leftover heaven

On the morning of our return, we feasted on leftovers. The roasted potatoes (from the first night, with the roasted chicken); black beans with ham hock (from the first night's soup); eggs; biscuits (not shown, but delicious -- and leftover from the morning before). Ah, so sad to end this brief food tour....

between courses

Between courses 2 and 3, we took a walk up to Bernice Anne & Donnie's. It was a lovely evening, we sat on the porch with them and drank tea. We watched their local hummingbirds (there seemed to be about 100, although I suspect there were 10-15) for quite a while...
Upon our return to the Post's house, I was struck by the bottom image, across the street. Old meets new. Hmm.

proper finish to a perfect meal

All great meals must come to an end, but there IS such a thing as the proper ending....

marinaded venison with red wine reduction

Sherry's final dish was a marinaded venison, served with a red-wine reduction sauce. It was delicious! We plated her 2nd dish with my orange-salsa venison. Also, the lonely piece of venison (showed at apprximately 1 o'clock) is a plain piece of sauteed/fried venison -- merely seared in butter. Since we were gettin' fancy with all of our preparations, we decided that each person should taste plain venison, too. It was very tasty, and a good comparison.

Venison Puntas a las Mexicanas

Sherry & Mike's first contribution was a Mexican style venison: served with a slightly spicey tomato sauce. We decided that both the Puntas a las Mexicanas as well as Tom's kebobs would go well with some rice, so these two dishes were plated together.

venison-kebobs

Tom's contribution was venison-kebobs. Since venison is a very lean meat, it is easy to dry it out. Tom's solution was to wrap each piece of venison in a piece of bacon. Mmmmm, pork-fat....

orange marinaded venison

My contribution to the feast was an orange-marinaded venison (inspired by Vijay's orange-marinaged ribs, by the way) topped with an orange & red-onion salsa. The orange-dish is in the foreground of the last picture; the background is one of Sherry's preparations -- a red-wine reduction (more on that later).

day #3: the venison odyssey

We decided that since we were in West Virginia, and wanted to show Mike & Sherry some "local" cuisine, that we ought to eat venison. A neighbor hooked us up with some steaks & tenderloin, and we went to town. We prepared 4 courses of venison that day -- and they were all successful.

We brought coffee (beans) with us -- and a stove-top espresso maker. We were both pretty sure that we had left a grinder at the house during a previous trip. OOPS!

Fortunately, there is one coffee grinder at the house... it's an antique, that is mounted on the wall. It's a good thing that no one was in a hurry -- because it took about 30 min to grind enough coffee for 4 people. Ha!

we may not have had hot water...

... but we had great food.
I'm not sure why I didn't photograph our first dinner: it was a delicious roasted chicken. I also didn't capture our first breakfast, which was breakfast pizzas... But I got my act together for dinner #2, which was a wonderful roast port tenderloin, with beets, root vegetables, and a delicious black bean soup. Of course, we had a lovely wine to go with it. Washing the dishes camping-style (multiple wash & rinse buckets, because of the lack of a functioning kitchen sink) was WELL worth it.

country road walkin'

We spent this week in W. Virginia with Sherry & Mike. I think we really lucked out on the weather: it didn't get uncomfortably hot/humid until the day we left. We had ample opportunity to walk...

CU Campus Tour

OK, I've been remiss... but we've been busy!!!
While my folks were still here, we took a tour of the CU campus. I was really glad that we did. Among other things, I've lived here for over a year now, and have never been on campus before! We discovered that the campus really has a lot to offer, even to the general public. Many of the museums, theaters, lectures, shows, etc. are open to the public, many of them for free. This tour was a good inspiration for us to get off of our butts, and make use of what's available to us -- in our own backyards (OK, only 10 miles away).

My ode to Leo

Leo, if you're out there -- reading this blog -- this one's for you!
Ah, if our lives could all be that simple...

Rocky Mountain High-igh, Colorado

It doesn't get much better than this.

awesome day trip

Of course, when we reached our destination, Tom dropped in a line for a while...
He didn't catch any trout, but managed to retrieve someone else's line and a lure. Not a bad day...

walk to Brainard Lake

It's been a bit warm here this weekend (well, not if you're from Phoenix; it's been about 85 degrees...) so we decided to head up into the mountains to do a bit of hiking in the cooler weather. We discovered Brainard Lake this spring -- as it has excellend snow-shoeing & x-country skiing. We had a very pleasant 2.2 mile walk into the lake/recreation area. We stopped there, but we saw a number of people riding their bikes back to the parking lot, with combinations of telemark skis and snow-shoes strapped to their bikes/packs. Pretty cool!
Although we stopped for lunch at a lakeside picnic bench, we chose a different bench than the one shown here....

joint dinner affair

The other night, Tom decided we should have fish for dinner. He asked how I wanted it prepared; I requested salmon with a ginger-soy sauce. He grilled some salmon with a delicious ginger-honey-soy sauce -- it was perfect.
I also decided that I wanted to make "something" with red lentils. I pored through our books, and decided on a red lentil & bulgar wheat "croquette" recipe from Food & Wine. (Kinda like felafel, made with red lentils rather than chick peas as the bulk ingredient.) I must admit: this is the first time I've ever been disappointed by a Food & Wine recipe. Despite nearly 2 hours of prep & cooking time, it came out rather bland... although I thought it was pretty enough to photograph.