use real butter

You don’t just walk straight into Cured and Boxcar Coffee Roasters on Pearl Street. You can’t. There is a little partition that forces you to go right or left, but not straight ahead. The two businesses share a common space with an open zone of mingling and happy browsing in between. Both Cured and Boxcar appeal to the eyes, nose, brains, tastebuds, and tummies.

as you walk in, cured is on the right

and boxcar coffee is on the left

Let’s begin with Boxcar Coffee Roasters. Boxcar roasts their own beans in-house. When you order coffee after an incredible meal at Frasca, they are serving Boxcar coffee. I am told by Jeremy and other trusted caffeine fiends that this is most excellent coffee. As far as local roasters go, Jeremy ranks it up there with his other favorite Conscious Coffees. If you’re talking about where to get a great cuppa, it’s all here east of the Pearl Street pedestrian mall: Boxcar, Atlas Purveyors, or Frasca’s Caffè (which incidentally uses Boxcar beans).

serving up some cowboy coffee

Saunter up to the counter and order from the small menu at your left. There is coffee, espresso, and the related variations as well as hot chocolate and hot teas (caffeinated and herbal). To your right sits an assortment of small pastries and confections to further tempt you. Don’t be in a rush for a cup of coffee, because it’s not going to happen in a rush. Theirs is cowboy coffee and it involves precise temperatures, times, technique, and of course, good beans. I don’t even drink coffee and I’d be tempted to pay for one just to watch the process. And you can watch it all being made in front of you while you hang out at the lovely bar. Or if you have business to discuss or a laptop to get sucked into, you can sit at one of the half dozen tables.

a perfect latte

my steaming pot of mint tea on a cold and rainy day

Jeremy loves when I have errands to run in this shop because it means he can enjoy a cowboy coffee (he digs watching it being made as much as I do) or a latte. I actually come here more often without him, and I buy coffee. I mean, I buy beans. Sometimes they are for home (for Jeremy or entertaining guests), but most of the time they are gifts. Boxcar’s beans make excellent gifts for the coffee connoisseurs in your life and the wall at the front entrance has a nice selection from which to choose.

whole bean or ground coffee – great for gifts or your own sipping pleasure

Now if you turn your attention to the East side of the store, prepare yourself for temptation. The other half of this nice, open space is occupied by Cured, which is another little gem on East Pearl Street. It’s like a shop of gourmet delights from seasonal local produce to artisan breads to fancy sea salts to Colorado honey.

inside cured

specialty oils, condiments, pickles, honeys, spices

and chocolate

There is a feel to this shop that I get nowhere else in Boulder, sort of like a foodie field trip. I’m almost afraid to blink for fear of passing over some fantastic little nibble on display. Okay, but Cured really deals in three heavy hitters and for those, you need to take a short walk toward the back of the store. And trust me when I say it’s easy to get distracted on the way.

cheeses

cured meats

wines and spirits

**Jump for more butter**

I’m not much of a coffee girl which might explain why I don’t get the coffee culture surrounding coffee houses, cafés, whatever you call them. And contrary to what some might think, I don’t get around downtown Boulder as much as the typical Young Urban Hipster (granted, I am NOT a young urban hipster). Half the time when friends suggest a place to meet in town I have no idea what they are talking about and the only reason I get there is because of Google. But I am slowly learning my way around. One of my favorite places in downtown Boulder happens to be a coffee shop.

atlas purveyors

My friend Andrew introduced me to Atlas Purveyors a year ago when I was looking for a coffee shop to supply the caffeine for our Food and Light participants. Actually, Andrew introduced me to Chris Rosen, one of the owners of Atlas and a genuinely kind and good individual. Chris is the one I blame for my addiction to tea slushies. I’d blame Kit, Brandon, and the rest of the staff at Atlas too, just that I usually hit Atlas during Chris’ shift. I always considered myself immune to the lure of coffee houses because I don’t drink coffee, but Atlas is much more than coffee.

atlas is part of our community

Boulder has a ton of good coffee houses in the downtown Pearl Street area. I once overheard someone walking on Pearl sarcastically remark, “Another coffee shop opening in downtown Boulder? Yeah, I guess we don’t have nearly enough!” But based on how full Atlas is at any given time, one might actually be led to believe that we don’t have enough coffee houses in Boulder. It’s popular and there are many regulars who frequent the establishment to have meetings, to work, and to just hang out.

i enjoy the chalk art and chalk graffiti

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chocolate espresso crème brûlée

I got up before sunrise and tip-toed around the house this morning. We dipped below freezing overnight. Sticking my nose to the open window, I took several shallow sniffs then one deep inhale. No smoke. Scanning to the east I saw clear skies. The absolute best news? Calm winds. This in contrast to yesterday morning’s hostile 60 mph gusts that slapped our aspens around like rag dolls, ripping leaves off the branches. We found some wood siding from our house had been torn off by the winds as well. At noon, Manisha emailed to ask if we were all right. There was a fire near Boulder Canyon.

It’s September. In parts of the American West, this is synonymous with fire season: the driest (we had 4% humidity yesterday) and sometimes hottest time of year. Toss strong winds and bone dry vegetation in, and you are primed for a fire. We are no strangers to fire season having lived at the boundary of the Angeles National Forest in Southern California. The price one pays to live in Awesome. I hopped on Twitter and the stream of information was flowing fast. Boulder is a good place to be on Twitter. Those crazy winds whipped the wildfire into a nightmare starting in Four-Mile Canyon. It quickly spread in almost all directions and we followed news of evacuations and road closures. Good citizens updated maps in real-time or tweeted updates from the police scanner. When the reverse 911 system failed, authorities asked people on Twitter spread the word that they were going door to door to evacuate.

Smaller fires popped up around the area, but were quickly put out. It was the big one, now called the Emerson Gulch Fire, that was consuming homes and whole neighborhoods. If you look at the satellite imagery of the area, the houses are not next door to each other – they are scattered about, in the woods and canyons/mountains. It’s rough and rugged terrain (people are not on municipal services there – they have giant propane tanks for heating… which explode in wildfires). If someone dropped you into that scenario where several fronts are threatened, how do you go about deciding what to save, what to defend? It’s heartbreaking. That firestorm was so bad, the only thing authorities could focus on was evacuation. Photographs, video, descriptions and links to more information poured in on the hashtag #boulderfire. We watched as the evacuation zone expanded, inching closer to our home.

smoke from the fire was the only cloud in all of colorado (taken at dusk looking east)

When the zone was within 6 miles of our house and authorities closed Boulder Canyon, we began to gather our things. Things are just things. As I packed up letters from and photos of my sister, I realized that the only “things” I could not do without are Jeremy and Kaweah. The rest – even those cherished items that I had of Kris – I could let go of. But while we had the time, we packed what we might need if we had to evacuate and if ultimately the house was lost. [For those of you with an invested digital existence, it’s a handy thing to have an external drive (updated daily) to unplug and grab.] Without a doubt, my mind turned to Ivory Hut who just last week lost all of her worldly possessions to a fire. Thankfully, the winds had calmed considerably since the morning and tankers were finally able to fly in the waning light before nightfall grounded them.

the plume of smoke rising into the evening sky

By last night, the evacuation zone had extended again – to within 2 miles of our home. Evac zone and fire are not the same things, mind you, but we were ready. Here is an incredible time-lapse shot from Flagstaff Mountain last night. Right now Boulder lies choking under a blanket of smoke from the fire. I’m trying to reconcile those images with the clear, sunny day we are experiencing just west of the fire. Our hope is for containment. Thank you for all of your concerned and caring tweets, FB messages and comments, and emails. We are sending good juju to the victims of the fire and the incredible rescue, firefighting, and relief personnel.

Life goes on. My dear friend, Andrew, is leaving today to travel the world for a year, or two, or six. Boulder will miss you, Andrew. We will miss you. Thanks for spending an evening with us on Sunday. Thanks for being such a Force of Good in the community. Safe and remarkable travels, friend. Come back to us any time.

andrew on the terrace at the flagstaff house

perusing the wine list (the guys got cocktails instead)

crab- and salmon-stuffed squash blossoms with caviar (zomgdelicious!)

Well now, there is a recipe after all. This one dates back to my pre-blog days when I had a static website. I have a little sticky note (the virtual kind, not a paper sticky) on my desktop telling me to transfer some of those old recipes over. I think it might be one of Jeremy’s favorites.

chocolate, of course

espresso powder and cream

Chocolate espresso crème brûlée. The chocolate and espresso are enough to win most folks over, but crème brûlée will surely round up the rest of the holdouts. Crème brûlée is one of the more annoying things to have to type out, so I’m glad the fabulosity of the dessert itself far outweighs any inconvenience experienced in writing about it.

add chopped chocolate to the hot cream

whisking egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla

**Jump for more butter**