Roswell Adventures

After I moved to Roswell, Chuck and I started looking for things we could experience together. That first December we learned about Christmas on the Pecos in Carlsbad, NM and, after a bit of investigating, we learned that the weekend we planned to go coincided with a new event - the Carlsbad Winter Wine Festival. Thus was born a new almost-Christmas tradition that occurs on the first weekend in December. It starts at 3:30 on Friday, when we bug out of work just as quick as we can, drive home to change and load the car and head down the road to Carlsbad. Our first stop is the Trinity Hotel, where we check in for the night prior to driving over for Christmas on the Pecos...which will be explained in pictures shortly. After the adventure on the river we head back to the Trinity for a fabulous dinner. The Trinity is absolutely amazing - and not just because of the fabulous food. The building used to house the bank and the water office where Pat Garrett held office. It was on its way to

Acorn squash is fairly new to us, but when a friend gave us one from his garden, we gave it a shot. It was delicious, but I didn't like how long it took to cook. For us to enjoy it during the week, I would have to come straight home and start to work on dinner...not one of my favorite ways to unwind from work. So, this delectable squash was relegated to weekend meals. Then I learned I could cook it in the slow cooker. I was totally sold!    A nice acorn squash, a little butter, a little brown sugar, and a little cinnamon, and this is what you get!     Doesn't this look delicious! Plus it gave me an opportunity to try some of my new cinnamon from Penzey's in Tucson :)   It went really well with the leftover ham, and since it is so easy - and since I can set it up in the morning and use a timer so it is ready at dinner time - this is going to be a regular at our dinner table. I made sure to save the seeds to plant in some of our dozens of bales next year.

Since we are living so far away from Heather & Matt, it was a special treat to be able to share Christmas Eve dinner with them... ...and with Heather's special guy, James. When visiting Tucson, we stay in a casita at a friend's house and fortunately there is a full kitchen. So, I was ready to cook :) After thinking through a variety of options and discarding many for a various reasons, I came up with this rather simple dinner: Rouladen Mashed Sweet Potatoes Brussels Sprouts Hash Cole Slaw Rolls Dinner was a hit, with requests for recipes, so I figured the easiest way to go about it was to write it up here. ROULADEN For the Rouladen,  I turned to my dad for input. Originally I had asked for information about using a flank steak, but I decided to go the easier route and visit my local butcher to order some round steak sliced for rouladen. Excerpts from his guiding comments (with my notes in parentheses) are: "Working from long side of meat sm