BUZZURRO

I complain a lot about the problems in New Mexico, with the bureacracy, food, customer service and especially the bad drivers. And I will say again they are all bad, and I wish they would improve, but no place is perfect.
I really do love living here.
I love going into supermarkets at 10 PM and having 5 choices of refried beans to pick from.
I love clothes shopping in department stores open on Sunday.
I love the variety of food, Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Soup and Salad places (as a meal) as well as others.
I love the scenery of the desert. Yes, it can get a bit repetitive, and at times I want to see green, but then it gets cloudy and the sunsets and sunrises just can’t be beat.
I love where I live which is not really isolated or in the middle of the desert, but some nights I hear the coyotes howl. Sound travels far here. I don’t live in a highly traveled zone, but sometimes I do hear cars, trucks and motorcycles too.
And I love being able to see the mountains which I live near from miles and miles away. The air is so clear here that my senses, trained by years of polluted, smoggy air can’t judge distances well.
I love the low humidity, but to the man who tried to rent me an apartment in New Mexico without air conditioning and then said to me ‘It’s low humidity here. It doesn’t get hot. You won’t even need it.’ I say, “I love having air conditioning.” We HAVE used it a few times.
What I love most of all is the fact that I can work, regardless of the fact that I’m not 24 years old. There are economic opportunities here that didn’t exist for me in Italy.
I am happy.

This morning I learned some terrible news. Blogger Nickie Goomba died in Italy.

I have never met Nickie Goomba in real life. I don’t know his real name, address or profession. In that respect he is more like a stranger, but I do know his mind… well some of it at least. He was the author of a wonderful blog. His humor and satire of world events made his blog special. Buzzurro and I looked forward to reading every new post, just as much as we looked forward to the humorous,witty comments he left on our blog.
We were so greatly honored when Nickie Goomba decided to include us in his ‘famiglia Goomba’ a group of select blogs that was prominent on his own blog. We were also so greatly honored when he nominated our blog of just a few months for the Weblog Awards, which was a thing we never heard about and could never even hope to earn a nomination for.
I didn’t even know Nickie was sick until 6 months ago when he stopped blogging. I knew he must have been seriously ill because I could tell by his posts that he really, really enjoyed blogging. I kept returning to his blog hoping for a recovery and a new post, but unfortunately God had other plans.
Good bye my friend, Nickie Goomba. Rest in peace. Riposa in Pace.

A tribute to Nickie Goomba

Last night Buzzurro and I heard on the radio an advertisement for a restaurant called ‘O Sole Mio’, which to us sounded like a perfect name for an Italian restaurant, but instead it is New Mexican.
Then the announcer proceeded to say ‘Open 7 days a week’ and ‘closed on Tuesday’.
“What a stupid advertisement’ I said to Buzzurro. ‘You are either open 7 days a week or open 6 and close on Tuesdays, it can’t be both !’
‘Maybe they have 8 day weeks in New Mexico’ he replied.
‘I hope not. Then I’d have to work 6 days instead of 5.’
‘Or get a 3 days weekend every week’ replied Buzzurro.
Wouldn’t that be nice ?

A few weeks ago I had this conversation at school with a person born and raised in New Mexico,
Her: “The school cafeteria is serving frito pies for lunch.They are SO good!”
Other people nearby: “Frito pies. Great.”, “They are tasty.”, “Wonderful News’.
Me : thinking that fritto in Italian means fried, and frito in Spanish means fried, so she must be talking about a fried pie of some sort and also thinking ‘with all these recommendations, they must be good’
I actually say’I love Mexican food, so I’ll try one.”
Her “You can get one with beef or a vegetarian one with beans.”
Me “Either sounds good to me.”

So I went off to the school cafeteria where I found some cafeteria workers in front of trays with unappetizing blobs of food on them, covered in cheese.
‘That doesn’t look fried to me’ I thought, but I bravely ordered one anyway, wondering if what I ordered was the same as what I was expecting to eat.
The worker heaped on a pile of shredded lettuce and tomatos and I took my concoction… I mean frito pie to the lounge to dine in peace.
Even though the evidence on the tray pointed to the contrary, I still held firm to my belief that I was holding a tray of pie frito. A fried pie.
Fritto in Italian means fried and so does frito in Spanish. What I didn’t even think of was what a frito, the noun, was in English. It is a fried snack made with cornflour and tons of salt. I never really liked them as a child, and still don’t.
I dug my fork into the pile sitting on the tray and to my horror discovered a few of these noun fritos on the bottom. The pie wasn’t frito at all! It was just beef, cheese, tomato and lettuce thrown on a bed of those Frito snack chips which I do not like.
Being very hungry I tried to eat it anyway, hoping that the grease from the beef would cover the salty, fried, processed chemical taste that I associate with Fritos. It didn’t work.
I made it through a few bites and then threw the whole tray away.

Yesterday I went to a party at her house.
“I made frito pies” she proudly exclaimed.
My first reaction was to say ‘Yuck. No thanks’ but then I thought to myself that the last time I ate a frito pie was in the school cafeteria, a place not known for high cuisine, so I actually said “Sounds great. I’ll take one’
And she served me the same shapeless blob that the cafeteria did. The meat and beans were much better, so were the lettuce, tomato, onion and cheese, but the Fritos were the same.
I really can’t understand all the hype around frito pies.
At least now I know not to order them.