I was inspired by my recent trip to New Mexico to make a Green Chili Stew and of course, I had to make sopaipillas.

As is prone to happening with home renovation projects , our window replacement is going on much longer than we had anticipated. We probably should have learned this lesson with the kitchen remodel 2 years ago but we didn’t. This time around it wasn’t pesky knob and tube wiring hidden away that’s the source of delay.

Our hope was that the project would be completed while we were in New Mexico, but alas it was not. As we stand now, all the windows have been replaced, but the screens did not arrive. Which may seem a pretty simple thing to slap some screens on some windows but not so. All the screens are custom fitted to each window and a finish carpenter has to hand finish all the mill work. Once that’s done the painter needs to come through and stain/paint each window and screen frame.  After that then the crank and lock hardware needs to be installed. Then at some point, stucco repair has to be done. This is the fun of living in a nearly 100 year old Spanish Revival and the price one pays (financially, emotionally and physically) to try to restore it to its previous glory.

On the good side, they don’t work on the weekends so we get a bit of a reprieve from folks other than us being in and out of our house all day. We’ve been ordering a lot of take out because it’s a huge pain to tarp and un tarp everything or do dust abatement to be able to use the kitchen. Which ultimately is why there has not been any new posts, because not a lot of cooking has been getting done.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the kitchen will be 100% complete by the end of this week.