Columns

Food on the Hill: Poached Pears

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Photo by Leo Rose
 
Food on the Hill
By FELICIA ORTH

This Week’s Recipe: Poached Pears

The holidays seem to present endless opportunities to enjoy pastry. Flour, sugar, butter and eggs combined in a multiplicity of tasty ways: cookies, cakes, pies, rolls, fruit- and nut-studded breads. By the time New Year’s Eve rolls around, I am happy to put away the flour and serve a dessert featuring one of the fresh fruits widely available in the winter — pears.

If you are lucky enough to find perfectly ripe pears for the day you will serve them, they are delicious unadorned, or Read More

Making New Year’s Resolutions … Like Herding Cats

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Making New Year’s Resolutions Is A Lot Like Herding Cats
By TOM GARRISON
St. George, Utah
It’s that time of year again. Holiday cheer mixed with excess—an abundance of rich food and drink, way too much money spent on gifts, perhaps a bit too much time spent with the slightly obnoxious Uncle Bob.
In the post-Christmas doldrums, you swear to maintain a more even keel next year. Lucky for you there is a mechanism by which this can be attained—the New Year’s resolution. To increase the probability of success, consider the following guidelines.

Making New Year’s resolutions is a lot like herding cats—both Read More

Smart Design With Suzette: Flooring – Part 2

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Smart Design with Suzette
Flooring – Part 2
By SUZETTE FOX

Locally, regionally and nationally, builders and homeowners are building or remodeling homes that are green and environmentally friendly. They have discovered how easy it is to attain the benefits of sustainable construction without sacrificing aesthetics or breaking the budget. In fact, going green often saves money, especially over time, while being kinder to planet Earth.

Last Sunday I talked about tile, bamboo, cork and wood floors. Today I’ll finish out the conversation with linoleum (not vinyl), terrazzo, stained concrete Read More

Cinema Cindy Reviews ‘The Imitation Game’

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By CYNTHIA BIDDLECOMB
Los Alamos

“The Imitation Game” is a tight period piece, a biographical film about Alan Turing and the effort to crack the code of the Nazi’s Enigma machine in the Second World War. The machine changed its encryption every day at midnight, much faster than the cryptographers could solve. The film is quite compelling throughout and well acted, especially by the lead.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing in his every twitch and clueless glance. Turing was not only an obsessive-compulsive character and a genius, he was the type who is unable to pick up on social clues and who Read More

Griggs: Dateline: Panajachel, Dec. 25, 2014

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By DAVID H. GRIGGS
Panajachel, Guatemala
Formerly of Los Alamos

Dateline: Panajachel, Dec. 25, 2014

The sounds of gunfire and heavy explosions had been increasing since 11 last night, but after 11:50 p.m. the noise became a continuous barrage – the crackle of machine guns, rifle bullets coming so fast that they sounded like the heavy rain of a thunderstorm on our metal roof, sharp rips of automatic weapons, echoing explosions of larger bombs competing with the distant sharp concussions of exploding shells.

Cordite fumes wafted through the closed windows and under the locked door.

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TALES OF OUR TIMES: Space Photos Sum Up Your Beliefs

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By JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens
for Clean Air & Water
 
Space Photos Sum Up Your Beliefs 
 
“A picture is worth a thousand words” tells more about human nature than you would guess. The saying is often attributed to Confucius (born 551 BC). Other sources trace its origin to ad man Fred Barnard in 1921. Check it out.   
Our nature also chooses the meanings we ascribe to today’s photographs of Earth from space. The pair of photos confirms for each of us that our world view is wiser than the views held by others.
 
Sunlit photograph of Earth taken from
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This Week at the Reel Deal

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By JIM O’DONNELL
Reel Deal Theater

Thanks to our brilliant staff, we are open every day during the holidays, please check our schedule for showtimes!

On Christmas Day, Thursday, Dec. 25, we are opening Wild with Reese Witherspoon and Into the Woods (we got it!!!) starring Meryl Streep

We will hold The Hobbit and Night at the Museum.

As you probably already know, Sony has pulled The Interview (except for select screens) so we will not be showing it.

Just after the Holidays we will open Unbroken, American Sniper, The Imitation Game, Paddington, Big Eyes, The Wedding Ringer, Mortdecai Read More

Food on the Hill: Apple Pie ’63

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Food on the Hill
By Felicia Orth

 

 

 

 

This Week’s Recipe: Apple Pie ’63
(Adapted from Pillsbury to reduce sugar and increase walnuts)

 

Photo by Leo Rose

The winner of the 14th Pillsbury Bake-Off contest was Mrs. Erwin (Julia) Smogor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her recipe was published as “Apple Pie ’63.” My mother baked it for my father that year, who pronounced it his favorite dessert ever. For the next 50 years, my mother, my sisters and I made the pie for Dad as a special treat, especially on Dec. 25, my father’s birthday.

Gerald Orth was born during Read More

Solo Traveler: How Cheap Is Paris?

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A fountain in the Marais neighborhood of Paris. Photo by Sherry Hardage
 
Cognac crepes prepared on a Paris street. Photo by Sherry Hardage
 
The Eiffel Tower. Photo by Sherry Hardage
 
Solo Traveler
How Cheap is Paris?
By SHERRY HARDAGE

My friend Joyce and I decided to bag the Camino de Santiago in favor of Paris. Just imagine the City of Light with world class museums, lovely restaurants, and the best metro in the world, versus a long dusty walk through the Spanish countryside carrying a pack and breathing car fumes just to get to a tomb at the end of it all!

We decided it wasn’t worth Read More

How the Hen House Turns: Dogs At Christmas

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How the Hen House Turns:
Dogs at Christmas
Column by Carolyn A. (Cary) Neeper, Ph. D.

An early memory at age three—a rope to pull on Christmas morning with my older brother. In waddled a small furball of brown and white, and Boots became part of our lives until I was a junior in high school. Our adventures on 40 acres in Hayward, California began.

In the late 50s, Skates, a golden shepherd mix with a long torso, happily shared Christmas with husband Don and me on Breese Terrace in Madison, Wisc. In those days we celebrated with her beside the tree on Christmas morning. In 1962, however she needed a good dose Read More