Heat it and eat it

August 6, 2023August 6, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

If there’s any rain in ’em, it’s not for us.

Don’t let the clouds fool you. It ain’t even cool around here.

Yesterday we roasted another record with 102°, the old mark of 98° having stood since 1952, two years before this old dawg was whelped.

Naturally, being an eejit, I was out for a ride. Nothing strenuous — not quite 30 miles, a couple of hours in the saddle, a couple thou’ of vertical gain.

Getting big air over I-25 (with the help of a bike-ped bridge).

But I confess I felt a tad toasted by the time I got home. I’m glad I didn’t go for the extra-credit mileage I’d been contemplating. I’d be a rank smear of B.O. and bad ideas in the valley some’eres. Even the coyotes would give me a miss.

“Sheeyit, homes, smells like sunscreen and chamois cream ladled over old scars and regrets. Let’s hit the Dumpster behind Golden Pride.”

Speaking of eats, it should go without saying that I’ve been rooting through my archives for recipes that require a minimum of cookery in this heat.

For breakfast, oatmeal is out, fruit smoothies are in. Lunch is something equally light, either sandwiches or leftovers from the previous night’s dinner.

Last night’s dinner was Martha Rose Shulman’s pasta with cherry tomatoes and arugula. I don’t object to boiling water for pasta; it helps humidify the house.

Night before last we had Melissa Clark’s shrimp salad, layering the shrimp and its sauce over a bed of arugula, red cabbage, red leaf lettuce, sliced grape tomatoes in a variety of hues, and various another crunchables from the fridge and pantry. I foreswore the diced red onion (Herself hates raw onion), but snuck in a few thin slices of scallion when she wasn’t looking.

Hetty Lui McKinnon’s tacos de papa require a little stove time, but not enough to have you sweating into your skillet, especially if there are some leftover taters on hand.

We’ll be revisiting Martha’s recipe this evening, with a side salad. Today’s record high of 100°, set in 1910, might be a goner, too, because by 3 p.m. it was already 100° at the airport.

Landscraping

July 26, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

July has been a scorcher, with 12 triple-digit days and one record high (104° on the 17th).

It was 103° yesterday. Not a record, but still, damn. Today, at 3 p.m., it’s 97°.

And I’m gonna try real hard not to bitch about it because I’m not one of the landscapers trying to make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is our back yard.

I didn’t even go out to sweat for fun yesterday.

But the landscapers were out there bright and early under Tōnatiuh’s broiler, with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, excising scorched swaths of grass, excavating edging stones gone all wobbly like a meth-head’s dentition, and wheelbarrowing railroad ties off to … who knows? A railroad, maybe?

All the livelong day, too. As an expression of solidarity while motoring to the grocery for some grub that would not require cooking I refused to turn on the a/c in the Subaru.

Java jive

July 17, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

No matter how hot it gets — and it’s getting plenty hot! — I refuse to surrender my two cups of steaming black coffee in the morning.

Remember the old Folger’s jingle? “The best part of wakin’ up,” and so on? Well, the best part of waking up is not “Folger’s in your cup” — it’s waking up, because this means you didn’t snuff it during the night, which in turn means you can now get out of bed and make yourself a proper cup of actual coffee.

I’m not a coffee Nazi, but at home — and whenever possible on the road — I have my rituals.

I start with Santa Fe’s Aroma Coffee, roughly a 60-40 mix of their Blacklightning and French Roast beans, hand-ground either that morning or the night before. I used to rely upon an ancient Braun espresso maker that I’ve dragged all over Creation, but finally decided that an AeroPress and an OXO electric pour-over kettle were a whole lot less likely to explode on me before achieving coffee. I’m not afraid to die unless it happens before coffee.

If I’m car camping, I grind my beans before leaving El Rancho Pendejo and use an elderly Coleman two-burner and a battered blue-enamel coffee pot to boil water for the AeroPress.

Camping camping? Downsize the cooking gear to a Soto OD-1R stove, a Snow Peak titanium pot, and an AeroPress Go.

And if I’m lording it in some motel … goddamn it, I hate to admit this, but if there’s a Starbuck’s within walking distance I’m likely to just stagger over there and slam a couple Americanos. If I moteled it more often I’d acquire some small electric kettle and do it up right.

Because the second-best part of waking up is that first cup of coffee.

Walking on the moon

July 15, 2023July 15, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Never fear. We’re still earthworms. It’s just that The Duck! City landscape looks a bit lunar in spots, especially at the eastern end of Comanche Road NE, which tilts up and turns to dirt just short of Foothills Trail 365.

During our nine years here a few eastbound motorists have failed to notice that Comanche just sort of, oh, I don’t know, ends at its intersection with Camino de la Sierra NE. Their vehicles take flight, briefly, then return to earth, their only laurels being the remains of the wire fence marking the end of Comanche and the beginning of the Sandia Mountains. Resale value and driving privileges suffer. Lunacy of a different sort entirely.

Anyway, it’s not hot enough around here to be the moon, which enjoys highs of 260° Fahrenheit in full sunlight. It just feels that way lately.

Herself and I got a late start on our weekly bike ride this morning, and it was getting right toasty as we climbed Big Horn Ridge Drive toward a couple of whoop-de-doos that are more fun when done from the other direction.

Bunnies we had seen, but no quail, and I was thinking we were going to get skunked (har de har har) until a lone adult quail ran across the road just ahead of us, saw us, and pulled a U, scurrying back down into the gully.

We stopped to have a peek over the side, and wowser, there were at least three pairs of adults and a whole mob of juveniles puttering around down there, wishing we would quit gawking and be on our way, like the two e-bikers who zip-zapped past without a word.

It pays to keep your eyes peeled around here. You never know what you might see, even if it’s only a windshield full of wire and the Sandias coming up fast.

For what it’s worth

July 8, 2023July 8, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

Looks like the tree’s bringing the heat.

Some like it hot, they say.

Not me, Bubba.

There are moments when the summertime heat feels almost bearable. Say, when there are no pressing matters and a pool sits nearby. There is an iced beverage sweating in a tall glass and a broad umbrella throwing a soupçon of shade. Someone else is picking up the tabs.

But even then. …

When I was a kid on Randolph AFB the San Antonio summers were murderous. Crouch under the Fedders window unit and play board games or haunt the officers’ club pool like a toasty ghost.

Tucson? Don’t get me started. I drove a 1974 Datsun pickup with no air conditioning, and my guest-house rental (also sans a/c) was a long, slow-rolling, late-afternoon drive from The Arizona Daily Star, where I labored in dubious battle with Young Republicans and old fascists.

Mostly I passed my days at the pool there, too. Not at the Star; at the University of Arizona, where the coeds weren’t yelling at me all the time unless they caught me drooling.

Now here I am in The Duck! City, where everything I do makes life hotter and the windows of opportunity are quickly closed and curtained against the sun.

Cycling. Running. Cooking. Especially cooking. Sometimes I feel as though it’s me browning in the skillet.

Not an early riser by nature, I find myself compelled to rush through the morning’s rituals so I can get out and back in while Tōnatiuh is still warming up in the bullpen.

Coffee. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Albuquerque Journal. More coffee, with toast this time. The litter box. Not for me, for Miss Mia, who has already been in there a time or two while I was ethering my sputtering carburetor. Then the baño for me.

A bite of breakfast — yogurt with granola, oatmeal with nuts and dried fruit, a mandarine, or some combination of these. No tea, it’s already too hot, and we don’t want to overclock the old CPU. Dole out some water to the parched foliage.

And then — hey, what’s that sound, everybody look, what’s going down? — it’s raining. Not for long, not in any quantity (0.01 inch), and it evaporates from the chip-seal in the cul-de-sac before the echo of the raindrops fades.

But still. Music to the ears. Maybe I’ll have that cup of tea after all.