A black widow has taken up residence in one of the outdoor terra cotta lanterns we brought back from Chiang Mai. Here, it prepares a creature of unknown origin for dinner.
We have many black widows, near the garden hose and other cool, damp places around the house. Though highly toxic, the spider’s bites are rarely fatal to humans, as only a small amount of venom is injected. The female black widow does, at times, devour her mate—but not so often as legend would have it. The male is less venemous than the female, and neither is aggressive unless disturbed.
Generally, these spiders go about their own business and I don’t mind their presence—at a distance. I won’t be sticking my fingers into the terra cotta lanterns anytime soon, and I always check my shoes before putting them on.
This is a house of mystery. Each day of repairs and refurbishment reveals a new enigma (Why the hole, behind the kitchen counters, stuffed with cloth? Why the backyard pit big enough to swallow a car? Why the bordello lamp and dirty bedpans in the crawl space beneath the house?)
The man who sold us this house told us he had bought it the previous month from a cousin in trouble. He told us his cousin hit bottom in a nasty divorce. He told us, as we signed paperwork at the title company, that he is an Air Force veteran; that he served in Desert Storm and declined an invitation to enter the current war.
None of that was true.
All lies, everything that man told us about himself, his cousin, the brutal divorce. But he told no lies about the house. “What you see is what you get,” he said, and we saw a heap of work with a pile of potential. We saw a house with a long history we knew we could never fully divine. But that was OK. We would learn some things along the way; to other questions, we would forever imagine the answers.
Our neighbors fill us in, little by little, with the history they know. The owner before the liar was not his cousin; he was just a young man who couldn’t afford to pay his bills. And the owner before him was an old Spanish man who filled the yard with grapes, grapes everywhere in this fertile soil. He made wine for a large extended family. This explains the voluntary fruits that have populated our yard in various spots—along the southern fence, out back by the apple tree and around that mysterious pit.
It makes sense, so many grapes in the Rio Grande bosque. Now here’s a fascinating tidbit: New Mexico is the oldest wine-growing region in in the country. The first missionaries planted grapes in this river valley in 1629, 140 years before the first vines took root in California. Many of today’s New Mexican vineyards are growing grapes that hail from those planted in centuries past. And at least one winery uses an ancient irrigation system that watered Anasazi crops more than 1,000 years ago.
And here we are today, with the old man’s grapes coming back to delight us.
What a pleasant story, no? So we thought for the first week after hearing it. Then we heard the old man was, apparently, a pervert who watched the little neighbor girls with most unsavory eyes.
And that’s the thing about stories, about life. Rarely are they black and white; rarely are they thoroughly good or thoroughly bad. Perhaps it’s true, and I would have despised the man’s character, had I met him. But he is gone and his grapes remain. Those, I will enjoy.
Forgive the silence of the past few weeks. We’re still here, deeply entrenched in flooring and painting, not to mention a particularly annoying countertop snafu. With some luck, all will come together…. just as we prepare to leave for Asia again!
The in-laws visited last weekend, bearing house-warming gifts (muchas gracias!) and the necessary ingredients for an informal house-dedication ceremony. A little bread (papadam chips for the gluten-free among us), a little salt and a sip of apricot brandy. May we always have the essentials of life, plus a little drink for joy. Louis Untermeyer’sPrayer for This House was read, wishing goodness through our door and peace throughout our rooms.
…and we knew precisely where to put it. We have, directly behind the house, an enormous mulberry tree (we also have a bunch of ugly fences, which will be removed) with branches that shade the patio, cool the house and give shelter to an abundance of critters. It’s a calming place, the place to which we retreat most evenings around sunset as we admire the sky and dry the day’s sweat from our skin.
In Thailand, such massive trees are wrapped in saffron, signifying their importance (and saying, “Please don’t chop me down!”). We realized a few weeks ago that our tree needed a robe.
And a few offerings for the spirits…
Incense, wine and rice. Perhaps in time we will offer corn and tequila, more in line with local tastes. But for now, I hope, our house is suitably blessed and the spirits sated.
Where, where, where do the months go? Seems like just a few weeks ago we had our 4th of July hotdogs in Borneo, and now the 4th of July is upon us again. You know all the sayings about the speed of time as we age—and I am most assuredly growing older—so here we are mid-summer with a house still in production (bathroom floor, tub, toilet and new kitchen cabinets all in!) and a to-do list that grows as fast as the weeks pass.
So I’m not surprised it took me two years to purchase this cookbook (and a few more weeks to tell you about it). I first picked up Lois Ellen Frank’s Foods of the Southwest Indian Nationsat the Petroglyph National Monument gift shop when we visited New Mexico in 2005. In just a few minutes with this James Beard winner of a book, I was engrossed in stories of masa and pinon, of native ingredients that have defined Southwestern foods for ages. I should have bought the book right then and there, but sometimes for silly and inexplicable reasons, I just don’t. I let the opportunity pass. And then I think about that item, as I did with this book, for weeks and months and years. In the middle of Chiang Mai, in the pouring rain, I’d find myself thinking of posole and roasted salsa in the desert.
I finally bought the book, and now I can’t wait to get that stove hooked up (the guys are working on the gas line today) and that kitchen in order so I can begin to cook. Squash blossom, prickly pear, pumpkin, sage—even tumbleweed greens can be harvested for soup. Ever since I started reading my sister-in-law’s book on desert medicinal plants, I’ve been endlessly curious about this cuisine new to me (did you know, for example, the prickly pear has long been used to lower blood sugar and treat diabetes?).
More than a recipe book, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations will tell you how to make homemade masa, how to bake corn in a pit, how to cook with ash, how to bake bread in an adobe horno, and how Native Americans did all these things long before my ancestors showed up on this continent. Long, long, long before Americans grilled hotdogs on the 4th of July.
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for July, 2007.
Welcome to my ramblings on food, drink, travel, politics, history and all the other avenues that converge in life. I’m a journalist, author and media trainer; and for five years I was Gourmet's Asia correspondent until the magazine's recent closure. I’m a bit obsessive in the kitchen. Much like my mother, I start thinking about dinner well before breakfast….
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