Pie Overload!

When co-workers and acquaintences, (even my parents!) ask what a vegetarian eats on Thanksgiving, I have taken to announcing "WHATEVER WE WANT!" That said, I am dozing on Tofurkey-induced tryptophan!
I am so stuffed right now, but I still want more! My tongue says YES, but my belly (and pants) say NO! My favorites were the tofurkey itself and my new cranberry sides. Zipper's favorites were the crunchy french onions (nearly burned perfectly) from the green bean cassarole, along with everything fresh and/or crunchy. I tried hard to avoid the starch overload that I usually succumb to.

My new sad favorite is the ABC series Pushing Daisies. Sad because it's been canceled in only its second season. But I am inspired by the main character's gift of pie making (and the other main character's great love of cheese). So our Thanksgiving holiday really started last night when I got it in my head to bake not the two pies we had planned on, but four. So I did a pumpkin pie (plus two mini pies thanks to some leftover pie crust), a pumpkin cheesecake, Zipper's favorite blueberry pie, and an apple pie for myself (I don't like pumpkin). I can't believe I've never made an apple pie before! I didn't have one in my recipe book, and had to go hunting for one, but this one was phenomenal!

Apple Pie:

3/4 c. sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon (heaping half-teaspoons, if you're me)

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

5-6 apples (firm, tart, peeled, cored, sliced) I used champagne apples and gala

2 Tb. butter

Toss apple slices with sugar & spices. Pour into a pie crust and dot with pieces of butter. Put the top crust on, cut vents in crust, brush crust with a little soy milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at around 375 for about an hour.

I am also delighted to have kitchen-tested a couple of cranberry recipes. I'm sure by now, everyone's already picked their positions on the jelly can and sauce teams. My mom's always experimented with various recipes, and Zips likes to eat them fresh, raw, unsweetened. While I do enjoy the popping noise they make, and the fact that they resemble tiny apples, I simply can't do it. SO, I found the easiest and tastiest recipes for both a fresh raw cranberry relish, and a simmered sauce:

Cranberry Relish:

2c. fresh cranberries

2 skinned, cored apples

1 whole, seedless orange (skin on, chopped)

Pulse in a food processor until combined and relish-y. Add

2 c. sugar

Mix until combined and store at room temperature until sugar dissolves.

Cranberry Sauce:

1 c. sugar (more if ya can't take it)

1 orange

1 Tb. grated ginger (use a microplane zester)

zest the entire orange into sugar. Add juice of the same orange into a pot with the sugar and ginger. Simmer until dissolved and add

4 c. cranberries

Simmer until all the cranberries pop. Yum.

Here Zipper and I lounge in front of the Garfield Thanksgiving Special (the one where Garfield has to go on a diet just before the big eatin' day).

Here Zipper helps clean up. I am thankful she makes me laugh so often.

Even Better Than Halloween

This weekend must've been one of the busiest of the year around here. Between NMSU's homecoming football game (where we got trounced by Boise State 49-0) (hey, last year we got trounced 58-0, so it is a kind of improvement), Halloween, a Carrie Underwood concert on campus, Dia de los Muertos, the local Renaissance Faire, if you count the early voting that ended on Saturday, my head is spinning!

So we spent Halloween giving out vast quantities of chocolates and organic fruit suckers (mmmm.. mango tango!). Saturday we went to both the Dia de los Muertos festival in Mesilla as well as the downtown farmer's market. I've never been to a day of the dead, having just heard about the holiday, and appreciating the asthetic of calavera sculptures, paper banners, and nichos or shadow boxes (take that! Joseph Cornell!).

In any case, it was amazing! The little plaza square was packed with tables and altars filled with photographs, mementos, offerings to deceased family members and pets. Often these were paired with an 8x10 printed description of the person's life and death. It was often touching, sometimes funny. One of the most memorable was a shrine that featured this skeleton decked out with a lap tray that included a portrait of its subject, along with a tv dinner and clicker. It was so personal and specific a tribute. Another invited viewers to eat a piece of their grandfather's favorite candies (those chewy caramel squares), and to ring a bell.

Then there was a woman selling sugar skulls. When I bought a couple, she directed us over to the altar she had created. It took a second for me to put together that if she had constructed an altar, that meant that she had lost someone. It was her son, who died in 2000. He was actually born the same year I was. It was a difficult and wonderful public kind of intimacy (sounds contradictory, I know). Here I was buying a decorated skull made of sweetness, sharing a stranger's grief. This makes me want to participate in a more personal way next year.
There were some that were altars for mass deaths. In addition to a large installation displaying what must've been thousands of paper cranes for the American death toll in the Iraq war, there were also at least two altars to commemorate the women murdered in Juarez.

It was pretty emotional. One of the past posters said "To Remember is to Live"-- I think that's a nice way to acknowledge how it's not morbid, but rather life affirming. One of our favorite (super LIFE AFFIRMING) booths was run by a pair of sisters (Kristi from Dexter, NM and Konsuela from Roswell, NM) who do ceramics, make t-shirts, and had several kick ass calendars. They were both such characters (think Paula Deene, then multiply by two, amplify the volume and laughter, make them arty, and park them in the southwest handing out skull lollipops!). We loved them so much, we had to come back on Sunday just to buy their other calendar. (We came too early and even hung out and waited around just for them to open up.) They even pointed out that we had to visit the booth next door and check out their cool stuff.

Which we did, but nothing could beat Kristi and Konnie.

Okay, finally. I don't mean to brag/gloat but to my friends in Syracuse, NY and Wisconsin, and even Indiana. It is the first week of NOVEMBER and I bought home grown watermelon (seedless but SUPER SWEET), tomatoes, green tomatoes, and canaloupe. And it is sunny and clear.

We are fortunate indeed!

A New Favorite: The Take Away Show

In doodling around YouTube, I've discovered this wonderful series of performances on La Blogotheque that includes The Shins and Andrew Bird singing their way through Paris (different episodes), Jose Gonzales in Marfa, TX (check out "Storms"), and REM in Athens.

Here another of my fave musicians, Beirut, appears to happen across a band that's playing his song as he's singing it.

Andrew Bird

Very few videos get at how cool he is live and otherwise. This one's pretty good. He's usually much more dapper than the second one, but his loops and playbacks and virtuoso violin/guitar/whistling is really inexplicable and amazing!

"Fiery Crash"


His signature song "Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left"

Dumb Signs

Okay, one of the quirks-- or perhaps a result of my own culture shock-- is odd signs out here on the southwest frontier. Here's a sampling:
While these are certainly not dumb signs, they are also definitely not what I would expect to see at a bathroom break along the highway.

This one's from the same rest stop, and stands in the middle of a grassy field.

This one's actually in Arizona, but I don't doubt its applicability in many places in NM.
And the illustrious THE THING? (WHAT IS IT?) roadside attraction near Texas Canyon, AZ (exit 322 off of I-10). This thing has haunted my imagination ever since I would drive from San Antonio to Northern California for undergrad. I'd see road signs hyping it for hundreds of miles. I think when we moved down here, we saw billboards for it as far as Missouri.

I didn't pay the dollar admission to see THE THING? itself. Sorry. Not my thing.

Surrounded by Giants

So I skipped classes at the end of last week to attend the national American Studies Association annual conference three hours to the north. I return with renewed vigor for my own writing and dissertating. At one point, I was in the audience watching Avery Gordon introduce Hazel Carby, and I turned around to see Siobhan Somerville (whom I admire and adore, having commuted 2 hours to take a class with her at a different university) waving at me, and behind her Judith Halberstam was sitting next to Lisa Lowe. Behind me the other way, Andrea Smith was sitting just a row away. I have stars in my eyes! Also in attendance were E. Patrick Johnson, Lauren Berlant, Lisa Duggan, Jose Esteban Munoz, Elaine Kim, Eva Cherniavsky, Mimi Nguyen, Martin Manalansan, Linda Trinh Vo, and even more!! I literally clicked on every letter of the alphabet of the online schedule of presentations to see who was coming. After half a semester in a new place, getting bogged down with grading 81 freshman compositions every couple of weeks, this was really helpful in getting me back on track.

In short, it was a wonderful, invigorating jolt of juice to my brains (even though it was equally exhausting physically!). To see the critical scholars who populate my essays and bookshelves-- as people who joke and have to drink water mid-presentation-- as audience members of other scholars' panels (Jose Munoz and Lisa Duggan attended Judith Halberstam's hugely popular session on queer punk, and laughed at all the right moments).

Okay, on a more corporeal note, there's nothing to eat at the convention center. Nothing worse than a couple stands hocking Starbuck's and stale pretzels and bagels. Coffee breath on top of an empty belly is AWFUL to have at a crowded conference. And then there's the mortification of having audible hunger pangs during a presentation. I know. I had them. During a panel on food, no less.

Happily, within a couple of blocks of the convention center in Albuquerque is Sushi King!! We went three days in a row! I highly recommend the New Mexico roll (green chili, avocado, spicy mayo), the veggie tempura maki, and the vegetable maki. They were great and even brough me extra spicy mayo on the side!

There's also a great New York style pizzeria that we visited on the last day (I can't believe I am capable of being sushi-ed out!)-- called JC's New York Pizza Department.

And more beautiful local pomegranates... now in season

All my vitamin C in a basket. Local green tomatoes, local pomegranates, and a couple of limes.

Albuquerque Balloon Festival. sans balloons.

Since we live only 3 hours drive from my parents, and since Albuquerque hosts the world's largest international hot air balloon festival, we decided, "What the heck?!" and trucked up there last weekend to see it. Of course, ordinarily hot air ballooners take off at the a**-crack of dawn, so we decided to try to get into the spirit of the thing. The thing is, regardless of how rare it is to see me rise, Romero-zombie style, pre-dawn, the weather would not cooperate. So this jumble of toy hot air balloons were practically the only ones inflated to be seen. We witnessed the sad attempt of several MASSIVE balloons to inflate, but the winds were too strong (I was so worried the winds would cause the flame to ignite the fabric of the balloons themselves). Later in the day it actually hailed for a spell!
Here our pinwheels demonstrate the reasons the balloons could not do the mass ascension we were all there to see. sigh. I don't know how much this makes me want to try to do this again!
And a mechanical model of how the hot/cool air currents lift propel and return the balloons to Albuquerque offered the only other sight of balloons in motion. Here's a lovely shot of what we should have seen. But didn't. Maybe next year.

New Favorite Places: Tucson, AZ

We took a roadtrip to Arizona several weekends ago, just to see what we could see, and discovered the wonderful 4th Ave. district near the U of Arizona. A great place to blow your paycheck is independent bookseller (and t-shirt seller, poster seller, and doo-dad seller) Antigone Books. They have a wonderful selection of graphic novels, political bumper stickers, notecards, and gifts. I found myself purchasing a rechargeable (hand-crank) cat-shaped flashlight. It'll come in handy, I know it. A wide array of japanese paper design notecards. Entirely too lovely and expensive.And a happy discovery (not in the 4th ave. neighborhood, but happy nontheless): Lovin' Spoonfuls is an entirely veggie restaurant. I ordered a chili dog, and Zips had a turkey club. A nicely stocked menu. Lots of critter-friendly choices! We can't wait to go back!

A French Girl Teaches Me to Play Tegan & Sara

White Sands, Blue Skies

Today we drove out to White Sands National Monument-- only 40 miles east. I bought Zips a gypsum "desert rose" at the farmer's & crafts market downtown last weekend, and now I have shoes and floorboards filled with white gyspum sand from frolicking and rolling down dunes all afternoon. The sand is light beige and coming from Indiana, it looks so much like snow. Plus it's rained recently, so snowplows (sandplows?) had been through recently to unearth the road through the dunes. The sand is cool to the touch (unlike normal beach sand). Now that we know it's so close, it's going to be a regular excursion. I think I'm going to get an annual pass!
Oh... and next up, I'll write about the "Weird New Mexico" art show that's currently on at the art gallery on campus!

An Unexpected & Pleasant Surprise

It's barely September, and at one of the local markets, I stumbled upon locally grown POMEGRANATES! I had no idea they were a) grown around here b) in season (?!) c) edible when they're green. They're very mild, a pale pink color rather than the deep burgundy they usually are. I'll be buying more and secretly shipping them to loved ones in Indiana.

Honestly, what's not to like?

okay, this is totally not one of my cats. But it could have been. Gabby used to go after every part of corn-- husks, cob, silk, kernels and everything. I wish we had a video of him like this. Of course, he'd probably look more like a scene with the raptors in Jurassic Park!

Hot, Cool, and Limey

This weekend, to get out of town a little, we went to the Chile Festival in Hatch, NM-- about a half hour away from here. I think we first heard of this on a food network show called Glutton for Punishment in which the host entered a hot chile-eating contest. The contest we saw was a speed-eating contest for 10 mild green chiles (the winner ate all 10 in 40 seconds). The hot chile contest was the next day, so we didn't see any grown men crying or retching. Maybe next year. Oh, and Zips eschewed the entire focus of the GREEN CHILE festival, and bought a 2lb. bag of jalapenos. We had a dwindling supply. This should last us-- a little while. I have grown enamored of ristras, though. Especially those that include green and yellow chiles along with the red ones. I think I'll use a photo of these for our holiday cards this year. Especially since I'll be gloating about enjoying warm weather during the coldest time of year. I still don't know if the ristras merely decorative, or if and how to consume the chiles. I'll also be finding out if the green and yellow ones eventually turn red or not. Zips bought the smallest ristra we could find-- at least until we figure out what we can make with them.
In our latest culinary adventures, having given up on local restaurants, at least until we have more jingle in our pockets, Zips and I have set about approximating favorite recipes. The best veggie tacos in town have now been reproduced in our top secret kitchens. Okay.. it wasn't that complicated. Just some heated up corn tortillas, a swipe of good homemade guacamole (and I've finally caved to the practice of including some chopped tomato, onion, and even cilantro in my guac-- instead of just lime and salt), some finely sliced lettuce, chopped tomato and cucumbers, your favorite pico de gallo, a little shredded cheese, and *alfalfa and/or spicy radish sprouts. The sprouts are the key!
I realize it may have little, if any food value, but everything's fresh, cool, crisp, crunchy

And to go with it, I've decoded my favorite beverage of the south-- aside from margaritas-- Sonic cherry limeades. Impoverished as we are now, we made off like bandits at a 7-up and Coke sale at our grocery store before we moved. So we have a tower of 12 packs. So I found a recipe for my favorite pink drink. It's basically the juice of one lime (I like to include pulp), maraschino cherry juice (yes, just pour it off tiny jar of cherries you have in the fridge for your banana splits), and a can of 7-up. Really. The recipe I found said use Sprite, but 7-up works too!
In a vain attempt to preserve the cherries shriveling in their jar, and ration out the remaining syrup, I found an alternative recipe online-- substituting grenadine for the cherry juice-- but the result, while entirely drinkable and even enjoyable, is more like a sophisticated, bartender's invention of Big Red (another southwestern fave, but this one requires moderation. Or I turn into the energizer bunny). Either way, bottoms up!

Maybe I'm not a poplar after all...

I admit. I'm a little disappointed. I re-entered my birthday and got a different tree and description each time. I have to say, this first one is the most like me (if I don't say so myself).

In lieu of my usual summertime recipe extravaganza (the house is still a mess, I am still falling over half-empty boxes and doo-dads everywhere) I have a couple of belated foodie related schpiels.

1. On our last trip to Chicago (*sob*), we tried not to revisit too much of our past haunts, refusing to think of it as the last time we go to Oysy Izagaya or Hey Sushi (mmmm....that enchanting and addicting orange (miso?) ginger salad dressing) we tried a mexican joint caled Mamacitas that boasted:

That's the *ahem* Best VEGETARIAN Mexican Food in Chicago. So we went for it. Why not? I stuck with the safest bet-- quesadillas, and Zips sprang for the veggie tacos, soft corn double tortillas festooned with shredded lettuce, carrots, broccoli (?!) and little else. The quesadillas were also stuffed with shredded carrots and broccoli along with the cheese. Both of us had some flavorless orange-ish rice and some runny refritos to accent our meals.Needless to say, I'm POSITIVE Chicago has something better. Someone should steal that sign and relocate it.

2. On a more positive note, one of the first places we ate here in NM together is in an old pony express stop in a charming little town square (Mesilla) called La Posta de Mesilla They're great. Often a little busy with tourists, but the food is excellent, and I can't wait until we start getting paid so I can try out one of their house margaritas. In any case, Zips got the vegetarian sampler that included (from top to bottom of pic) a chile relleno, a folded bean taco, some Mexican slaw, and one of their green chile enchiladas. I got a bean burrito smothered with queso and green chile sauce (I know, it looks more red than green). So far it's more or less the most appealing place for us to satisfy our mex tooth. There's another joint, called El Sombrero that has the BEST veggie tacos. I haven't had a chance to take a photo of them yet, they're always half-gone by the time I think to reach for a camera. Hopefully I'll be able to show you soon. Mexican-style slaw, by the way, seems innocent enough. But once you eat it two or three times, you start understanding that it would, in fact, go very well with nearly everything you eat. I was lucky enough to cobble together a recipe that tastes exactly like La Posta's!

Apparently I am a Poplar Tree

...according to the celtic horoscope.

You Are A Poplar Tree

People tend to look up to you, and it's a bit lonely at the top. Inside, you are not always self confident, but you show great courage. Mature and organized, you are reliable in any situation. You tend to have an artistic or philosophical outlook on life. You are very choosy in love and take partnership seriously.

What's Your Celtic Horoscope?

One of the Perks

This is pretty much our view each day. I forget that another amazing thing about living here is our proximity to beautiful craggy mountains. Zips never really saw clouds casting shadows on mountains before.

I admit the music is very "Highway to Heaven."

Buy Roberto's

I was in the grocery store and couldn't resist the pack of tortillas emblazoned with our new town. Good photo. Sucky tortillas (half the package was MOLDING when I opened it). Roberto's is a local restaurant that is also a tortilleria. SUCKY restaurant. Good tortillas. This is pretty suggestive of our new town.

Okay. Things I miss that I'll try not to dwell on:

• 3 Asian groceries in town
• Excellent frozen custard drive thru-- if you go, order a Tiger's Blood Old Fashioned Soda. then ship it to me on dry ice!
• Downtown farmer's market selling with concord grapes, sweet corn, watermelons, etc.
• Being 2 hours from Chicago
• Double features at the Lake Shore Drive In movie theatre in Monticello (we saw Kung Fu Panda there before we moved)
• U-Pick blueberries at Prelock Blueberry Farm (we moved before their season began *sob*)
• U-Pick strawberries at Pretty Prarie Berry Farm (we picked 27 pounds before we moved)

AND a provisional list of stuff I like here.

• $0.33 for a gorgeous bunch of cilantro.
• Our lovely house with my studio in the garage and an immense backyard for the kitties to explore.
• Being 3 hours drive from my parents
• The plaza in Mesilla
• "downtown" "farmer's" market selling neato crafts and southwestern jewelry. I'm developing a thing for turquoise. (They razed the entire downtown mall in the 60's for urban development that never happened. And the farmers here seem to grow chiles and zucchini and the occasional scrawny ear of corn. But they have some neato arts and crafts)
• All the wildlife in our backyard

Okay. I know it's a sad, short list. I said it was provisional, and I intend to add to it. I'm in driving distance to Roswell, NM, the UFO capital of the US. And Terminator 4 is filming near where my Dad works. And my mom had surgery and I was able to drive up and take care of her for a couple of days on the fly. These are all good things. I'm sure there will be more.

The Move is OVER!!

Serendipity: After days of toting boxes down flights of stairs and loading them onto a moving truck, the church next door provided this moment of irony. Check out the reflection of our yellow Penske truck. Really, God? Really?
So we have been moved for a month. In fact, it's a month to the day that we've been out of our beloved apartment in Indiana. Intending to rent a moving truck on July 1, we finished moving out of two third floor apartments (mostly without the use of any elevators, and entirely without any outside assistance at all), and finally got entirely packed and on the road on the 4th of July. We drove out of town at 10pm, desperate to make SOME attempt to leave the state. As we drove into the night, fireworks from the University and those fired off by locals in their subdivisions flew over the highway on both sides. It was like a celebration that our move was finally underway.

I'm so glad it's over. I lost 4 lbs. and developed some serious biceps, triceps, and forearms from this ordeal. And a wheeze. Here's hoping the dry desert air will cure me!

In our last desperate moments when I despaired that we would never get all of our belongings into the truck, I was able to appreciate how lovely our home was, with its arts and crafts built-in bar and cabinets. We so loved the clean white walls, high ceilings, dark wood trim, hardwood floors and beveled glass fixtures. Here Bijoux is doing the last walkthrough. Of course, I'm conveniently forgetting how much of an inferno it is in the summer, although we lived through it with a box a/c in the bedroom, and fans. And I'm willfully leaving out memories of the cast of unsavory neighbors living on the second floor and in the basement. I choose to remember how I would trot down the back steps to get a copy of the Sunday paper on Sunday mornings, and being walking distance to the downtown farmer's market, and discovering our proximity to the Trolley bus stop in March.
Last post I promised the Coldest Pop in Town! and here it is:If you're thirsty, it's in Nashville, In. Although I can't vouch for the coldness of said pop.

We actually made the trip across the country twice. Once to find a place to live, and then the move with the kittens and household. Househunting from 1500 miles away is impossible. But we found a beautiful house for rent with a eucalyptus tree and a rosemary shrub dripping down from the second tier of the backyard. It will be such a luxury to park in an actual garage. Zips made part of it into a workshop for me to work on paintings and crafty projects. There are ledges all over the kitchen to display vintage lunchboxes and for Zips to explore. In short, perfect.

For the real move, Mini was the most miserable, yowling and doing somersaults in her little cage all across the country. Zips did pretty well. She mostly slept and gave me little nose nudges through the bars.I think Mini has all but bounced back. Here Zips keeps an eye on her underneath the eucalyptus.

Next up, I will lament the things I miss most about the Indiana that I never expected to, and attempt to showcase things about this town I find promising.