The last Blog in which Penny and Jean remain Astonished.

The Garden of the Gods ..... Colorado Springs....300 million years of upheavals. ....What nature hath wrought!

Penny and I continue in our Grandmotherly type duties tending to David. He made Varsity in Soccer at his high School. We attended his practice games Saturday morning sitting in the Bleachers where I absorbed as much sun that morning as I have in all my NYC years. Of course we're closer to the Sun here. I hope I'm storing up all the Vitamin D. All the Soccer parents looked as Fit and weathered and tan as the soccer players.

On Sunday, to disturb the quietude of Suburban living, I decided to make the evening meal. I choose Chicken Frijatas from The 30 minute Cookbook which took me 3 1/2 hours to make.

Our Recipe for left overs in the refrigerator are to either throw everything into a pot of Chicken broth if it's cold outside or toss everything in with a bowl of lettuce and have a salad.

Odd Assortment of Items Not Connected To One Another:

I have only seen the city of Denver from the Freeway. It appears to be a cluster of rectangular verticals while a little South of the city proper the buildings of squarish horizontals with some trapazoidals.

There were no glorious clouds over Colorado Springs area. Just a hazy smear of old titanium white. The haze was also over Denver and we later learned it was the smoky residue from the horrendous California Fires.

Never got to Pikes Peak and tho we saw the Mountain Range we couldn't figure out which Peak was Pikes.

We have driven back and forth over the Continental Divide which is not a straight line. Penny told me that the C.D. is the place where on one side the Rivers run East and on the other, West. I must have not been listening that day in General Science. I also learned that the Rio Grande River runs up into Colorado. We saw it a few times.

Here in Wheatridge/Denver at Penny's daughter's home so this will be a brief Domestic Entry. Just warning in case you all were hoping for more of the usual exciting revelations.

Penny's family consists of Denise and husband Burke and children Jayne and David. They live in a lovely comfortable house. I love it's rambling layout and spacious yard and gardens and many bathrooms. Do I sound like House Beautiful yet?

Denise is an Attorney with a Denver Firm dealing with Environmental Issues. Burke is a Financial Consultant and, more important, a Master Wood Working craftsman. Almost all the wood creations in their house are done by him including a magnificent cherry floor which I believe entailed buying up the equivalent of an entire cherry orchard.

He is the nephew of the late Burke Marshall who was a significant figure during the Civil Rights Days as well as other issues of social change. So we are in the correct political atmosphere. We were discussing this when we heard Ted Kennedy died. Perhaps one of the last of the old guard Liberal good public servants remaining.

Jayne is off to Colby College in Maine and we are baby sitting David, a sophomore in High School (Colorado Academy). Among other things he is a star Soccer Player.


Received message from friend, Kathy, who was in Colorado recently and she too was taken by the cloud formations. This is one of the few places where the clouds and the rocks equal one another....Interact with equal drama. She used the word voluptuous to describe these sights and I thinks that's perfect.

Literary Notes: Now that we're not dashing about the State I have time to catch up with all the New Yorker Magazines. Was looking forward to reading Part II of Ian Fraiser's essay of traveling across Siberia. Now, There's a Travel Blog!!!! I particularly liked that the "handsomest town" they drove through was, Blagoveshchenie, which means Annunciation.



Also reading "This Is How" by M. Hyland reviewed a couple weeks ago in the Times. Very powerful ..... I'm not sure I should finish it.

Recipe: This is sent by Chrissy from Pagosa Springs. She is a Vegan and a Music Promotion Entrepreneur. This should show that Vegans also can have fun. Some of you may want to get permission from your Health Care Giver before trying. This is definitely an All American Classic.

BUTTER COOKIE PIE

CRUST:

24 Nutter Butter sandwich cookies
5 Tbsp melted Smart Balance butter spread
9" Chocolate pie crust

FILLING:

1 (8 oz.) package softened cream cheese
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tsp vanilla
1 (8 oz.) container Cool Whip
1 bottle of Hershey chocolate...any size

RECIPE:

Step 1: Crust
Crush cookies in a zipper style plastic bag with a rooling pin, or with a food processor or ball peen hammer. Mix cookie crumbs with butter. Spread evenly all around bottom of chocolate crust and press with bottom of a glass. Squeeze 2/3 bottle of Hershey Syrup over cookie crumbs.

Step 2: Pie Filling
Mix cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar and vanilla with electric mixer until well blended. Gently stir in Cool Whip until blended together. Spoon onto Hershey Syrup layer

Step 3:
Freeze 4 hours or until firm. Let stand 1/2 hour until pie is to be cut. Garnish the top of the pie with remaining Chocolate Syrup. Can also drizzle chocolate on serving plate (as you have seen at the best restaurants).

First I want to thank Jayne Munger, Penny's granddaughter, who lent us her wonder red Honda Forrester that so beautifully held the roads through all the up hills and down. More later on this along with family photos.

Yesterday, looking on the vast many shaded Sand Dunes with "Blood of Christ" mountains in the background and wild grasses and flowers in the foreground and the threatening sky all above us I said to Penny, "This is a landscape Painting", I paused and then I said "This IS a landscape." Ahh, the corruption of Art. These type of inland Sand Dunes are a rarity on the planet where all the forces of nature conspire to erode the San Juan mountains and blow the bits and pieces towards the Sangre de Christos mountains and gradually over geological time build up these Dunes. Any minute I expected Lawrence of Arabia to come across the crest.

The day before was Mesa Verde, very high, hot, deeply gorged Mesa where the ancient people lived that they know little about and no longer call the Anasazi. Pueblos were there too...you can see their rock dwellings. We didn't take a tour but would have done if it was October. Driving out from the Mesa we are on a long straight as an arrow road through cattle country and passes a now deserted house that surely some artist put there.



After leaving the Sand Dunes we drove North on Route 285. It finally rained relieving us from all that relentlessly good weather. And then we were in yet another type of terrain. Enormous wide wide wheat colored valleys. They are so spectacular they must have some other name than "valley". Will consult my Geology book later.



This is the last day of Motel living. I will miss all these almost identical rooms and folded towels and little jars of shampoo and paper wrapped soap. And television and sadly almost none that carry MSNBC. It's not glamorous like hotel living where you have a seemingly self contained community with all sorts of people coming and going. Remember Garbo in Grand Hotel? Motels are more isolating. Not even sure anyone else is "home". Of course the tourist season is about at an end and there is a recession and school has started but still there were not many tourists around anyplace we went. This may be because we were in ski country!!!!! Penny says the roads are jammed in winter.

Today to Boulder then back to Denver where we will take on our duties of baby sitting for David, Penny's 15 year old Grandson. Looking forward to chaperoning all those teen parties. David's parents, Denise and Burke are taking daughter, Jayne, to Colby College and will be gone for a week. We'll have plenty of time to try out all those recipes I've been given.

Next installment will feature a lethal chocolate cookie pie from Chrissy of Pagosa Springs. We stayed at a great motel there on River. The couple who run it are going for a vacation to NYC in October and were told they should only wear black and white. I assured them that this was so. The Motel is First Inn just in case you find yourself there sometime.

And so we bid farewell to the Golden West.....until we take a day trip to Pike's Peak

(ATTENTION READER: Recipe at close of text)

Yesterday, in Telluride, while drinking coffee in a book shop reading the steadily unsettling news in the Times, Penny was reading a book collection of Proverbs. She read to me, "The marvelous and astonishing only surprise for a week." (Ethiopian).Then she commented that it was probably good that we would only be on the road for a week. However, since the week isn't over yet, I continue to be astonished.


But I did realize that no photo I take can capture the glorious catastrophes necessary for mountain creation. If only our lives were in geological time.....the sights we would see!!!! I'm cutting down on the macro photos. Only Ansel Adams can do that....and he used real film.

There's only one road into Telluride and the same road out to back track to Durango. Brandy, our waitress at the Blue Jay Inn the night before said there was a dirt road out to the highway but was treacherous, abutting deep jagged ravines. hmmmmmm...should we do it?????

Remember Route #550 when you travel through Colorado. Again, red red red rock coincidently called Redbeds in my Roadside Geology book. Also other colors looking like remains of ruined ancient civilizations and then again like those pre-Druid Megaliths and all those Tertiary Intrusives.

Along one of the "non-treacherous" roads full of sharp mountain curves we saw the Road Service trucks with cranes and winches and chains pulling something up from down deep. We were told that guard rails weren't used because they get in the way of snow clearance. We did notice lots of small road signs with the names of those killed along the way. Either small formal blue plaques or tattered little flags attached to sticks in the ground. Perhaps not unlike those candle and flower and teddy bear mounds in the dangerous parts of cities.

Between the drama of nature's own mountains and high deserts are ....... Golf Courses.....greener than green. Bill Maher said the other night that in one day a golf course uses as much water as a family of four used in four years. I think that's the ratio.....but you know what a complainer Bill is.

Staying at the Durango Lodge right downtown across from the Train Station where the Steam Engine takes tourists and others to Silverton on an old narrow gauge track along the Animas River Gorge. This is all mining territory but Silverton is mined out. Old Western type town, now down to very small population to serve the tourists. So we decided to do one real tourist thing and take the train there (3 1/2 hours) and the bus back (2 hours).

We sat in an open "gondola" car with black soot puffing from the engine, speckling my last pair of clean khaki khakis. Who can tell what we were breathing in but Penny said without this train ride we could have had 5 more years of smoking.

Most places we go to eat/drink have honky/tonk Rag time piano players. The best was tonight at the Diamond Belle Saloon downtown Durango. There was a warm up piano player first about age 12 whose fingers sped madly across the keyboard playing his loop of Scott Joplin favorites. Must be something in the DNA. Hoyle Osborne was the main man and apparently has been famous in the West for many years. All the tunes he played were terribly familiar but we couldn't remember any of the titles. I don't know if that was due to our two Martini dinner or the brain damage from the soot of our day's train adventure.


The Saloon was a the perfect place to see all sorts of people. They seemed to be local as our waitress in her short strapless red and black work clothes knew everyone. One of the customers came over to talk to us.....Cowboy Bruce who told us all about his aneurism. We always know how to attract the guys. The older men here ...really older...have great style. Not always tall but trim with their gray ponytails, neat ample mustaches and wearing fabulous cowboy hats. I don't know if I want a cowboy hat or a cowboy.

Literary Note:
For those Frick readers I see in my Astor book that at the new palatial Astor hotel, Frick along with his friends, Morgan and Carnegie (while they were still talking) would play poker around the clock....in a private room of course. Not sure if this will enhance the 10 minute talk.

RECIPE:
Michael Angelo's Grandmother's Eggplant

Slice Eggplant 1/2 " thick
Dip in flour then Dip in Egg batter (3 eggs plus 1 large tablespoon of Parmesan Cheese)
Oil a frying pan
Over medium high heat, brown the eggplant lightly
Oil bottom of 10" X 13" baking dish
Cover bottom with Tomato Sauce of your choice or use a couple of medium size cans
Lay down Egg Plant in long overlapping layers (like fallen dominoes)
Between each piece put a few pieces of mint and chopped garlic (I like this part)
Pour more tomato sauce over top
Cover lightly with Parmesan
Bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes
(If browns too fast cover with foil)
EAT


Off to Mesa Verde

On our way to Telluride where we hear there is a Spaghetti Eating Contest. We are here in Ski Country where we have seen sights beyond one's imagining unless of course you've already done Route 70 between Vail and Glenwood Springs. It was something like seeing those Tintorettos at the Academia for the first time this past March.

Drove around Vail on Wednesday which is an enormous stretch of Condos cheek by jowl appearing to be either Swiss Chalets or Bavarian Castletttes. Then to Leadville. Ate at the Silver Dollar Saloon. This is the home of Baby Doe.....remember the Opera? She was the mistress of Horace Tabor, The Silver King in late 1800s.Our waitress talked about those times as if they were still going on. She was very down on Baby Doe.



Spent our first night out at Penny's daughter's comfortable vacation condo at Copper Mountain. This is another ski community more spread out than Vail, however it appeared that no one was there but us. We wandered through this seemingly empty "town" looking for a place to eat.....like walking through a modern de Chirico painting. We found an Irish pub totally vacant and silent except for the bartender busy with his MacBook. Very surreal. Penny had a Guiness on tap.

Went south yesterday through red mountains and high deserts driving on all sorts of roads smaller than I-70,(but the only roads there were) to Placerville. Lots of road work being done thanks to the Stimulus Plan. I would love to read first hand accounts of how the roads were blasted through these mountains that look like they were made out of very very hard rock. Looking for a book store to buy one of those Road Side Geology books on Colorado.

We hope to stay in Durango tonight maybe for a couple days ..... like a base camp. I read where there will be picketing and demonstrations at Whole Foods Stores because of the CEOs stand on the Health Plan (whatever the Health plan really is).

Literary Section:

Have been reading Updike's Rabbit Run. I guess really re-reading after these many years. A friend lent it to me suggesting I see if it holds up or is dated. The book is one of those old paper backs with yellowing drying brittle pages. We all have them on our shelves. I'm only a third way through and it seems a little dated because of all the references to life in 1960 but the writing is enthralling. I can't believe Updike is dead. No one could write sentences like he did.....maybe Cheever. For example: "Her precocious beauty was like something that happened elsewhere, in France, or Persia or Heaven." Or about a couple who screamed at each other all the time...."....would shout together for hours...and then as the neighbors listened, old wounds opened like complicated flowers in the night." The story of Harry Angstrom reminds me of Bloom's journey in Ulysses but I haven't finished Rabbit yet nor did I ever finish Ulysses.

Also reading the easy read on the Astors, "When the Astors Owned New York".

What have you all been up to?

Yesterday we went to Christine's Studio down in the funky industrial part of Portland next to the freight train tracks. She's been working in Encaustic and showed us how it is done...........with great patience..........layering and melting bees wax........careful not to heat it too high, which would release formaldehyde and other toxic fumes. Hard to believe that organic natural bees wax can also be lethal. (Further proof that artists live on the edge!) Think of this the next time you see an Art work with the word encaustic on the label. She said that in ancient times the artists used palette type knives heated on coals to soften the wax..




Just a word about Portland in case you're thinking of visiting or moving here. There is free public transportation throughout the business district including to some parts across the Willamette River so one can get around to at least to half of the interesting things without a car. My sister lives in an old Art Deco Building renovated fairly recently. It's appropriately named Jeanne Manor.

Tomorrow we leave for Denver. Will send off Michael Angelo's mother's Egg Plant recipe. Must run off now to next "experience".

O.K., I know.....it sounds like there's nothing but Sloth and Gluttony in Portland. I assume there's some of the other deadly sins too but I haven't run into them yet, alas. There's been these little sparkly creative moments such as last week's talk at the Public Library on 20th Century classical music including the 12 Tone System revealed. Yesterday was an hour of Piano for two hands at St. James down the block......Debussy, Mozart and Barber.

If I haven't recommended the movie MOON, I do so now. I've only seen two great movies in 2009 so far. All the rest have been fun if forgettable. The other great movie is THE HURT LOCKER.

If I have already mentioned this bear with me. Too much passive pleasure has dulled my senses. I have met many people and strike up conversation with people I think I've met but turn out to be perfect strangers. This may be the result of socialization over-kill. I may have to enter a Vow of Silence Convent for restoration.

However, Friends, aquaintainces and no doubt strangers have responded to the Julia Child's influence thus many recipes keep coming my way. Today I only present two simple ones.

I Carol's Favorite New York Times Recipe; circa 2008

Fresh Fresh Fresh Shrimp
Very Fresh just plucked Arugula
Saute shrimp in good oil with finely chopped garlic
Place on top of lots of fresh Arugula
Sprinkle with fresh lemon juice from an actual lemon.


II Fettucini with Zucchini
Boil Fettucini...al dente
Shred fresh baby Zucchini
Use all cloves of Garlic
Saute garlic and Zucchini in oil
If too watery can pat with paper or old towels
Add to Fettucini
Add a few red pepper flakes
Parmesan
Feta
(Fettucini a la Portland??)


NOTE: I have given no amounts for any of the above ingredients because an adventurous cook experiments

Tomorrow I may go to the Museum and hunt for an Annunciation. Wherever I travel part of me is always in Italy.