September 17, 2016 A full day of activity and food in Taos
We woke up and had a leisurely morning. We left the house at 9:30 and drove to the city parking lot and walked to the plaza to the farmers’ market. We walked around and did not find any wild mushrooms. We stopped for a cup of coffee for Suzette and I bought us a small loaf of apple, cinnamon walnut bread for $3.00 from a bakery shop. We then walks to the edge of the plaza where the friends of Taos Library were selling books, weight a pile of cookbooks for the restaurant for $17.00 and carried them back to the car..
We drove to Michael’s Kitchen and looked for the Estate Sale, but did not find it. Instead we saw that Taos Auction was having a Closing Sale.
We walked over to it and soon Suzette found hand carved Wooden shoes from India that would make good door pulls and bought two pair for $100.00. I saw a silver pin that had a Millicent Rodgers design and bought it for Suzette’s birthday for $150.00. We then drove to the Millicent Rodgers Museum and went to the gift shop where we found that the same pins sold for $250.00. I felt vindicated.
It was noon, so we drove further north and west on the gorge road to Mesa Brewing Co, where the was a food and art event for the Harwood Museum. We were hungry so we ordered food and beers. We ordered the daily special of chicken mole enchiladas with calabacitas and black beans, a spinach and roasted beet salad with walnuts and goat cheese and a slice of chocolate cake plus two beers, a Harwood Ale which provided a $1.00 donation to the Harwood and a doubleheader potter.
Everything was delicious except a bit more mole sauce I the enchiladas would have been tastier.
We discovered that there was an art project featured at the Harwood Art Fest. For $15.00 you received a 6 inch by six inch block of compressed sand and concrete and a carving tool. You scratched a design into the block and after 7:00 the iron workers would fill the scratched blocks with cast iron and the cool then blocks and remove the images carved into the blocks from the sand. Suzette got the idea to make a door knocker in the shape of an artichoke. She made the top thistle part and I scratched the bottom heart and stem part that she would later hinge together to make the door knocker. After about 1 ½ hours we finished and left our creations and drove back to the house for a nap at 2:3o.
We napped until 4:30 when we dressed again and drove to the Harwood Museum for a fabulous concert by the Taos Chamber Music that started at 5:30. I loved the concert for two reasons. It was music inspired by Tibetan culture and because one of the members of the Taos Chamber Music group is Sally Guenther, who was in my grade at Paschal H.S.in Fort Worth, which brought back memories of Paschal, such as the fact that awards were given to the best students. I don’t recall if awards were given for musical achievement, which Sally surely would have won, but I won the awards for being the best chess player and being the best Economics student. Sally’s father was head of the Music Department at TCU and she was an accomplished cello player in high school and attended Julliard after graduation. This made me recall that another friend named David Cochaner’s whose mother taught us math in fifth grade attended MIT to study math after graduation.
The concert included a world premiere of a work adapted from Tibetan oral signing by Andrea Caulfield, who described her trek to northern Nepal to learn and record the music and then played and sang the vocal part of the piece along with the six members of TCMC who played the piece. It was impressive and I thanked her and complimented her singing during intermission after the piece.
After the concert We drove the few blocks to Stella’s at 210 Camino Pueblo, which had gotten several good reviews. I ordered Sea Bass with wild rice and grilled asparagus. Suzette ordered a Cajun Cream soup with shrimp. We both liked our dinners. I shared my dish with Suzette and gave her fresh spinach leaves and rice to add body and texture to her soup, which was barren of anything except a very flavorful Cajun Cream soup base and lots of shrimp. My dish on the other hand was a platter full of lots of interesting ingredients. First of all the platter was filled with a layer of fresh spinach leaves. I guess bags of fresh organic spinach leaves are now readily available in Taos. Then there was some sautéed zucchini and yellow squash mixed with a risotto merely of wild and regular rice that was in a thick sauce and finally on top was a sautéed filet of what I thought was fresh corvina with half a dozen spears of steamed asparagus leaning across the top of the fish filet. I thought it was a good dish, especially for $20.00, as was Suzette’s soup for $10.00. By 8:30 we were finished with dinner and on our way to Mesa Brewing Company to pick up our cast iron knocker.
After picked up our knocker and thanked the iron workers for their effort, we saw Jay and Paula Steinberg and their two dogs in the brewery’s Main hall where the music was being played. They were camping next to the brewery and this weekend was a mini music festival. I bought everyone glasses of wine and another slice of chocolate cake and we listened to the first hip hop band of the evening and talked to Jay and Paula until 9:30, when we decided to go back to the house.
When we returned to the house we watched the French chef series ‘ episode on Yam’Thka in Paris which has championed French/Chinese fusion food and excellent tea. I was particularly interested in Suzette seeing the emphasis and skill in acquiring and serving tea. I hope she liked it. It reminded me again of the importance of serving a good cup of tea, like I had at Ichi Ban and can no longer have at Azuma, which has caused me to switch my allegiance to Ichi Ban with one sip of tea.
Bon Appetit
Bon Appetit
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