birder53

Marchi's Restaurant on 31st St. & 2nd Ave. is Italian with no menu. Not fancy but always good food and excellent service. It was always a good spot for a family dinner where you didn't want to spend time choosing what to eat, just enjoying the food and your company. It isn't adventurous at all. They've been serving the same menu as long as I can remember. It is good food. Here is a link to a review. Marchi's

Former NJ person here. Can't say I blame anyone from NY for not venturing into NJ for a meal when there are so many great options closer to home. Maybe it is lazy, but adding a commute along with the extra time and expense to get a meal just never appealed to me. An "expedition" for lunch that tied in with another activity usually appealed to me. I've driven to Philly just to get a sandwich at Dinic's and planned trips to Maine around lobster. Dinner needs to be less stressful, which means close to home for me. Once I moved from NY to NJ we only ventured back to visit family. Didn't miss it at all! NYers who never make to to NJ for a meal will live happily ever after. This might mean I'm not a die hard foodie, but the easier it is to get to and back from any great meal, the better.

When moving this past summer, we drove with a bottle of Strega in the car since it didn't fit in any of the boxes going on the moving van. After an 8 hour drive and delivery pizza "the best pizza in Zanesville, OH" we decided to open the bottle. Ice and strega. Don't know why it took us so many years to finally try it! It was tasty and refreshing. Reminiscent of chartreuse. We almost finished it by the end of the three day drive.

I'll second Cafe Pasquals for breakfast but I also like it for lunch. The grilled chicken sandwich with manchego cheese, carmelized onions and jalapenos on chile corn bread is fantastic! Their green chili cheese burger is even better than Bobcat Bite, but it's also pricier. The dinner menu and atmosphere just isn't as interesting for me. We just had breakfast at the Panty for the first time this week and it was great. Tecolote is okay. I like the egg dishes better than the french toast that every one had raved about.

Thanks! My recipe used a combination of mild and hot green chilies. The peppers I bought at the farmers market had a nice level of heat. I added some frozen green chilies from the local supermarket which were a bit milder. The final product was still pretty spicy, but if you can find frozen green chilies in your neck of the woods, that could help temper your current batch.

Thanks Jensen and Andie. I considered making a "slurry" as I did for the green chili, but figured the recipe would have included that for the stew if needed. Since both recipes came from the same chef that seemed logical. I think I will add something when I make the next batch. I'll start by braising my pork and sweating the onions and garlic next time as well as adding some chicken stock to the mix. The final stew was tasty, but not the "wow" flavors I was hoping for.

Congratulations! We also have bags of peppers in the freezer along with containers of green chili and posole stew. Bring on the recipes!

We just finished eating the Posole Stew made with the green chili. The liquid was thin and not very flavorful. On the other hand, it was chock full of posole, pork, onions and red chilies. I tried adding more salt, then a little more cumin, but what really helped it was fresh lime. My lower lip is burning right now, though the stew wasn't too hot to eat and enjoy. I think I'll start the next stew by browning the pork, onions and garlic to see if that helps the liquid with the flavor issue. As far as how thin it was, what would you do about that? I let it simmer about 4 hours and then refrigerated it overnight hoping that it would be thicker today, but no luck.

There is a bushel of roasted green chili in the freezer. Some of it is peeled, stemmed and chopped. Most of it is whole peppers in small freezer bags because we didn't realize how much work it was going to be to clean and chop all that pepper! I pulled out Cafe Pasqual's Cookbook and made the Green Chili recipe. It doesn't call for browning the onions and garlic before adding the rest of the ingredients. Everthing just goes into the pot and cooks down. You do add a roux for thickening near the end. The chili is used for the Posole Stew, which I made yesterday. Again, no "building" of flavors by browning the onions and garlic to start. We'll try the stew tonight, but even as I tasted it while cooking it didn't seem to have a lot of flavor, in spite of all the ingredients and seasonings in the pot. Is this unusual for a recipe? Would would start by browning your onions and garlic before adding the rest? The Posole Stew also has pork in it which was just added to the pot with everything else. It might turn out to be great, but it seems as though more flavor could be coaxed out this with a little browning and building at the beginning of the recipe. Any other green chili/ green chili stew recipes out there that you really like?

Once I can smell them I can't eat them!

I picked up a set at a Le Creuset outlet several years ago. The bowls are stainless steel and hold about one cup. The weird thing is the plastic lids which do not completely cover the bowl. There are small openings along the bowl edge in two spots on each lid. This only becomes a problem if storing liquids for later use and forgetting to be very careful when taking the bowl out of the fridge. It happens.

I tried them once just to see why they were the most expensive apple in the store. The texture and lack of enough flavor made that a one time purchase. Galas and ginger golds are my favorites.

Have fun! We bought a bushel of roasted chilies last month. Some we chopped and froze. The rest were frozen whole in small bags. This weekend we made our first batch of green chili and today we make the posole stew. Someone told us the chilies get hotter the longer they are frozen. Not quite sure about that, but the batch we used for the green chili certainly had a lot of heat. Let us know what you finally make with your bounty!

My husband loves pumpkin pie. Zia Diner ran an ad featuring their pie, so we went and he ate. He liked it just fine, along with the whipped cream which he thinks was freshly made. What bakeries and restaurants make a great pumpkin pie in the Santa Fe area?

I purchased the magazine holders for my Fine Cooking collection. The Quick and Easy pull-outs are in a three-ring binder. The magazines are stored by season as are the Q&E sections. The on-line index is a big help in addition to the annual indexes. But I also add my favorite recipes to a Recipe folder in Word so I can find them easily. Even so, I can still waste lots of time looking for a specific recipe. I stopped saving recipes from newspapers when I realized that I never used them. We eat well here thanks to Fine Cooking!

You're half right. Water takes *less* time to boil (visually) at higher altitudes (i.e. lower atmospheric pressure) but the things being boiled take longer to finish, since the boiling temp of the water is lower at higher altitudes/lower pressures. This link will not only tell you the boiling point of water at your altitude, it also includes a correction for current barometric pressure. -B ← Cool!

Water takes longer to boil at 7,000'+. I now keep the pasta pot partly covered to maintain the boil. Sometimes it boils over, but not as a rule. Pasta that cooked in 9 minutes in NJ takes 14 minutes in this part of NM.

And our "host" said, "You can't use those! They cost $65 apiece !!" And she said, "Are you telling me that of all people, you spent $65 apiece on wine glasses?" And he said, "Hell no! They were a wedding present 12 years ago." And she said, "And don't you use them?" And he said, "Of course not." And she said, "You've never used them, or set your table with them, in the 12 years you've had them?" And he said "No, of course not. One of them might break!" And she said, "Well, if one of them breaks you can buy another." And he said, "Why would I buy another? I'm not paying $65 to replace something we never use !!!" And she said, "Well, if you never use them, and one breaks, you won't miss it then..." and she rinsed them, dried them, and poured the wine into them. And he screamed, "If one of them breaks and I don't replace it, then I'll only have a set of 5 for the breakfront" and ran off crying. Things break with use. Things get scratched, and stained. You gotta be grateful that you have nice things, and even more grateful that you have friends who will accidentally break, stain, and scratch them. ← Everyone is probably guilty of one form or another of this. We finally gave away the Waterford crystal glasses because of undue anxiety when using and cleaning them. We're going to use that fancy table cloth this weekend along with Grandma's dishes that I can't find replacement pieces for. We'll also continue eating at the good table every day using place mats and trying our best not to mess it up. I'm still thinking about the polyurethane, but that will wait for another day.

I'm glad to see I have company in the uncovered table camp. Before purchasing our current table, we had a big piece of plywood on the previous very small table to accomodate family gatherings of 12 or more. We kept a tablecloth in place to hide the our "leaves". The current table has beautiful woodwork just under the table top and around the tops of the legs. It seems like such a shame to keep it shrouded. Good point about expensive tablecloths. We have a few beauties from my mother-in-law that came from Italy. They terrify me! The polyester blend cloths I own are easy to throw in the wash but some stains just never come out and you end up with oily dark spots. Red wine, tomato sauce and espresso are permanently imbedded in these "easy to clean" cloths. I might try using one of the "good" cloths this weekend. We have a small group coming for dinner. These cloths are smallish and do not fit the table with all the leaves in. I'll have to bite the bullet when something stains them. It's them or the table! What good is it to have nice things if you are afraid to use them? We might just as well all have cheap tables and keep them covered up.

We bought table pads along with our dining room table. The table is so pretty it seems a shame to cover it up. Depending upon what type of entertaining we are doing, we use the pads + table cloth or placemats with a runner down the middle of the table. The table has lots of light scratches in it, depending on the light, but none that would be considered gouges. How do you care for your table? Do you cover it up and protect it or is there a way to enjoy the beautiful wood and not destroy it? Many years ago my mother decided to coat her dining room table with multiple coats of polyurethene and forget about the pads and cloth. I'm wondering if that is the way to go.

It's wonderful!

There are several different roasters set up along Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe. There are also several roasters at the Farmers Market. This is our first chile season in NM and we've picked up small zip loc bags of still warm peppers at the Farmers Market. Now that we know it has a short life in the fridge, we froze a few. A friend encouraged us to buy a bushel and get them in the freezer. Any suggestions for picking a roaster?

"7-6-5" Grilled pork tenderloin from Fine Cooking. It's fool proof and delivers moist and juicy meat every time.

Moving cross country required discarding all open condiments in the refrigerator. I'm amazed at how empty my fridge is right now! Given time, condiments will surely creep back in - and that's a good thing!

We've been here one month and love everything about it. We are also birders and are finding our way through the western field guides. When they decided to call NM the land of enchantment, they were not kidding around. It is a magical place. Besides all that, thanks for sending the salt SOS to your Sis!