Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

The Weather

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It’s all relative.

One of the reasons I left the New York City metro area years ago and moved to Arizona was the weather. The winters in the New York area were just too darn cold. I recall getting ready to go to work one winter morning and glancing out the window at the thermometer to find it reading -7°F. (That’s -22°C for you metric folks.) There was an icicle hanging from it.

The winters were gray, too. By November, the trees would be bare and their trunks and branches were gray. The sky was gray. When it snowed, the snow turned gray. Even the grass seemed gray. It would stay like that until May when the trees budded up again.

One year, it snowed not long after New Years and there was snow on the ground for a full two months. Gray snow.

I don’t like cold weather and I found the gray depressing.

So I moved to Arizona. Winter days here in Wickenburg are quite mild — often warm enough for a T-shirt. Winter nights are cold, sometimes getting down into the mid 20s. The desert depends on the sun for heat and the sun doesn’t disappoint. It’s sunny most days. When the sun sets, the temperature can easily drop 20°F in less than an hour.

The sun does its work only too well in the summer time. It gets hot. Hotter than I bargained for. Hotter than hell for at least two months out of the year. Don’t be lured to Arizona by cheap hotel rates in July and August. Even the people who live here wouldn’t come here then.

Arizona SunriseYesterday and today, it was overcast. It’s been making great sunrises (like the one in this photo, taken out the front of my house this morning) and sunsets.

Today it actually rained.

Rain is a big deal in Arizona. We can go literally months without any rain. This was probably the first rain in at least a month.

For the past two days, the sky has been gray. I’m glad, though, because the sky is blue and clear so often that gray makes a nice change. Everyone I spoke to today pretty much felt the same way. “I hope it rains,” one main said, looking up at the sky.

It had already rained once, but that’s never enough. In Arizona, we hope it rains all day long.

Arizona SunriseYou can hope for rain all you want in Arizona because you’re not likely to get it. Sometimes, when it rains, the air is so dry that the rain dries up before it hits the ground. You can actually see it falling under the cloud, but it disappears before making anything wet. The phenomena is called virga and I think I’ve seen enough of it to last a lifetime. You can see some in this picture, looking pink because of the rising sun. (This picture was taken out my back door yesterday morning.) Sometimes you can actually smell the rain and still not feel a drop. What a tease that is.

The rain does have an interesting smell here. Not at all like back east and nothing like the ocean. Mostly, it’s the smell of the creosote bush. I think it’s the smell of the rain that I like the most. Last night, we slept with the bedroom door open to the patio. This morning, the rain smell was the first thing I noticed. Nice.

Is it possible for the weather in a place to be too nice? I think so.

When you look forward to a rainy day just to have a break from all the good weather, I think that’s proof enough that you’re getting too much of a good thing.

Fine Dining in Wickenburg, Take 2

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Mike and I enjoy a great dinner…in Wickenburg!

To the people reading these blogs — especially lately — it might seem that I spend an awful lot of time and words thinking and writing about food and restaurants. You need to understand that Wickenburg is a small town in a relatively remote area and fine dining is not something that’s in demand — or apparently understood — by the general population. Although there are restaurants where you can get a good meal, getting a fine dining experience in town is a bit tougher. That’s hard for a transplanted city girl who was accustomed to getting any kind of food she wanted any time of the day or night.

Hopefully, when they start selling all the expensive housing they’re building around town, rich people will move in and there will be enough of a demand for fine dining to open a few new restaurants. In the meantime, I’m waiting.

But last night, Mike and I had dinner at one of the town’s three remaining “American Plan” guest ranches: Rancho de los Caballeros. We’d been eating at Los Cab (as the locals call it) occasionally for the past five or more years. During that time, they underwent a change of kitchen staff, with at least three different chefs. Los Cab’s dining room is the closest you can get to fine dining in Wickenburg and sometimes it’s pretty darn close — close enough to convince me, anyway.

Last year, I was quite disappointed. Mike and I ate there three times and it just wasn’t cutting it anymore. The menu had gotten boring and the service just wasn’t what it should be.

One of my pet peeves in a fine dining restaurant is having a server or busperson address us as “you guys.” I’m talking about a greeting like, “How are you guys today?” Or a question like, “Would you guys like anything else?” I call this the You Guys syndrome. While it’s perfectly acceptable in a place like Screamers, for example, where you walk up and order a burger at the counter and they call your name when it’s done, you don’t expect it in a place that has a dress code. Yet sadly, Los Cab’s staff was suffering from the You Guys syndrome.

How are they supposed to address people, you might be asking? How about “How are you this evening?” or “Would you folks like something else?” Duh. It doesn’t take much imagination. But if the young folks that make up the staff aren’t properly trained, they don’t know they’re doing something that’s not quite up to par. So I can’t blame them.

Last night was our first meal at Los Cab this season and we were suitably impressed. Service was excellent, the menu was interesting, and the food was good. And I didn’t hear a single “you guys” during my entire meal. What else can you ask for?

I mentioned the menu. Los Cab changes its menu daily. This is because all guests staying at the ranch eat all meals there. If you’re there for five days, you don’t want to see the same menu every day. Especially since the menu is somewhat short. Last season, the chef experimented with a single menu and revolving specials, but he saw the light and switched back to the seven menu system midseason.

Last night we had the Friday menu.

I started with a mixed appetizer definitely designed for daring city slicker types — it included fried cactus, home made jerky, and grilled rattlesnake. Unfortunately, they were out of rattlesnake — it is out of season now, you know — but the jerky and cactus strips were very good. I wasn’t too keen on the dipping sauce, which tasted a bit too much like soy sauce for me. Mike had the Tortilla Soup. He said it was a different recipe and a bit spicy but good.

For our main course, I had grilled venison served with tabbouleh and pear slices. It was very good, although I think a little more sauce wouldn’t have hurt it. Mike had roast duck breast atop a smoked portabella mushroom. It was an interesting preparation — most times we’ve had duck, it’s been paired with a sweet sauce, like a cherry or orange glaze. This had a more smokey sauce that was definitely different. We shared a bottle of wine with dinner. (In case you’re wondering, it was served properly in the correct glasses.)

For desert, we shared creme brulee and something called Chocolate Lasagna. The creme brulee wasn’t my idea of a creme brulee, which is an eggy custard served very cold with caramelized sugar still hot on top. (Frank’s in the Myrtle Beach area made the absolute best when we used to do down there about 10 years ago.) This was a more pudding-like concoction served over fresh berries in a thin sugar cookie crust with vanilla creme on the bottom. Very good. The Chocolate Lasagna was chocolate cake layered with marscarpone. It wasn’t my taste, but Mike gobbled it up. Of course, we had that with coffee and tea. My coffee was very good — I’m so picky about coffee — although the bean was a bit darker roast than I prefer. At least it was brewed to the proper strength, fresh, and hot.

What’s nice is that Los Cab has a fixed price menu that includes three courses — appetizer/soup, entree, and desert with coffee. Alcohol is extra, of course, but they don’t nickel and dime you for entree accompaniments or beverages (like one Wickenburg restaurant that gives you free “dessert” — a tiny scoop of half-melted ice cream — but charges you $2 for the coffee you drink with it). And this year, Los Cab accepts MasterCard and Visa — previously it was a cash-only restaurant.

After the meal, the restaurant manager brought our check and asked how everything was. I told her it was great. We talked about last season when both she and the chef were new. She said it was like opening a new restaurant back then and that they had to work out the kinks. I told her that so far, this year was looking much better than last and that we were looking forward to coming back on other days to sample the rest of the menu.

If you live in or visit Wickenburg, you really owe it to yourself to try Los Cab’s dining room for your next special occasions. You’ll need reservations to get in. Because all guests eat at the restaurant, they open up tables to outsiders only if tables remain after all guests have been seated.

So yes, you can have a fine dining experience in Wickenburg. Thank heaven!

Bumper Stickers Wanted!

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I begin to “personalize” my golf cart with bumper stickers.

When I first got my Marketeer golf cart (which I wrote about in a previous bLog entry), I realized that looks were not one of its fine points. And I decided early on to cover all its ugly paint and rust spots with bumper stickers.

Making a decision to do something and actually doing it are two different things. But my comments about the bumper stickers did not fall on deaf ears. John and Lorna, friends of ours from Maine who visit Wickenburg in the winter months, began looking for stickers for me. And when Mike and I arrived at their place in Maine last week, they presented their two finds: “Save the Maine Blackfly” and “This Car Climbed Mt. Washington.” While we were there, I added to the collection with “Slow Minds Keep Right” and “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.”

StickersThis morning, I put the stickers on the cart, as shown here. (The Blackfly sticker is on front.) I used a Sharpie to change “This Car Climbed Mt. Washington” to “This Cart Climbed Mt. Washington.” (John and Lorna’s idea, not mine.)(Mt. Washington, to you west-side-of-the-Rockies people, is a “mountain” on the east coast. Although I’ve never been up there, it’s evidently a big deal to drive up the road to the top. (I can’t imagine it being such a big deal, having climbed Pike’s Peak — over 10,000 feet — in a rental car.) There are lots of cars on the east coast with these bumper stickers.) Of course, I had some other personalization options in mind. Gus, the Fuel Manager, had gotten an orange and white checkered flag for his golf cart. It’s the standard airport “Follow Me” type flag. I decided I needed a flag, too. But I wanted something different, something that said something about me. I got that in Maine, too. A Jolly Roger.

My MarketeerSo now my cart is starting to look like something special, something I’m proud to drive around the airport. But I need more bumper stickers! Do you have a bumper sticker you think would make a unique addition to my cart? If so, send it! If it’s appropriate, I’ll stick it on and take a new picture here for this bLog. Please don’t send anything crude, tasteless, or politically incorrect. I may not be the most popular person at the airport, but I don’t want to be universally hated, either.

You can send your bumper sticker to me at:
Maria Langer
c/o Wickenburg Municipal Airport
3410 West Wickenburg Way
Wickenburg, AZ 85390

I look forward to seeing what arrives and sharing it with the folks who read this bLog — not to mention the folks at the airport.

Plane Germs

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I fight off a cold I may have caught enroute from Boston to Phoenix.

PhotoLike most people, I hate getting sick. It isn’t just the feeling like crap part of being sick. It’s the knowing that I have so much to do and that doing any of it will exhaust me and prolong my illness. Mike and I took a vacation in Maine last week. We stayed with our friends, John and Lorna, who have a wonderful piece of property on a stream with a dam surrounded by tall trees. The weather in Maine was mostly foggy while we were there, but every once in a while, the fog would lift or clear away and we’d get an outstanding view of the New England countryside or coast.

We left on Friday for Amhurst, MA to visit Mike’s niece, Molly. The drive was wonderful through Maine, with the fog clearing out enough to make it a very pleasant drive. But when we hit New Hampshire and Massachusetts, it became overcast. By the time we reached Amhurst, it was raining. It was terribly humid on Friday — the kind of humidity that makes you sweat no matter how cool it is outside. On Saturday, it was pouring and very cool. But not quite cool enough to give me the chill I normally need to catch cold.

So it must have been the plane ride. Five and a half hours on board, from Boston to Phoenix. Stuck in coach, crammed into a window seat beside Mike on a plane too full for anyone to stretch out. I spent most of the flight reading, despite the nagging headache I’d had since the previous afternoon. I couldn’t even listen to my iPod very long. My head ached.

The air was typical airline air. Who knows where it came from or where it had been? How much of it came from outside the cabin? How much of it was laden with the germs the 100+ other passengers had brought onboard with them?Now don’t get the idea that I’m paranoid about germs. I’m not. I fully believe that everyone should expose themselves to a certain amount of germs just to keep their immune system working. That’s why I don’t go out of my way to use antibacterial soap. And I never really believed that the germs on airplanes could make you sick. To me, it sounded like just another fear fed into society by the media, which loves to keep us scared and tuned in for details.

But now I’m not so sure.

I arrived home at 10 PM on Saturday. I was fine on Sunday. I woke up a bit early on Monday — okay, so it was 4:00 AM — but felt fine. At about 7 AM, I had a nasty sneezing fit. By 10 AM, my nose was running like a faucet. By noon, my head was aching and my nose was sore from blowing it. By 2 PM, I was at the cold medications counter in Safeway, asking a pharmacist to please help me find the right medicine for my symptoms.

My condition continued to worsen. Mike made us dinner and it took me forever to eat. Ever try to swallow food when your nose is completely stuffed?At 7:30 PM, I went into the bedroom to read. I was asleep 10 minutes later.

I slept sitting up. I know from experience that a postnasal drip can give you a sore throat and cough. I didn’t want to go there. So I slept with my head up and tilted to one side. Thankfully, the nasty stuff in my nose had thickened a bit from the medication and wasn’t drippy. As I write this on Tuesday morning, I still don’t have a sore throat or cough.

But I am on medication. And I decided to take the day off to rest up. That’s the only way I’ll recover.

But why now? Why couldn’t this have happened over the summer when I was goofing off most of the time? Why does it have to happen when I’m working on a book revision and have two editors nagging me for articles? When my helicopter needs to be run up after maintenance so I can do a tour for a woman and her grandson this weekend? When I’m trying to launch a podcast and my voice is too nasal to make recordings?No need to dwell on it. I’ll just settle down on the sofa with a box of Puffs, glass of orange juice, and a good book. I’m taking today off so I can get back to work tomorrow. I’d better be at least a little better by then.

Brunch at the Princess

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Now THAT’S a meal to remember!

We spent Saturday night in Tucson after my Apple store appearance. We had a 9:05 AM flight from Phoenix to Boston and it seemed silly to drive all the way back to Wickenburg just to drive back to Phoenix in the morning.

We were actually on line for security at Sky Harbor when we decided to look at our boarding passes. That’s when we discovered that America West had changed our flight to one departing at about 1:30 PM. We were four and a half hours early for our new flight.

I hate when that happens.

Fortunately, we had a car at the airport and it was Sunday morning. Sunday morning in Phoenix means brunch to Mike and me. We normally go to the Biltmore, but we’ve been there so many times that we were interested in trying something new. I suggested the Scottsdale Princess. The information booth near baggage claim had the number. I called and made a reservation for 10 AM.

I should have been suspicious when they told me they wanted a credit card number to hold the reservation. But I just rattled it off — I use my American Express card so often the number is memorized — and hung up.

I never asked about price. After all, how much could it be? The most we’d ever spent on brunch was $55 per person at the Biltmore some years ago, when it was a very good brunch. It’s not quite as good now, but I think it’s cheaper.

We had sticker shock when we saw the sign at the restaurant’s door: $70 per person. Ouch! No wonder they get your credit card number and have a 24-hour cancellation policy. They don’t want to lose potential customers who faint away when they see what they’ll be paying. Silly people like us who don’t ask first.

But they were pouring Taitinger champagne — not the cheap junk most restaurants try to get away with at Sunday brunch. And everything looked good. I mean really good. So we went in.

Oh, how I needed an experience like this! Excellent service, from the moment we stepped up to the door. We were seated by a maitre d’ wearing a crisp, clean suit who didn’t seem the least bit put off by our ultra casual attire. He put us at a table by the window, where we could look out at the gardens. Our waiter appeared almost immediately, offering bottled water and then champagne. He offered to give us a tour of the buffet area, which extended from the restaurant’s interior out to a beautifully decorated Mediterranean looking courtyard. We decided to explore for ourselves and wandered outside.

I have never seen a brunch with as many options as this one. There were smoked and grilled meats with accompanying relishes and sauces. All kinds of smoked fish. Three kinds of caviar with all the fixin’s. Grilled vegetables. Tapas. Plain and exotic fruits. An omelet station, a crepe station, a pasta station, and a carving station — which also offered freshly grilled filet mignon, pork chops, lamb chops, salmon, and trout. Giant, pre-peeled shrimp and steamed crab legs. At least 10 kinds of cheeses. At least 20 kinds of desserts.

Everything was of unquestionable quality, prepared to perfection, and displayed attractively. The staff was knowledgeable and friendly.

We made four trips to the buffet. Although the place filled right up, there was never a line for anything we wanted to eat. Each time we returned with a new plate, our old plate and silverware was gone and new silverware was in its place. Our napkins were neatly folded at our place. Our waiter returned frequently to refresh our champagne. One time, we finished our champagne before going to the buffet for more food and returned to find our glasses still empty. I was surprised that our waiter had apparently slipped. But he appeared with the champagne bottle right after we returned and poured, explaining that he didn’t want the champagne to sit and get warm in our glasses while we were gone.

Was I dreaming? Pinch me!

Oh, how I needed this experience! I’d begun to think that service and quality was something I could no longer expect when dining out. This set me straight again. Thank heaven our flight plans were changed!

After an hour and a half, we asked for our check. When the waiter brought it, he told us that we’d eaten quickly, that people usually stayed an average of three hours. We told him about our flight and he understood.

Brunch cost over $170 for two, including tip. But was it worth it? You bet! I’ll be back again — when other plans don’t “rush” me through my meal.

And one more thing. Our new flight to Boston stopped in Las Vegas and didn’t get to Boston until midnight local time. Our brunch may have been expensive, but it lasted the whole day — we weren’t the least bit hungry on the flight.