The Land That Enchants Me

New Mexico is the Land of Enchantment. I have no doubt of that. I knew it the first time I visited many decades ago, and I knew it when I came here, finally, to stay forever. Like a seed blown far from the flower, I have set roots here in New Mexico, planted my heart and soul firmly in the land.

Rural New Mexico is what I mean. I'm not a city girl. Being out here in the middle of nowhere is not for everyone. Rural New Mexico can be a hard place to survive physically and economically. Rural New Mexico is technologically behind the rest of the world. In many places it is culturally behind the times.

But so what?

Sometimes being in the right place at the right time is worth whatever price needs to be paid. While New Mexico can be a slower, kinder, artsier, red-or-green whimsical kind of place, here in the outback you risk all that enchantment running you over and stomping on you for good measure. But I don't look at the brutal winds, the spiking temperatures, the aridity (and the dust and the pollen) as negatives. I don't think of the lack of economic opportunities, the slow internet, the dicey cellular coverage as true problems. They are simply part of the chiaroscuro of the place.  They contrast with the breathtaking beauty, the wonder, the magic that fuels my soul.  Those other things ground me and provide the extreme contrast that pumps life into life.

Nobody said enchantment was all sweetness and light, anyway.

I have come to learn that susceptibility to any magic is directly proportional to the willingness to dive in and embrace it all: the good, the bad and the ugly. I would say I had dived in, except that I think it's more that the place snatched my heart from me, and laughingly teased me into jumping in to get it back.

I love being enchanted.

The Artwork of Dede Lifgren

This is the most recent work by my artist sister, Dede Lifgren.  The urn is 5' tall.  Click on the photo to enlarge.

Summer looks so good from a winter point of view. And then comes the heat and the flies and the mud after it rains and I start thinking about how nice it is to sit next to a warm wood stove when its snowing outside.

It's hard to believe I took this photo just four months ago.

Special Eggs, by Alma Hobbs

Alma Hobbs

From Memories and Photos of New Mexico (Facebook group)

Reposted here with permission

When I grew up we had a bunch of chickens. There were white ones, black ones, wild ones , gentle ones. They ranged out 2 or 3 hundred yards, scratching around, hiding their nest in the bear grass and surviving.

Everyday was an Easter egg hunt. The eggs that our hens produced were a lot like people. Our eggs were not like a carton bought at the store, all so equally matched in color and size. The outer shell was every color from white to dark brown, but those eggs were all alike inside. Well, except once in a while one would have two yolks. Other than that if you cracked a white one in the skillet and a dark brown one in the skillet by it, and did away with the shell nobody could tell which egg was which.

Then there were special eggs. Sometimes in the early spring, a hen would lay a tiny egg. That pullet's first egg could be as small as the first joint of my thumb. If the timing was right that tiny egg would be boiled and died for Easter to be the PRIZE egg of the egg hunt. I remember several of those tiny eggs.

The other rare egg was an occasional soft shell egg. The membrane kept the white and yolk contained, but the egg had to be handled carefully, as there was no outer shell.

I see those soft shelled eggs in humans also. Some of them get their feelings hurt, so easily. They seek to create drama. We have to handle them carefully.

But we are all eggs in the basket together. White, Brown, Special, Soft shells, Remove the shells and we are all just big gooey messes.............

She's Baaaack!

I haven't been posting to this blog because I've been writing lots elsewhere. Plus I wanted to see about using WordPress instead, though I don't know why. I've never liked WP and I still don't, so I'm staying right here. I'm going to redo my website, lifstrand.com and will make it easier to go back and forth from one to the other.

At least, that's my plan.

Meanwhile, a reminder that I've published the posts from my Mage Music blog in book form. If you're interested in learning a little more about the process of creativity, whether via Magick or the sweat of your brow, you might want to get this book. Right now you can get a free Kindle version, so don't wait to order your copy.

Mage Music is now available (paperback and Kindle)  Order yours today from Amazon!

Spiritual Horsemanship - project development: Where's Lif?

Spiritual Horsemanship - project development: Where's Lif?: I haven't posted here in a long time, but that's not because I haven't been writing.  I've been putting my time into another...

Is It Soup or Is It Compost?

I don't often want to cook. No, let me rephrase. I rarely want to cook. How this plays out in the real world is that when I get the urge to play chef I usually don't have a lot of ingredients available to cook with.

Yesterday I got the urge to make spaghetti sauce. Mmmmm - that nice tangy red sauce that goes over pasta, and that you enjoy with warm bread fresh out of the oven. Mmmmm.

Well, not at this house.

Background info

If you haven't read other stuff I've written, you might not know some important facts about me that influence my culinary efforts:

• I live in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. Nearest town - nearest store - is 30 miles away.  
• I believe that processed foods are bad for people, so I focus on raw and organic, which tend to be bulky, space-consuming ingredients.
• I also live in a teensy tiny house. I don't have much storage space, including space to keep much food.
• I like the concept of gardening, but the practice of gardening has been less than fruitful.
• My chickens are apparently on strike. Or maybe they're too darned old to lay eggs. And no, I'm not going to eat the chickens. That's another topic, thank you very much.
• And in the winter when I've already got a fire going in the wood stove, I try to do all my cooking on it. Why waste propane?

Combine the above with an only sporadic interest in cooking and you can imagine that not only is there not much meal planning going on here, but when I do decide to cook, what I want to eat and what I make are not necessarily going to be the same thing.

Yesterday's Spaghetti Sauce

So yesterday I get the urge for spaghetti.  First I built up the fire in the wood stove and started heating some olive oil in a suitable sized pot.  Then I started sauteing onions - I happened to have some that weren't growing too much greenery.

I went through the fridge and saw that the celery was getting old, so I chopped up some of that for the sauce and chopped up some for the chickens. I saved the stem end plus a couple inches of stalk to sprout and become more celery someday*.

Rummaging around, I found some carrots that were ready to use now or to feed to the critters in a day or two more, so carrots got chopped up and added to the pot to saute. I like the sweetness that carrots give to a sauce. The ends and mushy parts I saved for the horses.

Time to add some tomatoes. I checked in the cupboard - uh oh. One measly can of chopped tomatoes and one of tomato sauce. I have learned to check the expiration date on any food stuff I find in my house, and unfortunately these cans were... quite old. Old enough to start kindergarten.

I grow tomatoes in the house all year long, but I don't use grow lights. Thus in the dead of winter the plants are not enthusiastic about producing fruit, so no help there.

So no red spaghetti sauce. Time to regroup.

Today's Soup

As you may have concluded, following recipes is not my thing.  I like to wing it when I've succumbed to the urge to cook.  So... if I wasn't going to be making red spaghetti sauce, it was time to explore my other options.

There was half a head of cabbage waiting for me to remember it - actually quite fresh. I chopped that up (saving the stem end for growing a new head of cabbage*) and added it to the pot to cook.

I had some organic chicken broth that I was going to use last Thanksgiving and didn't. Its expiration date hasn't even been reached, how lucky for me and for my dog Joe. Some of the broth went into the pot when I decided the veggies were cooked enough and some went over Joe's kibble.  He liked that.

I added some water and leftover coffee from the morning to cover the veggies (I like to add coffee because it adds a richness to sauces), plus some garlic and some salt, and let it all cook a while.

When it started smelling good I gave it a first taste. Hmmm.  I rummaged around in the cupboard and found a can of organic black beans and one of pumpkin. Dogs seem to like cooked pumpkin a lot, so Joe got a tablespoon of pumpkin before the pot did.

For a final touch, I added some dried oregano and basil - I grew those and dried them myself, I'll have you know!

The soup was smelling real good and the occasional taste confirmed it, though it hadn't cooked long enough to have fully blended by the time I went to bed.  I put the pot outside in the cold (it was in the 20s out there) rather than heat up my fridge, and put it back on the wood stove this a.m. to continue cooking.

If I was going to do this right, I'd put the soup in a blender and I'd add some sherry. I'm too lazy to do the blender and I don't have any sherry, which is too bad because I can tell that would really provide an extra depth and richness that the soup calls for.

I'm working - in my own way - on a loaf of sourdough for this evening.  By the time the bread is done the soup will be perfect.

But I still want the spaghetti, darn it.

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*I did say that I don't garden well, but I'm always hopeful.