Patagonia Kitchen

My temporary kitchen for 5 days in Patagonia, Arizona. I cooked or prepared quite a few meals here.
Since I’ve been away from my home kitchen almost all month, this will be my entry for Sherry’s Blog Event.

Brought from Trader Joe’s in Ann Arbor: 
shelf-stable gnocchi with a jar of basil pesto.
New-to-me products which I might use again.

It was good, and we saved the rest for lunch.

Salad with leftover gnocchi with pesto and lots of vegetables.
The apartment kitchen lacked a serving bowl so I used a cooking pot.

Not much in the refrigerator, but it was good to have some choices. And great to have a full-size fridge.

In the freezer: ice cream, P.F.Chang’s chicken, ice cans for the picnic cooler.
Our host supplied a large can of coffee for the Mr.Coffee machine.

Breakfast: cereal, milk, juice, fruit, coffee.

From Safeway: P.F.Chang’s chicken in Korean BBQ sauce.
Another new choice. I would use it again in a temporary kitchen.

I didn’t have standard side dishes for Korean barbecue chicken so we ate it with white bread and fruit salad.
For other dinners and lunches we ate sandwiches -- but photos of them would be boring. 
Cooking with limited ingredients in a temporary kitchen is an adventure!

Kitchen on the Road

Hotel kitchens on the road: tiny fridge, microwave, coffee maker.
This is very convenient, as we have an icebox with food for lunch each day.
It saves a lot of time, especially when the only place to stop is a roadside rest area!

Blog post © 2022 mae sander

Shared with Sherry’s In My Kitchen blog event.

Road Trip: New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri

Outside the car windows we have seen many wind farms in several states.
I enjoy seeing evidence of what makes our nation productive. I did not take photos of the
many trains, often 2 miles in length with containers, with tank cars, and with other cargo.

Along the route are many cattle ranches, which are pretty to look at.
There are also feedlots, which are not pretty — you can smell them for miles!

Cline’s Corners is a very old roadside stop in NM.
You can have your fortune told by a local alien.

… or by a very old style stereotyped “Indian.”
Can you believe this still exists?
In 2014 the “Medicine Man” was here,
and I couldn’t believe it then.

Oklahoma welcome center —
lots of info about old Route 66, which was parallel to Interstates 40 and 44.

At the welcome center they even gave us this
large brochure about Route 66.

The Will Rogers Archway is a rest stop built over the roadway in Oklahoma.
More Route 66 memorabilia is in the gift shop — there’s also a McDonald’s.

A statue of local hero Will Rogers (1879-1935)

The view from the archway.

Oklahoma’s stretch of old Route 66 offers a large number of tourist attractions. The original Route 66 was designed in 1926 to encourage road travel by the growing number of American families with automobiles. Route 66 began in Chicago, and ended in Los Angeles, and in the early years attracted tourist business for the small towns all along the way. By current standards, the time to drive the old road was endless!

In the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, Route 66 was the route of the “Okies” — families displaced from farms by drought and economic hardships of the Depression, many from Oklahoma. John Steinbeck, in his famous book about these families and their journey west, named it “The Mother Road.” Woody Guthrie, who was born and grew up in a town on Route 66, wrote many songs about road travel by homeless wanderers seeking a better life. And Nat King Cole, in 1946, sang “Get your kicks on Route 66.”

Traveling across the country, I’ve often driven the newer four-lane divided Interstate highways that replaced the old two-lane Route 66 (though in 1960, on a family vacation from St. Louis to California, I did see at least some of the original). Instead of going through the middle of small towns, the Interstates are limited access, and mainly bypass the town centers — leaving the old diners, roadside motels, and souvenir shops behind. Now you take the exits to visit fast-food chains and big gas stations. There are rows of name-brand hotels alongside the frontage roads in the cities, and you don’t need to go into towns at all. But it’s very efficient.

Dinner in Oklahoma City: typical Chinese-American food.
Did you know there are more Chinese restaurants in America than there are McDonald’s?

Dinner Thursday in Rolla, MO

Driving from Santa Fe to Oklahoma City on Wednesday was uneventful, with the usual wide-open spaces and hilly landscapes. Driving from Oklahoma City to Rolla, Missouri on Thursday was a nightmare: the worst pelting rain that we’ve driven through in years. In the morning, the trucks passing me kicked up such a wall of water that sometimes I couldn’t see the lines on the highway — which were the only way that I could navigate. We finally gave up and stopped for 45 minutes until it cleared up a little, but in the afternoon it was nearly as bad. We hope Friday will be better.

Blog post © 2022 mae sander.

Randall Davey, Santa Fe Artist

Randall Davey’s painting of his house, which is now part of the Davey Audubon Center.
Davey bought the house in 1920, when he settled permanently in Santa Fe.

The artist Randall Davey (1887–1964) was the owner of a beautiful house and art studio outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. The property is now the Randall Davey Audubon Center and Sanctuary. Davey taught art at several institutions, including the University of New Mexico. A number of well-known museums display his paintings. 

The Randall Davey House as we saw it while visiting Santa Fe earlier this week.

Another view of the house.

For us the main memory of this artist is the beautiful garden full of bird feeders, and surrounding land, where it’s great to watch birds and other creatures. We have visited the bird sanctuary several times on our various trips to Santa Fe, including this week. We’ve never had the opportunity to tour the house and studio, however.

A hummingbird at one of the feeders.

Deer in the garden behind the house.

Deer love bird feeders too. Not everyone thinks this is a great idea.

 

Randall Davey is honored, along with many other local people of accomplishment,
by a plaque on the sidewalk in front of the museum in downtown Santa Fe.
For a history of artists in Santa Fe, see “Founding the Santa Fe Art Colony”

While we are currently traveling home from our trip to Arizona and New Mexico, I’m posting more about what we did while in the West.

Blog post © 2022 mae sander.

 

Santa Fe Streets

We have now driven from Santa Fe to just outside Oklahoma City, on our way back from our road trip. There’s nothing to write about here, so here’s another post about the interesting street art in Santa Fe.

A few images and from our last evening in Santa Fe.

Intriguing mural!

The famous plaza of Santa Fe. On one side is the Spanish Colonial Governor’s Palace.
The other three sides are shops and restaurants.

Photos © 2022 mae sander

Santa Fe, New Mexico

The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis Assisi, Santa Fe, New Mexico, at sunset last night.
We are spending just one day in this interesting town that's full of art and very good food.

 Dinner: The Plaza Cafe

Breakfast food for dinner: blue corn tortillas, over-easy eggs,
red and green chiles, hash browns, pinto beans. Beautiful!

Len's enchiladas with rice & beans.

Flan for dessert. A great diner with wonderful New Mexican food.

Lunch at Pasquale’s, a famous restaurant in Santa Fe.

Len enjoyed a squash taco & a tuna taco, with green rice & salad.

My spicy Chinese chicken salad with mango & lettuce. Very good.
Very spicy!

Strawberry-rhubarb pie!

What will we have for our last dinner here? Maybe I'll update this post with one more set of photos!

Another Gastropub!

Fire & Hops.

Santa Fe Art and Birds

Besides eating, this morning we have done a bit of birdwatching at the Randall Davey Audubon Center & Sanctuary.  Len took several bird photos while we were enjoying the early morning light.

This afternoon, we visited three museums. The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture is always a favorite, though unfortunately today most of the exhibits are under construction, so we didn't see much. We proceeded to the Folk Art Museum where there was a fabulous exhibit of Japanese art and cultural ideas about demons. And we also visited the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, though didn't take photos.

Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe

Special Exhibit: #mask: Creative Responses to the Global Pandemic

Artists worldwide have been responding to the pandemic with a variety of creative work. I was surprised and fascinated by the items in the exhibit (online here). My favorite was a recreation of a traditional Day of the Dead altar, as a pandemic altar. The artist is Arthur Lopez of Santa Fe, and the title is "Altar Vision: 2020."

Note the hand sanitizer, the picture of a mask on a computer,
the virus outside the window, and other items related to the pandemic
(all modeled from clay). The Corona Beer is a reminder of the coronavirus!

A more traditional altar by Luis Tapia, from "Fiestas and Community Gatherings."

Special Exhibit: Yōkai: Ghosts & Demons of Japan

Noh mask of a demon from the website of the exhibit.
The exhibit included a fascinating variety of images, including modern ones
like the films of Hayao Miyazaki that include ghosts and demons.

Blog post © 2022 mae sander.