Arizona Adventures

Road trip!  El Paso, Texas, my home town, is a great jumping off place for a weekend getaway. We can go go east to Texas, north to New Mexico, or west to Arizona.  And all within a two to six hour driving time, which may seem a lot to others, but not in the Desert Southwest.  A cup of coffee, some good conversation, and the wide open spaces are covered in no time.

Wide open spaces with snow on mountains

My husband Wayne and I recently celebrated his birthday in Alpine, Arizona.   We were also looking for a calm, peaceful atmosphere to encourage us to continue writing on a book we had started,  Forts, Farbs and Phantoms:  A New Mexico Adventure.  

Alpine, Arizona, a town on the border with New Mexico, in the Apache National Forest, seemed like a good candidate for a writing getaway.  I checked with Google and discovered to my amazement that Alpine was only between three and four hours driving time from home  Piece of cake, we thought.  We might even be in Alpine for a late breakfast!

We left El Paso around 7:00 am and finally arrived in Alpine tired and hungry six and a half hours later.  How could Google have been so wrong?  Google wasn't.  I had failed to specify Alpine, Arizona on Google instead of Alpine, Texas.  But that error wasn't the only cause of our late arrival.

Wayne had been very busy the day before we left, going through a list of errands and checking them off when completed.  One of the errands was to fill up the tank of our Honda Crosstour.  We had just left Silver City, New Mexico, and were about ten minutes into the forest when Wayne looked down at the dashboard and got a puzzled look on his face.  "We are almost out of gas," he announced.

Our drive back to Silver City was nerve-racking.  We had no idea how much gas was left in the tank or how long the refuel indicator had been on.  Obviously gassing up the Crosstour did not get crossed off his list yesterday! Fortunately, very soon we came to the Continental Divide, so he put the car in neutral and coasted down most of the way to Silver City. Less than a quart of gas was left in the tank when we arrived at the gas station.

After this inauspicious trip beginning, the rest of the trip was great.

 Smokey on duty in Alpine AZ

Snack stop

Best cafe in Alpine!

And quiet too!

Lunch in nearby Springerville, AZ

It may appear that eating was our main entertainment during the weekend!  I must admit that beautiful scenery and good food were highlights of the trip.  And we actually got the plot of Farbs moving again.  All in all, a great weekend.

 Now, to plan the next weekend getaway (a little more carefully, this time!)

Dining Al Fresco - A Near Disaster!

We woke to an unbelievably gorgeous day in mid-February in the Desert Southwest:  brilliant sunshine, calm winds, and temperatures in the high 60's.  There was no way to stay inside on this special meteorological day.  The barbecue courtyard at our house beckoned.

Barbecue courtyard

The day called for a Mexican breakfast prepared on the old stove in my husband Wayne's cook shack.

Wayne in cook shack

While Wayne stoked the stove with firewood, my job as sous chef was to chop the vegetables, green chiles that had been roasted, peeled and frozen, fresh tomatoes, cilantro (either you love it or hate it!) and chopped onions.

Vegetables ready to go

Wayne warmed corn tortillas, put them on metal serving plates and then fried the eggs.

Preparation of tortillas and eggs

He also prepared  frijoles refritos  by heating cooked pinto beans in a small amount of oil. ( We almost always have a pot of pinto beans in the fridge, ready to use for various dishes.)  And finally the vegetables got a quick sautéing and were ready to go on top of the eggs.

Almost finished!

I was already seated at the table, sipping coffee and enjoying the weather, when disaster struck. I heard the clank of a metal plate on the bricks and a stream of invectives at about the same time. Wayne had been balancing one of the plates on the edge of the stove to take a picture, when, as luck would have it....

Breakfast disaster!

Well, stuff happens.  We happily shared the other plate of Huevos Mexicanos,  which was really enough food for two.  And who could be in a bad mood on such a beautiful winter day?

   

Sweet Potato Chile Soup for a Winter's Day

"Sweet Potato Chile Soup" read the title for a recent recipe in our local newspaper.  I was intrigued by the dish because of an unusual combination of ingredients.  Sweet potatoes are being touted as a healthy addition to our diets, "packing a powerful nutritional punch, " reports Medical News Today.  One medium potato provides 400% of daily needs for Vitamin A as well as fiber and potassium.  And the chiles...well, chiles perk up almost any dish.

Our Desert Southwest is blessed with an abundant year round supply of chiles.  I love chiles for three reasons:  they are low in calories, high in vitamins, and, more importantly perhaps, really tasty. When my husband Wayne and I travel very far from El Paso, our home town, we often end up complaining about the local food, wishing that we could cure the blandness with a small dose of chile.

The two chiles found in this soup recipe, the poblano and chipotle, are not as common as the jalapeño or long green chile, but they still can be easily found in local markets. The poblano has a heat rating of 1,000-1500 Scoville units, which is less than the jalapeño.  The poblano is usually dark green in color but may be red as well.

Chile poblano

The other chile used to flavor the soup is the chipotle.  And I'm not using the term 'flavor' lightly!

Chipotle pepper

The chipotle is the dried or smoked form of a fresh jalapeño, with a Scoville unit of 2500-5000. This sweet potato soup recipe calls for canned chipotle in adobo sauce (made with tomatoes, garlic, and various spices).

Chipotle pepper in adobo sauce

The hardest part of the soup recipe was peeling the poblano peppers.  I arranged three peppers on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven on broil, turning the peppers over when they started to blacken. Then I wrapped the chiles in a damp cloth, and after a few minutes, went to work to remove the thin skin.  I am used to peeling long green chiles that give up their skin fairly easily, but the poblanos were more of a challenge.  (Be sure to wear rubber gloves during the chile peeling process).

The rest of the recipe was a breeze.  I sauteed a chopped third of an onion and one chopped garlic clove in a small amount of butter.  Then I added two sweet potatoes, peeled and quartered, a 32 ounce container of chicken stock, two chipotle peppers in adobo, and the three roasted and peeled poblanos. When the mixture came to a boil, I cooked it on medium low heat until the potatoes were tender.

The last step was to puree the mixture in a blender with 1/2 cup milk (or cream would have been even better) and 1/3 cup honey.  A garnish of cilantro (fresh coriander) finished off the exotic flavors.  I was so proud of the soup that I served it in a special tureen bought in Mexico years ago.

Sweet Potato Chile Soup

Sweet Potato Chile Soup makes four generous servings.  I hope this soup will warm you on a cold winter's day, as it did us.

Will the real huevos rancheros please stand up?

When my husband Wayne and I go out for breakfast or brunch in our home town of El Paso, Texas, it's hard to order anything other than huevos rancheros   The typical items appear on breakfast menus- pancakes, bacon and eggs, oatmeal, but why go to a restaurant if you are going to order the same old thing you could have cooked at home?

An air of suspense surrounds the huevos rancheros plate.  You never know until the dish arrives exactly how it will be presented.  The good news is that huevos rancheros prepared almost any way are quite a treat.

Just in case you have never tried huevos rancheros, the basic construction is a fried corn tortilla, topped by a fried egg, which is topped by some kind of sauce.  (Health conscious readers may note that the word "fried" has already appeared twice in the description!) 

 I have eaten at restaurants that forego the bottom tortilla layer, but surely they must be just uninitiated?  For the middle layer, we always request our fried eggs to be cooked "over hard" (generally accompanied with a flipping of the hand to emphasize the point).  However, I have sometimes had to eat huevos rancheros with runny eggs, which is how most people order them, I suppose.

But it is the sauce that tops the tortilla and eggs that is the deciding taste factor.  Sauces can be divided into three categories.  The first ( which is my favorite) is a thick, red, homemade red sauce, made from dried red chile pods.  Wayne insists that the sauce must be a very dark red, almost maroon in color, and if the sauce has an orange tint, it has been watered down, so cross that restaurant off your list.

The second type of sauce is a green chile sauce.  Our Desert Southwest is blessed with availability of long green chiles year round; however, we believe that green chiles from Hatch, New Mexico are the most flavorful.  Last weekend we ordered huevos rancheros at a small restaurant in the neighboring town of Canutillo, New Mexico.  They arrived at the table topped with green sauce.  The sauce was good, but unfortunately we are both addicted to red sauce.  As we paid our bill, Wayne asked the waiter if they also served  huevos rancheros  with red sauce. He replied, "Yes, we could make them with red sauce, but they wouldn't be huevos rancheros." You can see that the definition of huevos rancheros is rather flexible.

The third sauce is any combination of sauteed tomatoes, chiles, onions, garlic, salt, and perhaps oregano.

Sometimes the sauce is soupier, like salsa for dipping tostadas. At other times, the chiles predominate, and if they are the hotter varieties of jalapeño or serrano peppers, you will be reaching for something to fight the fire.  One restaurant we used to frequent covered the eggs with chopped green chiles, which can be mild, medium or hot.

What I have been describing are the huevos rancheros found in most restaurants in El Paso. Browsing through pictures on the Internet of huevos rancheros though, I was amazed at the different interpretations of this favorite breakfast dish.  Sometimes the sauce is under the eggs, not on top like I am used to. Other variations include garnishes like avocados, various kinds of cheeses, onions, or even sour cream.

And we haven't even delved into the side dishes that are usually served with the huevos.  Refried pinto beans and Mexican-style rice are common in El Paso.  Sometimes you are served a small pile of lettuce and tomatoes, just to make you think you are eating healthy, I suppose. 

Could huevos rancheros resemble snowflakes, in that no two are alike?  I'm beginning to believe that the sky is the limit in creating your own version of this delectable breakfast fare.