Boots in the Oven

Happy (almost) 2009!

Posting this time of year is difficult, what with the constant driving and seeing of family and eating the BEST FRIED CHICKEN OF MY LIFE for lunch today (coming soon).  We'll be back in Austin on Friday, so look for posts to start up again after that.

If you don't want to wait that long for another taste of our sparkling prose, please click on over to Relish Austin, which is Austin American-Statesman food writer Addie Broyles' site of fun.  She invited us, along with a few other local bloggers, to guest post over there while she's on her own holiday travel-thon.  I hope you enjoy our predictions for food trends in 2009!  And agree with them.  We're very sensitive.

Meanwhile, Happy Holidays, and may 2009 rock your socks off.

Let it snow, let it... whyzit gotta snow alla time!?

Living in a climate that gets snow once every two years or so, you forget what a pain in the butt the stuff can be.  Beautiful, sure, but always scraping it off your car, or having a chunk of it slide down into the open top of your short boots, or trying to drive on roads coated with the stuff and sludge, too?  Not so much.

On our last morning in Santa Fe we woke up to this view out of our hotel window.

Yay!  The stuff was really coming down.  Unfortunately, we were going to have to drive through it to get to Taos, which was expecting somewhere between 6 and 12 inches.  So we resolved to take the river road (as opposed to the high, scenic road through villages and pueblos) and set out on mostly unplowed roads.

Sadly, we didn't see any elk.

The drive was actually really nice, and though visibility was low we could tell we were driving through some lovely country.  About two-thirds of the way up to Taos, with the snow having mostly stopped, we pulled off the river road to take the high road the rest of the way into town. 

Wandering Santa Fe

The one place I DESPERATELY wanted to eat in Santa Fe was Horseman's Haven.  Every time we mentioned the town to anyone who'd been there, their eyes would light up and they'd drool "horseman's" at us.  This was always followed by a disclaimer, though - "but don't get the level 2 green chile!"

So, our friend David came to pick us up at our hotel, and off we went.

I didn't get a picture of the outside, where it was snowing, but the building is off to the side of a gas station.  It's comfortably sized and run by a very nice family. 

Guess who ordered the Level 2?

The Mr. heard the siren call of something that might be too spicy for him to eat and immediately ordered it.  With eggs, delicious potatoes, and carne adovada.  The carne adovada was fairly spicy in its own right, deep with the flavor of red chiles, but the level 2 - holy hell!  I dipped the tines of my fork in his little chile side dish and blew the top of my head right off.

I was perfectly happy with my own level 1 green chile, which I ordered on chicken enchiladas accompanied by beans, the ubiquitous posole, rice, and some shredded lettuce.  I was done with eggs for the time being.

Santa Fe: Chilechilechile YAK!

Our first morning in Santa Fe.  You'll be shocked to hear that we wanted eggs and chile.  Luckily, just a block or so from our hotel was the well-regarded Tia Sophia's.

We'd heard that the wait at Tia Sophia's could be insurmountable, but when we arrived just before 10 there were only a couple of people ahead of us.  We waited out on the sidewalk, checkin' out the Lensic theater across the street.

Soon enough, our number was called, and we sat down to this exciting disclaimer:

New Mexico's so cool because of their complete unselfconscious mix of American, Mexican, and often Native American culture, especially with their food.  Tia Sophia's menu allows choices between sausage, bologna, bacon and ham; hash browns, posole, or home fries; tortillas or toast; and of course, the state question - green or red.  Chile, of course.

Husbear ordered bologna and posole, because wtf? but was accidentally brought hash browns.  They quickly fixed the mistake.  But damn, were they stingy with the chile!  We ordered a second ramekin.

Also, sadly, their chile was barely warm, totally undeserving of the bold disclaimer.  The restaurant is just off the Plaza, though, and probably gets a lot of tourists from cold, unspicy climes like North Dakota, people who would send back dishes spiced with black peppercorns.

Let me take you back to the Lincoln County War.

So, we're home, with bags of pinon nuts and cans of green chile and our very own ristra made of pequin peppers.  We LOVED New Mexico! 

This trip, the live-blogging experiment lasted only three days, or the amount of time it took us to get to Santa Fe and meet up with old friends from college.

Last Friday, the day started in Capitan, New Mexico, home of the first real live Smokey the Bear.  Matter of fact, we stayed in the terrifically American Smokey Bear Motel, complete with its own smokey statue right out front on 380.  You can park right in front of your well-appointed room, complete with perfectly accessible internet and comfortable bed.

Us tired. Us see big cave with underground lunchroom.

plus, us drive seven hours.  So sleepy.

The day started in Marfa, a time zone and 350 miles away.  Knowing food pickings would be slim, we picked up food at the Get Go, a little gourmet-type grocery store in Marfa.

Starting off, we got a quick reminder of how far from anything we were.

Then, we drove for three hours, through lots of dusty towns, and the surroundings got taller.

We saw Dan Flavin with his tube out!

What, you're not into modern art jokes?

This was going to be a long post, full of insights into the ongoing tension between art people (disparagingly called "Chinatis" after the Chianti Foundation) and the regular old folks in Marfa, including a bit of art critique and a slew of lovely pictures, but the free internet I don't even think I'm supposed to have here at the Hotel Paisano in Marfa is teetering on the verge of complete collapse.

yay! On the Road Again

Hello from Marfa!

Yup, with no warning, we've taken off once more.  This time, though, it's just us and the open road - no cats (aw, sweeties!  Catherine is taking great care of them, though), no particular obligations, just relishing the possibilities of the open road.  We'll be driving through West Texas and New Mexico for the next ten days or so, and I'm hoping to blog from the road - let's see if that works any better than it has in the past?

Today... why does leaving always take so much longer than you think or plan it will?  We didn't leave Austin in our little Focus rental car until 11. 

It was sunny and almost 80 degrees in Austin, which is why I hope you'll understand when I tell you it took me a full two hours to realize i'd forgotten my coat.  And I knew it was supposed to be 25 here in Marfa this evening.

Lucky we found a tiny department store just out of Fredericksburg...

We stopped in the ye old bavarian tourist and antiquing tourist funshop of Fredericksburg, TX (incidentally, where we got engaged way back in 2002) for lunch. 

Of Cookies and Beer and Fish of course.

I like vacations because they have a great ability to jostle you into a change of perspective. A vacation is like a free pass to reconsider the everyday in a Rubik’s cube endless possibilities sort of way. For example, I recently learned that on a boat, at six in the morning, a big chewy chocolate chip cookie and a nice cold Newcastle make the perfect breakfast. Alcoholic you say? Try genius my friend.

A few weeks ago I had the supreme pleasure of going on one of those quintessential father and sons fishing trips. An outing in no way diminished by the fact that both my brother and I aren’t exactly youngins and are sporting families of our own.

My dad had set up the trip months in advance and even with all of his planning there was no way we could have been ready for Hurricane Ike to hit just days before our appointed time. Worried that we’d have to call it off we checked in with our soon to be guide and man on the scene, Captain Frank. Fortunately, it seems fish don’t really give a shit about the weather.

A taste of good times to come.