“. . . the ever-present landscape flows in and through a Santa Fe kitchen.  It comes in as a stream of brilliant sunlight; as the smell of piñon nuts whose mother trees can be seen across every acre of land; as the inescapable layer of dust which no one tries overly hard to keep out, and, of course, as the food itself.”
Huntley Dent  The Feast of Santa Fe

Last week I made two peach pies: a morning filled with peeling, slicing, rolling, dusting, and, finally, crimping.  Outside my kitchen window squawking scrub jays searched the piñon trees for the soft, sweet nuts tucked inside pine cones.  The smell of peach and cinnamon filled the air.

Yellow and fuzzy with a deep blush, Tony’s peaches from Valley Honey and Apple Farm have a short trip from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. Purchased today, they can be eaten tomorrow. They are local, but not native.

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Peaches, like the hollyhocks I wrote about in August, are native to China and traveled to the Southwest in much the same way–from Asia to the Middle East to Spain and, finally, to New Mexico along with apricots, apples and a host of other fruits and vegetables. Dent writes in The Feast of Santa Fe that by 1850 vendors were selling peaches and other seasonal produce on Santa Fe’s plaza.

So I wondered, did the cooks who bought those peaches make pies? Checking Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert’s historical New Mexico cookbook, The Good Life, I found only one mention of pie. In a description of the elaborate food preparations for a wedding feast, she writes about two helpers who baked ” . . .  dried fruit pies in the mud ovens. The fruit was cooked, sweetened and seasoned. Long strips of flaky pastry were place in bread pans, spread with fruit and covered with more pastry. After these were baked they were cut into squares large enough for generous helpings.”  My guess is that these pies were filled with with dried apples or apricots, traditional favorites in New Mexican cuisine.

Dent includes a recipe for little pies, or empanaditas as they are called in Spanish, filled with peach butter and piñons. The small turnovers are made with flour and lard, stuffed with filling, and cooked in a small amount of hot oil. Done right, according to Dent, they are a light and flaky treat, a Christmas delight.

We ate one of my peach pies the day I baked it,  warm from the oven topped with ice cream. The other one is in the freezer, saved for a cold winter night, maybe Christmas Eve.

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

It was a week of travel, most of it in California: Carmichael, Chula vista, Escondido, Hollywood, Bakersfield, Mountain View, Richmond, and Arcata. Dave and I call it the western swing–his monthly review of construction projects in Arizona, California, Washington. As I list the towns and think back on the flights and rental cars I realize why I was tired yesterday, my first day back at home.

It was Tuesday, the morning I make my weekly trip to the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market. I try not to miss it, especially at the height of the season. If for no other reason, I would drag my sleep-deprived self down to the open air market at the Railyard for the tomatoes. They come in every shape and color: pear, cherry, plum, bright orange, dark purplish-red, and green-striped. Some, the best ones I think, are downright ugly, misshapen and split, bearing no apparent relationship to the perfect round specimens at the supermarket.

On my short drive to the market, trying to figure out why I felt so jet lagged after traveling from only one time zone to another, I realized that I had hurried out of the house without my usual mug of espresso laced with milk.

No time to turn back, I started through the row of tables making purchases, first, white corn and roasted green chile. Next, a quick stop at the indoor market for a cup of strong black coffee. I was starting to wake up, but struggling to juggle a cumbersome bag full of produce (I should have saved the corn for last) and a hot paper cup. I made quick work of the rest of it, not belaboring my selections:  a basket of mixed cherry tomatoes, a head of Bibb lettuce, a bunch of scallions, a container of tiny raspberries and four glossy, dark green poblano peppers. I had a list when I left the house, but had no idea where it was or if I had gotten what I came for (except, of course, the tomatoes).

Just before walking back to the car with my heavy load I decided that I had to  have green beans. Soon they’d be gone and I’d regret that I didn’t buy them when I had the chance. I hesitated, not wanting to walk back through the market, but then I spotted him, a farmer in a big straw hat, spray bottle in hand, spritzing the beans, onions, and squash at a nearby table. He had a couple of different kinds of string beans, but I  was attracted to the long green beans with purple streaks.  Rattlesnake beans.

Feeling more sociable after a half a cup of Guatemalan dark roast I asked about the the beans.  A lot like green beans, he said, the streaks disappear when cooked, but they are more hardy, not as easily overcooked–a bonus given my usual distracted state. So, how do you cook them, I asked, and he replied that he sautees them. In olive oil? At this he looked a little sheepish. When he is trying to be healthy, yes olive oil, but his preference is butter or bacon fat. Sold.

We wished each other a good day after we made the trade, rattlesnake beans and advice in exchange for a few dollars. As I turned to leave I noticed that his teal blue nail polish matched his shirt perfectly.

It’s good to be back home.

Photo Credit: Emma-O – Pantychrist Guitarist via Compfight cc

Four-feet, five-feet, six-feet-tall–a bevy of the statuesque flowers sway in the breeze, a welcoming sight at the entrance to my bank. They’re everywhere–peeking over the tops of adobe walls at art galleries on Canyon Road and towering over short picket fences at downtown bed and breakfasts.

Thomas Jefferson planted hollyhocks in his garden at Monticello and Georgia O’Keeffe painted this one with a blue larkspur on her first trip to Taos in 1929. My grandmother Lester had a row of them out by her fence in Topeka and showed me how to push a bud with a bit of a stem on it through the center of an open upside-down blossom, well-dressed dolls wearing twirly, full skirts–magenta, white, and yellow.

Native to China hollyhocks (Alcea rosea) made their way first to the Holy Land and from there to southern Europe during the Middle Ages according to Ruth L. Fish’s charming history of the flower.  The sturdy flowers came to New Mexico with the Spanish, who called them Las Varas de San Jose, rods of St. Joseph.

To see their abundance in July and August in northern New Mexico makes it hard to believe they aren’t natives. Fish points out, ” . . . no other plant has flourished with such persistent vigor as it has shown, despite the handicaps of general neglect, poor soil , and drought that it has often had to suffer.”

By P. Nixon

Many in Santa Fe are in well-tended, irrigated flowerbeds, but my favorites are those that thrive in unlikely places. The one pictured here is in a neglected, unwatered bed between the street and a sidewalk, surrounded by weeds, standing in front of a dead tree, gaily blooming as if it were the star attraction in Mr. Jefferson’s garden.

As the summer winds down, it’s a good time to gather some hollyhock seeds–discreetly!  Wiki-How provides fifteen steps  to successfully grow the flowers from seed, although I am not likely to follow them.  I’ll drop a few near my back fence and let nature take its course.