Dreams, Moments, Travels
Another Los Angeles weekend has us taking in some history, nature, art, and culinary treats. This cactus photo is from The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and was taken the next day as we failed to take one while driving out today.
With the Barrett-Jackson auto auction and the Friedman Billings Ramsey Open (the FBR Open, a.k.a. The Phoenix Open) just around the corner, Scottsdale and Phoenix are sprucing up the grounds of our fair cities. A mad influx of car enthusiasts and beer-drinking baseball cap and polo shirt-wearing doofods (er, duffers) is about to jam our roads, restaurants, and patience. So the crews are out picking up litter, erasing graffiti, killing flies, sharpening cactus needles, and dusting off the sidewalks.
Cafe Pasqual’s here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was where we were supposed to have dinner last night, but the weather had other plans for us, so it goes. With so much ice and cold in town and not wanting to encounter more snow before the day is out, we’ll be leaving far earlier than planned. As for Pasqual’s, breakfast can be breakfast, but it’s their exquisite New Mexican cuisine at dinner that draws us in, maybe another time.
Snow mushrooms dot the highway as we make our way south.
I wonder if people who experience this snow thing every season are as enchanted by it as Caroline and I are. I can admit that New Mexico is right on with its state motto, The Land of Enchantment.
Approaching Albuquerque, we entered a heavy patch of fog, but as we emerged, we were greeted by this spectacular 22-degree sun halo. Not wanting to stop on the freeway to take a proper picture, Caroline grabbed the wheel, and I threw the camera out of the window into the freezing air to snap a couple of shots. This is the one that turned out okay.
With the sun being blotted out you can bet my nerves grew brittle at the thought I might have to drive while it’s snowing. In Phoenix, most of us do poorly when it starts raining.
I’ve probably said it a thousand times before, but one can never grow tired of El Camino Family Restaurant. Normally, there are colorful spheres on the center spire in the top middle of the sign; I wonder why they are gone.
Good fortune remains on our side as the weather cooperates for this earlier-than-expected visit to the refuge; we weren’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow morning.
That’s a Northern Shoveler duck. This aquatic cutey with the spoon-shaped bill has a great scientific name, the Spatula clypeata.
If we were real birders, we might be able to tell you what kind of sparrow this was, but I can’t find precisely what type it is, so it’s just a sparrow for now.
The Northern Pintail duck just doesn’t give a …
This nearly lone leaf, still clinging to its branch, shivers in the cold air here at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, where we are spending the last day of the year and the first day of the New Year.
The idea of drinking ourselves into a stupor, ending a year in a haze, and beginning the next feeling as though the past year smacked you upside the head is peculiar to me, to say the least. My New Year resolutions are simple: every day is a holiday, see something beautiful at least once a day (besides my wife), and help as many people as I can in whatever little way that might make their day, an hour, or minute just a bit better.
We must be doing something right by the universe as we are yet to have a bird poop on us. Karma.
Here we are on the last day of the year, ending on a beautiful note with the hope that tomorrow begins in beauty, too.
Tomorrow morning, we’ll be standing right about here for some aviary fireworks.
We could have eaten elsewhere, especially considering we’d eaten lunch here earlier, but I’m not fooling anyone. If we’re in Socorro, we’re eating at El Camino Family Restaurant. Of course, I had the steak Tampico and Caroline the chile relleno plate. I have no recollection of what Jutta had as once at El Camino; I’m blind to the world. This is how we closed out 2006.
Ah yes, it’s November here in Phoenix, Arizona. The long hot summer is over, heck just a couple of weeks ago we were still having 100 degree days (38 celsius) – perfect cotton growing weather. Just look out there on this broad expanse of pure white cotton, for every 2 pounds (1kg) of cotton we will use more than 5000 gallons (20,000 liters) of water to grow and process enough fiber to make a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. The Rocky Mountains are not getting the snowfall needed to replenish the Colorado river that fills our lakes for drinking water, but some idiots here in Phoenix feel it is viable to waste this precious resource to grow cotton. Imagine living in a desert where only a handful of days have rain and then think of a place where without much regard water is thrown on cotton, golf courses, and tens of thousands of swimming pools, and there you would find Phoenix, Arizona.
If you ever go to Hawaii you will likely have more than one opportunity to try what is known in Hawaii as lilikoi, or, for us mainlanders – passion fruit. The same day we bought the dragon fruit we saw these old wrinkled up leathery fruits – ah, so that’s what passion fruit looks like. While on the islands we had lilikoi shave ice at Jo-Jo’s on Kauai, Mahi in guava-lilikoi butter sauce on Molokai at the Kualapu’u Cookhouse and something else with passion fruit but my memory fails me. Passion Fruit is super yummy, a lot more tart than we imagined, but the flavor is phenomenal. I have been looking for a passion fruit jam recipe that uses fresh fruit and not fruit juice concentrate but this must be one of the most closely kept secrets in the culinary world.
Visiting the Wild Oats Marketplace nearby we come upon this odd-looking thing. A quick search of labels tells us this baseball-sized red orb is dragon fruit, also known as the pitaya or pitahaya, as well as the strawberry pear, and, for you Latinphiles, the Hylocereus undatus. The dragon fruit is a tropical fruit originating from the Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica area, however, is now cultivated around the world where tropical climates permit. So, if you live somewhere where 20 to 50 inches of rain (54cm to 136cm) a year, with temperatures up to 104 degrees (40c) are the norm, you might want to try growing this yourself, because, at $8 apiece, this is probably the most expensive fruit I have ever seen. And, no, it doesn’t taste like chicken, nor would it taste better with chicken.