Category: Announcements

On Saturday, July 20th, 2013, Meals on Wheels of Albuquerque hosted its twelfth annual Breakfast Egg Stravaganza. The event was held at the Northside Presbyterian Clinic, 5901 Harper Drive, N.E., in Albuquerque. A great time was had by all. The breakfast was an all-you-can-eat plethora of deliciousness that included freshly made pancakes, build-your-own omelets, made to order waffles, a fresh fruit bar and much more. In addition to the breakfast buffet, the event included a kid’s zone with a bouncy house, face painters, a silent auction and much more. The Breakfast Eggs Stravaganza is great fun for not a lot of money and it supports a good cause. Every penny of the proceeds goes to help our Low Income Medical Meal Program which provides a daily meal for those who need a medically specified diet but are unable to afford it for themselves – the only program of its kind in Albuquerque. A recent report by the Meals on Wheels Association of America revealed that New Mexico ranks second for food insecurity among seniors. Nearly a quarter of the Land of Enchantment’s senior population doesn’t know where their next meal will come from. Over 67% of the organization’s clients say…

When Break The Chain host Ryan Scott learned that a CIA trained chef was operating in the Duke City, he knew he’d have to investigate.  His sleuthing didn’t reveal any clandestine menus or covert cooking, but he did discover a chef with some pretty deft knife-wielding skills.  Throughout Ryan’s interrogation, the chef maintained no cloak of subterfuge or secrecy.  In fact, Chef Paco Aceves was rather forthcoming about his training and his not-so-secret mission here in the Duke City.  Chef Aceves’s mission is to introduce Albuquerque to a range of international smoked foods including some of the most popular American BBQ specialties. His eponymous restaurant, Paco’s International Smoked Cuisine is not your typical BBQ restaurant in that it he utilizes smoking techniques to prepare a menu of rotating dishes from various countries.  Oh, and Chef Aceves was trained by the CIA, but not that CIA.  He’s a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, the other CIA.  The CIA  Chef Aceves attended is America’s most respected school for culinary arts training. In the third YouTube channel episode of Break the Chain, Ryan joins Chef Aceves in the kitchen where the chef displays his formidable culinary skills in preparing a delicious pork…

Widely recognized as one of the most foremost authorities on the New Mexico dining scene, Andrea Feucht is very passionate when it comes to the Land of Enchantment’s food. Andrea shares her passion with everyone in her new book, The Food Lovers Guide to Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Taos, a terrific tome all foodies should own.  Better still, buy at least two copies of–one copy in your vehicle and one in your kitchen. That way you consult the guide to help you decide where your next meal should come from as well as consulting it for recipes Andrea charmed some of New Mexico’s best culinary minds into sharing.  I recently had the pleasure and privilege of interviewing Andrea about her new book.  As with any conversation with the tenacious author, it was an informative, thought-provoking and revealing interview I hope all of you will enjoy. Q: Many congratulations on The Food Lovers Guide to Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Taos. It’s an amazingly comprehensive guide, but it doesn’t read like a lot of guides which are so formulaic in their writing. How did you manage to balance providing information with making it fun and interesting for readers? A: Interestingly, it was…

Dear Readers As many of you know, back in August a malicious invader infected my virtual private server with a malware virus, the second such incident in four years.  To prevent a future recurrence, I paid the company which hosted my server to move my site to a “more secure” hosting environment.  Alas, no good deed goes unpunished.  The move caused the site to become unstable with frequent and unexplained outages.  Because my hosting provider didn’t take ownership for issues they caused during the move, I began searching for a new company to host Gil’s Thrilling (And Filling) Blog.  In ZippyKid, I found the very best hosting company there is.  It’s a very reputable company with tremendous technical expertise, but moreso, it’s a company which will partner with me to ensure you have the best browsing experience on my site. I apologize for any inconvenience the absence of my blog may have caused and appreciate all the kind words from so many of you.  It’s my hope that henceforth the only thing I’ll have to apologize about is the quality of the pictures I take. Gil

  Every four years since the year 2000, news anchors and analysts have depicted America’s  voting preferences on colored maps.  States which tend to vote for the Democratic party are colored blue while states which tend to vote for the Republican party are colored red. What the maps don’t show–but the political pundits certainly discuss ad nauseum–is the increasingly acrimonious political and ideological divide between red and blue states.  The talking heads would have you believe the answer to Rodney King’s lament “can’t we all just get along” is a resounding “no.” There are 49 chromatically quarrelsome states which could learn a thing or two from the Land of Enchantment.  In New Mexico, the colors red and green have lived together in perfect harmony for centuries.   Perhaps to keep it that way, our sagacious state legislature passed a resolution approving the official state answer of “Christmas” to the state’s official state question “red or green.”  Christmas signifies a diner’s preference is to have both red and green chile on their entree. Certainly there are avid proponents of both red and green chile–some even quite vocal about their preference–but New Mexico is a land of tolerance.  Though most of us have…