Category: Uncategorized

Daily Thoughts · Uncategorized

New Mexico Restaurants

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As I posted yesterday regarding restaurants which we have grown to love while traveling, this post will cover our favorites in New Mexico.

ALBEQUERQUE

Located to the west of Interstate 25 in the Rio Rancho community is El Pinto. It is a great place for sitting outside on their beautiful patio while dining on New Mexico cuisine, beginning with deep fried jalapeno strips. Delicious.

Flying Star Café, located on Central is the place to go for the best fruit pies you have ever had. The crust is the flakiest you have had. Delicious desserts of all kinds to take on the road for keeping you from being bored while driving through the desert.

Charlies Front and Back Door. The Front Door for when you want to be seen and the Back Door for when you don’t.
The Mexican food is traditional New Mexican.

DEMING

Si Senora on the main street is our place which we drive all the way from Phoenix to have their stuffed sopapillas. Their green chile sauce is above reproach. Our opinion is that these are the best sopapillas you could have. Before you finish your lunch or dinner, they put a basket of cinnamon-sugar sopapillas on the table for your enjoyment. Randy is all about free, so he leaves this place with a smile on his face. The prices are so cheap you will be amazed. Our lunch plates were about $7.00 each.

ROSWELL
Martins The Capitol, according to our kids (but they haven’t been to Deming) has the best stuffed sopapillas. I have to say that if you can’t go to Deming, then this is the place.

Burrito Express is, once again according to two of our kids, think that their burrito’s are the best this side of Heaven.
If we go to Roswell, we have orders to bring back as many as will fit in our trunk to Dallas. Their green chile steak burritos are huge and just so great.

SANTA FE

Now we are talking great New Mexico Mexican food. Our first stop as soon as we reach the city limits is The Shed.
To tell you how much we love this place, our last visit of 3 days saw us there 3 times, twice for dinner and once for lunch. How is it that the best garlic bread is found at a Mexican food restaurant? But it is! Randy goes for their
blue corn stacked enchiladas. This place has so much history and just entering through the door that can’t be more than 5′ tall, is just a perk.

Café On The Square for breakfast. We were excited to have Val Kilmer walk past us Great place to watch people go by and the breakfast selection is just great. Good food and a place where the locals frequent.

The Shed is the place to go for Steak Diablo. Ribeye with green chile sauce atop makes this beautiful little restaurant right off the square a winner. While we were at dinner there one night, we caught sight of Jerry Seinfeld.
Steak Diablo and Seinfeld, all in the same place. Great memory.

The French Bakery is such a perfect spot for resting your feel from sight seeing and munching on a dessert and a cup of coffee or tea. This place is just around the corner from the Chapel of Loretta, which is a must see when you are there.

SAN ANTONIO (the one in NM, not TX)

The Owl Bar is the place to go for the “world known green chile cheese burgers” I ask Randy if I called someone in Paris or London would they really know about the OWL Bar, but he just glared at me. So I don’t know if their claim is true, but they really are amazing. IT is certainly worth pulling off Interstate 25 at Socorro.

IF you have others which you love, let me know and I will add them to this list!

Uncategorized

Traveling Delicacies

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We are headed back to Texas! We have been in Phoenix where we went looking for a house! We found just the perfect one for us! Actually we looked at it last August for the first time! It had just been listed and the minute I walked in the door, I could sense the feel of “home”! We returned to Phoenix again in November, after being in CA, to see our kids and to once again go “looking”! The house was still available! When we were told that it would not be available to buy until the end of April, we began to ask the Lord to please “hold” it for us! And that He did! We went back this past Saturday and put a contract in it! We are thrilled that God showered us with this gift of the only house we looked at that, each time we looked at it, there was just not any negative in it! We loved the beautiful back yard, the Arizona room (that’s the fancy name for screened in porch) and all the windows just was exactly what we wanted!

Breakfast · Casseroles · Holiday Fare · Uncategorized

Green Chile Breakfast Casserole

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Looking for a great dish to serve Easter weekend? This breakfast dish is a little different from the usual one you see and is “lighter” since there is no meat. Whip up some sausage balls to go along with this and a fruit compote and you have a perfect beginning to your Easter Celebration.
10 large egg
1/2 cup flour
1 teas baking powder
1 pint small curd cottage cheese
1 lb Monterrey Jack wheeze, shredded
7-8 oz can chopped green chiles, drained

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease a 13×9″” baking dish with oil or Pam Cooking spray.
Lightly beat eggs in large mixing bowl. Add remaining ingredients and mix well.
Pour mixture into prepared baking dish. Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until casserole is bubbling and lightly browned on top.
Allow casserole to sit about 10 minutes before serving.
Serves 8 to 10.

Drinks & Punches · Uncategorized

Almond Tea

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This past week has been a full week of packing up to leave Texas to a new adventure. In the midst of the packing, there was a luncheon I attended where I was just invited. I didn’t have to cook or bake anything. It felt a little weird but was nice to just go through the buffet line, load (and I do mean load) up my plate with salads and finger sandwiches. The hostess served this almond tea. It was just a hit with all of the ladies there. She kindly printed up the recipe and handed it out to anyone asking for it. I think I will just make up a huge pitcher and have it sitting in the fridge so I can drink it all day long. Kept thinking about this summer, our first in Phoenix and how good it will taste when it is 120 outside.

3 Tables lemon instant tea, (unsweetened)

1 cup sugar

2 cups boiling water

2 (6 oz) cans frozen lemonade

3 teas vanilla extract

3 teas almond extract

Mix tea and sugar together. Bring 2 cups water to a boil and pour over the tea and sugar mix. Add extracts and thawed lemonade to this and mix well. This is very concentrated, so use 2 parts water to 1 part concentrate when ready to use.

May be store for several days in fridge.

Makes 1 gallon: serves 10-12 unless I am at your house, then will serve about 2.

 

Uncategorized

Sassy Saturday

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Such a cold rainy day here in Dallas, and out of packing boxes until it quits raining and we can go buy more, I decided to look through some of my old post. This one was from 2012 and brought back so many fun memories! Hope it makes you smile!

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Well, we were up and ready to head out this morning. Randy was feeling good after having gone back to work after his surgery this past week and life was good. We were excited to be having a “normal” Saturday in front of us as we headed out to storage to take some winter items and bring out new spring bedspreads, etc. We left storage feeling good that the storage unit did look like maybe there were getting less and less boxes to have to go through each season. Maybe the prior visits of us going through and refining really was working. Well, we load up our car, you know the one, the new one with the navigation system which, by the way, I have totally mastered.

We have arrived at Wal Mart and am just visiting and talking about how fast Randy’s head is healing after the surgery and…

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Uncategorized · Vegetables

Baked Cabbage Steaks

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Last evening, we discovered that something very simple to make can be extremely good! Wow, we were shocked at how good the cooking method could change the normal flavor of boiled or fried cabbage. I had seen this on FaceBook and decided to just try it last night. Even picky Randy who isn’t a real cabbage eater, said, “this is really so good” and ate all of his plate full. So see, something good does come from FaceBook!

1 large cabbage head, cleaned and outer leaves peeled away.

Seasonings: onion powder

Salt & pepper to taste.

Fresh garlic, minced (amount to your liking)

Olive oil

Cut cabbage into about 1 1/2″ “steaks” (I got 4 steaks out of the head of cabbage)

Place in a greased 9×13 baking dish. Drizzle olive oil over the steaks and season with the onion powder, garlic,  salt and pepper to taste.

Place a sheet of foil over the dish and bake in preheated 350 oven for about 40-45 minutes. I took the dish out after 40 minutes and removed the foil, placing cabbage back in to get a little brown for about 5 minutes. Serve with a spatula onto plate.

appetizers · Fish · Meats · Uncategorized

Bang Bang Shrimp

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imageLast night, my sweet hubby took me to Bone Fish Grill for dinner. We have been wanting to go back since we ate there in Ft Lauderdale, FL a few years ago and have just discovered that there is now one here. So off we went, all the while talking about the first thing we will do is order the Bang Bang Shrimp. If you have never had these, all I can say is, if you live anywhere close to a Bone Fish Grill, get there as fast as you can and order these little darlings. Your life will never be the same. As soon as we got in the car after dinner, we googled to see if there was a copy cat recipe of this and sure enough there it was. So am posting this to encourage you to make your way into this restaurant if possible, and if not, do yourself a favor and make this.

1 lb shrimp, shelled and deveined (smaller shrimp works great, but not the tiny ones)

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup Thai sweet chile sauce

3-5 drops hot chile sauce

1/2-3/4 cup cornstarch, to coat the shrimp

Mix may with sauces for coating the shrimp. Set aside.

Bread shrimp in cornstarch.

Deep fat fry the shrimp until lightly browned.

Drain on paper towel, putting shrimp in a bowl and coat with the mayo sauce.

Serve in a lettuce lined bowl, top with chopped green scallions.

 

Meats · Uncategorized · Vegetables

Pork Roast

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A couple of days ago, taking a break from packing boxes, I got hungry for a pork roast!  We  texted (only old people call their kids) our kids and ask them if they wanted to come over for dinner.  I think we all know the answer to that question anytime free food is involved! So I got busy and began to look for the necessary food items that I normally use for pork roast.  They weren’t there, such as brown gravy mix, cream of mushroom soup and That brown stuff you sprinkle on meat that starts with Worches, but I can never remember the spelling and since I don’t have any in the fridge, I can’t run to check the spelling, so you will just have to guess what I’m talking about! Anyhoo since we are trying to use up all the items in our pantry and not keep buying I went with what I had in hand!  It turned out so good!  Will make this again as all four of us loved it!   I used cream of celery soup, a packet of dry French onion soup and about 4-5 shakes of Kikoman sauce!

1 (2-3 lb) pork roast

2 tables olive oil

1 onion, sliced

1 reg size can cream of celery soup

1 envelope of Liptons dry French onion soup kix

4-5 shakes of Kikoman sauce

garlicpowder to taste

pepper

in large Dutch oven heat with olive oil. Sprinkle roast with pepper and garlic powder to your liking! Because of the onion soup mix and Jimoman you  don’t need to add any salt!

brown roast and sliced onion in hot oil on both sides about 3-4 min on each side. When roast is brown sprinkle it with the dry soup mix, then cover with cream of celery soup and splash in the Kikoman sauce! add about a can or more water to roast and bake st 350 for 2-3 hours!  The last hour of baking I add cut up potatoes and carrots.  Bake until roast is tender and veggies are done!  The gravy this makes is so good!