anazasi beans and $8 for heirloom tomatoes

I visited Santa Fe for five days in May 2013. It was not a tourist-minded trip. A friend was housesitting. I love Santa Fe. I saw a chance for free housing in Santa Fe. She agreed. She did warn me that she didn't tend to do much. If I had had a car, I would have gone somewhere every day, exploring pueblos. I wanted to go to the National Petroglyph Park and had mentioned it in advance. My friend's response was to offer to treat me to an expensive desert jeep safari that showed us some petroglyphs. The jeep safari was awesome. Totally. I still wish I had seen Petroglyph National Park.

The jeep safari takes people onto a gigantic private ranch that contains several old settlements, one of two of the settlements being quite ancients. And you see lots of petroglyphs. We asked to see them and Roch, the guide, knows every inch of the land so he knows all the petroglyphs. I suspect the ones on this ranch are very old. They are mostly small ones, yet I have seen quite large ones, outlines of beings that resemble dressed-up Indian dancers. Kokopelli is a famous New Mexican petroglyph and Kokopelli is almost the size of a modern human. I have this idea Petroglyph National Park had bigger petroglyphs but I don't really know, it would have been a drive and my friend really had told the truth. She did not get out and about much.

We did go out to breakfast every single day and always to the same place. She would have branched out, I think, but she loves this place and so do I. I love pupusas and I swear the ones at this funky blend of New Mexican and American breakfast foods make the best ones I ever tasted. They tasted nothing like the ones sold in pupuserias in San Francisco's Mission, the only ones I can campare them to. The ones I ate daily in Santa Fe were lighter, crispier, fried more and filled more lightly. Someone with a light, perfect touch made them. Man, they were good.

That, the jeep tour and the Georgia O'Keefe museum were all we did in five days. I did ask my friend to drop me off downtown so Ic ould just stroll around the SF square and feel like I was there. There are several museums and many galleries off that main square and I wanted to see them all. But I had forgotten my cell, did not know the last name of the person my friend was housesitting for and so my visit to downtown Santa Fe became all about getting a hold of her. I stopped and asked two pairs of cops for help and both pairs shrugged. Is that any way to treat tourists in a town dependent on tourist income? And all the tourist info spots were closed on Sunday, like that makes sense. What about weekend tourists? Don't they ever need help?

I finally walked to the library, getting there just a few minutes before they closed. Lots of places had wifi but I had no way to get online! I got online at the library, got the  home phone of my friend's ex-husband and the phone number where her son works. Then I went around asking people if I could use their cell phones, explaining my situation. The one public pay phone I found in downtown Santa Fe had been vandalized -- and left that way. A nice kid taking parking fees at a parking lot booth lent me his cell. I managec to control my friend's co-workers into giving me his cell phone. He was a little upset with them but I had been convincing. I really have known him since he was 8, I had explained and shared a few facts about him that I knew to convince his assistant manager (he managers the joint) and I scored his cell phone. Later, though, his mom told me he was upset that the restaurant had given out his number. She explained what a jam I was in. I had no idea how to find that suburban tarct house. None. I had done none of the driving. When I don't drive, I don't pay attention.

Another thing we did:  we went to the farmers market where an enterprising capitalist was selling what was probably about 1/4 pound of anazasi beans, a tiny packet of spices and cooking instructions for five bucks. I bought two as souvenirs.  I eat lots of legumes, since I don't do grains and legumes are high in protein and fiber while low in calories. Legumes are good for us.

The anazasi bean was cultivated, it is believed, as far back as 1,100 A.D. Some archaeologists discovered some jars of the beans a few hundred years ago and began recultivating them. I think they are tastier than pinto beans. They are prettier. They have a splash of reddish blotch on them. It is said you pass less gas with anazasi beans than pintos and I think this must be right. And I think the anazasi gas I do 'pass' smells much less than the pinto bean smell. That might be my imagination.

In May, heirloom tomatoes cost eight bucks a pound in Santa Fe. I had been grumbling in Berkeley about paying three bucks a pound. No more. Not to mention at some points in the summer heirloom tomtatoes were so abundant this year that many vendors sold them for $2.50 a pound. Once I scored some at two bucks a pound. We're talking organic here. I only buy and eat organic food.  Update:  in summer 2015, organic heirloom tomatoes are selling at Berkeley farmers' markets for $3 to $3.50. Why the steep price in Santa Fe?

I am surprised by how much I like these anazasi beans. I think I could give up protein. I put in quite a lot of chili powder, some garlic and onions to begin to season them. I just ate about a cup's worth for my dinner, doused in pumpkin seed salsa. With each bite, I could not help but think "a month from now, I will only be able to eat a liquid diet. Two months from now when I start on solids, all food will have to be pureed. These beans will make good pureed food. The fiber will help me 'go', a challenge post major surgery. And they are high in protein, another challenge. I have to push protein in the early weeks so my body does not eat its muscle.

I had a good visit. We went to a flea market on a pueblo near Santa Fe on Sunday. My friend scored a lot of great little souvenirs for her much-doted-upon pair of grandgirls. Then she dropped me off downtown. It was a little  miserable spending the whole afternoon trying to figure out how to get hold of my friend but my goal had been to hang out in downtown SF and just feel like I was there. by the time I got my friend's cell number from her son back in MN, I had walked all over downtown SF. And my friend insisted on picking me up since once she had taken a cab and it cost forty bucks.

She and I had never spent anything like that much time together. We got along just fine. I don't think there was any tension. I even ate a pizza for dinner, even though I don't really do pizza anymore. We were starving, the place we had tried to eat at was closed. She said "we're going to eat at the next place we see" and there it was, right in the parking lot: a cheap pizza joint. When the large cost $14, it was  cheap carbs, cheap ingredients, skimpy on the stuff you most want but I politely ate it. She ate my swordfish and salmon, which I had frozen and brought from San Francisco. I ate her pizza.

I only told her later , months later, that I had just eaten that pizza to be polite.  Now I would not eat it at all, since I am done with gluten forever.

Isn't this fascinating? Even midwinter here in Berkeley, when the tomatoes are not looking quite so awesome, I have not seen them more than three to $3.50 a pound.  Those eight buck heirlooms in SF shocked me.  In 2013. I wonder what they cost in 2015?!

And this happened. I had dinner with some friends in El Sobrante, CA, just before I went to Santa Fe. I asked if we could grill a burger because I don't have any access to somewhere to grill. the house we stayed at in Santa Fe had no grill either. A guy was selling meat and grilling samples. When I smelled the cooking meat, I wanted some grilled meat so badly. I asked the guy if I could buy a whole patty. He was grilling some kind of sausage in patty form. He said "Come back in five minutes". When I returned, he gave me a whole patty, cooked just for me, and would not let me pay. What kindness.

Life is full of such sweet things when I am able to notice them.