Under a Red Roof

49th Year Kickoff II

June 17, 2020 in Eating, Traveling by Colleen | Permalink

The Huerfano (orphan) namesake of my favorite Colorado County.

On our first road trip, twenty-eight years ago, we came to Taos, enjoying the scent of earth and sage, the look of adobe, mesas, and mountains, our newly in love eyes sharing the mutual feast of New Mexico. I love how, after all these years, it continues to inspire, delight, and restore, a mirror of our own love.

And for a bit of a change (the photos after LAFYOGI), we took a route untraveled, winding east along 64 to Cimarron. We enjoyed a good snoop and delicious lunch (fish & chips and smothered bison burger) at the St. James Hotel (a place famous for ghosts and gangsters and history) before another beautiful drive home, some of it during a massive and much needed rain fall.

Tags: New Mexico, Traveling

Bright Spots

June 15, 2020 in Cooking + Baking, Drinking, Eating by Colleen | Permalink

I made the best barbacoa meat a couple weeks ago, slow cooked all night long, and worth the effort. We enjoyed it every which way for days.

I don’t know what the pink flower is, but it cheered the path for a couple of weeks. The teensy yellow blossoms of the Russian Olive make for a heavenly scented walk and help make up for the trees highly invasive nature.

Shrimp & Grits!!

A front garden yucca getting ready to shine…

It’s cherry season, y’all!

I am trying my hand at water kefir – the less funky cousin to kombucha. This was blueberry lemonade and sipped like a dream. Hope you are as well as can be and keeping it positive!

Sweet Start

May 20, 2020 in Cooking + Baking, Eating, Gardening + Nature by Colleen | Permalink

Hello, and happy Wednesday! Greg and I have slowed down on the sweets, thankfully, with these from over the past few weeks rather than days. Our thighs are grateful!! A hazelnut brownie, pineapple upside down cake, and panna cotta with a ground cherry and grapefruit sauce. Eeek, so good!

I made a jalapeno and onion jam and topped pork chops with it, pineapple curry, lasagna (homemade noodles using the machine I inherited from my Grandma!), and Greg made the mac and green chile cheese and beautiful salad. All spectacularly good.

It’s iris season, and these are our first two blossoms. Woot!

Juniper eyes the squirrel atop the fence…

Coming Alive

May 4, 2020 in Eating, Gardening + Nature by Colleen | Permalink

With a quiet flourish the aspen and chokecherry are alive with leaves shiny and new. Such a joy in these still strange times.

We are making our way, and even venturing out once for fast food, waiting and waiting in the parking lot. Then so rattled and paranoid when we arrived home that it was hardly worth it. Our food tepid and milk shake melted by the time we were actually able to eat. Oh well, we tried.

But, oh! Lilacs and wildflowers are blossoming and scenting the neighborhood with hope.

Our home cooking and baking continues to satisfy to the utmost, making little sausages heady with garlic and paprika, more fabulous hummus, and way too many sweets. Peanut butter cookies, strawberry lemonade cake, chocolate sandwich cookies all this week. Eeek! Oh, and a batch of strawberry rhubarb jam. Tis the season.

Hope you are hanging in there, healthy and happy and safe.

Ice Cream Sunday

April 29, 2020 in Cooking + Baking, Eating, Gardening + Nature by Colleen | Permalink

Sunday’s homemade ice cream, walnut and chocolate. I made the walnut with the green walnut liqueur, like the delicious variety I made ages and ages ago, but since there are no green walnuts to glean in my neighborhood, I resorted to purchasing a bottle. I suppose it ought to go without saying, but the ice creams were both fantastic!