I've been away...

I've been away...
I still have a bit of drainage on my left ankle, but it's finally almost gone.  Can't believe the New Year's here!  And I'm still in Denver.  In the meantime, after years of fighting it, I got trapped into joining Facebook.  I must admit I'm having fun with it.  A nice group of copywriters adopted me.  I met some really interesting folks.  Reconnected with a bunch of people I hadn't talked to in years.  It's not all bad...

I keep hitting unexpected speed bumps on the road to my Latin American walkabout.  C'mon!  It can't be that complicated!  If I can't figure out how to do all this (mostly bureaucratic paperwork) in the next week, I'm just going to store what's left of my stuff with a friend, and pack a couple of extra bags, and catch a tourist flight.  Probably what I should have done in the first place.  What?  Me over-think things? Naaaaawww.

So, I've been going around doing goodbyes to all the familiar spots in my life.  One of the places I've come to like very much is the local breakfast joint, Jelly.  I have some pix, but I can't figure how to transfer them to this page.  I'm still learning these things.  Or not.  When I'm on the road, these places will be the ones I think of.  And the ones I recommend to my new friends who are going to or through Denver.  I surely hope I figure this out before I hit the road.

One of the first things I did on Facebook was humiliate myself (my hubris) with a baking experiment for a new friend, Becky Rider from Fargo.  She's a food and wine writer, and I had promised her a galette. Not just any galette, but one without grains in the pastry.  Well, I used coconut flour.  That was alright, but, without gluten, nothing was sticking together.  I'd already thought of that, and added eggs, but it still wasn't holding together like I wanted.  I wound up making a fruit pie.  It would have been alright except the oven's thermostat chose that moment to die, and the oven went to 600 degrees.  I rescued the pie, but not before the rim of the crust was blackened, and the blueberries crisped.  The peaches, raspberries and blackberries did okay.  As a presentation, it was a disaster, but nobody eats the rim of the crust anyway, so everyone wiped out the pie in about five minutes.  So.  Not a total disaster.  Becky was very gracious.  It was New Years Eve, and it seemed like a good idea at the time...