Let’s get things rolling again with a tasty little number I came up with after sharpening my knives up one day.

I have some great tomato plants growing in my garden. They’re yellow pear tomatoes, which have a delicate and delicious flavor and are uniquely yellow in color. For some reason these particular tomatoes thrive in my garden, while I’ve had little success with the romas I tried to grow alongside. In fact this is the second incarnation of the plant I grew last year. When winter came along and froze them out, I just buried the whole plant as compost. When the seasons rolled around again there were a bunch of tomato sprouts coming up where I’d buried the plants the winter before! I took the best looking two seedlings and planted them in the same spot as last year, and they exploded with wave after wave of juicy, sweet little yellow tomatoes all summer long and are still producing well into the warm Tucson fall.

I’ve also got a good crop of chiles, which survived the winter and are on their second season of producing serranos, jalapeños and poblanos. They don’t get a lot of light and they were really reaching for the sun, so I had to tie the stalks to stakes to keep them from falling over. But since they got up and established themselves, they have been very resilient and have given me great harvests of unusually spicy chiles. I find that the jalapeños and serranos taste really good if I leave the on the plant until they turn red. The intense spiciness mellows slightly and they become much sweeter.

I’ve spent many years working as a chef in restaurants, and while I’m glad to have moved away from that career path, I still truly enjoy making food. I grew weary of the long, hard, sweaty hours in the kitchen, running around in high stress, working longer and harder hours than anyone else in the restaurant, being held responsible for the most important component of the business (the food), yet being paid far less than everyone but the dishwashers. That part I did not care for. I did, and still do, love the art of bringing flavors, colors and textures together into dishes that are both delicious and visually beautiful. The most basic and necessary item in any good chef’s tool box is a good, sharp knife. Without this it is physically impossible to prepare food that looks really good. A dull knife will result in crude looking vegetables, and meat cuts that look like they were pulled apart by hand. A sharp knife on the other hand can turn something as simple as a green onion or a tomato into a work of art. One afternoon, when I was giving my knives a long-overdue sharpening, I tested my favorite knife, a 10-inch Henkels Four Star chef’s knife, by cutting one of my yellow pear tomaotes.

This got my mind going on a variation on salsa fresca, using the pear tomatoes, read and green chiles, and english cucumbers. I wanted to take advantage of the nice new edge on my knife to cut the tomatoes and chiles in a unusual way, a sort of fine julinenne rather that the normal dice or food processer blend that creates so many salsas.

Ingredients:

• yellow pear tomatoes
• red and green serrano chile peppers
• english cucumbers
• cilantro
• lime juice
• salt
• extra virgin olive oil

Sorry, but that Ozzy photo had to go. A bit much, wouldn’t you say? Might scare the kids and grandmas out there…And to be honest it was freaking me out a little bit, seeing it every time I came in here.

So anyway, just here for a bit of an update on doings and happenings in the world of Gabe. As you can see, try as I might to force myself into it, I’m still woefully behind on updating this blog’s design and getting back into posting regularly. Guess it doesn’t look all that bad, but to me it’s just not finished. But that’s all changing, right here, right now, isn’t it?

I still have a monster post or two to come on my Italy trip, which was beyond fantastic, by the way. It was my first trip to Europe, my only other overseas voyage being a 5-week adventure in Australia in 2000. I will go into great detail in a future post, but for now I’ll just say that I was amazed at just about everything I saw there: the landscapes, the architecture, the culture, the people, the food. It was all awesome. It goes without saying that the pizza and gelato were heavenly. Something I was not aware of was how delicious a plate of speck with potatoes and eggs tastes in high mountain hut while waiting out a hail storm. The centerpiece of the trip was a 5 day trail running tour that followed the Alta Via One trail in the Dolomites in the Süd Tirol region of Northeastern Italy.

Finding words to do justice to the adventure is proving difficult. But there are two that were constantly repeated in my mind as I ascended pass after pass, only to be greeted with an seemingly endless supply of the most beautiful landscape vistas I have ever seen: epic and idyllic. Seriously. This is the stuff that trail runner’s dreams are made of.  60 miles of point-to-point running and hiking through unbelievable natural beauty, with places to stay comfortably and eat well all along the way. Heck, this is the stuff anyone’s dreams are made of (unless you are incredibly boring, or just more into the whole sedentary/shopping/tourist thing)! In short, if you ever have a chance do not hesitate to visit this part of the world!

I’ve been back for a little over a month, and I’ve already been up to Durango, CO and the Lake Tahoe area, both of these for work. I headed up to Durango to complete shooting of a series of videos my company is producing, highlighting our various hoof boots. Of course I had the still camera, so we went out and got some shots on the horse, as well. Durango is another fabulous and beautiful place, and it’s always a good thing to spend any time I can away from Tucson in the summer. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, having grown up here, but I’m not. The blast furnace heat just plain sucks. It makes outdoor activities miserable unless one can find a way to drag their sorry ass out of bed before the sun comes up, and even then it can be hot a sticky.

The very next week, it was off to the Lake Tahoe area, for yet another work-related excursion. This one was an adventure all the way. I and a two others from our company were called on to help out with the Tevis Cup, which is the nation’s, and probably the world’s, most prestigious and most difficult horse and rider endurance race. Since our company makes and sells horse boots, we wanted to be there to show people that our boots are good enough to used in the toughest of conditions. The owner of our company was also competing in the race, which he has completed many times. He has also run this same course, yes, all 100 miles of it, since it is also the route for the Western States 100 trail running race.

Our duties consisted of assisting the owner in fitting horses with our Glue-On boots for the two days leading up to the race. In addition to riding the race himself, he agreed to fit boots on anyone’s horse who was riding the race at no charge. All told over 20 riders had their horses fitted with our boots, so needless to say we were pretty busy. The day of the race came and we learned the meaning of a long day. We were up at 3 am to make it to the starting area in time to move the many vehicles to places along the route. We then focused on meeting the riders we here assisting at various stops along the route and helping them and their horses out with food, water, and anything else they might need. At every stop they looked more and more exhausted. Our riders didn’t finish until around 3am the following morning, so by the time we made it back to bed it had been over 26 hours of nonstop activity. Not always easy, but it was an amazing experience. And I can only imagine what it was like for the horses and riders! Over the 50 year or so history of the race, the average finish rate is around 50%. That gives you an idea of how tough it is. Most of the time a horse will get pulled from the race for not meeting the strict condition requirements at the vet checks along the route. It’s good the see so much care and effort put into making sure the horses are well taken care of.

So that’s what I’ve been up to…going places.