Albuquerque, NM

Thank goodness tat now-a-days SOME men can and enjoy cooking. However, if you are a woman in Many NM HOMES, you’ll have an apron on and perhaps have beencooking for days for the feast days, New Year’s dinner, New Year’s eve party: you get the picture. If you are lucky, other family members may help and guests may bring a dish or two to help out.

Let me tell you I have heard the woes of the work and cleaning to be done. I’m single which makes my party time easy. My friend Pat went to church yesterday and some of the women were talking how there should be a left-over pot luck party for after Christmas! (ditto New Years) Unless you have a good sized family who can eat all those leftovers?! Besides if everyone bring a diash, you will have a great variety of food and styles of cooking! Less goes to waste and there’s also less clean-up. Take control of the remote and get some of the guys to help with clean up and garbage removal before the game is on. La Fiesta!

Also here’s another scoop that I accidentally discovered. If you go to Santa Fe Baking COmpany near closing, sometimes they’ll yell out: free pastries! They have huge muffins, scones, croissants, and more for the taking. Don’t tell too many people, because I barely got two scones, and there was no way the lady scooping up the croissants was going to let anyone get close! I guess that they have their regulars! If I end there again near closing, I’ll take my position differently.

Thus today I had several muffins and two sconces. Pat immediately packaged some for the freezer explaining: all you have to do is heat them up in the oven and they will be just fine. I put a couple in the cold refrigerator, and left several for today and tomorrow in a bag on the counter.

I also had some ripe and slightly bruised pears that needed attention and so today I created a new kind of porridge/pudding. In a saucepan I mixed water, some leftover rice and barley, a crumbled bran muffin with raisins and cinnamon, two diced pears a 40z “fage” yogurt think with cream (that’s how it is made). I mixed them and heated the ingrdients, occassionally stirring for about 15 minutes until thick. The pears were not mushy and kept their fresh flavor. My first bowl still had a good deal of liquid, but as I let it set longer, it was more like pudding. Mucho good. Made 6-10 bowlfulls. See now I have leftovers! It not only make a great breakfast but also a terrific dessert.

You could substute yougurt, heavy cream, or whole milk for the fage. Fage is available at health food/gourmet grocery stores. Also you could use chopped up empadas, leftover breads, and different fruits. I considered adding an egg, but had a hardboiled one instead.

Start your new year off with some extra yummy zestful food. Be glad for the treats from unexpected sources! Alaso if you venture out and have lefovers from a fine dining establishment, bring the extras to someone you know who might now have the extra money for such vittles, or who might not get out. They’ll be surprized and appreciative.