The east and west halves of New Mexico have always been divided by the Rio Grande rift, and now scientists say the fault line is expanding, making the drive across the state that much… slower.

To stretch out our trip to Santa Fe to visit mom even more, we took a drive through the lowlands of southern New Mexico, where the landscape and the affinity for southwestern-style clothing is quite different from Santa Fe, otherwise known as the Center-for-Real-Indian-Stuff.

Down there, “New Mexican” is a geographical location, not a style. The food, often labelled as “Mexican” or “local,” is truly New Mexican (flat enchiladas, non-fried fish tacos, sopapillas, etc.), but it’s not edged in silver tassels and driblets of turquoise.

Also interesting is that in the south, cactus stands in as the token vegetable, and only as you start climbing north does guacamole start making an appearance. Carne adovada *anything*, however, makes its disappearance wherever you are in the state.

At White Sands National Monument we had a rare sighting of the famous Desert Clown,

did some missile testing,

and stopped to visit some Hatch chile farmers. The roasting season is over and what’s left are the dried husks that get sent away to have their color extracted. Apparently the coloring will be used for things like Gatorade, and then the fully denuded remnants used in some other food form. (Plurine anyone?)

Rift or no rift, the idea of scale in New Mexico is always fluctuating and weird. Near and far become two drastically different states of mind.

It’s Lunar New Year, and there’s no better way for the Chinese to celebrate than deep-frying some ground pork. Better yet, since it’s the year of the Dragon, let’s take what is traditionally known as Scotch Eggs and call them Dragon Eggs, or, in honor of Kim Jong-un, who was diagnosed by Jerrold M. Post “as having malignant narcissism, a personality disorder characterized by ‘extreme grandiosity and self-absorption,’” we can call them Nargisi kofta, which means “Narcissus meatballs.” And since Post goes as far as to characterize Kim’s narcissism as malignant, maybe these eggs—covered in sausage meat and rolled oatmeal—are the form of narcissism that is somehow benign?

True to form, you’ll always find your face reflected in their golden yellow souls.

as a child my family never really celebrated Xmas, though we did send cards (ideally without any mention of God or Jesus) and my Mom sewed some velvet stockings with our names on them for our white brick fireplace, and they occasionally grew fat with things like staple removers, pocket calculators, and… Hanukkah chocolate money (i didn’t realize how funny this was until a few years ago—child-appropriate and shiny representations of money—a great hit with the Chinese). i do have memories of a fake tree with a red metal stand and nice glass globe decorations but presents were optional, especially since my dad (starting on the day after Thanksgiving) stormed about the house ranting on how if everyone agreed to buy presents after December 25th then everyone would save a shitload of money.

over the years my Dad has had a lot of ideas of “getting a pact together,” and though they all have good intentions, they somehow don’t resonate well in a world where not everyone (thank God) thinks like him: in Los Alamos where i grew up in there was only one supermarket, and one day he found green plums for sale, his favorite, a total rarity in that town. he bought several bags worth and then came home and called all his friends to go get them, in order to send a message to the manager that there was great demand for these plums. instead what happened was that after a few days the store ran out of green plums. more often than not his call to arms are political, usually to “clobber” the Republicans, teach the Communist pigs a lesson, or elevate the political power of Chinese Americans (the majority of which—to his dismay—tend to be in the Republican camp).

this year my Xmas weekend started with a bang and ended with a whimper. Mid-morning Xmas Eve i got a call from a client and after a few comments about the holiday and the weather, he asked if “we” had an offsite backup of his computer files. i asked if this was a “if someone were to firebomb the office” type of question and he responded, “actually, more like if the Feds come and raid the office.” he was serious, by the way.

the whimper came Xmas day just as the sun was setting and we were lounging on the deck. Something scrambled up a tree which startled both dogs and even Bing-Bing the cat, otherwise known as Bing-Bing the Brave, who had ventured on the deck to view the farolito lighting,

stepping outside for only the second time since her accidental procedure several years ago which turned her into a Manx, despite knowing that one dog is convinced she morphs from “tolerable roommate” to “prey” the second she crosses the threshold. anyway, if you were a small thing, say a baby possum, and you were in a tree, and down below were two dogs with four front paws on the trunk and it was dang close to dinnertime you wouldn’t go DOWN the tree, would you? would you?

a little about our client. i don’t know what happened and apparently it’s an innocent mistake, (not like the two-year sting operation on rawesome, who did have their computers confiscated) and i certainly hope so. these people are the coolest people on the planet. they have their holiday dinners at places with this kind of art on the wall (faces blackened to protect the innocent, but gawd that world map! that flag! those paintings! and the photos aren’t showing the bowl full of non-dairy creamer, the Sutter Home red or white option, or the other carafe filled with what tasted like bong water)

but i wouldn’t miss their holiday party for ANYTHING in the world. and i am dead serious. if you know me, that means a hell of a lot. plus, how can the Feds bust a company where the Office Manager has to remove this from under her desk, in order to stash things, like…

dead body parts?

in-between dealing with the off-site backup system, i went on a good hike, ate a bucket of latkes with lox and homemade applesauce, became addicted to a fudge called Fungus Amongus, converted a Scotch naysayer into an Islay lover, painted bookshelves, talked to both parents, one of which couldn’t believe you could just email some blogger to ask him what Chinese writing software he used (“i DON’T know him personally!”) and the other said “Guess where i am calling from?” before revealing that she was sitting at L’Atelier at the MGM about to eat a soufflé with a scoop of pistachio ice cream dropped in the middle (“It’s falling into the center of the Earth”), pulled weeds (while on the phone), brined a pheasant, took a recipe for butterscotch budino seriously when it said to finish everything within three days, figured out our New Year’s card (late this year – holler, or rather, send us your address, if you want one), and best of all, got to see the Star of Beeflehem.

when you have a Scottish dog, it’s easy to—say—get into drinking Scotch, speaking “Come by” as if you’ve swallowed a golf ball, and over-romanticizing fog. but to really get it right, you’d have to eat Steak n’ Kidney pie, and when your Scottish dog comes by way of Texas, you have to add that extra Texas oomph.

and what exactly is that Lone Star pizzazz?
well, along with the meat there’s BACON that’s browned to a crisp, a token carrot or two, and the while thing is stewed in broth and red wine. But you must have peas in order to get that authentic dump truck green.

then, before you seal it up with the top crust you pile on a LOAD of buttery mashed potatoes. YES INDEED.

then and only then do you get to simulate a Neil Jenney painting.

and here’s the really insulting part. i just couldn’t cram all those mashed potatoes into the pie. i just couldn’t do it. gratuitous leftover mash.

well that’s the way the cookie crumbles. i’ve always thought the Scandinavians to be a one-extreme-to-the-other lot, and i’d always figured it was because they have all-sun part of the year, and no-sun part of the year, but then i met a bunch of really intense-all-the-time Russians from St. Petersberg and that blew my theory out of the water.

many years ago i visited a friend who lived in Stockholm and we decided to have a dinner party (“can you cook Chinese food?”) while i was there. my friend was at work but he gave me directions to get to the wine shop, which, by the way, was government controlled (heavily taxed), and they kept a detailed list on who buys what and have quotas to cut people off. i asked him how many bottles to get and he replied “two each,” meaning two bottles for each of us, which meant four bottles total. in addition to my friend having a really funny Swedish accent he liked to exaggerate it, so what i heard instead of “two each” was “twelve.” so off i went to the store, worrying more about my name being on some list then how i was going to drag a case of wine home by myself.

i managed to get it all back to the apartment, and my friend was plenty surprised to see so many buddies waiting for him when he got home, but he was even more glad when he realized the name on file for all this booze was mine and not his. turns out these Swedes liked vodka before dinner, and dinner involved pork dumplings (skins made from scratch – come on, i’m in Stockholm) and cutting up a whole chicken and so on, so by the time dinner was actually served the crowd was rowdy and drunk as hell. i actually have no memory of whether or not we managed to open even one bottle of wine, but it’s been so many years since that trip i think my quota must be refreshed by now.

some time ago, we used to be invited every year by a friend from college for Xmas Eve dinner. his boyfriend was French so the feast (stuffed tenderloin, green beans, Burgundy wines etc.) was fabulous. however, one year his boyfriend became bored when a small group of us started discussing art, philosophy, and other “intellectual and fussy” topics incongruous with the Jingle Bell CD on perma-loop in the background. we were never invited back.
so, this Thanksgiving holiday after a hike with the dogs,

we stayed home and had a friend over for crispy skinned duck, brussell sprouts, and sour cream apple pie. oy.

our friend is about to enter just about the worst divorce situation ever, and i can’t give out the details, but it’s wretched. Lies! Fake photographs! Loaded guns! she got so worked up her face turned pink and puffy, and the dogs, who can read emotional distress as accurately as an unsupervised block of gruyère, were all up in arms with her. Woof.
all i can say is thank god she’s got the lawyer charging an iPad an hour and he’s managed to find himself a shyster—who’s got quality topics on his blog: “Am I Crazy? – No, just dealing with a narcissistic personality,” and “Use a Condom and Pay Child Support Anyway,” which the husband must have read before hiring the guy, as he recently called our friend a “Psychotic Narcissist.” upon which we had to pull out the big gun to look up exactly what that meant.

turns out, we also needed google’s help. according to the Internet, you can’t actually be a Psychotic and a Narcissist, because the Narcissist depends on having an audience, and can’t afford to shut out the world because it’s the world that gives them self-worth, whereas the Psychotic ignores everything that isn’t in their world view, eventually retreating into the “inner recesses of their tormented mind.” (isn’t google great?)

we felt a little stumped, because we all know this husband, and he just wouldn’t use words unless he knew their precise meanings, and he would never, even in a rage, take a compound noun lightly. we pondered LaPlanche and Pontalis further and decided that our friend misremembered the epithet, and that he must have called her a Pathological Narcissist. BINGO. that’s what it was.

why all the fuss? because whatever he calls her is exactly what he is. her role is that of Narcissus’ pond, the reflection. plus he’s got the Peter Pan complex, which, in a joyful coincidence, is called Puer Aeternus in Latin (meaning Eternal Boy), and there we were drinking Puer A-teapot.

ooh! and you can see my reflection. <3 <3 <3

incidentally, our friend told us that schools can now tell when a child has been eating too much saturated fat simply by looking at their ears. i guess that means i’m going to wear earmuffs from now on.

so welcome to dinner at our house. no dumb, fussy conversations here. just more pie, please.

our kitchen sink clogged up a few days ago and our plumber came out to send in the snake. no, he didn’t have the rotating camera head with the LED lights, but he did say we had need of some cast iron pipe replacement, and also suggested putting in a water filtration system. because 2011 seems to be the year of the giant house expenses we agreed to install these two fat boys in the back, adding an industrial touch to our recent plantings of a straight Meyer lemon tree (just because it’s a Meyer, don’t be afraid to get rid of it if it’s all wonky—lessons from the lemonless), English lavender, Canna lilies, and white sage.

supposedly the system gets rid of chlorine and other chemicals in the water, and it descales the hard deposits that clog shower heads, ruin copper pipes and make your hair fall out and give you skin rashes. plus the water tastes amazing! yes! softer, rounder, not minerally, and it makes a fabulous espresso. now for our tea tastings, we can heat our fat boy water in a Lin’s ceramic pot, brew in Yixing, and drink out of purion… dreamy!

after the install a field specialist came to test our water. he put some white reagent powder into a little vial and filled it with water. the water stayed clear. if the water had chlorine in it, it would have turned pink. we probably didn’t look convinced so he tested water from the hose, which is not filtered, but that stayed clear too. then we sneaked some water from our neighbors and damnit, still clear.

the guy was pretty frustrated, and couldn’t believe that our street would have no chlorine in the water, so he he opened a new batch of reagent, thinking his current powders had expired, and looky – it turned pink! (that’s the neighbor’s water)

being a good specialist he did a second test, which was sticking a vacuum sealed pipette into the water and then breaking the tip so that the water went up into the glass. i think there must be a gas in the pipette, which turns the water pink in the presence of chlorine.

it all felt a little Chinatown (the movie)-ish, because he was full of useful water information. he said Los Angeles used to get water from 200 miles away, and now we get it from 400 miles away, which means we go through 4 chlorinating plants, not to mention the extra miles of pesticides and poop seeping into the H20. he said that Dasani comes from the Detroit River, and though Fiji Water does come from Fiji it has to travel so far in plastic bottles that’s not a good thing either. he also gave us a run down of how filters actually work. water needs time inside the filter in order for the unwelcome particles to wander into the little avenues and get stuck. if the water pressure is too high, or if the filter is too short, like a fridge filter, or a Brita, the bad stuff doesn’t have time to uncling from the water molecule. also, over time the water creates channels in the carbon so that after awhile when you run water through it just goes through the channels it has made, rather than through the filter. big sigh.

awesomeness like this on the side of an 18-wheeler just screams “New Mexico!” and when it’s Hatch chile season you’re going to smell it before you see it.

The “chile drop” was at the La Puente High School parking lot, with burlap bags everywhere, burritos for sale, and a whole host of confusing canopies separating the people into variations of walk-up, pre-pay, fresh, or roasted categories. god forbid if you wanted to mix and match between the categories.

i was in the pre-paid roasted section, which i assume was the most orderly, as everyone in line was only mildly frantic, confused, or salivating. mostly the conversation sounded like kids talking to overseas grandparents: “what time do you have?” but several people who had been standing in the sun too long offered up their opinion on how to fix the ordering system. in New Mexico you can smell the roasting from the side of the road and just pull over and pick up a bag, but here they assign everyone a check-in time, and then plead with you not to be late, but if you are late, they squeeze you in, making the people who actually do show up on time wait. as an owner of two dogs this is the most egregious example of “rewarding bad behavior,” but i didn’t mind because the chile lady said “there was a slight back up because everyone wanted Chavez,” and i got curious as to whether Chavez was a type of chile or a person.

turns out Chavez is a roaster, and he’s got the art down. some of those guys throw the chiles into the drum and put it on automatic. but not Chavez. Chavez roasts by hand, checking that the chiles are blistered just enough so peeling the skin later isn’t a pain in the ass, but not too roasted so the skin is carbonized to the meat. someone in line before me said “What’s the big deal, what difference does it make who roasts?” and the chile lady gave her a look of “if you have to ask, then it doesn’t matter.”
when it was my turn, the lady asked me whether i wanted to request a roaster. i said yes, and she said which one. turns out there’s more than one master craftsman roaster, but that was the only name i knew so that’s who handled our chiles.

the bagged goods.

the taste test.

the apres roast.

on the freeway coming home we passed a pick-up truck with two bushels of roasteds in the back. when we passed i gave him the sign of the coyote but the driver was too fixated on whether he was going to have enchiladas or burgers for lunch to respond.

on a hot afternoon after visiting the lovely city of Sintra, Portugal, after discovering a delicious drink called Amarguinha (almond liquor served with lots of fresh squeezed lemon and ice), after discovering that the dessert the Portuguese call “Byronian” was—in one word—a cracker, some pals and i took a long, winding bus ride to the Western-most point of Continental Europe.
[See post to watch QuickTime movie]
to pass the time we had some fun with languages, since between the four of us we had English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian covered. we were all a little brain dead, so mostly it consisted of trying to pronounce the Chinese and the Russian words, and noticing similarities between the Latin languages. and then someone suggested “mushroom.” now what a silly word. there’s some debate as to the origin of the word mushroom, most likely from the French word mousseron (to mean moss), but some argue it goes back to the Greek work for mucus (mykes, from where we get “mycology”). (on a side note, back in those days, a candle snuff was called a “snot”). in any case, there we were, with “Mushroom,” “Grib,” “Mógu,” “Cogumelo,” “Champignon,” and “Funghi.” the only one missing was the Spanish. no matter how we stared and blinked at each other, no one could remember. we tried ordering a pizza in Spanish, we tried imagining a can of mushrooms in Costa Rica (sadly, the label said “Champignons”) we tried thinking of all the Mexican dishes that had mushrooms featured (er… none), we tried hating mushrooms, and collectively not caring what the freaking word for mushroom was in Spanish, but still it eluded us, for hours. damn hongos.

to keep from going crazy we went back to things we knew, like the English alphabet, and played a game of “what so-and-so has up his bum tonight.” it’s a daunting task for a non-native speaker trying to remember unfamiliar words, such as Kleptomaniac’s birth control, or Suzanne Somers, and so this is very impressive.
[See post to watch QuickTime movie]
and this, is in honor of “a laundry.”

while the garden and backyard was being dismantled i went to Lisbon for two weeks to attend the Disquiet: Dzanc Books Literary Program and solve the mystery regarding certain Asian pastries and why they don’t seem very Asian once you stop cooing over how delicious they are and think about them in relation to their fellow brethren (like fried milk, red bean paste, sesame rice dumplings, etc).

i thought i was onto something when i found out the wine my parents used to serve (before i had a say on the matter) on fancy occasions (Lancers and Mateus) were both from Portugal. hm… i thought, was it something that filtered into their consciousness via Portuguese influence over Macao and Hong Kong? i asked my father, and he said “I know Mateus is made in Portugal, it is the info I got from recommendation from some magazine long ago. Lancers was introduced by some friend.” not that he answered the question, but that’s Dad for you.

so, the great pastry tale starts in Portugal in the Age of Discovery: in 1498 Vasco De Gama found the route from Portugal around Africa to India, allowing the Portuguese to dominate the spice trade, colonize Macau and various other spots along the way, and bring pastries to China. thank you!

i have always wondered why the egg tart served in Chinese dim sum was such an anomaly. it’s baked, for one thing, it’s a custard, which is weird for the Chinese, and it’s a tart, even weirder. now that i have gone to Belem (the old home of Pastel de Nata) i’d have to say the Chinese should have followed the recipe better. more creamy, less egg-y, and with the dusting of powdered sugar and cinnamon the thing goes “poof” when you bite into it.
visiting the old home of a special food is a great thing. in Belem when you order the custard tarts they ask “how many.” maybe the little guys operate on the buddy system, or maybe this was influenced by the Chinese. In Nanxiang, China, when we ordered soup dumplings they asked how many steamer baskets. makes you want to learn the numbers of foreign languages real fast.

one morning i dropped by my favorite cafe and ordered a coffee (by the way, their espressos are ok, not great, but ok) and the largest pastry i could see. i took one bite and almost peed my pants. whatever it was called in Portuguese i don’t remember, but what i was eating was the famous Hong Kong pastry called the Gai Mai Bao, or the Chicken Tail Bun. Buttery and coconutty and open faced, it’s always been my mom’s favorite, even though what she knows is an eclair-shaped pastry with the buttery goods stuffed inside. Same difference really.

finally i went to Castella do Paulo, a Japanese/Portuguese bakery where i found out that a famous dessert called Pão-de-Ló was taken to Japan by Portuguese missionaries in the 1500′s, and the Japanese in classic form morphed the recipe, perfected it and renamed it Castella cake. And how. here’s a video of their “and how.” (They’ve got this thing about beating it by hand in gorgeous copper pots. Please play the sound full volume.)

also in Belem is the port from where all the Discoverers set sail. pretty amazing to think Vasco De Gama looked at this same view as he took off. minus the bridge, of course, which, incidentally, was built by the same people who designed San Francisco’s Bay Bridge. I know I know, looks like the other one…

nowadays Lisbon is so lovely and beautiful i can’t believe anyone would want to leave. the drinks all come Pantone coordinated and all the plants look like Los Angeles. and that bridge? really…