Bliss is a Sopapilla

After a hard week of anxiety and pain, there's nothing like a little taste of home to make all things right in the world.

Let me explain.

I grew up in southern New Mexico, and I'll tell you what. I took New Mexican cuisine WAY for granted. I can remember a time when I was bored, for pete's sake, with the food at the hole-in-the-wall Mexican food place near the dental office where my mom has worked since the earth was young and, oh, sorry, Mom. Anyway, that all changed when I moved away from home and learned that the Mexican food I grew up with was regional. You just can't get that kind of Mexican food outside of New Mexico. But I'm always on the lookout for anything approaching what I remember from my growing-up time.

So tonight we tried a new Mexican place that opened up in what was formerly a "chicken shack." Clucks-R-Us, I think it was called. Ok, that's mean. Not important anyway since they went out of business. So, the food was actually pretty good! Not perfect, but hey, we're in Oklahoma. They do this thing with cheese sauce here. What can you expect? And if you don't know what the problem is with cheese sauce, you're obviously not from New Mexico. It's just not right. But what sealed the deal with this place was the sopapillas. For all you folks who don't know what a sopapilla is, well, it's a little slice of heaven. A 4x4 square of puffed pastry that the New Mexican food connoisseur will fill with honey after biting off one corner. It's lickable-yummy goodness in a small puffed dough pocket.











On to other topics. My niece is having a birthday this week. The reason I say this week is because with all the various family that has to visit to celebrate said birthday, it's taking a week to get through it. So this weekend is our weekend to whoop it up with her, her sister, my brother and sister-in-law. The Nodster is 10 this week, and we, Auntie and Unka are getting her her first cell phone, one of those kind where there's no dialpad, just buttons for ringing up mom and dad. So that's the cool thing we're doing. The OTHER thing we're doing, well I'm doing, is knitting her a cell phone cozy. Is that a cool thing for kids these days? Am I going to get "The Look"? You know. Is she going to sell it next week on Ebay or worse, is she going to give it away on Freecycle? "Free to good home - knitted cell phone thingamagig." Let me know what you think. Anyway, here's the "knitted cell phone thingamagig" as WIP (work in progress).