Obscure Family Connections and Apartment Food Fests: Thanksgiving Away from Home

So, I know I said this wasn't going to turn into a food blog. However, it's kind of hard to avoid that topic while talking about Thanksgiving, so here's another post of tasty food and the stories surrounding it!

First of all, there's the funny story behind what I did on the actual Thanksgiving Day. I had previously met a bunch of family who live out here when I first arrived in ABQ, way back in August. However, since I had only seen them all only once, I had forgotten what many of them looked like. Imagine my surprise when I was talking with the boyfriend of one of my coworkers at the Daily Lobo, and he mentions he has a relative who works at Sandia National Labs...who happens to have the same name as my cousin who works at Sandia National Labs...and who lives on the other side of the city, just like my cousin. We rediscovered right there that we were related, and, though I had previously received an invitation to go to my cousin's for Thanksgiving Day, I now had a way to get there, not to mention an interesting story for my confused coworker!

The next step, then, was to gather food that I could eat in preparation for the impending Thanksgiving Day feast. Since my apartment and I were planning on making an epic day-after-Thanksgiving meal on Friday for our friends and family, we made a suitably epic trip to the local Whole Foods, which is where I picked up some things for Thursday at my relatives' as well. I mixed together quinoa and vegetables. Pretty simple and tasty, but not worth a picture. My cousin's girlfriend (my coworker at the Daily Lobo! I still can't get over what a small world this is) made something truly photo (and tastebud) worthy: a fudge-like flourless chocolate cake with raspberries on top!

As you can see, dessert was wonderful (and it didn't take long for it to loose the Pac Man shape and become only a few slices). However, the rest of the meal went just fine as well: turkey, mashed potatoes and my quinoa and vegetables. A little plain, but it was still neat to have family to be with on Thanksgiving, and to be able to eat everything, including dessert, with confidence!

Then, the food insanity truly began.

Friday was the big day, and we had a ton of food to make. A quick overview of the menu:

- Turkey
- Gluten-free stuffing
- Gluten-free gravy
- Mashed potatoes
- Oven fries (using both blue and Yukon gold potatoes)
- Insalate caprese (fresh romaine, fresh mozzarella, fresh tomatoes, olive oil (of course!) and some prosciutto and soppressata)
- Antipasto (beans, peppers, olives, capers, sharp provolone, artichokes, pepperoncini, sun dried tomatoes...you name it!)
- Linguine (senza glutine!) con pesto
- Gluten-free mac n' cheese
- Bacon (used to wrap the turkey)
- Iron skillet bacon-fried fresh sliced jalapeños (gotta use that bacon fat somehow!)
- Corn spoon bread (made with un-cross contaminated corn meal; due to the dubious relationship with me and corn, I only had a little)
- 2 gluten-free sweet potato pies
- 5 normal people pies (an assortment of apple, pumpkin and pecan)
- Vanilla ice cream and good ol' Dark Amber maple syrup from Maine

I was planning on making some gluten-free iron skillet mac n' cheese as well, but all of the above took over 4 hours to get ready, and we were all quite hungry and unwilling to wait for more food by the end of that, considering the sheer amount of everything we already had.

Unfortunately, considering how busy we all were making things and how good the food was, few photos exist. However, here's some shots of the Italian side of things before all of the food preparation became truly crazy (if you have some deja vu I don't blame you), and before full attention had to be devoted to make sure everything turned out edible:

  

   

It took us until yesterday to finish up all of the food, and that was ever after inviting over lots of friends during the weekend to help us with it all! We're a lucky apartment: almost all of us can cook, and all of us can appreciate good food.

Between family on Thursday and the apartment food fest on Friday, it was definitely a wonderful way to spend Thanksgiving away from home!

Ok, this really is the last food post. At least for now. With the end of the semester upon us, I'll be too busy with things academic to engage in photo-worthy foodmaking. Not to worry, there's still plenty of interesting things happening around here and I'll continue bring them to you!

Linguistics and Lobsters

It's been two weeks since I last posted, and let me tell you, they have been an extremely eventful 2 weeks! Things really kicked off on Nov. 1 with the first day of the 10th High Desert Linguistics Society Conference, here at UNM. We had presentations by people from all over the US and Canada, as well as some international people from Mexico and Brazil, to name a few countries. As a grad student, and by default a member of the HDLS, I had to help out at the conference. However, what made the conference especially important for me was that I got to make a poster presentation on a new machine translation conceptualization that I had come up with. My presentation went well, and I got some good comments and feedback. While I don't think the academic life is for me, it was still interesting to check out the conference and see what academia is like!

Then, after the conference ended on Saturday, I had just a few days off until the next big thing came along: Election Day! I had never covered presidential, congressional and state legislature elections before, so despite spending nearly 11 hours at the Daily Lobo from Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, it was still very fun and exciting to have the chance to report on everything as it happened via live blog and twitter, as well as write some articles for the next day's newspaper.

Finally, the latest thing to happen around here over the past few weeks was last night's authentic New England seafood dinner along with (of course) more pasta! We returned once again to Talin Market to pick up Maine lobsters and cherrystones (for chowder, Rhode Island clear) for dinner. In addition, we couldn't resist picking up more pasta as well as a pesto sauce (unfortunately jarred but there was no time to make it) and more capers as well. We also picked up some vanilla ice cream to go along with the maple syrup I had gotten from home the week before. We got back to the apartment soon after 3, assembled everything and got to work.

...and played with the lobsters a little bit as well.

     

Soon we ran into our first problem: no one had a steam basket, so how were we going to steam the clams? We ended up creating our own by poking holes in a disposable metal food container, reinforcing the sides with twist ties so the weight of 3 pounds of clams wouldn't be too much for it (we steamed our clams in two batches), and then used a coat hanger to secure the whole thing to the pot in a way that we could still close the lid and steam them.

 

 
It worked extremely well, and, as understandably proud as we all were, we left our creation hanging above the sink for the rest of the evening, holding the cleaned-out clam shells after we had shucked them for the chowder.

 
Soon after the chowder was all set and cooked (which went pretty uneventfully despite the chowder being somewhat less than perfect due to me forgetting that 6 pounds of unshucked clams does not equal 6 pounds of shucked clams), it was time to drop in the lobsters. I let my landlocked New Mexico and Nevada friends take care of that, and I showed them how to calm the lobsters beforehand by stroking their undersides. After half an hour, we took them out and everyone marveled at them before we shelled them.

 

 

 
...but once again, we couldn't resist playing with the lobsters.

    

  
After over 3 hours of preparation, everything was finally together and ready to go. Everyone grabbed a plate of pesto pasta and lobster meat, and a bowl of chowder.

Despite the fact that we had 8 people over for dinner, and despite the fact that everyone loved all of the food, we made so much that there was still plenty of leftovers for the next day or two (if they last that long).  

I promise that, between last post and this post, this blog isn't taking a permanent detour into the food world, but so far meal times have been pretty entertaining!

Things are going to get even busier around here very soon, with term paper season kicking off tomorrow, but hopefully it won't be another 2 weeks before I post again.

Fall and Italian food in ABQ

After a long wait, and with temperatures finally plunging into the 60s (though some 70s here and there), fall has finally come to ABQ! (Though apparently it's already been here for a good part of NM already. I keep forgetting how big the states are out here!) But, as expected, it's arrived in a very different form than in New England. This week, the leaves finally started really changing colors on the trees, instead of just being green and slightly yellowed at the edges, then falling off and dying like they have for the past few weeks. Nothing too special, most colors are pale yellows, though there are some orangey reds. It's different because these leaf colors occur alongside 1) trees that are still green 2) trees that are already bare 3) pine trees and 4) cacti, dinosaur ferns and scrub brush. And, though I didn't get any pictures of this, it was funny to see tree leaves speared on the cacti spikes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
However, the definite highlight of the week was yesterday. That afternoon, me and a few others from the apartment hopped on the bus and headed off to Talin Market on Central and Louisiana to go pick up a bunch of things to make an Italian dinner. We started off with lobsters and clam chowder in mind (Talin Market has fresh Maine lobsters and Rhode Island cherrystones!), but we ended up being too tempted by the Italian food; we agreed to come back to the seafood later.

For an antipasto we picked up the fagioli, marinated artichokes, olives, capers, fire-roasted tomato, roasted red peppers and cappicola. We didn't pick up any cheese for that since I already had a chunk of parmeggiano reggiano mailed to me from home! We also picked up a few pounds of gluten-free fettuccine (they had Tinkyada), some local artichoke marinara sauce and shredded romano. Once we got back we set to work and it took us over an hour to set everything up.

 

 

I got to introduce everyone to the concept of putting capers on pasta (and just the concept of capers in general), as well as the fact that romano is a better pasta cheese than parmeggiano reggiano since it's not as intense and won't overpower the flavor of the sauce. They were all a little confused about the antipasto since they hadn't ever had it before and expected it to have lettuce like a salad, but still enjoyed it. Even my Navajo apartmentmate, who has told me he really only likes meat, kneel down bread, corn and green/red chiles, approved of it all. And the best part is, we made so much for only 4 people, so there are plenty of leftovers for the coming week!

Open flames and chainsaws: The Balloon Fiesta

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be able to go to the evening events for the 41st annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta (and Chainsaw Carving Invitational). UNM had a trip for students on campus during fall break so naturally I jumped at the chance to go for only $4. It was a long bus ride out to the fairgrounds, which are up in Rio Rancho, sort of a suburb of ABQ but still part of it. I was struck by just how open the sky was when we got there:

Killing time until the sun set and the inflating of the balloons for the night flight began, we checked out the carvings from the week's Chainsaw Carving Invitational competitions. Each competitor started out with 2 tree trunks and, in two different rounds, a 90-minute speed round and a round lasting all week (a couple hours each day, non-consecutive, but not to exceed 24 hours total over a 7 day period), turned then into the following sculptures. Keep in mind these are all only (somehow!) done with chainsaws:

 

  

 

 

Soon the sun began to set and I finally got a chance to see the pinkish color that the Sandias are so famous for. It's only visible for about 5 minutes, if that, so photos have to be taken quickly.

By the time the Sandias faded though, the balloons had begun to be blown up all around the field. Since there were no viewing spots and you could just wander around the field in between all the balloons, that's what we did until things got too dark to see, and we parked ourselves in the middle of a huge bank of balloons. For now, here endeth the words: now, just sit back and enjoy an hour and a half's worth of balloon photos!

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You'll notice none of these photos feature balloons in the air. Unfortunate crosswinds made that impossible, so we had to settle for seeing them lit up on the ground. However, that was still plenty neat enough, especially since they coordinated several "blast off burns" throughout the evening, where all the balloonists would simultaneously fire their burners for 5 seconds straight. Balloons would keep inflating themselves around us (in the end there were around 70, at least), and as it got darker, the different balloons' burners served to highlight different parts of each picture, and it was fun to experiment and capture different lightings when different balloons in different parts of the frame triggered their burners. Also, it was cool to see some of the novelty balloons, like Humpty Dumpty, a cow, a panda and a big stagecoach, to name a few. Once again, even though the balloons never got off the ground, it was still a wonderful experience!