January 4, 2020 Brunch -Lizzie’s in Van Horn, Texas. Dinner – Chicken and dumpling Soup.

January 4, 2020 Brunch -Lizzie’s in Van Horn, Texas. Dinner – Chicken and dumpling Soup.

Today was the long road home.  We started at 8:19 driving north.  After about an hour we arrived in a Van Horn where U.S. 90 met I – 10.  Suzette had researched the restaurants and chose Lizzie’s which reports by dinners on yelp seem to suggest was the least spicy of all the Mexican restaurants.  When we arrived there were several tables filled with folks, which seemed encouraging.  We immediately saw one of our favorites, Machaca.  But I was torn between Machaca and menudo, which was a Saturday and Sunday special.  I saw several tables of folks eating menudo and the dark red color scared me a bit and the fact that we had eaten Posole only two days before pushed me to order Machaca.  Suzette ordered it also.  We ordered it with corn tortillas, which we always do.  The dish was served with beans and potatoes, which Suzette ordered.  I ordered mine with double beans.

This Machaca was the most traditional style, beef jerky rehydrated and sautéed with eggs, onion, fresh jalapeños, and tomatoes, ranchero style.  In Albuquerque and other towns in New Mexico usually day old roast beef is used. This was the second time I had had it made with beef jerky. The first and only other time was at a ranch in Baja California in 1972.  The National Highwa,c -| down the length of Baja has just been opened and there was almost no development below Ensenada.  You had to buy gas at ranches and several served food.  I ate Machaca for the first time at one of those ranches that served breakfasts.

Suzette’s Machaca plate 

Lizzie’s Restaurant in Van Horn

After breakfast we drove north on US 62/180 and soon arrived at Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  Billy and Elaine had recently hiked up the mountain and had commented that they enjoyed their trip, so we stopped at the visitors center at the trail head to the peak and were directed to the other two park sites further north.  I am not in good enough physical shape to hike up a mountain, so we drove north and stopped at the Smith Springs ranch house at frijoles Canyon.  It was a lovely old house, schoolhouse, and orchard located adjacent to a spring that flowed at a rate of 6 gallons per minute.

The house is now a park service museum that traces the history of the site from Indian to Spanish to U.S. Calvary, to settler habitation of the site. Smith was quite inventive and created a mechanism to manufacture acetylene gas chemically to light the house.

We then drove to McKitterick Canyon but it was under reconstruction so we continued north through
Carlsbad and Artesia,  where we stopped to shop a couple of antique stores and then picked US 285 and continued north through the Pecos River Valley through Vaughan and up to I – 40 at Clines Corner where we turned west and drove into Albuquerque a few minutes after 5:00.

As we drove into Albuquerque looking at the sun set over Mount Taylor and the volcanoes and turn the sky and the Sandia pink, I could not help thinking that our Valley and the Pecos River Valley are just as beautiful as the area around Marfa.  Perhaps because it was great to be back home.

Willy was home when we arrived but left to take some items toWill’s house, where he will stay until the apartment is ready.

Suzette said she had been suffering from an upset stomach for several days and we both had gotten heartburn from our Machaca brunch.  Beef jerky does not go down easily, so decided to cook chicken soup and we decided to add the last dozen Ling Ling dumplings we had.  Suzette suggested using the chicken carcass for a broth and I added chopped celery, onion, and a carrot for a mirepoix.  After cooking the broth for about an hour, I added several handfuls of green peas, the meat of one chicken thigh diced, about 1/3 cup of rice and 1/3 cup of  chopped cilantro leaves plus the dumplings.  We removed the bones and served the finished soup with green onion thinly sliced and Hoisin sauce.  The soup was delicious and helped settle our stomachs.  After dinner Suzette poured us glasses of limoncello over crushed ice, which further settled our stomachs.

I drank a cup of tea with the last brownie after that for dessert as we watched the AFC Wildcard games.  Most dramatically the Patriots lost to the Titans.

At 10:00 Suzette went to bed but I stayed up and watched the lovely and loving special on the life of Linda Ronstadt.

I concur with the overused statement that it was fun to get away and fun to return home.

Bon Appetit