It's all about the food

A large part of this will have to be word pictures, but the ending should make up for it.

We began our New Mexican food journey at Hollar in Madrid (that's "mad rid," not the Spanish city). Our next door neighbors in Texas called to tell us about this tiny little gem of a town last week after they had stopped there on the way to somewhere else ... a good call. Madrid started out as a coal mining town, but the abandoned company cabins are now occupied by 350 artists. 

And even though the new cook in the kitchen at the Hollar was a bit slow getting out the food, the salads (fried green tomato and fried chicken) had beautiful greens and fruit, dressed with house made dressings and graced with thin ribbons of provolone. Yum!

We strolled around and met some of  the artists, including the elderly couple who first rescued the ghost town in the early 70s and a photographer who moonlights as a volunteer DJ at the new radio station.

Fortunately, we left room for dinner ... just a mile down the road from the Ravens Ridge B&B at a place called Harry's Roadhouse. Killer margaritas accompanied Don's blue corn turkey enchiladas, while I "mmmmm'd" my way through a tostada topped with grilled chicken, and finely chopped veggies, greens and guac ... basically the best taco salad ever. And I finally realized why ... the flour tortilla, cooked to a brown crisp, was made with lard. Mmmmmm indeed.

Breakfast the next morning was eaten with our hosts Phyllis and Judge .... and it's no wonder they get such high trip advisor ratings. Incredibly fresh fruit laid out on a plate like a work of art, fresh squeezed orange juice, lots of hot coffee and cream cheese stuffed French toast with orange sauce (much like my Friday night supper crepe sauce). All accompanied by some great conversation.

By the end of the meal, Phyllis was bringing out pieces of her pottery and telling me she's a quilter ... not to mention the paintings both she and Judge have hanging in the dining room and the incredible gardens and pond outside that they have created. We feel like we've known them forever ...

Anyway, it was no surprise when we were not particularly hungry at lunch time several hours later. Since we were headed to the Ghost Ranch for a tour of Georgia O'Keeffe's painting inspirations we decided to stop at Abiquiu Lake for an impromptu picnic of apples, granola bars and water.

And even though it was overcast, the still water reflected a warm palette of southwest color.

Tales of the tour will have to wait for another post, since the focus is on food. So after wandering through some places in Abiquiu and restocking our apple and water supply, we headed for El Rito.

Now Phyllis and Judge had warned us that El Faralito was kinda small and out of the way, but we had a very long half hour to ponder just how small as we stared at the unlit OPEN sign.

Not to mention the five or six abandoned buildings that surrounded it, although there was an impressive piece of assemblage art in front of one of them ...

Just as Don was about to give up, a little blue truck pulled up and two guys hopped out ... shortly followed by another truck and the lighting of the neon sign.

We were in! 

The eight tables quickly filled up and the younger of the two truck guys took our order (two ice teas and the Farolito Special) before heading back into the kitchen to cook.

The picture doesn't do it justice, but for $11 we each got a crispy taco, a beef enchilada, rice, beans, green chile relleno and sopapillas ... my new favorite food. It defies description, but I'm going to try making them someday!

No wonder there was an article on the wall from Gourmet magazine ... this place was the real deal!

We headed out just in time to see the sun drop into the clouds behind Georgia O'Keeffe's Pedernal ...

The bar has been set ...

P. S. Just found out that sopaipilla is derived from a word that means bread soaked in oil. Ha ... no wonder I liked it.

Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu, New Mexico

Raven's Ridge B&B in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Do you know the way to Santa Fe?

We headed out early Wednesday for the Santa Fe B&B birthday gift cooked up by Meliss and Meg ... thoughtfully timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of our first date. 

The terrain changed as we headed out of the Hill Country. Don was the first to notice the wind turbines ... which rapidly increased in number as we drove through Nolan County. They're hard to photograph from a moving vehicle, but trust me, there were hundreds of them on the horizon ...

The day's drive ended in Lubbock ... inspiration for the Sons of Fathers song Flatland (with good reason).

I convinced Don that we needed to go to Prairie Dog Town ... 

where we found out the little critters liked popcorn just as much as I do.

Dinner at the Funky Door capped the evening and we were up before dawn to hit the road ... which was easy enough since the sun didn't rise until 7:50-something.

Heading steadily west and north, the cell phone signals faded, the land got flatter (as if that was possible), with the exception of the massive grain elevators towering over the railroad tracks and the towns got fewer and farther between ... most strewn with abandoned businesses.

Reader alert: this is going to get political for a moment. It is my considered opinion that Washington DC politicos would make far different choices if they knew they had to actually live in Levelland. 

We began to notice sand along the roadsides ... reminding us of the long open stretch of road on Pea Island ... minus the ocean. The grasses got tawnier and as we drove over the state line into New Mexico, the sun polished them to gold in the distance, while the clouds overhead cast purple shadows over the ground.

Already several thousand feet above sea level, the van began to shift down into lower gears as we steadily climbed through the true colors of the desert Southwest. Dusty blue greens and faded golds, rust and rose, and a sky so blue that even the camera couldn't quite believe it.

Slightly lightheaded (more so than usual) I realized it was the altitude ... and began drinking water, which helped. We patted ourselves on the back for having the foresight to print out directions, a good thing since the GPS faded in and out ... the signals blocked somehow ...

This was the last stretch of straight road that we saw ... within a few miles the van was zigging and zagging into the hills ... ummm, make that mountains. At which point I said something to the effect of "I knew there would be mountains, but holy &#%$ !!!"

This particular stretch, which doesn't show the downhill grade nearly well enough, was graced with a guard rail ... which means it was worse than many of the other stretches which didn't ... although roadside crosses were in great abundance. But what made me laugh out loud (when I wasn't begging Don to go slower) were the cow crossing signs (look carefully, there's one below the sharp curve sign). I mean, really?

Happily, we lived to tell the tale ... with many more to follow.

Stay tuned.

- Considering Weave: Grace Forrest's Underlying Order

I've alluded to Jude Hill's class Considering Weave quite frequently over the past several months ... but one of the coolest parts of her online study was the opportunity to meet other kindred spirits.

There were at least 80 people in the class (not everyone posted to the open forum) and of those, 50 had their own blogs. It was overwhelming just keeping up with Jude's posts and all the forum posts ... but then some of those promised even more details on individual blogs ... and one of those was Grace.

Grace from New Mexico hooked me early with her blog Windthread (see the KINDRED SPIRITS link to the right). And the posts that stuck in my mind related to a cloth she started on July 4th and ended on July 11 ... the time it took her to create "Underlying Order."

I also noticed how incredibly generous she was about commenting on others' work in the online class forum and she became a role model as I learned how to fit in with a well-established community of textile artists.

Throughout the summer I read and read ... trying to absorb all the new ideas and possibilities ... virtually abandoning my own blog. However, as the class wound down I began to follow other blogs ... and was delighted to find that some in turn were following mine.

So it was that Grace and I began an exchange of posts and comments on compost. Recalling her woven cloth from the summer, I looked back at the original posts, one of which mentioned putting it in her online shop. Against all odds it was still available and I laughed out loud when I read the title: Underlying Order. 

"Like compost," I thought. 

I sent Grace an email asking how to buy Underlying Order,  setting in motion its journey to my hearth ...

There is nothing like seeing a cloth in person ... to touch it, peer at the stitches, turn it over, discover the finest details ... like the incredible hand-dyed backing cloth that inspired me to take the copper pot out of my hearth (just visible on the lower left edge of the first photo) and fill it with cloth, tea, acorns and windfall lichen (when I really did have other things to do) ...

But the very best was seeing, as if for the first time, the diamond ... 

not just on Underlying Order, but on the mug that sits by my chair every morning as the sun shines in ...

Kismet

- Travel to-do list: Laundry, packing ... natural dyeing?

Ha! I didn't actually plan to do natural dyeing today. Well, maybe I wondered if I could fit it in. And I did ...

There are now 12 Ball canning jars packed and ready to wait. Because they are not safe if I stay here ... because I will peek ... I always do ... whether I'm baking in the oven, or frying something, or natural dyeing ... I just have to peek. 

But since we are going on a romantic getaway staged by our wonderful kids as a birthday present (from June) timed to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of our first date (in October) ... since I won't be here to peek, in other words ... it seemed like a good time to try putting together some India Flint inspired trials that could remain undisturbed for more than a day.

There was some rudimentary method to my madness: I used torn strips of the same tan cotton sheet, rolled up various vegetal products, tied up the bundles, put them in the jars with used tea bags, poured boiling water over each to cover, capped them, and put them on the back porch.

And for the record (because I will forget otherwise) here's what ended up in the jars:

1. Dried avocado pits (unbroken) wrapped in copper wire
2. Broken avocado pits wrapped in steel wire
3. Dried avocado skins wrapped in copper wire
4. Dried avocado skins wrapped in steel wire
5. Yellow onion skins wrapped in copper wire
6. Yellow onion skins wrapped in steel wire
7. Red onion skins wrapped in copper wire
8. Red onion skins wrapped in steel wire
9. Dried avocado pits wrapped in twine, with 1 tsp grocery alum 
10. Dried avocado skins wrapped in twine, with 1 tsp grocery alum  
11. Yellow onion skins wrapped in twine, with 1 tsp grocery alum  
12. Red onion skins wrapped in twine, with 1 tsp grocery alum 

Next time: windfall lichens and acorns are on the menu ...

- Stitching a little peace (flag)

I'm starting in the middle since this piece looked better before it was completed. It's a 1" x 3" replica of the Sow/Sew Peace flag that I sent to the Solace Project, made with the same materials.

My first attempt, alluded to but not pictured earlier, was pretty bad ...

The inked-in letters were obscured by the fuzz from linen weft threads picked out of the cloth used in the original flag. They simply didn't have enough twist to stand up to the abrasion from the warp threads. So I rotated the whole warp, leaving the discarded effort on the end of the shadow box loom.

But the rotation opened up a pennant-like stretch, so I tried again ...

After weaving a light indigo cotton into the warp, I created a tiny pennant from the cotton tape used on the original flag, backstitched the lettering, and twisted the frayed ends into miniature "ties" ...

I used thread pulled from the blue chambray to stitch the "sky" and tried again to use linen threads pulled from cloth to stitch block-like shapes onto the flag. Lesson (finally) learned: raveled linen fabric does not work as a weft source, even though I've had good luck using unraveled linen knit thread.

The end result was a reasonable facsimile so I don't know that I'll make another attempt, but the piece doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.

It did, however, make for an interesting way to while away a rainy day.

- Just a little bit: One square inch of cloth weave

I'm back to my 60-count linen warped shadow box loom ... trying to finish up so I can cut the bits of cloth off and make a sampler to remember Considering Weave by.

Taken with my new iPhone ... which makes me very happy

This latest 1" x 1" bit is linen cloth woven into the linen warp and stitched with Jude's magic thread (which was thoughtfully wrapped around September Window). 

Unfortunately, my attempt to weave a reprise of the "Sow/Sew peace" flag using raveled threads from the linen cloth was far less satisfying (and therefore unworthy of photo documentation). You can't win 'em all.