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Recipe: heirloom tomato salad

I’m wearing fleece right now, because September flipped the switch on summer and we’ve been relishing this glorious cool down! The neighbor was firing up their hot tub (because the pipes can burst when we get down to freezing overnight), we saw morning frost in the high country, and snow is predicted on the high peaks this week. Just in time too, because we upgraded our tele gear this weekend. Now we’re poor and happy!

i chose the rossi s3s over the k2 kung fujas

soon all this will be covered in snow… precious precious snow

Labor Day marks the end of the vacation season. Kids are back in school, people go back to work. It is the start of when I like to spend time outside the most. The weather is cool enough to my liking and the backcountry isn’t filled with a bunch of yahoos from the city. Kaweah can happily trundle along on her walks without overheating. That smell of crispness on the air means autumn fast approaches. We’ve already seen early bird sprigs of aspen turning yellow around our local trails. The sun journeys across the sky a little lower each day and the remaining late season wildflowers dot the landscape with their humble whites, yellows, and purples. I love the transition from summer to autumn.

colorful sunsets

weekend hiking

plants turning yellow

fireweed

k-dawg pooped out after her hike

I don’t hate summer. It’s really the heat that gets me more than anything else. And while I’m gleefully anticipating ski season, I have to say that it is with great sadness that the love affair with the summer bounty must come to an end. Corn, tomatoes, peaches (oh my goodness, those Colorado Palisade Peaches), melons, baseball bat zucchini, cherries, plums, berries, peppers, beans… I enjoy most all of these prepared in the simplest of ways. It’s too hot to futz with stuff over the stove or in the oven. Minimalist preparation means that the foods are allowed to shine and that you have more time to go out and play. One of my favorite fruits of summer? Heirloom tomatoes.

i buy the hell out of them at the farmers’ market

a little olive oil, some fresh basil, and smoked mexican sea salt

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Raffle winners: Thank you to everyone who donated to A Fund for Jennie and a special thanks to Maggy, Erika, and Aimée of Bloggers Without Borders for coordinating the raffle and donations on such a huge scale across the food blogosphere. We had 41 legitimate entries and Kaweah chose the numbers (or rather, ate the corresponding dog biscuits for): 48 and 66. Mod 41, that gives us #7 (Jenn) and #25 (Kaela). Congratulations to our winners! I’ll contact you shortly to arrange for your choice of photo!

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I keep a long list of things to do. It’s not the normal list of errands, house maintenance, work, etc. It’s a special list for things that I will eventually get around to in either a few weeks or a few years – but I’m gonna do them. Things like the dozen or so baby quilts for which I have already collected the fabric, a care package to send around the globe, cookies to give to people who least expect them, or dinner with friends at another friend’s restaurant. Coordinating among multiple busy schedules means we have been attempting to get together for months, but we finally made it earlier this week. It was the first of many foreseeable dinners with this fine crew: Ellen, Manisha, and Kathya. We went around on email to figure out where to meet for dinner. There are so many choices, but I had been promising to visit my friend (and chef) Chris at his new restaurant since before it opened in Westminster, Colorado nearly six months ago. We’re all friends on Twitter and everyone agreed that Hideaway Steakhouse was the top of our list.

our own private dining room

I met Chris at my Food and Light workshop in Boulder in 2010 – one of our best students, a true sweetheart of a guy, and an incredibly talented chef and photographer. He told us Monday nights are generally quiet so he reserved the backroom just for us so we could dine, gab, and shoot photos to our hearts’ content. Such a great fella. The owners and manager came by to say hi and introduce themselves too. Hideaway Steakhouse is located in a predominantly residential area that is a bit of a food culture wasteland. The menu at Hideaway has the traditional steaks that you’d find at a steakhouse on one half, but the other half is where Chris gets to play and show off his culinary mastery.

chris offers so much more than just a steakhouse menu

manisha starts with a mojito

ellen soon learns that she’s fallen in with a camera-toting crowd

What I love about having dinner with my foodistas is that “they get it”. We all order something different so we can get a good sampling of the dishes. We share everything. No one dives into the food as soon as it arrives because we’re all getting our cameras ready (except for Ellen, who kept repeating “That’s a damn big camera!”). Oh, and they are absolutely hilarious, wonderful, amazing women. We had so much to tell one another that it took an hour before we finally figured out our order. But Chris took great care of us – he spoiled the hell out of us! We started with plates of his “lamb three ways” dish: braised lamb shank and goat cheese ravioli, lamb bacon (he cured it himself) sweet potato hash, and lamb tenderloin. Then we shared a couple of appetizers off the menu because everything was just too tempting to not sample a few.

lamb three ways: heavenly!

click click click

heirloom tomato carpaccio

ellen tries an escargot

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