New Mexico Ghost Towns + - The Very Large Array

 After Kelly and Magdalena, we headed further into the vast, mostly empty, interior of New Mexico for the 'plus' to our Ghost Town themed trip. Our quarry, he Very Large Array. 

What you say is the "Very Large Array"? It is one of the premier radio telescopes on Earth. For more detailed information here is a link to Wikipedia's page on it. Wife and de-I have a number in our circle of blog readers who are quite the science geeks. So us getting out there in-person definitely ups our cred among that community.

It is really amazing just how vast this operation is to be working as one single unit. This will give you and idea.

 And, of course, there was a very large array of photographs required to capture our experience. During this shoot I started to play around a bit more purposefully with shooting the same image in color, as well as in black and white to see the difference.

And can you believe it? The New Mexico edition of...

SIGNS OF THE WORLD

Geeky place...Geeky signs

 In New Mexico, we have no 'whimp' Rattlesnakes

 

NM GHOST TOWNS + - KELLY & MAGDALENA

 New Mexico has ghost towns, lot of them. The vast majority were associated with booms that resulted in the discovery of precious resources like gold and silver. When a discovery was made, there would be a surge of people coming in to work the deposits and to provide services to those working the deposits. But most of the deposits found in this part of the world were worked out fairly quickly. Then the towns would gradually begin to diminish, and in many cases, die out all together. Ghost towns offer very interesting opportunities for photography. 

On top of this, after the workshop done in Penang, and the focus on using dark spaces and shadows, I was all hot to try shooting black and white. I did have to figure out what setting to use to get black and white pictures. A brief search on YouTube found the answer. 

Our first stop were two towns very close to each other Kelly and Magdalena

First Stop Kelly

Kelly (according to the New Mexico Tru tourisim site) is noted for its rather substantial mining equipment remains. Sadly that part was closed off, only leaving us the town which had had most of its buildings hauled off when they officially closed down the town. However, two intrepid people went back a decade a go and took up residence there.

There was a church, which still is being used.

And some ruins associated with the mines

And the New Mexico species of Espouses Fotograficus 

It was very dusty and I thought this pattern on our car was particularly interesting.

Magdalena

Magdalena is not completely dead. Unlike the mining only towns, Magdalena kept alive through the 20th century due to ranching. But like so many small rural communities, it could not provide economic opportunities for young people and was gradually dying. Then in the 1990's a few intrepid newcomers arrived and began a number of efforts to revitalize the community. So far it has been successful in staving off entropy.

As this was the first time shooting black and white, how I was shooting was evolving with each new location. Here, I started to mix in color pictures to see the difference.

A Study of Patterns

Then we came to the Stockyard/Rodeo Grandstand which was an entire study unto itself.

Finally we bid adieu to Magdalena

Heading South To Ghost Towns

 Wife and I are off on a driving trip to Southern New Mexico. We are specifically going to a number of ghost towns for the purposes of photography. Our base will be Silver City which we've never visited.

Cordon Bleu or What To Do With Leftover Ham

 On Thursday, I went to the refrigerator to do an inventory in preparation for the Saturday shopping. I found a package of ham leftover from the prior Saturday lunch salad. Usually during the week it would be consumed for a lunch. However, this week we had a lot of leftovers that were being use for lunches. Plus I had a couple of lunches out. This ham was coming to the end of its shelf life. What to do with it.

While taking stock of the refrigerator drawer, I saw the block of Gruyere cheese from Costco I recently started working on. Inspiration. Ham. Gruyere cheese. What does that say to you? I am sure it says the same thing it said to me. Cordon Bleu. 

What? That is not the first thing that came to mind? What? You don't even know what Cordon Bleu is?

Ah, Grasshopper let me educate you. Cordon Bleu is a chicken breast that has been flattened into a cutlet. It is filled with ham and cheese, folded over, breaded, fried, and then baked. You end up with piece of chicken that has a crunchy outside like fried chicken and a ham and melted cheese center. Now the fact that I have never made Cordon Bleu even once in my 70+ years of life, probably only ate it once or twice, have usually made a hash of things when I try to bread and fry them, were not going to dissuade me. I am on this creative cooking roll and this was a challenge I was ready to tackle.

Stage One - Preparing the chicken cutlet for the folding and breading

What this picture does not show is that I had a couple of cutlets that were split on one end. I had visions of molten cheese escaping into the frying pan. But I folded them and they pretty much retained their shape.

Breading

At this moment my confidence level on the outcome was a bit shaky. It was really going to depend on my success getting them into the frying pan, flipping them, and getting them out.

Frying

Eureka! All were fried for two minutes on a side with barely a speck of cheese leakage. Then it was on a rack on a baking sheet and into a 375 degree oven for 15 minutes or until 160 degrees internal temperature. 

Finished Product

Out of the oven, nearly Cordon Bleu perfection. They tasted great. 

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of cutting through the finished product showing the wonderful layers of chicken, ham, and melted cheese. 

Sigh.