Lifestyle. {aka: What Makes Life Fun}
This lifestyle section is the toy box of my life. The things I like to do for fun, like garden, travel and try new restaurants. Heck, try new things in general. I might talk on of the rad cookbooks on my shelf because I mean really, you doesn’t love a good cookbook?
It’s a place I might share a photo that I like. Like this header photo, for example, that I took in the Swan Falls area in Southeast Idaho just as the season was starting to change.
Mainly it’s about all the things that round out what I like to think is my kick ass Idaho lifestyle.
rice with lobster stock, mushrooms and asparagus
My husband and I are going through Top Chef withdrawals. We finished Season Ten with gusto and no sooner had the credits rolled that it dawned on us that we were out of Sunday night viewing material. See – this is what we do. Sunday nights are carved out for him and I...
who knew that vanilla and potatoes went so well together
A goal for this year was to pull a different cookbook down from the shelf each month and actually cook out of it versus just drooling over all the beautiful photography. So far I have tackled a VERY complicated, but delicious, soup recipe from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc...
café fírenze – fabio february
Let's start out by saying I really wanted to love this cookbook. I really did. Too bad it didn't turn out that way. I made it my goal to pull down a cookbook off the shelf each month, dust it off, and make something out of it. For the first month, full of enthusiasm,...
died and gone to (italian) heaven
New York City may be a long way from Boise, Idaho, but it's certainly closer than Italy and is home to a place that definitely embodies the Italian charm. I remember walking down a cobblestone street in Rome, a shop owner out sweeping off the front step, singing away...
ad hoc at home – or – the most complex soup I’ve ever made
I love cookbooks. I love leafing through the pages, looking at the glossy photos dreaming of the dinner parties that I would have. The problem is that I also get a couple cooking magazine subscriptions each month and they are equally enticing. And finally, factor in...
basque-ing in the smoke
I'm working on how I can become an honorary Basque. I just love the spirit of this ethnic group that inhabits the rugged region that straddles the French-Spanish border in the Pyrenees mountains. In fact, they are the oldest surviving ethnic group on the European...
summer: a hard act to follow
The forecast is for 28° tonight. If this was going to be an isolated incidence, I would probably dash out with an armful of sheets and cover my garden but it would only be a futile attempt at prolonging the inevitable. It IS October after all and I should revel in the...
they grow up so fast
I equate having a garden as being a bit like having kids (albeit this analogy is from someone that has no kids, so you might want to factor that in). I imagine what it will grow up to be like long before it is ever conceived. I wait anxiously for the first signs of...
seeing red…actually it was more of a burgundy
If you're ever given an opportunity to go to one of Chandlers Steakhouse's winemaker dinners, do it. I know the price tag can be daunting – I thought the $125 per person price tag seemed a bit steep – but after being to one, I think it's a bargain. The reception...
trattoria stella, traverse city, michigan
When thinking of Traverse City, Michigan the word "foodie" hardly came to my mind but apparently it should as there seems to be quite the movement there, focusing on true farm to table philosophies. Trattoria Stella is one restaurant that falls into this category,...
To be a Gardener Means to be an Optimist
It was not too long ago that our community garden group was sitting around a dining room with packets of seeds spread out dreaming of what we'd do with all the bounty. Soon after that we worked the soil into rows at a Sunday afternoon work party and buried those...
Kiwis in Boise?
And no, I'm not talking about New Zealanders although I would have been more apt to think of them over the fruit when someone mentioned the word "kiwi" in reference to Boise, but recently friend Krista Grisel dropped off two plants for me and since I'm almost always...