My pressure cooker makes life easier when it comes to cooking beans, which of course I had to do today for my 75th birthday. I had a birthday lunch at The Range in Bernalillo earlier in the week, thanks to Lori and Mike, but there is something earthy about making beans at home on your …
They trade cowboy wisdom as fast as Seinfeld punchlines on Yellowstone but what’s really sticking with me is the food. For instance, the scene in Season 4 Episode 6, where 6666 ranch newcomer Jimmy discovers a foil-covered plate on his bunk after a challenging day on a rank horse. It’s a chicken-fried steak with cream …
I am long past sentimentality and fart jokes, so I decided to make a pot of pinto beans for my birthday. My peace-seeking strategy for turning 73 this month is to lie low, monitor reality with history and news and hope that no one in my orbit kicks the bucket anytime soon. I have beef …
Now they’re going to tell me to give up cookies. I’ll cut back under scientific pressure but I won’t be happy about it. I whistled through an echocardiogram this week, then got zinged for A1C. Why do I have to be apologetic for my lifelong love of potatoes and pasta? How could a wholesome-looking oatmeal …
I still haven’t unfurled my first-ever yoga mat, contrary to the surely good advice of so many friends, but with a strained hamstring and plantar fasciitis in the same appendage I did this morning use my stand-up desk for coffee and bird-watching and slathered raspberry jam only on the leftover crusts of my fried Spam …
Rain wakes me at 7 a.m., the day before Christmas. I decide to read Joan Didion with coffee. She died yesterday. Later I will read Slouching Toward Bethlehem . This morning I choose her essay on Ernest Hemingway, Last Words. There will be fried potatoes and green chile for breakfast. Cowboy ate his kibble and …
“The Doughnuts,” about a boy and a doughnut machine gone wild, has always been my favorite Homer Price story and today I brought it home. I don’t know how old Homer was when the doughnut machine showed up in his life. I think Robert McCloskey wrote and illustrated the story for publication in 1943. I …
Fame did not come as I wanted. Jim Belshaw, retired Albuquerque Journal columnist, early riser and waste-no-time emailer, messaged me at 6:09 a.m. Sunday after seeing my name attached to a comment in the New York Times. “Is this you?” he demanded, ever the no-nonsense newsman. In my waking haze, I realized he was grilling …
dream ranch 