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February 18, 2007

Green Chile Heaven

Hello. I'm back, with my riveting tales of frying eggs and altering basic recipes.

I will spare you a moment-by-moment description of making the 1-2-3-4 Yellow Cake from Joy of Cooking (which should really be called 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-wtf Yellow Cake). I made it in a last-ditch attempt to make D a Valentine's Day present, and it was damned complicated. It resulted in bits of cake batter on the floor and cabinets due to several accidents with the rubber spatula and the mixer. At least it was rubber this time -- I remember an early incident involving a horrible metal-on-metal grinding sound and a mutilated metal implement. The resulting cupcakes and lemon icing were really good, although I'm still curious about why they shrank during cooking (something to do with the folded in egg white mixture, perhaps). It was certainly better than boxed yellow cake mix, but you need to have a good deal of patience and time on your hands to make the real thing.

D is on a serious green chile kick. This is good, because I've been overscheduled and too exhausted to cook meals. I spent part of this week in Boston and have also started taking an early morning marketing class on Saturdays, so I was completely beat last night and slept until nearly 1 p.m. today. When I finally dragged myself to the kitchen, coffee was made (!), and all of the ingredients for New Mexican-style huevos rancheros were ready to go. D had made a pinto bean side dish, the green chile sauce, and had corn tortillas ready to heat up in butter (I really don't deserve to be spoiled in this way). We got the eggs going, and then assembled each dish with all of the above plus some cheese, and had a decadent breakfast.

Tonight, in keeping with the green chile theme, D is made wonderful green chile hamburgers with some sort of Mexican cheese. The flavor of the chiles was really nice and they weren't too spicy for me at all. Now he is scouring the internet in the hope of finding a source of frozen green chiles in the city, as our imported tub is half gone. Whole Foods is a potential source.

Which reminds me: For my marketing class, I've picked Whole Foods as the company to study for a final report (I figured something food-related could hold my interest). They have built a great brand, so it should be interesting to take a closer look at how they did it.

Update: No photo yet, but a friend of D's who grew up in New Mexico has graciously given us canned green chiles that relatives brought to her recently. (Thanks, Adrian!) I see more green chiles in my future.

Posted by csageday at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2007

New Mexico

My idea of spending a couple of extra days in New Mexico was a good one. I needed a change of scenery, and the difference between New York and Santa Fe is dramatic. Also, Derek found an amazing B&B outside of Santa Fe. Here's a quick round-up of what we did.

After my conference ended, we spent Friday afternoon in Albuquerque and Friday evening and Saturday in Santa Fe (we rented a car and drove -- Santa Fe is an hour away). I did have altitude sickness for the first couple of days, which manifested itself in a headache, a dizzy/disoriented feeling, and a desperate need to be either in bed or in a bath for most of the day. This made our dinner at Ambrozia Thursday night (which came highly recommended) not quite as enjoyable as it could have been. My soup--a duo of cheddar/ale and black bean--was great, but I felt like my head was under water.

Several fellow conference attendees recommended shopping at Gertrude Zachary, so we stopped there before heading to Santa Fe on Friday. It's a local chain of jewelry stores with staff expertly trained in helping you part ways with vast sums of money for tiny silver things that you may or may not wear when you come to your senses. We were there for over an hour, while I agonized over prices and D exhibited the patience of a saint. The buyer's remorse began the minute I left the store.

Next, we went to the Atomic Museum. We couldn't decide whether to pay to go inside or not – there's something odd about a museum dedicated to advances in technology that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. It also looked pretty low tech – more like a dry cleaner than a museum. Inside, it reminded me of a middle school science fair -- slightly worn exhibits sat next to 50s era weapons and bomb shelter canned goods. Good-natured military folk hung around, ready to talk about the marvelous advent of the atomic bomb. In the gift shop, we browsed through military paraphernalia and wondered why our friend had requested a Little Boy wine stopper, only to realize later that she was joking about it precisely because it was in poor taste, not because she actually wanted a relic of American insensitivity in her kitchen (I think she'll appreciate the colorful flyers advertising "scientific" birthday parties at the museum).

When we finally left Albuquerque and headed to Santa Fe, I began to understand why so many artists call New Mexico home (and they really do – there are galleries everywhere). Everything from the smells to the food to the landscape is so different from anything on the east or west coast. Instead of trees and grass and endless suburbs, there are large expanses of shrub-dotted, snow-covered hills with the occasional cluster of orange adobe buildings or cliffs of red clay. In urban areas, nearly all the homes and businesses are one-story buildings, usually made in the adobe style.

The unique fireplace smell I mentioned is from local piñon (pine nut) trees. It's as strong as incense. I wanted to take some branches from our stash and bring them home but that seemed sort of pointless.

Our B&B in Santa Fe was called Hacienda Las Barrancas. It's a large house a good twenty minutes from Santa Fe with a long porch, a hot tub out back, and a converted barn.

Tim and Emily, our very friendly and helpful hosts, live in the barn and have renovated the house for use as a B&B. They are both tremendously well suited to running a B&B -- they were so welcoming and the house was so comfortable and warm that I wouldn't have minded hanging out there all day. They're both artists, and they've put a lot of care into making the rooms and common areas in the house appealing. They also had great recommendations for things to do, and the breakfasts were heavenly. I liked the place so much that I've been trying to convince other people to go, even though it's entirely impractical to fly to Santa Fe for a B&B experience. Oh, and did I mention that we had a fireplace in our bedroom? It was freezing in Santa Fe last weekend, so the fireplace and hot tub (even though using the hot tub required a mad dash through snow in our bathing suits) were put to good use. (After we figured out how to turn the hot tub jets off we heard some high-pitched, human-like hooting and find out the next morning that it was made by coyotes).

We wanted to go hiking, so T&E sent us in the direction of the Bandelier National Monument Saturday. It was cold and there was plenty of snow on the route we took, but the sun was out and the rock formations, animal tracks, caves, and foot-carved paths through the rock made for an interesting hike. Photos are on Flickr.

We headed to Santa Fe next and went to the Georgia O'Keefe museum (nice to see so many originals) and a high-end photography gallery (Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Weston). We made it to the central plaza in time to spend more money on turquoise jewelry (although this time I was buying it from the artist and it was cheaper). We were too late to visit the many, many galleries on Canyon road, but we did gawk at the old ceiling beams and general charm of LaFonda's -- a very old hotel in the center. Finally, we ate at The Shed, and although the food was great, I can't say I enjoyed the hour wait (I'm not sure it's the norm, but they give you a beeper and by the time we got a table, I was writing letters to the management in my head about how it should be called The Shack and why the hell weren't we seated at that empty table for four 20 minutes ago, etc. This is my typical reaction to being hungry while in the proximity of food. The beeper setup must mean it's a tourist attraction, though).

A note about New Mexican food: New Mexicans put green chile in absolutely everything. I had green chile stew at The Shed, and green chiles with my huevos rancheros. On Sunday morning, we had fabulous blue corn, piñon, and green chile pancakes. When I ordered a plain old BLT at the airport, it came with green chile in it. Tim and Emily told us stories of buying huge sacks of chiles at harvest time. "It's a staple," they said. It's the New Mexican equivalent of ketchup.

We picked up some green chiles and other New Mexican goodies at a supermarket on the way to the airport on Sunday. I had to try Emily's muffin recipe from Epicurious (she makes fabulous baked things) first, but I think pozole may be next. About the muffins, though -- it's my third try with muffins, and these are way better than the previous batches. The right recipe is everything (so go print the recipe).

Posted by csageday at 01:20 AM | Comments (1)

February 02, 2007

Albuquerque

I've been spending most of my time here trying to look and act professional at my conference, so I've barely been outside. I also think I had altitude sickness the first two days (argh). Still, D has arrived and we had a nice dinner last night and I noticed that smell that people talk about -- a different type of wood is burned in fireplaces here and it smells like incense in the street at night. Can't wait to get to Santa Fe -- I've gotten wonderful recommendations for places to go, eat. etc. Oh, and the landscape is, just... different. Didn't get a photo from the plane, but it's flat, flat, flat, and then mountains rise dramatically out of the desert and are dotted with bushes and snow. You can see for miles.

Posted by csageday at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)