Much of New Mexico’s history is contained within roads and trails. The state is physically and culturally tattooed by the Spanish Trail, the Camino Real, the Santa Fe Trail, Route 66, as well as by significant rail routes and interstate highways.

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, a sort of culinary reality TV show that aired on ABC this spring, proves that television is capable of taking this country’s health and nutrition crisis and distilling it down to the usual plot points of celebrity, animosity, betrayal and cheap editing tricks.

As desperately tired as I am of Vincent Van Gogh puns, I don’t really care what Sabert Lewis calls his mobile wood-fired pizza business—the pies he churns out are blissful slices of traditional Neapolitan mouth sex.

Every once in a while, I find myself in a grocery store bright and early in the morning. As a rule, I don’t shop before I’m alert enough to defend myself. So, if I’m in a grocery store before noon, it’s for some kind of morning emergency purchase, such as Advil or coffee or toilet paper.

Last Sunday, I laid my big, beautiful rooster down on a tree stump and cut off his head with a hatchet.

Let me tell you, that felt good.

Early in the morning on May 5, while dawn was still having second thoughts about even cracking, the New Mexico Beef Council’s semiannual Gate to Plate tour kicked off. Journalists, ranchers, legislators and industry insiders were pressed back in their chairs as our bus, the size of a rock band’s, tore out of Albuquerque and headed for Clovis.

When oil recently spread like a cruel bloom through the Gulf of Mexico it was a graphic and horrible reminder of our dependency on fossil fuels. That’s why it felt so liberating to sit down to a literally farm-fresh meal in the warm spring sunshine on Saturday, April 24 at the Camino de Paz Farm and School.

I was a scrawny, strange, unpopular child. I was a scrawny, strange, unpopular teen. I’m a not-so-scrawny, strange, controversial adult. I’ve never really done much to inspire envy in others. That is, until I pestered SFR into letting me write about food.

Everything has its microcosm. While jet-setting heads of state bring nuclear nonproliferation and the possibility of new nuclear power plants to the headlines, Santa Fe’s Atomic Grill is experiencing a fission-fueled rebirth of its own.

Yes, we know we’re still in for some vicious cold snaps—the types that turn apricot blossoms into shriveled husks—but winter is in the rearview mirror and one’s mind naturally wanders to short skirts, T-shirts, and eating and drinking outside. In advance of the impending work-avoidance weather, here’s a roundup of the best patios for partying, posing, pastries and passing the time.