We are safe and warm inside our Canadian hotel room, listening to Il Divo perform on my husband's i-phone. We came to the Quebec Provence on the wings of free-mileage wrought tickets on Continental and hotel rates on Fairmont properties that cost no more than a stay at a Holiday Inn Express. We began our Canadian experience at Le Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City and then moved on to Le Manoir Richelieu in the Charlevoix region, just two hours upward along the St. Lawrence River. We'd been dreaming of this trip for two years, since the first time we ... << MORE >>

I am way behind in blogging due to the fact that I've been up to my eyelashes in other things-among them cooking for friends and family.  I'm including a recipe I hope you'll enjoy.



If you're not otherwise occupied, you might want to head out for Hatch, New Mexico for its annual Labor Day Chile Festival.  Hatch is a small town with about 2,000 inhabitants, except for during the Chile Festival when the population explodes to about 30,000. That might seem like a lot of ruckus over a mean green/red pod, but, after all, the Hatch Chile is the king of all peppers.   This year, the festival begins on September 5th and goes through the 6th.  Vendors roast green chile all along the streets, or you might just like to hang out in the parking lot talking to other chilephiles. They've got a horseshoe tournament, the Chile Festival Parade, the coronation of the Chile Queen, music by Queen Priscilla Banuelos, a chile toss contest, a chile eating contest, and a watermelon eating contest  you might seriously want to compete in if your mouth is on fire.  You can listen to the Las Cruces High School Mariachis and see the Darrell Hawkins Rope and Bullwhip Show or participate in a fiddling contest.
    It is very important to know a thing or two about peppers before you inflict them on your dinner guests.  I once nearly annihilated three men, two of them family members by serving stuffed poblano peppers along with enchiladas for dinner.  One spent all night writhing on the bathroom floor while taking various homemade concoctions in a futile attempt to put out the fire in his belly.  Two others headed straight for the bathroom during dinner, and made me wonder whether I should call 911 right away.  Pitiful moaning (and worse)  issued from the room and made me vow right then and there to NEVER serve another poblano to anyone. 
     Having said all that, I feel that I can safely recommend the following recipe.  To my knowledge, no one has died from having eaten it, although anything is possible.  Most folks really seem to enjoy this one, and it is something you can cook without setting your hands on fire by having to handle the peppers, themselves. 







                                                         Marci's Green Chile-Cheese Grits

9 oz. Velveeta Cheese
6 cups cooked grits
7 oz. can of diced mild green chiles
3 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1 1/2 sticks butter
1/2 tsp. Lawry's garlic salt  or to taste
1-2 cups crushed Kellogg'sCorn Flakes (amount depending upon type of baking dish to be used)

Cut cheese into easily melted pieces.  Add cheese to hot grits and stir.  Whip eggs and milk until blended and stir into cheese and grits mixture, along with garlic salt and butter.  Stir well.  Pour mixture into a greased baking dish.  Put Corn Flakes into a Ziplock plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin.  Sprinkle crushed Corn Flakes over grits and bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes (until it sets).  This side dish should serve about 8-10 people.  (Feel free to add a little more cheese if desired.)

I often serve this as an accompaniment to baked Cornish Game hens drizzled with a tangy orange barbecue sauce.  If you add steamed asparagus or green beans as another side, you'll have a colorful and hopefully delicious meal.

If you try this, let me know what you think!

        

The daily high temperatures in Austin are currently in the upper nineties.  Like vapors of bad juju, heat radiates upward from the asphalt and takes my breath away.  Our black, Chow mix dog has gone into hiding under the porch, and won't reappear until October unless he is pulled out by a John Deere tractor.  Even our gray ground squirrels listlessly lie on their backs with their tongues hanging out. 
     It's too hot to go barefoot.  This doesn't suit our seventeen-month-old grandson, who is generally opposed to shoes.  Summer just doesn't seem to be his season.  Whenever we take him to play in ...<< MORE >>

We are in Santa Fe, New Mexico scanning the horizons for dark clouds.  We've been promised scattered thunderstorms and lower temperatures.  A cool breeze has swept over the Sangre de Cristos and onto the high dessert valley, but there is no rain.  When we first bought a home here, drought was rampant.  Dead juniper and pinon dotted the countryside—all victims of beetles that had feasted upon them in their weakened state.  Local lawsuits erupted over water usage.  People began to wonder whether rain would ever fall again or if we'd somehow been ushered into a permanent dry as dirt era.
    I am reminded of 1969, when ...<< MORE >>

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Words have value, and are sometimes spoken at a great price.  In 1964, when I was in the first or second grade, my sister and I went to visit our grandparents on their ranch in the Hill Country.  It was summertime and heat radiated through the afternoon air as if from an open oven door.  Peacocks hid underneath the shade of live oak trees.  Half Sheepdog, half ...<< MORE >>

O.K. folks, I'm telling the following true story at the request my good friend and fellow writer, Linda Amey, who heard it years ago.  Thanks, Linda, for listening to a good many tales during the past twenty-one years.




They're everywhere, just waiting like  ticking, rattling bombs.  Coiled in a live oak treetop, underneath the hood of the red Chevy ranch truck, on the other side of the screened back door, and perhaps even underneath our four-poster bed.  I could say, "No problem.  They don't bother me.  I grew up on a ranch and ate boot leather and nails for breakfast.  My only toy ...<< MORE >>

There is a rhythm to the universe, even if it doesn't seem to be in tandem with our own.  Often, it is far better than we could ever have imagined.

For years, I'd been trying to take my husband to South America for his birthday.  What started as a flurry of planning a year in advance of his 60th, added up to nothing by Jan. 10th.  One thing after another, kept us from going—for years.  And then, by the time we were within days of his 63rd birthday, a miracle happened.  On New Year's Eve, I got a whim to try ONE MORE TIME.  Suddenly, like pieces ...<< MORE >>

In the South, we digest life through the use of food. We punctuate major life events with a giant smorgasbord exclamation point!  We celebrate births with pastel petit fours and ice cream punch at showers.  In honor of graduations, we host barbecues in the backyard or high tea at the Ritz.  We take our guests out for meals in fancy steak houses.  Waiters wearing hip haircuts and cushy shoes serve us perfectly-cooked filet mignon.  Then comes the side dishes of garlic mashed potatoes and whole steamed asparagus drizzled with lemon and butter.  At weddings, we feed our guests plates of roast pork tenderloin, new potatoes ...<< MORE >>

I have a parenting tip that I think should get me at least five minutes on Oprah!  There's a lot I don't know about parenting, even after raising a number of children.  This works, though, and beats arguing hands down.

Our youngest daughter was born to shop.  My mistake.  Due to the extreme heat in Austin's summers, I took our one-month-old  in her stroller through Barton Creek Mall.  We didn't necessarily buy anything; we just browsed.  What I have learned is this:  if you take a baby girl to the mall, it will imprint on her.  She will begin to dream ...<< MORE >>

This past weekend, we were in Charleston and loved the way history spoke to us at every turn.  There were 17th and 18th century  homes punctuated by elaborate plaster moldings, outlined in 18-ct. gold and whose drawing rooms dripped chandeliers.  They had creaking wooden floors and smelled of ancient oak, old parchment and mold.  Signs around town advertised Ghost and Horse-drawn Carriage tours.  We did not go on the ghost tours, although the history of long-deceased residents whispered to all who passed through the 1808 neoclassical Nathaniel Russell House.  If you closed your eyes and thought about it, you could see women in miles of ...<< MORE >>