gfron1

As the pace of preparation picks up (nice alliteration), my meals are becoming less worth talking about. Today for lunch I had an Indian meal to go. These are my favorite hiking meals because you can boil them in water and put some tea bags in the pot and have no clean up at all. I served it with another tea sample from Ming - lychee green. His lychee black is one of my two favorites (the other being jasmine pearl), but this wasn't quite as good as the black. Still nice, but I'm not a fan of greens. I'm off for a dog walk.

Two little bits of info. When I woke up this morning, following yesterday's storm, the cars and windows were covered in dust. I assumed it was a bad case of our normal dust, but apparenlty its volcanic ash from Chile! How exciting, but now I have to go clean my store windows. This morning I was requested to make a birthday cake for someone in town. I've always turned these down since I'm not a pro, but her request was unique enough that I didn't think anyone else in town could do it, so I'm gonna take. I told her she can make a donation to the high school culinary program in lieu of payment to me. The cake is needed next weekend and I'm already running crazy, but I'm a glutton, so what the hey! And, the chocolate arrived this morning - geez doesn't look like much, and we added three more registrants since the interview! Only 2 spots left.

Any chance we can pics? It sounds great. Are the customers mostly Asian or mixed?

Please no chiles! - the carbon footprint of chiles from here, sent there and brought back here would be too much for my conscience to handle! My store just switched to corn bags to compensate for just that sort of thing! The go go dancers on the other hand Verjuice is bringing us buffalo which I hope she'll report on. The ranch she is going to is famous for its white bison which was recently on Leno. White Bison is ironically also the name of a 12-step program that my centers run for recovery in the Native American tradition. I just got back from the radio interview. It went super and the DJ ended with a song called Scotch and Chocolate - some bluegrass diddy. Very fun. The buzz is definitely in the air - Kerry's class is almost full and I'm fielding lot's of calls.

The end of the storm These are the Burro Mountains, and home of the famous Tyrone open pit mine. Jumanggy - that painting is not uncommon around here - its part of the Dia de los Muertes celebration (Day of the Dead). You'll see countless references to skeletons during our dinner on Friday since one of the hosts, Carlos, is from Mexico City.

The weather report is showing 60s for this weekend - woo hoo!!! I tried that tea for breakfast and it was exactly what it said it was...however, now I have an upset tummy.

First of all welcome - great topic for your first post! Did you let the batter sit long between mixing and piping? Is it possible that some separating happened? Can we assume the sheets were all the same temp, they were all allowed to sit in a comparable draft/non draft? Sun? etc? With sinking, my first guess would be inconsistency in the batter for some reason. It could also be the macaron gods making sure you didn't get too cocky.

As has been said before - it is important for both the health department and restaurant to know - presenting it fairly so as to not jump to conclusions, because if there are multiple cases of this happening, then both parties need to know so they can respond appropriately.

Tonight I inked the deal for our site for Friday's dinner. This house will not let you down. Our store shot a cooking show there a few years ago using my climbing partner who is in film school as the director. It ran on cable access to great fame (both viewers saw it). Our host, Larimore, has been sick, but he assures me he will be well by then, which is great since he is an outstanding host. Switching gears. One of the fun aspects to owning a store is the samples. Today I recieved chocolate bon bons and tea. The bon bons came from a company called Sweet Life Chocolates. The maker spends half of the year here in town and the other half up in a cold state somewhere. I found them to be a bit large for my liking, but very smooth and well flavored. The other sample came from our tea provider - Vital Tea Leaf in San Fran. Ming is a Tea Master, and a fabulous entertainer. When Tyler and I visited his shop two years ago, we enjoyed it so much, we walked out with $150 in teas. We then promptly came home and opened our own miniature version of his tea room using his teas. I'll be sure to host a little tea tasting for the gang. Ming sent a bunch of samples including this High Mountain which he describes as "Refreshing green tea with a kick of fresh green flavor. Mellow green tea great for relaxing and cleansing. For those who are interested in becoming strong tea drinkers." I'll give it a try in the morning.

Are you doing a small amount? I get mine directly from them.

Roswell huh....get ready to buy your tourist t-shirt. Verjuice has a bit more time here than Kerry, so I'm going to show her some of my favorite food finds - very likely El Rey. I've built it up to be the king of butchers (get it?), but it won't compare to a huge Chicago butcher or NYC butcher. But these guys have moved in from LA and are doing it all themselves. If you remember way back to when Ling challenged me to make an animal product dessert/aka meat, they were my go to guys. They to order processed a cow for me to get true suet (not just fat). Its a small little shop but its fresh and done with true craftsmanship. Folks around here say they have the best carne asada anywhere.

Finally scored the cheese for Saturday...not my greatest find, but very approrpriate...more on that on Saturday. By the way, I get all of my cheese from San Fran through my wholesale distributor. They have easily 500 different cheeses for me to select from. Unfortunately, no chocolate cheese for this order.

The snow has come and gone. Its all melted. Just little sprinkles now. For lunch I thought I should make sure my favorite Mexican places are still good. There's no one good Mexican restaurant, but everyone does one or two things very well. Since we have a huried schedule I hit my favorite burrito joint. Don Juan's. He used to be a guy in his car on the side of the highway selling out of a cooler, but now he has a little shack that is about 10x15 feet. Today they had a special Avacado burrito, and then my favorite - the chile relleno burrito. The Chile Relleno buritto is a whole relleno inside of a tortilla with beans, rice, etc. Normally its too hot for me to finish, but today it was mild enough for a Canadian And just so they get their props, here are the pooches - Lexi on the right and Lucia on the left. Lexi is a blue tick hound/blue heeler mix. Lucia is a min-pin-poo (miniature pinscher/poodle). And Lucia always demands a bit more "me" time. How cute is that little beast!

Because we're in the middle of nowhere, today is about preparing for procurement. We don't have easy access to many ingredients, so we're trying to nail down the menu and get requests off to Verjuice who can pick up big city things at Whole Foods. So while I sat over my breakfast (dessert leftovers) of pumpkin cheesecake with pomegranate seeds... (I know this is totally the opposite of the brand new blog that just started on dieting.) I was thinking about perspective. Most people on eGullet have the perspective of their home towns and states/provinces, etc. And I think when people look at maps of states in the Western US, they don't realize the immensity of these land masses. The four counties that make up our region are larger than some Northeastern states. The Gila Wilderness that surrounds us is also larger than some of those states. So let's start with New Mexico itself. You can see us in the bottom left. Albuquerque and Santa Fe are higher up and I circled El Paso since it and Tucson are the next closest big cities. ABQ is 4 hours away at a minimum. SF is 5 hours. Las Cruces is 2. Tucson and El Paso are both 3 hours. Las Cruces is getting to be a bigger city, but its not quite there in terms of amenities. There are many surrounding towns, most being about an hour away (Deming, Lordsburg) and they don't offer much that Silver doesn't already have. But for my paying job I run meth treatment programs in all of those communities which means one hour commutes each way a few times each week. Big city folks do that too, but they only go a few miles. Then there's the Gila Wilderness. Its huge and its old. Its so remote that you can pick any of the hundreds of trails and never see another human being. Every now and then you do and its kind of scary. The Wilderness has many claims to fame, but the Gila Cliff Dwellings are the most notable. We won't have time to get up there since its a 2 hour drive in windy mountain roads in the winter. Too bad because there's a great little German restaurant halfway up and lot's of hot springs. Here is a map of HALF of the wilderness. Work calls, so more later. BTW, its raining which is fairly rare and they're predicting snow. For us that means ground cover that will be gone by lunch.

Tonight I had dinner at the home of Janey Katz and Suzi Calhoun - artists. Janey's work has been featured in national catalogs - she cuts up old cars and turns them into animals (Critters in the Hood). Suzi does ceramics which you'll see in a sec. They're dear friends and the ones who shared space with our store when we first opened. This was my chance to talk with them about locations for Friday's meal and some meal planning. Silver is a big arts community. The history of our town in order: Mimbreano, Apache, mining, ranching, hells angels (70s), hippies (70s/80s), artists (80/90s), and early retirees. All of those aspects still exist in our community. Most any house will be filled with art here. Janey and Suzi's house actually was an old fort that held Geronimo before he escaped. Because they are gallery owners, they have oodles of fun art like this ceramic fast food trash. Janey also has a thing for stuffed animals. She only buys them when they're moth eaten at garage sales - she's actually very anti-hunting. This is Ernie. And look ma, there's a skunk on that fridge. The other thing you'll find in every house is dogs. Not dog (I don't know anyone with only one), but multiple. They've lost a couple this year to age - they're pug people except for Darma. Darma lost all of her hair last week to Suzi who is spinning it at her gallery and making scarfs and hats. They still have Moana (below) and Tyrone. Anyway, walk in there's the obligatory gauc (in Suzi's bowl) and salsa. Dinner itself was salad, squash and steak. I'm not much of a red meat eater. Its not political or ethical, its just my preference. But tonight was a humongous TBone (which everyone was saying is very rare to find here). Dessert was a flourless bought at Bad Ass Bakery. Her slogan is "If you don't like it, make it your own damn self." I usually do. Then I had to run to be with a friend who's dog in not doing well. He just lost his other dog a few months ago. We do a lot of pet comforting around here. I'm off for bed.

ding, ding, ding - we have a winner! It was an egg white based cake and it felt like it rised (?) too quickly to me also. In my altitutude adjustment I decreased the leavening quite a bit (40%), but virtually no difference. My problem with the tuiles is that they bunch or break. I know I overcooked the edges (the browning) but I think my bend is too extreme. Still I want to make a cute little pistachio case.

I'll be talking a bit more about Silver tomorrow. We're on a bunch of top 10 places to live lists. When you were in Deming, did you get to el Rey Carniceria? I think its the best butcher shop I've seen in two decades. They also have one of the best burgers I've had in ages down in Columbus at the Mexican border. And as far my store link (its not shilling since we do less than 1% of our business through the site) it works for me - no password needed, but we're getting ready to overhaul it so we can get 2% of our business through there.

I'm a bit sweeted out right now, but I'll be fine in the morning - no need to send cards. This is a benchmark point, however, for me and the book. I'm finished with the Cakes and Tortes section and Pies and Tarts. There are a few recipes in each that I haven't done, but I'm just not motivated to make one more batch of buttercream - plus that was getting expensive. Now I move on to Warm Desserts.

Not much to say about this dessert since its not going to be part of the weekend - it will be long gone by then, but here's Amernick's Pumpkin Cheesecake with Pecan Squares. I just need to find someone to give it to.

Pumpkin Cheesecake with Pecan Squares - I have been fighting this dessert for 3 months! Back in October I thought, "I'll hold off until Thanksgiving." Then I decided I didn't want to do it. But I said, "Well, it will still be good for Christmas." But I just wasn't excited about it. I mean, I'm just not a pumpkin guy or a bar guy. So I procrastinated and procrastinated. But today I decided I had to get it done and move on with my life (it was my Catholic guilt bothering me). Then when the cheesecake came out of the oven I said, "See! I knew it would suck" as I ate a small piece slightly warm out of the oven. So I went to walk the dogs and chill it a bit. Her directions said to cut the cheesecake and pecans squares separately and assemble - blahhh! That's a bunch of bull - I'm not spending my time assembling a dessert I don't even want or like. So I carefully held both components on their sides and merged them - very nice handiwork if I do say so myself. Then I just cut them with a hot knife. And just to make sure I still hated them I took a bite of the assembled scraps (post trimming). Damn - its good! Who knew?! The one downside to this recipe is that I made a 3/4 sized version and its still huge. Anyway, drama aside, here it is. I think I'm done for the weekend

Let's talk a bit of food. Silver City definitely adopts its pace from just south in Mexico. Our community is about 50/50 Hispanic/Anglo. Family, friends, community far out-trump work and productivity (Yes, I'm kind of an oddball overachiever). So a lazy morning is typical. For me, I'm up with the sun and normally whipping up a dessert component to be assembled later that night. Today was no exception. You'll notice the hand-crank grinder. It was a gift by Kevin Knox, author of Coffee Basics, who lived here for a short while and quickly befriended us and our specialty food store. He also taught us the correct way to brew coffee and tea (not that you'll see me do it correctly, but he did teach us). I'm working on a dessert from the Amernick book. For some reason I have procrastinated on this dessert for weeks and weeks. It will be done today! Like always it will be one piece for me, and the rest to friends and neighbors. This is going to be a huge pumpkin pecan bar thing (11x17). In the Mukka Express topic people always want to know if these things work. For me - everytime, and I'm not a coffee guy. But, you put enough chocolate in anything and I'm happy as a clam. Today I used a locally roasted Ethiopian and sweetened it with a great syrup from Montana called Liquid Planet. We actually have two great roasters in town - A.I.R. and Bornsen. Both roast dark and so appeal to that type of coffee drinker. For me it really doesn't matter, but it means we always have fresh coffee. At home we usually fill up with Peet's. So I'm all caffeined up now and back from sharing lemon caramel tartlets at church, walked the dogs on their first walk and am settling down to so more prep for this weekend.

Here is the celery juice. The first is fresh from the juicer - pretty ain't it. And this is after boiling it down from 4 cups to 1 cup.

I didn't know what they were so I looked it up on McCrae's Blue Book

Has anyone else had the fantasy of opening the eGullet Café? I know there are a lot of lurkers who think we're all pros, but the vast majority of us aren't and I always chuckle when people say they like my desserts since I'm eGullet taught and only 2 years into this little obsession of mine. I remember my early disasters - and my current ones that you either don't see or you see an extreme close up photo

Standing up for the authors here...when I interviewed Ann Amernick about her book she said she had all of the recipes in metric and the publisher changed them all to " housewife." She was able to negotiate a mixed format but was very unhappy about the conversion. She's a fairly big name with a succesful previous publishing history, so this is a much bigger battle than most authors can handle on their own.