spreading the love

I am on a new mission to invite people over for dinner. I'm hoping to make it a regular habit, like once a week. So watch out, you may be next!

For the inaugural event, Eric and I made a creamy vegan spinach soup (spinach, sunchokes, scallions, carrots, roux, soy milk, spices) and a millet polenta with home canned tomato sauce. Our friends brought peach crisp made from frozen peaches harvested from a family tree.

Yay local, seasonal, organic, vegetarian food! Yay community!

vegan earth day dinner

Breadworks, a local bakery and cafe, hosted a vegan Earth Day dinner! It was a nicely informal event with a bring your own wine policy. The tasty vegan food and community-centeredness made me nostalgic for uber-hippy-vegan-makeshift-restaurants-in-basements (ahem The Red Herring of Urbana, IL) BUT I shouldn't dwell too much on the grunge that Boulder lacks. Instead I will note how impressed I was with the number of people there. Boulderites know that a delicious meal does not need to involve animal products. Cheers to that!

And in case you're wondering, they served lentil soup, potato and kale enchiladas, mexican millet, jicama salad, and chocolate banana bread pudding. Yum!

millet: it's what's for dinner

Colorado grows over half of all millet in the U.S. As people who are always on the look-out for more local grains, we were excited to learn this fact from a piece on Colorado Public Radio. Millet has long been used for food around the world (roti flatbread is made from millet flour and couscous was originally made from millet), but has been mostly known as a component of birdseed in the U.S.

I made a mexican-flavored millet stew loosely based on this recipe. It turned out so, so creamy and tasty. The bursts of coriander are my favorite. We used: millet, veggie broth, beans, corn, frozen roasted hot pepper, parsley, garlic (all local), as well as cumin, coriander, onion, oil, and topped with salsa.

backpacking

We went on a 15 mile backpacking trip this past weekend to Rattlesnake Arches in western Colorado. The desert canyon views were stellar. I felt like I was in another world.

homebrew video

Our friend Ted Burnham made this short video about home beer brewing. It stars none other than... us! I love the editing, especially the sound editing. But don't follow our steps exactly - we mistakenly put the malt extract in before steeping the grain. Oops!

first farmers' market of the year

Saturday marked the beginning of the farmers' market here in Boulder! As you can see, we brought Francois along for the adventure. This was his first ever bike trailer ride (at the precautiously slow speed of 4-8 mph). We didn't know what to expect but he did remarkably well. Still, I am going to keep my eye out for an enclosed kid trailer so that on future trips I can have a little more peace of mind that he won't bail on us.

Although the produce is still fairly limited, the weather was perfect for meandering the market aisles. We managed to pick up spinach, amaranth grain, blue corn flour, eggs, and cheese.