Miss Chris

Our 2ndday of cooking lessons, this was a demonstration lesson in Contemporary Southwest cooking. The teacher was one I’d hoped to get for a lesson, Lois Ellen Frank, part Native American, PhD in Culinary Anthropology. She, like us, uses organic produce, eggs, meat and so forth. Dr Frank has her own catering business and teaches at the local native colleges. Dr. Frank gave us a lesson in native foods: pre-contact and then post as contemporary foods have changed as people have intermingled. She started with the 3 sisters: beans corn and squash and then built from there. Lunch consisted of grilled salmon, black beans, corn and chili tamale and flan for dessert. The food from lunch was lighter than Thursday so we were not stuffed when leaving. Like yesterday we also had a glass of local ... read more

We love Taos, would love to live part time in Taos. Our house, the house that we wanted, sold and closed last Friday so we couldn’t visit it. But we could still eat meals, lots of meals in Taos. Comfort food to console ourselves. We left Santa Fe late morning and got to Taos by 11a.m. just in time to eat a very late and very light breakfast at La Taoseno. This restaurant was recommended to us a couple of years ago and we have been going for breakfast since. The green chili stew is gluten free and so great! Kids and Dale ate Sopiapillas filled with butter and honey. After a quick stop for water we went for a tour of the Kit Carson house. We haven’t been there in years so that was a ... read more

Thanks to the friends and relatives who voted for me, our Santa Fe trip is becoming a reality. Several months ago the Santa Fe School of Cooking, http://santafeschoolofcooking.com/ had a contest; it was a photo contest with the winner receiving certificates for 2 cooking classes. I made sure that I had the most votes by begging and pleading with anyone and everyone. The trip is planned: Tuesday we fly Wednesday we will spend in Taos with an early lunch at La Cueva Café where they serve gluten free New Mexican food. Dinner will be at Orlando’s, we went there with Elias on the last grandkids trip, a place highly recommended by the locals. We hope to visit our vacation home in Taos in the afternoon. This is a home that we found when Taos dreaming last ... read more

Well, how life changes in an instant. So we had lots of plans, lots of trips in the various stages of planning, but alas all have changed. I worked out of town until just recently so that made any kind of travel difficult. Then last fall our oldest granddaughter came to live with us making any travel outside of school breaks virtually impossible. We’d planned to do Santa Fe and go to the cooking school last Thanksgiving. Alas, not only was I working but our daughter-in-law couldn’t travel at that time. So now we thought that we’d go to Santa Fe during spring break and take our granddaughter and oldest grandson. We have made our reservations at the Santa Fe School of Cooking and paid for 3 classes: Chili Rellenos, hands on class, Contemporary Southwest and ... read more

Day 5: Happy Birthday Justin Happy Birthday Justin! 36 years old!! I started this page at 6:30 a.m. and the only one awake. I’d hung up a happy birthday on crepe paper banner between the trees then went to set in the sun. I was sitting on a hill behind the camp with the sun coming up over the mountain so the camp wasn’t bathed in sun yet. The hill isn’t heavily forested with lots of rocks and some debris from the trees and small grass filling in. The light was filtering thru the branches of the trees turning the bark to orange and red. It was cold, really cold but the cup of hot coffee felt good in my hands and going down the throat. I thought that this would be our last full day ... read more

Day 3: We were leaving our camp with packs full to hike to Hidden Lake. A trail would lead to a cutoff just past the stream, then we’d head off up over the hill with no trail (Donner Party?). We were there 12 years ago but could never find our way now. Since we had to pack up whatever remained we were then the last ones out. The planned formed was that Justin would lead Elias and Charlotte to the lake then Elias and Justin would empty their packs and return while Charlotte would stay behind and guard for bears. Justin returned with his pack emptied, packed up the trash to go out and stuff not needed for the remainder of the trip, packed it up and started down to the base camp. He would unload ... read more