Eating in New Mexico Day 6

This morning we went down the street to the Zia Diner for breakfast. The place was fairly empty.



A. ordered fried eggs, bacon, hash browns and a raspberry scone along with his usual morning coffee.



Z. ordered 2 chocolate chip pancakes and a lemonade.

This morning I decided to order a little pot of Jasmine green tea. At home I usually drink green tea with breakfast, but rarely when eating out because often the quality or choice of teas is lacking. When I saw they had not only green tea but Jasmine green tea on the menu I figured it might be okay and it was. They used Numi brand tea which makes a decent Jasmine green tea (and a very good gunpowder green tea also).




I ordered something called the Nutty New Mexican which was a takeoff on eggs Benedict. It started with a Wolferman's English muffin topped with a ton of their corned beef hash (corned beef, potatoes and green chile) with poached eggs on top with a bit of hollandaise sauce on the eggs. It was huge and I was only able to eat about half of it, but wish I could have saved the rest for later, it was so good. Just the right amount of heat, not too much, but still there. The only fault was that one of the poached eggs had a solid yolk, it should have been runny.

After going back to the room for our usual getting ready for the day routine we walked towards the Plaza area for a morning of shopping. We stopped in a little import shop and got Zoe some beaded bracelets and rings from Guatemala. We went to the Nambe shop and ordered a beautiful vase (made from the mysterious Nambe metal) and had it sent to my BIL and his wife for their wedding present. We picked up various little things for ourselves and for others including some Senor Murphy pinon brittle (okay but not my favorite), red chile peanut brittle (this was my favorite) and a pinon log (similar to a pecan log only with vanilla fudge inside the caramel and pinon nuts outside- this was pretty good). We also picked Z. up a couple of kid's books, one a book about Acoma Pueblo (which we were going to the next day) and the other a kid's book of Pueblo stories.

After walking back to our hotel and stopping at the UPS store to mail some things back home, we drove to the Chocolate Maven for lunch (we had eaten a dessert/snack here earlier in the week). That time we ate in a small room downstairs that had a glass window into the bakery so you could watch them making all the yummy baked goods. This time we were seated upstairs in a larger dining room.



Z. ordered a cheese pizza and lemonade.




A. ordered a Mediterranean melt sandwich (it had things like artichoke hearts, olives, mozzarella and provolone cheese) and iced tea.



I had a Pellegrino and a cheddar melt, which doesn't look like much in the photo but was delicious! It had cheddar cheese, tomato slices, caramelized onions and Dijon mustard on a light rye bread (toasted of course). One of the best "grilled cheese" I've had!

We stopped at the bakery on the way out to pick up some cookies. Some mini chocolate chip cookies that we ate in the car, and some shortbread cookies to bring to our friend Joe. Joe is an old friend, he did a reading at our wedding 24 years ago. He is a painter, a very good painter, and lives in the mountains in Cerrillos. We left the restaurant and drove out to see him at his house/studio.



This is the view out of his front door. We hung out with him and his cats (Maurice Ravel and Colin Maloy) until early evening. Z. played with the cats and at one point was outside with them. Joe excused himself and went to the door to tell Z. to be careful to watch where she stepped as there were rattlesnakes out there (!!!). She came in (at least for a while). We had one period where the wind really kicked up and it got dark and ominous but it petered out quickly and didn't really become anything. We snacked on organic red grapes and the shortbread cookies and were all surprised when we realized it was 7pm. So we said our goodbyes and headed back to Santa Fe.

We decided that pizza would be good for dinner, we were tired and not in the mood for a "real" dinner and didn't feel like takeout in the hotel room either. So we went to Upper Crust Pizza where the three of us shared a cheese pizza and A. and I shared a Greek salad. The pizza dough was thick and doughy yet crisp and the sauce had a tomato paste flavor. There was a lot of gooey cheese with lots of tiny browned dot spots all over (sorry, we were too tired and forgot to take pictures). We left full and went back to the hotel room where we had a package of Newman's Own Organics peanut butter cups (which conveniently has three cups per package) and had them for dessert. Then we (or should I say I) started packing as we were checking out the next morning to head to Albuquerque for my mom's list's F2F (Face to Face).