Hello from a wee hiatus! I am back with food, which I daresay is no surprise. I mentioned a while ago that we’ve been buying bags of avocados at Costco and freezing guacamole. Here it is before popping into the freezer. I am still in awe of how great this is. It does get a tad watery, but I’m not running a restaurant here, peeps, so who needs perfection when you’ve got guacamole on demand?!

Unlike when we lived in Portland, Greg and I aren’t generally roaming the city in search of new and exciting foods on a regular basis. We have our favorite places for Indian, Korean, Italian, Japanese, bar food, and tacos, but, sadly, not Mexican, in general, because we’ve largely been disappointed or gotten food poisoning, no joke.

That said, every once in a while, we do want to try something new. I heard about a food hall called C.O.A.T.I., read some menus, and off we went! I got an arepa from Arepapi, which is basically a sandwich made with a very thick corn tortilla. Mine had steak and shrimp and amazing cheese and sauces (no longer on the menu???). I did not take a picture! It was also very messy, and I used a LOT of napkins. Greg got this gorgeous sandwich, fries, and a beer.

At the end, we shared a taro paleta (Mexican popsicle), which was creamy-dreamy delicious! They had options to fill the paper boat with every topping imaginable, but alas, we decided to be flavor purists and felt zero sadness.

It is jam and jelly making season, my friends. Pictured are apple jelly, peach, and strawberry jam. Absolutely fabulous!

Adorable peach hand pies, made with a jar of the homemade jam. This is one of those instances when the execution is NOT worth the final product. Don’t get me wrong, they were truly delicious, but dang, I tried a new dough that was ridiculously fussy, making everything take ages longer than necessary. That heart cutout, though. Sigh.

Weather predictions indicated optimal temperatures outdoors for firing the oven to 550 indoors! God bless rainy days. The pizza was as good as it looks. Also, if you never ate at BeauJo’s pizza in Boulder as a whippersnapping teen or young adult, you may not be familiar with dipping your crust in honey. Highly recommended.

We grew this gorgeous Blue Pearmain Apple! Sadly, neighborhood varmints got the majority of the harvest. It did save me from having to do something with it, however. Small mercies?

On our trip to the Mid-West three summers ago (???), we tried as many local specialties as we could: Juicy Lucy burgers, Trenary Toast, Dutchcorn, Dr. Sprecher soda, divinely crispy fried cheese curds (!!), and a Kringle Cake. I found a recipe for one (in Shauna Sever’s MidWest Made) and, with ample almond pulp to make paste and a jar of cherry jam (from our own cherries!), I forged ahead with the recipe. It uses, not a pie crust, but a danish pastry I’d never made before, but was really quite easy. It is a two day process, as there is much waiting for the dough, but totally worth it! I think I might try it with cream cheese next time. Oh, I also did not have the bandwidth to make it in the wreath shape of its origin, because, why?