Wine, Movies, Art & Dem Sum

Good morning my fellow bloggers and stalkers.   Hope all had a great weekend and looking forward to another great week of learning, creating or just vegging, what ever floats your boat.  I'm still trying to get used to this firggin' format, but I'm sure in time, I'll become quite accomplished at figuring it out, making it as user friendly as a quantum physics assignment at MIT!

I had a pretty good weekend.  Friday I finished up the auction pieces for the Rotary dinner we attended Saturday evening.  The food still sucked and as for the wine, the only decent one I found ran out right away.  They had a plethora of red, which I love, but my allergy to them keeps me at bay, and they had lots of white sweet wine....I hate sweet wine!  When I visit my daughter in Austin, we go to Specs, this wonderful warehouse filled with all kinds of  spirits and luckily we have them here in El Paso now...one just down the street from us, heavenly!  Anyway, I digress as usual, but Andria loves Muscata...makes my teeth ache just typing the word.  I recall liking sweet wines when I was a young person, age wise, not mentally since I still have yet to grow up!  However, when we moved to Germany, I discovered all kinds of great wines.  That winter of '76 when I arrived,  happened to be one of the best grape growing years ever in that country, or all of Europe, I assume, since I "tested" many wines all through the continent and they were excellent.  It has been an especially dry Spring and Summer, making it great grape growing.  So we enjoyed the '76 wines throughout my entire time living there, '76-'79.  As '78 approached, the cost of '76 wines began to escalate due to their popularity.  I did bring some back with me, but they have long been enjoyed.

 I was a real snob back in the day when it came to wine...French or German was all I drank, then I discovered CA domestics when visiting my older sis in LA in '80, plus the cost was more suitable to my budget, as it still is.  Then during a trip to Santa Fe and other parts of northern NM, I discovered NM wines and I've been in love since.  NM has some awesome wineries and luckily, as many of you know, NM is just up the road or across the train track down the street from me. So we pretty much buy domestics now.  I had a neighbor back in my other life who was German and began a wine import from her native country.  She used to bring by bottles of our favorite wines at Christmas and we looked forward to that gift every year.  I still see her on occasion at the Sprouts up the street from me, but she is now hawking NM wines too...she too has seen the light!!  LOL

Again, there I went...tracking again!  So here are a couple of pics of what I sent to the auction.  They were alright and not my usual sort of work, but as I said in my last post, my dolls were never popular, too strange for this group, so I prostituted myself and made this stuff.  I do enjoy making the religious candles, though and I think I'm going to make a few more, except with my own small painting instead of a post card...now where did I put those water colours??!!??

Virgen de Gaudalupe Candle

"Love" book marker & daisy earrings

They were fun and easy to make and took me no time to put them together.  They did get a few bids, but again, my friends ended up with the above book marker and earrings...don't know who bought the candle though.  I think it was the young woman who was holding another one of her prizes, a certificate from a local attorney for a free Chapter 7 bankruptcy!!  I won't even comment any further on that one.

Since I'm waiting for the "monsoon" season to begin, hence the end of our swamp cooler's effeceincy to keep us comfortable during the summer, I'm making lots of different meals and freezing them for microwaving or toaster oven heating.  Last week I made "chilaquiles," a sort of enchilada casserole.  I usually make red ones, but I decided to make green chile and chicken, plus, a large "olla" (pot) of beans.  I made a huge baking dish of it and froze half of it as did the beans.

I added more green chile, NM of course, which I purchase at a little shop up the street from me.  They roast long greens  and jalpenos daily, so I no longer have to roast them myself.  If anyone is interested in the recipe, just let me know....will email it to you....it's so easy, a baby can make it...well, ok, I exaggerate, but it's real simple.  I also got a couple of ideas for another easy Mexican dish for "Albondigas," meatballs.  For those of you who are not acquainted with Gloria over at http://glorv1.blogspot.com/ you really do need to check out her blog.  Gloria is one of the sweetest, creative and just down right nicest ladies I've had the pleasure of knowing.  Her blog is full of her wonderful paintings, her childhood stories and her love of family and life...she's a gem.  This morning she posted a recipe for albondigas and it's the same one I grew up eating...lots of veggies included.  So if you want to try something new and easy to make, hop on over there and get that recipe...I promise, it's delish!

I discovered this great show a couple of months ago on the Science Channel.  It's called "Oddities," and here's the link for you to check it out:  http://science.discovery.com/tv/oddities/.  The couple that run this little shop of some horrors in NYC seem pretty normal, but it's the characters that come into the store to buy or sell....now they are  the real oddities!  I wouldn't mind having a few of their wares, and display in my studio or living room, but there are people who's entire home is nothing but...amazing collections.  Anyway, go check it out...it's really a fun show and later on this month, there will be another store added, one from San Francisco...looking forward to the west coast version.

I should close this down and publish but I have one more link I want to share with you.  My daughter was encouraged by a friend, who works for Nickelodeon, to write a blog about being a mommy of a litter of kids, 5 of them to be exact.  Andria has always been a terrific writer...she can make you laugh till you realize you need to wipe both tears and boogers or just wipe tears.  I know some of you either have adult children and grandchildren and some of you have no children at all, but I can promise you, you'll enjoy reading her thoughts about life as a full-time mother of children ranging from 12-5 months.  For Mother's Day, she wrote a really funny and yet beautiful blog about moi.  After reading that, you'll know the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  So please check it out and check out her "like" page on FB.  I think she has a giveaway of a gift basket filled with goodies...just what those goodies are, still not sure, but check her out and please pass the word on...she could use the traffic:  http://andisjournal.com/wordpress/2012/05/ 

Before I bid you adieu, just wanted to let you know I went to see "Snow White and the Huntsman."  Folks, I'm not one to go to the movies much, we're  Netflix kind of people, but since I've been getting together with a couple of old high school buds, we've known each other for 41 years, I've been doing more theatre than television.  Charleze Theron is incredible, so evil and yet, so lovely, the Huntsman is a total hunk and a half which  made the $6.25 admission a little more palpable and the special effects were fantastic, but over all, it was a stink-o-roo!!  Kristen Stewart recently admitted that she sparks up now and then, well, she should have sparked lots more during the filming of this movie...she was a real downer!!  Let's just say it's not your mama's Disney version!!  In spite of that, we still had a great time and that in itself was worth it.  We're going to see the new Andy Garcia movie this week, “For Greater Glory.” It's about the Cristero War, during the mid-late 1920's in Mexico when the Mexican government revoked the practicing of Catholicism in that country.  My mother told me when she was a little girl, my grandparents took in a Franciscan monk from Mexico who took up residence in their basement.  He did household chores, cooked and sometimes, played babysitter to my aunt and some of her rowdy friends when she had her club friends over.  He ratted out one of her friends to my grandmother, telling her this little girl kept getting into the brandy!!   LOL   Girls will be girls and monks will be...whatever!!!!


Well, time to shut this down and get my afternoon started...need to get myself back into the studio and begin creating more "coco-head" dolls.  Peace out.