How tall are ostriches? Answer: Some ostriches reach 8 feet in height. Learn more! Visit the ostrich at The Baltimore Zoo. Read "The Lovely Lioness and Ostrich Chicks" by Verna Aadema.

Even before there was an Easter, there were decorated eggs. Pagans used them in spring festivals. Many ancient cultures dyed eggs, exchanged them and generally considered them symbols of fertility. Their link to Easter is centuries old -- a simple yet colorful symbol of man's rebirth. To celebrate the season, The Sun asked a handful of people -- all with links to eggs -- to try their hand at decorating an egg or two for Easter. The results ranged from the traditional dye job (shades of the eternal Paas)

OSTRICHES or chardonnay? Raspberries or hemp? Agricultural researchers are scrambling for alternatives to the dying tobacco industry that has sustained Southern Maryland farms since Colonial times. Maryland farmers who plant some 8,000 acres of tobacco face a shrinking demand and faltering prices. Through the end of November, they can sign up for a state buyout or phase-out of their traditional "sot-weed" production, an $80 million program funded by the national settlement of states with cigarette manufacturers.

Ostrich meat for good sportsHere's a first: a sports- nutrition food made of ostrich. Ostrim meat stick is a high-protein, low-fat, low-sugar snack that looks something like beef jerky. The taste isn't bad, either. Ostrim even has an Olympic gold medalist for a spokesman, wrestler Kurt Angle (above).There's only one catch. If your kids are like my kid, after they find out what's in it, they'll never touch it.Ostrim is available locally at GNC stores.The Fine Grind, a gourmet coffee and tea shop, has just opened at 101 S. Main St. in Bel Air. You can get 30 or so coffees by the pound, plus teas, imported candies and pastries.