Thank you Michelle, Lupita  Aide for making last weekend so wonderful,.  Thank you for listening to – and enjoying! – my stories, someday to all be a part of Anecdotes and Recipes from Black Mesa Bed and Breakfast.

Breakfast last Sunday:  Spelt biscuits, chicken sausage steamed in dark beer, green vegetable frittata with smoky gouda and parmesan, potatoes with green pepper and onion spiced with something I  got at the spice bazaar in Istanbul and topped with one of my recent favorite things: organic fire roasted tomatoes.

Another of my favorite things:  organic berries with plain Greek yogurt, drizzled with – get this – ripe fig balsamic vinegar.  It’s really sweet, rich and delicious.  A great find.

I just discovered that Santa Fe has an olive oil store, Oleaceae, at the La Fonda, right next to Senor Murphy’s Chocolate.  Oleaceae has some of the most magical and wonderful oils and vinegars I’ve ever tasted.  Sea salts too.  I’m currently using the black truffle sea salt in lots of dishes (used a little in that green frittata I served Sunday.)  I never knew and was so happy to discover that there is roasted butternut squash seed oil!  Now I don’t want to have a salad without it.

The store is great.  There are those little white pleated paper cups under urns of oils and vinegars so you can sample everything.  One day I said, “oh, I need to cleanse my palate,” after several glorious sips of oils.  One of the oil meisters said, “try some of the Sicilian citrus white balsamic.”

Which I did.  Wow!  Light and cleansing (wonder if I can make a sorbet out of it. Hmmmm.)  sure enough it cleared the way for another round of sampling.

I’ve got a lavender balsamic vinegar to experiment with next.  More about it later.

But back to last weekend with 3 beautiful talented women.  I had a great time and hope to have photos from Michelle soon.  I also want to check out Lupita’s all girl percussion band,