use real butter

I’m pretty sure one of the main reasons Jeremy’s parents came out to visit us is that Boulder has a lot of great restaurants. This morning we went to Lucile’s in Boulder for a New Orleans brekkie complete with the requisite beignets!

lucile’s

this beignet is bigger than most cats i know

The food was great and Jeremy’s folks loved it. Although Boulder boasts terrific restaurants, Colorado has some Food Authenticity Confusion. For instance - country ham isn’t a slab slice of boiled ham thrown on a griddle. Country ham is like Virginia Smithfield Ham that has enough salt in one serving to meet your dietary sodium requirements for a year. And then what they call red chili and green chili (as in the peppers) is an abomination to anyone who has ever had a single meal in the state of New Mexico (where good authentic Mexican food is enough to bring me back to Dirt City Albuquerque). But the skiing is so good, I can overlook most of these infractions to Food Decency.

my eggs pontchartrain - pan fried trout with poached eggs, sauce béarnaise, and potatoes

The inlaws arrived yesterday afternoon and I met with Jeremy and his rents at L’Absinthe (we let his parents choose). I ordered the bouillabaisse for dinner and had the bread pudding for dessert.

market price french fish stew

can’t resist bread pudding

In hindsight, I should have ordered the beef. For some reason, I’m not terribly impressed with the seafood at L’Absinthe (oh, but the ahi tuna last time was good). Their bouillabaisse was good, but a tad salty. The bread pudding was fabulous, except that vanilla ice cream really made my drive up the canyon UNCOMFORTABLE.

This morning we made hashies and eggs and fruit for brekkie, then talked some more while I got my bread pudding in the oven (made with challah bread - so much better!) and then drove out to hike to Brainard with everyone. Kaweah ripped her nail off someplace in the snow and bled in several places along our route. She was fine and the bleeding eventually clotted (until she met another dog and tried to pull her own collar off and restarted the bleeding all over the snow).

I served Chinese hot pot for dinner tonight which should be somewhat easy prep on its own, except I made dumplings from scratch and some veggies AND made both classic crème brûlée as well as more of the chocolate espresso kind.

torch those suckers

I love the classic version far better than the chocolate. Something about eggs and milk and sugar… It is a fantastic combination! MIL agrees. FIL won’t touch non-chocolate desserts with a ten foot pole, so he got a generous slice of boca negra which he enjoyed.

My Donna Hay book arrived and I splurged on early Easter candy at the store because I am an atheist and I like robin eggs…