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TueKelly Koepke
Kelly Koepke is a freelance writer who moved to New Mexico for the light, culture and lifestyle. She contributes to a variety of publications, and helps businesses small and large, profit and not for profit, better communicate via brochures, website copy, newsletters, press releases and ghostwritten articles.
Kelly Koepke contributes feature stories to a variety of local and media, including Albuquerque ARTS Magazine, Localflavor Magazine, New at Home, and the New Mexico Business Weekly, as well as Western Lifestyle Retailer and Equestrian Retailer. She also helps businesses small and large, profit and not for profit, better communicate with their employees and customers via brochures, website copy, newsletters and press releases. She’s known as a ghost writer for busy executives who have neither the time nor talent to write articles and columns for trade publications.
How Sweet It Is
by Kelly Koepke • localflavor magazine
Sep 1, 2009
I’ll confess I’m not much of a dessert eater. At least not the super sweet, gooey desserts that most Americans enjoy. I prefer some fresh fruit, or something made with fruit, or a cheese plate or even cheesecake. I enjoy drinking wine or spirits with my desserts, though, but find myself stuck in the port or sweet liqueur rut. To help us all out of the quandry of what wine and spirits to serve with dessert we asked three local pastry chefs and in some cases their executive chef, for a mini-course on the final course.
Cowboys & Indians
by Kelly Koepke • localflavor magazine
Mar 19, 2009
Talking to Terry Schurmeier, co-owner of Cowboys & Indians Antiques, Inc., is like talking to an old friend. The conversation never lags, whether talking business strategies or design sensibility. This icon of the Western and Native American antiques business gets even more excited when I ask her about using the wares that her store sells in all kinds of environments.
To Market, To Market...
by Kelly Koepke • localflavor magazine
Jun 9, 2008
To hear some ranchers tell it, the lack of processing facilities is preventing them from feeding more consumers local, grass-fed beef, lamb and pork that is humanely raised without hormones or antibiotics. For folks like Rick Kingsbury of Pecos Valley Grass-Fed Beef, the best of all possible worlds has a USDA, certified organic processing facility on their doorstep.
There used to be one as close as Mora to Kingsbury’s ranch in Ribera. But that plant closed a few years ago, leaving ranchers in Northern New Mexico with few options. New Mexico only has a handful of USDA meat processing facilities for a state with a large rural area.
“Processing is a huge problem for us. A...
A Toast to Taos
by Kelly Koepke • localflavor magazine
Jun 1, 2008
Communities put on events for many reasons. To increase tourism. To build a sense of neighborliness. To celebrate a significant event in their history. To plain old celebrate. Taos in July has rapidly become the time for a festival that combines food, wine, art and culture for a good cause: the Toast of Taos, a fundraiser for the area’s only hospital, Holy Cross.
The media (including this publication) has started to take note, too. “There’s a lot more interest in the event,” says Holy Cross Hospital Foundation Director Sally Trigg, organizer of the weeklong shindig. “We’ve gotten sponsorships from the Albuquerque Journal, 5280 Magazine, Southwest A...
Kioti
by Kelly Koepke • localflavor magazine
Jun 1, 2008
Linda Prager, owner of Kioti, an upscale women’s clothing and accessories store in Sanbusco Center, apologizes if she has to end our interview early. “I have a new puppy, a German Shepherd. This is our third shepherd, and we can tell he will be the last puppy,” she says.
Our interview starts out chatting amiably about dogs, children and the joys of small business ownership. Prager and her husband David Muller started the business that would eventually become Kioti in Michigan in 1984. Fueled by a passion for the folk art and antiques of Indonesia, as well as a desire for travel and the hunt for unique, handcrafted items, the couple brought their finds back to the United State...
Back to the Earth
by Kelly Koepke • localflavor magazine
Nov 1, 2006
Eleven years ago, Santa Fe music teacher and artist Valdez Abeyta y Valdez discovered three flats of adobes at her front door. They’d been left by her father, salvaged from a wall her grandfather had built over 100 years ago. The decision to build an horno with the adobes did not come lightly.
“I’d never built a horno before and got really nervous about placing the last brick. It’s like the keystone of a Roman arch, holding all the other bricks together,” she says.
Abeyta y Valdez replasters the oven each fall in mid to late October with earth she gathers from around the state. This year, she and her youngest daughter, Simoné-Felice, trekked to Abiquiu with buck...
