Five Pounds (mostly butter fat.)

Is how much weight I probably gained this weekend. Good Lord. We have been doing some professional eating up in here. We started off Friday night after work heading over to The Railyard for a send off party for one of my co-workers Shayna and her husband Jack who left today to move to Austin, Texas. Most all of the peeps I work with were there (we were missing Beth and Kate.) I ate mushroom gnocchi with truffle oil (ummm and some onion rings.) Very filling and pretty good.

Here's a shot (albeit a bad shot) of the group at the table....



I had a table mate named Quinn... he is the owner's (Jeff and Kari) little guy. We got along just fine. I cheered him on while he was concocting crayon cocktails. And he helped me demolish the onion ring appetizer.


I'll miss Shayna... she was such a great help training me as a chocolatier. Bon Voyage sister! Good luck in Texas!

Saturday is of course the farmer's market and so we went and loaded up on good stuff again. And we have been cooking our asses off and fattening our asses up ever since. Yesterday we made a tomato and corn pie. What could be more perfect this time of the year? The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen's blog. It was fun to make and turned out really delicious. I would totally make it again.







After we pigged out on that pie I made a cold dessert soup from this month's Vegetarian Times magazine that is a coconut milk base with tapioca and fresh honeydew melon. Dudes. It was mighty fine... and again, really pretty food.





Sheesh. We went to bed full last night. Billy claimed to still be full when he woke up this morning (not me, I am apparently a pig.)

So we polished off the rest of that tomato pie today with a nice simple salad of peppery arugula from the market. Yes, we ate a whole pie between the two of us in exactly 24 hours. Sick. And here's where it gets really good... Billy bought these sweet little tiny pears at the market Saturday with the plan of baking them in a tart. People... what a tart it turned out to be. Allow me to demonstrate...

See how cute those little pears are nestled in to their tart pan?

Little pears... meet your new friends shortbread crust and almond cream filling.



After baking for an hour...



To make matters even worse he poured on a honey-pear glaze...




Digging in...



Uhhhh, yeah.

So there you have it. The five pounds. Billy was making the argument tonight that Julia Child lived to be in her 90's eating this sort of shit her whole life long. She was also like 12 feet tall and a giant of a kick ass woman. I'm 5'2 and kind of a dweeby, sickly kid. I haven't got a chance. Billy has been wielding a stick of butter a day ever since he got hooked on French cooking. Wish me luck.

Ok... so in closing here are a few more random pics from the past few days hanging out at home. Have a great week y'all!

This one goes out to Karen... Rudy in his sexiest pose....

This is a shot from a moment when cheddar cheese was being shredded for the tomato pie.

Market flowers.

Rudy at his usual post... growling at the world at large. Too bad we are on the second floor and no one out in the world cares.

After Bath Beard Fluff

This look does not last long. One day later the beard is full of crusty old gravy.
Sorry if that just made you a little bit sick.

Sunday in the Park

Yes, it's true. TWO posts in ONE weekend. Some kind of planets must be aligned somewhere or somethin'. Soak it up! It could be months before I appear again. Or it could be tomorrow. I like to keep you in suspense.

So this morning we met our new friends Christopher and Jana in the park behind our house. They have two dogs Chico and Mugsy so they and Rudy have their own little social party while we humans sit around in the grass and chew the fat.



Mugsy pretty much lays low... he's an old dude. Rudy and Chico switch it up between chasing each other, attempting to hump one another and making drive by passes looking for people food. As Jana had brought homemade banana bread the dogs spent more time make google eyes at us than playing chase. Those dogs are a bunch of weenies.

It's great to have the park right here to go hang out in. There are always other dogs and the real live grass is quite a novelty in Santa Fe. We don't have much of it here. This next picture is so stupid I can barely stand it.




After the park we pretty much laid low and lazy at home, had a visit with Michelle and then went for a late afternoon walk in the rain.





We decided it might be a good evening to hit the Dale Ball trail head up the road to see what the view of the sky over the mountains was like since storm clouds were rolling in.





We did not get to walk long because it started to really pour... but it was worth the effort to see the clouds coming in. I love that we have such quick easy access to the mountains here where we live.

Back to work tomorrow. I am going to bring our camera and see if I can grab some shots of what our work day is like on Monday's when Billy comes in to make chocolate with me.

Hope y'all had a good weekend. Peace!

Fresh!

Hiya folks! Holy crap can you even believe that August is almost over? I can't stand it. I have truly let this blog dwindle down to a trickle that makes the Santa Fe River look like a raging beast. I never saw it comin' but I just don't seem to have the time or energy to write much on here these past weeks. I am so unused to being a workin' stiff. It's taking me a loooong while to get acclimated to it. Or maybe I will never get acclimated to it? Yes... that is more likely. I strive to one day be an unemployed trailer gypsy once again. Cross your fingers and your toes for me peeps. For real.

Anyway... today we had some good times. We hit the farmers market early and found that this week seems to mark the peak of the season here. There was a good variety of produce and things like tomatoes, corn, peaches etc. were truly, fully ripe and looking beautiful. We bought a ton of stuff and came home to dive into veggie tamales and I made fresh salsa with local tomatoes and fire roasted Hatch green chiles.

Thai eggplant

Shishito peppers

Oyster mushrooms... soooo good!

We bought some of those purple concord grapes from these folks and they are really yummy.

Punkins!

There is no shortage of ass whippin' peppers to be had here.

After the market we went downtown on the plaza to check out the Indian Market with our new neighbors Keenan, Nicole and Atalaya. They just moved in a week or so ago and we are glad to have them in the building with us. Atalaya is their newborn little baby girl (4 weeks old.) As you can see from these two photos she really gave us Hell all afternoon. Such a trouble maker.





On our way home we stopped off to the Tea House for agave wine margaritas. They are super tasty but on an empty stomach the thing really knocked me for a loop. Yikes. I have been loping around in a haze ever since.

On our nightly walk with Rudy we met a local who has lived in a cabin up on the side of the mountain that backs our neighborhood for almost 30 years. His name is Dandy and he has a dog that likes to tree bears named Butterball. We stood around chatting and learning some local history about the neighborhood all the way back to the time when the Spanish had laid claim to these parts. He is a cool guy and one of the types that makes Santa Fe such a great place to live.

Thanks so anyone who is still taking the time to check in here and sorry have been such a pisser about getting new posts up. Hang with me! I am going to try to start posting more regularly again. Cheers!

Surprise!

It's ME! Yeah... I know right? Where the HELL have I been? I have been in the land void of internet that's where. It sucks. It's scary and it gives me a wicked tummy ache. We are still waiting to get Qwest out to the new apartment to get online. Word on the street is we should have it in the bag sometime in the next six days. But don't hold your breath on that one.

Our new apartment is great... we are sloooowly, ever so slooowly gathering furniture and getting settled in. I have been working at the chocolate shop and spending my days off trying to get caught up with everything else. The blog will continue to languish for another week or so til I can get on the net at home. I am currently hooked in at the Ecco gelato shop downtown. If ever you find yourself in Santa Fe this is not to be missed. It's on Marcy St and the gelato really kicks ass.

I celebrated my 37th birthday about a week ago. We went out to eat to Pasqual's and had a great day of chilling out... shooting pics with my new 50mm lens (thanks Mom & Dad!) and enjoying our new pad.

Since Billy and Rudy are sitting here with me waiting for me to finish up so we can walk around downtown I am going to keep this short. I will throw a few pics on... anyone who is friends with me on facebook has seen these already but... that's the way the cookie crumbles people.

Billy and Rudy playing dungeons and dragons.

Some shots from my B-Day...

So please bear with me... I will be back to writing regularly as soon as we get online at home..... Hope everyone is still having a great summer. Cheers!