Northern New Mexico-Food

We remain in one of our favorite states, New Mexico.  We love the food, variety of centuries old cultures, handicrafts and views.  The only drawback was some really hot weather in Santa Fe, with a western exposure without trees in the afternoon.  We changed spaces so we could add time to our stay and, sadly, gave up our wonderful shade tree.  Now that we are in Chama it is higher and the weather has cooled but proximity to the Chama River and the wet spring have really brought out the skeeters.

Yesterday I  lost abut 6 or more hours of work on the blog trying to catch up on the last few weeks.  Don't know if it was the flaky internet connections or something in the blog that Google didn't like.  Some Internet chatter referenced the same problem with some "cures" that are frankly beyond my patience and technical knowledge.  I like doing the blog and figure when I am old and forget my journeys, I can relive them on the old blog entries.  So, I will break the NM entries down into smaller segments, the first being...

FOOD

We have visited several restaurants at the suggestions of friends and locals here in Santa Fe, as well as outlying areas.  Among our favs are Tia Sophia's and Maria's in the Santa Fe old town area, Rancho de Chimayo in Chimayo, which is abut 30 miles north of Santa Fe, Harry's Roadhouse east of town and a fun place we found by accident when I was hungry in the middle of nowhere about 10 miles north of town.  It is the Tesuque Village Market, which appears to be frequented by locals.  Another fun place outside town is Gabriel's, which has an interesting gallery adjacent to the restaurant where 22 different tribes' art is featured.

Tia Sophias

Rancho de Chimayo

Harry's

Tesuque Village Market

The BD is a huge chile rellenos fan and enjoys trying them at restaurants.  New Mexico has been uniformly good, perhaps because of their fondness for chiles.  The best so far is Tia Sophia and even the little cafe here in Chama got a 9 on their version.  I first discovered Carne Adovada at Rancho de Chimayo.  It is made by marinating pork or chicken in a red chile sauce, then slow cooking the meat.  My first version was served with posole and beans at the Rancho.  The restaurant was opened in 1965 after Arturo Jaramillo and his Anglo wife, Florence, decided to refurbish the family hacienda built in 1910 and open a restaurant featuring family recipes. At the time it was not "respectable" to offer such cuisine in a restaurant but Craig Claiborne, then NY Times food critic, visited and wrote a glowing report in the paper.  As a visitor he had asked many questions but the Jaramillos had no idea who he was.  When the NM Governor gave them the article, they had to call friends in the East to ask who he was.  Because Chimayo was a bit remote and NM wasn't too much on the foodie radar (I don't think foodies existed then), the article had little influence on business.

For a few days the heat in Santa Fe was around 100 so it was a choice of staying in Pancho with the A/C on, leaving the dogs and going to a movie or museum or taking a ride into the mountains with the car A/C on and the dogs with us.  We chose to head for the Sangre de Cristo Mountains east of Santa Fe. We found fly fishermen fishing for native brown trout as well as stocked rainbows, pine and at the higher elevation, aspen. It was cooler and beautiful

A fun sign on the road gave the history of a particular holding, which kind of sums up what I love about NM and the sense of history, which is so obscured in many areas as tracts are built and shopping malls erected.