Roswell Adventures

Raise your hand if you understood my nod to the movie "Remo Williams...The Adventure Begins"! No, huh? OK, I guess it's just me. Anywho, while Matt was out we got our straw bales for this year's garden - 40 bales again this year! I will not ask for a show of hands regarding who thinks we may be a bit more than slightly insane. In preparation, we have been clearing out last year's bales. Much of the bales broke down during the gardening season - after all, that's what makes this work...you create your own soil as the bales break down. But there was lots left, and most of that has been relegated to one of two compost piles. We still have some to clear out, but we'll get there!  What is left from our main tomato bales. We'll plant tomatoes and basil here again this year - with marigolds in the side of the bales. These bales didn't break down nearly as much as some of the others. We may save out some of this straw for growing po...

Cold weather screams for soup...especially when you have had more than one day with temps staying stubbornly below freezing. Seriously - what part of "this is New Mexico" does Mother Nature not understand? This is what we woke up to Friday morning! The week before we had been preparing beds in the back yard so we could plant raspberries and blackberries, and thanks to the change in weather, I traded those visions of gardening for dreams of cooking up something to help us keep warm. Armed with leftover baked potatoes only slightly smaller than regulation footballs, I decided to tackle a soup I had been meaning to for quite some time - baked potato soup. I originally looked into all kinds of soups noting they were "loaded baked potato" variety of soups. Then I settled on a couple to merge and tweak and decided to launch my afternoon project. That we had diced, roasted green chiles in the fridge screamed out loud that I needed to include them in this r...