Cynthia G

Hmm. Until I read what kind of meatloaf you have my reply was going to be to use either horseradish or red chile. What kind of cheese did you use? What seasonings exactly?

Here in Northern New Mexico there are many people who use 400 year old Spanish idioms, words, and pronounciations. They lived in virtual isolation in the canyons and mountain villages after the Conquest. There are many, many food words that are completely unrelated to current Spanish usage. We have a Marist Brother from Madrid with us this session and he and our cook Della (whose family has lived on this mountainside for hundreds of years) cannot understand a great deal of what the other says, even though they both claim to be speaking Spanish!

Mayhaw, you seem to maintain the same kind of household I grew up in. We had a slew of kids and my 'rents never knew how many extra there would be for meals or staying over. We all learned to cook in huge quantities! My folks were also the foreign student advisors at the university where they taught, so we had people and foods dropping in from all over the world as well. A great childhood! I think your boys are very blessed!! Oh, and thanks for the book rec. I seem to always be out of new things to read even though I usually have 6 or 7 books (mainly non-fiction) going at once. Dinner looked great. Thanks for taking the pics even with the price of teenage mockery!

Hot Italian sausage, grilled peppers and onions, tossed green salad, mixed berries with cream.

Thanks for reporting in, Jen. It all sounds wonderful. Can't wait to see the photos!

That photo of your home gives an amazingly beautiful sense of place, Mayhaw. It makes me nostalgic for my childhood in the south.... which I never even had!

Breakfast burrito. Smothered. Red. Several cups of excellent coffee. Black.

Nice photos! Beautiful colors. I am enjoying your blog very much. Safe travels!

Lunch sounds great too. Next time your family is leaving you on your own for dinner, you just give me a call and I'll fly in, Jen! My paternal grandmother was a wise woman in the northern Appalachians ... comfrey is an awesomely powerful herb. But good grief, California regulates everything to death! It's not any more harmful if ingested than say... bleach and they still sell that there, right?

Worked through lunch..... so now having Mrs. May's Cashew Crunch... and weak employer-purchased decaf coffee that's about to be traded in for ice water.

Wow Jen, that looks scrumptious! May I come to your house for dinner? It is so much easier to get motivated for real cooking when there is someone to share it (besides the very willing and ever present pup). And, of course, I envy you the "free time" your enforced retirement has resulted in. By the time I finally got home last night I had no energy for cooking at all and ended up making just an omelet with extra sharp cheddar and jalapenos, served with a generous helping of red, of course. I would have loved walking into a house full of the aromas your place must have had!!

Dinner sounds and looks great, Jen. I'm so glad you're past your pork chop deprived days..... I cannot even imagine a life like that. I can't wait to see what you do with that marinating pork for tomorrow!!

Well Jen, being over 40 myself, I know exactly what your friend means. I'd simply tell your sisters GFY about the bed situation and the pedicure thing. Only certain "significant" persons in my life get to touch my feet! Back to food.... this is interesting.... are they playing any subtle healthy-eating-brainwashing-underneath-the-music in the background at yoga or is it in silence? My daily dishes are a mixed set of cobalt blue, light yellow, and white with cobalt blue and yellow flowers around the edges, all in the same shape by the same manufacturer so they mix and match really nicely. But for things like your "spaghetti" I think the white plates are really very visually lovely!

Wow, Jen, went and took a look at the virtual tour at Tigh-Na-Mara. I could go there easily! Let me know if you wanna give up your room! I was stunned that the prices on the menu in the Cedar Room are so reasonable. But maybe that's only because I'm comparing them to Santa Fe prices!

GG Mora, I also have a Big White Dog (Great Pyrenees) who wants always to be where I am, and if I'm cooking that means sitting nicely at my side waiting for any scraps that might fall! (And he needed to be taught that just because he can reach everything on the counter doesn't mean he may!) Since my hair is turning white (at 41.... prematurely, obviously!) my increasing problem is knowing whether that random stray hair is mine or Jack's!

Best food gift ever: A terra cotta mortar about 5 inches in diameter with a rock maple pestle. Made for me by an artist friend. Used almost daily for the last 15 years. Just seeing it on my counter or holding it cupped in my hand makes me so happy.

Celine, We try to schedule our trips to Taos so we can hit Michael's Kitchen (Paseo del Pueblo Norte) for a late breakfast or late lunch. Great food, lots of variety, not too expensive. Terrific pastries. Well, they were the last time I could eat them which is a couple years now. Very kid-friendly place. How old are your children? Other places that have been great, but I haven't been in a while are: Orlando's; Dragonfly. Places that get raves from friends but to which I've never been are: Momentitos de la Vida; El Monte Sagrado, a very high-end place in the new resort out on Kit Carson Road; the new Joseph's Table (La Fonda Hotel on the Plaza). Unfortunately Zen Ranch seems to have closed, but they were outstanding! Something my kids love to do there is hit the Taos Drum Company south of town a few miles. Great drums and lots of other cool stuff. Touching allowed. ~ Cynthia

These are all the same basic rules we had as kids, and that I enforced with my own. About the "no whining" rule.... when my daughter was about 3 we had a practice of going to our local college town diner every Friday night as a treat. One night she was cranky about something, I can't remember what, but when she started whining, I reminded her about the "no whining" rule once. She didn't stop, so I picked her up and we left, and I made sure she understood that her behavior had caused her to miss her favorite dinner. She never did it again, and she's now almost 18! Make sure you always follow through!

Recommendation # 1: Get out of Angel Fire! Really, drive to Taos... pretty drive and some great food over there. Not much to speak of in Angel Fire though. Pretty dismal. Let me know if you'd like Taos recs.

Ya'll are making me think I oughta play around with food pics, just for my own amusement. Photography is one of the art forms I regularly exhibit and sell, but I haven't really done the food thing at all. I love my digital (instant gratification doncha know!), but would never part with my old beat up slr. phaelon56, I was raised in the Southern Tier, so I know whereof you speak re the winter gloom. That is one thing I definitely do not miss now that I am living in Santa Fe!

This past weekend I was in Chicago for board meetings and also bored out of my mind on Saturday and Sunday evenings after returning to the hotel from very mediocre dinners. I don't have TV at home, so just for the novelty of it, I turned it on. It was set to the Food Network. I watched about 5 minutes of "Unwrapped" about vanilla (which I dearly love, but it was sooooooo boring and I didn't like the host guy, Marc Summers, at all!), saw only the final minute of an Iron Chef (so still don't get what's great about it), had to turn off the Bam!Man after exactly 90 seconds. I did however, watch an entire episode of something with Sara Moulton (Sara's Secrets?)cooking a Moroccan dinner with Rafih Benjelloun (she wasn't too bad, he was, of course, wonderful!). Other than that, I read.

I understand this having been a starving musician (and then a successful one) myself. This is not the kind of place that has a hold over crowd from earlier, and the kitchen is closed before the band starts playing around 9:30 - 10 p.m. They have live music every night and advertise this. But also because I used to work this kind of set-up myself, I would have been much happier to have just been able to stay, buy drinks so the house would benefit, and give the money that would have otherwise been a cover directly to Alex in the form of tips, because then I know that he would receive it. I have had the unfortunate experience of being totally ripped off by clubs when they "count" the covers at the end of the night. I realize some people would just stay and not contribute to the kid or the house, but it still strikes me as obnoxious to drop that kind of cash in a place and then be hit for a cover. It's not like we had each just had a glass of wine at the bar.

Um.... Lettuce=Love? No, no, no. A nice single malt scotch and a pound of fine chocolate is much more likely to get you somewhere!

Last Wednesday evening I joined Susan G and an out of town visitor at El Farol for dinner. (I'll let Susan G post about the tapas. Are you out there?) After dinner a local blues guitar kid named Alex Maryol (who is a close friend of my daughter and very, very good) was getting ready to play in the bar. We had just dropped roughly $150 on tapas and pre-dinner drinks at the bar, plus tips. On the way out we thought we might stay for a few minutes to listen to Alex. We were told by the guy at the door that we would each need to pay a $5.00 cover if we were going to stay at all! I am assuming this must be house policy because he had walked past our table and spoken to us twice, so he knew we had dined there. Now, I have been a professional musician and I know all about only making half the cover plus tips, but I thought this was a bit over the top. Had we stayed we would have spent more than that on an additional round of drinks (none of us are cheap dates) and would have certainly given Alex much more than that in tips. The attitude of the guy at the door decided instantly for us that we would leave. So El Farol lost the extra business.... and our goodwill.... and Alex lost out too. Would this have annoyed you too? Or am I just easily peeved? It just seems kind of tacky. I can't see myself going back.