Quote:

---

But my fav restaurant was north of Santa Fe, Rancho de Chimayo. LINK If you ever get back that way. Never stayed at the B&B but the restaurant is fabulous.

---

Give this woman a gold star! And the Chimayo Apple cocktails in the beat up metal pitchers were killer!

El Nido combined with the opera made a great evening and date.

Funny story from years ago. I work in the paper industry and there is recycled paper mill located along I-10. My wife called to talk to chamber of commerce and all they could share wa there was was 3 prisons in the county and Susan Smith was an inmate . ( she drove her 3 kids into lake and drowned them). The big news was she was pregnant while incarcerated.

My interview was basically the technical director begging me to come work there so he could leave.

The paper machine was running so poorly that they brought out tribal medicine men out to rid the machine of the bad spirits.

Needless to say, I didn't pursue the "opportunity".

Jabin said:

---

Quote:

---

But my fav restaurant was north of Santa Fe, Rancho de Chimayo. LINK If you ever get back that way. Never stayed at the B&B but the restaurant is fabulous.

---

Give this woman a gold star! And the Chimayo Apple cocktails in the beat up metal pitchers were killer!

El Nido combined with the opera made a great evening and date.

---

Yeah, they would make sure you were not driving before you could order and be served more than rwo back when I frequented the place.

Ag with kids said:

---

I lived in Las Cruces in the mid 90s for a short time while I was doing some work at WSMR. Best food in the world there (Per Se excepted).

I've had NM food there and up in the northern areas of NM and the LC and Hatch area food kicks the northern food's ass. Chope's in Old Mesilla is the bomb.

That's where I learned that putting an egg on top of your enchiladas was GLORIOUS...

---

Without a doubt, Las Cruces/Mesilla have the best New Mex/Mex restaurants in all of New Mexico. My favorite now is the Shed on South Valley. Breakfast Enchiladas with green chili on Blue Corn Tortillas, obligatory egg, with a side of beans and potatoes. As an aside, Mesilla Valley chili is better than Hatch Valley chili.

hangman said:

---

Not a lot of good jobs out there compared with West Coast, East Coast, and Texas.

---

Good place to retire in the mountains near Santa Fe if you have big bucks.

YouBet said:

---

Brittmoore Car Club said:

---

I feel like there are TONS of flaming white liberals in New Mexico, based on my last road trip through the state. Flaming white liberals are great at nonbreeding themselves out of existence...they either tend to adhere to alternative lifestyles or just have fewer children than straight conservatives. That is just one contributing factor, but it's a factor we should all celebrate imo.

Want to be clear that I do not celebrate them killing their own offspring off at disproportionate rates though.

---

There certainly are. Santa Fe has a massive gay population due to all of the art galleries. I suspect per capita it's one of the largest gay populations in the country. One day at lunch while there we were literally the only hetero couple in the place. It was the two of us and every other table in the joint were lesbians.

They need a steady influx of new gays moving there from elsewhere to maintain that city.

---

Lesbians LOVE Santa Fe.

Just ate there about six months ago. It was good. I think there are better but it was good.

Santa Fe proper is a restaurant paradise. Best Italian restaurant we've ever been to was in SFE but Covid killed it. Still mad about that.

aggiehawg said:

---

Ag with kids said:

---

I lived in Las Cruces in the mid 90s for a short time while I was doing some work at WSMR. Best food in the world there (Per Se excepted).

I've had NM food there and up in the northern areas of NM and the LC and Hatch area food kicks the northern food's ass. Chope's in Old Mesilla is the bomb.

That's where I learned that putting an egg on top of your enchiladas was GLORIOUS...

---

Stacked not rolled, I assume. And I very much agree with a homemade red sauce. Not as good on a stack with homemade Hatch verde sauce, IMO. Getting those freshly roasted Hatch chiles in the fall, cook up some pork butt with broth and posole with onions thrown in with Hatch is a life giving food. I took to learning to cook New Mexican food like a duck to water and had some great cooks teaching me. Even learned to love lard which they use for a lot of recipes.They would have a ten pound bucket of lard in their kitchen and go through that in less than two months. Sopapillos, fry bread, carnitas, rellenos,etc.

But my fav restaurant was north of Santa Fe, Rancho de Chimayo. LINK If you ever get back that way. Never stayed at the B&B but the restaurant is fabulous.

---

Stacked, of course...

When I first went there, one of the guys I worked with had gone to NM State. He gave me lots of good advice on places to go, Nopalitos in LC his favorite. I made sure I went there at least twice a week while I was there it was that good,

I also learned how to cook the sauces...I make a badass red chile combo enchiladas con huevo...

And maybe I'll try that place. My youngest daughter and my SIL just moved to MT (he's from there) so maybe I'll do a long road trip.

I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For me once you get west of San Antonio all the way through NM, Arizona, Utah it's spectacular. Maybe for some it doesn't compare to Corsicana, Midlothian or Anahuac but a lot of people seem to like it. The stacked enchiladas with red sauce, as mentioned, are stellar.

Their politics are F'd though I agree.

Quote:

---

Santa Fe proper is a restaurant paradise.

---

I agree. Back when I lived in NM it was said to have more 5 star residents per capita than any other place on earth. Santa Fe is a great place to visit, but I couldn't live there.

I'm going to piss off Dorm 15 here, but here are some paintings by the famous artist Peter Hurd of New Mexico. He lived in the Hondo Valley, which is the valley running from west of Roswell roughly up to Ruidoso.

Polo in the Hondo Valley:



A distant thunderstorm over the plains of eastern NM:



And a classic Hondo Valley scene:

Thought you realized the things I said about New Mexico were "tongue in cheek", except the part of not wanting people to move here. One of my best friends owns the place next to La Rinconada. Own several Peter Hurd and Michael Hurd, his son, prints. Peter was commissioned to paint a portrait of LBJ which he(LBJ) hated. I have lots of stories about San Patricio and the Hondo Valley.

Dorm 15 said:

---

Thought you realized the things I said about New Mexico were "tongue in cheek", except the part of not wanting people to move here. One of my best friends owns the place next to La Rinconada. Own several Peter Hurd and Michael Hurd, his son, prints. Peter was commissioned to paint a portrait of LBJ which he(LBJ) hated. I have lots of stories about San Patricio and the Hondo Valley.

---

Oh, I absolutely realize you were speaking tongue-in-cheek. What part of New Mexico do you live in? How long have you lived in New Mexico? How big of an impact is the political insanity they're having on your day-to-day life?

About 40 years, Lincoln County to 2019 now Dona Ana. I am largely unaffected by State politics.

Interesting. I moved to NM in '81, about a year before you if my math is right, but left in'90. I always intended to return but life didn't work out that way.

And?

The Chicken Ranch said:

---

I've been to New Mexico, and it's a sh*+hole.

I'd rather live in Louisiana any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

---

Count me out on that one. I've had enough of Houston summers to last 3 lifetimes. But it's way better than Baton Rouge or Ratville (NOLA). Give me Taos, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Red River, or Cloudcroft any day. If you've never been to Cloudcroft, it's awesome.

I hiked Wheeler Peak last summer. What a fun day!