His & Hers: Breakfast

On the left, we have hashbrowns, sausage and fried farm eggs.
On the right, we have cantaloupe, cucumber, sunflower and flax seeds.
Guess whose is whose?

I'm pretty sure men have evolved to only feel satisfied when eating something they could have killed on a hunt and women are satisfied most eating things they could have grown or gathered. At least, that's the way it seems in our house.

This was my first foray into raw food. Day 3 now. No day has been completely raw, but let's just say my birthday present to myself was a dehydrator. Last night it made me kale chips and dried cantaloupe. Right now it is making me banana chips and pancakes.  

Scenes from our harvest dinner

Salt Lake love: Good eats

Oh, the eating we will do. This is how I think about any trip out of Wyoming. Salt Lake and Denver are the closest major cities, but though we may get there fairly often, I try to never eat the same place twice. Too many good choices!

This trip we discovered Ruth's Diner in Emigration canyon where the biscuits actually pleased the biscuit connoisseur (as did the homemade raspberry jam). The freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice made me pretty happy, too.

Everything there was wonderful, even the phone booth we had to cram into because the waiting room was full.

While Jack was entertaining folks at the IDOS convention, I found gems like Frida's Bistro:

Where this guy stared at me while I ate. 

Mazza, yummy Middle Eastern fare

(notice I also like eating at odd times when I have the place nearly to myself):

And then there was this gourmet grocer, Liberty Heights Fresh, where the cheesemonger helped me select a local chevre that had been mixed with apricot preserves and honey. I dipped two dates in it for dessert. YUM.

Oh, how good food makes me happy. Like the fresh (this morning) egg omelet with caramelized onions, spinach and feta my honey made me for breakfast today.

Molecular redistribution

There is little moisture here. The average annual rainfall is around seven inches. Right now, moisture mostly comes in the form of snow and this week we had some warming days that melted the snow into pure liquid water. The problem is the ground here doesn't know what to do with it.


I tested this theory once by pouring water on to the ground. The balls of moisture curled up and sat, rejected by the dirt beneath, and waited to evaporate. Eventually - minutes later - chemistry had begun to work and the patch of dirt was indeed stained wet, but it was absorbed molecule by molecule, not with the kind of thirst I expected of dirt in the desert.

So imagine that writ large into snowmelt. Slick. Water on top of Gortex dirt; not unlike an oily road surface, really. When the water pools it eventually sinks in whether the dirt likes it or not and creates mud. My car and this mud are not friends. It sucks the car around and spits it out in inopportune places.  The car responds by splattering mud as far as it can.


Last year, we reached a detente in this war and resorted to leaving my car at the end of the driveway, close to the safety of asphalt, and using more appropriate vehicles to ferry me back and forth. Jack collects me in his truck, a ranch truck, or other vehicles that may have once been ranch trucks but which are now missing critical parts (like floors).

He collected me at the end of the driveway the other day and we relayed the stories of our daily activities on the way back to the house. I chattered about meetings and my aerobics class. He was sober; emotion caught in his voice.

"I lost a calf today."
"What happened? I thought they weren't supposed to start until next week."
"I know, but it didn't look premature. I found the heifer standing over it, nudging it, but it was already
dead. She would have been a good mama."


The next morning, dressed for my office job, I head for the ranch truck. On the flatbed is the calf, still looking like the newborn it was, exhausted and waiting to be licked back to life.

Sometimes I wish I could return to the world of blissful ignorance of buying packaged food at the grocery store and not giving a thought about where it came from, about the people who endure such stress and strain and the animals who sacrifice so much just so I can have a meal.  

Maybe I am the water, curled up and sitting on this Wyoming dirt until I evaporate on to the next phase of life. Or maybe I am the dirt into which the Wyoming lifestyle is melting. I've come to accept a lot about life here, but sometimes I still find dry patches.

“Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.” - Marcus Aurelius

Amuse bouche

If you ever have occasion to ask me about places to visit in certain cities I will invariably start with restaurant advice. In my hometown, my favorite is the Corsican Restaurant. In college it was Isaac’s Deli. Whenever anyone mentions Salt Lake City I ask if they’ve visited the Beehive Tea Room before they get to the word ‘City’.
Food is very important to me. After a life of quantities of food now I crave quality. For me, that means original, interesting combinations and definitely locally-owned eateries.
While in Kansas City visiting Jack’s family for Christmas, I ached for exciting dining experiences. We love where we live, but eating out in small town Wyoming isn’t exactly memorable; when I get the chance to tickle the taste buds, I try to do it up right.
On this trip we scored two hits in the gastronomic arena: The Blue Nile Café in River Market and the Fuji Steakhouse in Liberty.
The Blue Nile, a tiny Ethiopian place, was not a popular choice for the children in the group, but at least a couple of us were literally moaning with delight over our the injera, sampler platter and drinks (fresh mango juice and fresh ginger juice).
Neither of the moaners was Jack, by the way. He ate the kids’ Chinese leftovers. Those of us with discerning palates, however, ate with the kind of abandon that can create problems later.
“Um, it was red. And had lentils in it. Do you know what it was?” We pointed to the blank slice of plate. I was bemoaning our lack of options in Wyoming when I realized I could make my own yummy red stuff. Except I didn’t know what recipe to look up. Thankfully, the waitress did.
The red stuff, a.k.a. Misir watt, is on tap for today. Lemme tell ya how excited Jack is about this.
notsomuch.
Anyway, the second eating adventure was delicious, but the excitement was as much in the delivery as the consumption. There was moaning, yes, but a lot of laughter. If you have not been to a Japanese Steakhouse, you are in for a treat. It was my first time and we had a blast. The onion volcano, the super sharp knives slicing and dicing and giant spatula flipping and flicking (shrimp to diner’s mouths, or noses in Jack’s case), the Asian-accented jokes.
Jack, drooling over the cooking tools as much as the KC Strip, reached out to take a look at the spatula resting just behind his plate while the chef was stirring up vegetables on the other side of the grill.
Kawack! Jack nearly lost his finger.
The chef made his point without even turning his head, then grinned:
“I love you, man.”