Our second day in Boulder was as lazy as could be. With Laura running Eric all over town and J working on the car I took the opportunity to relax and put the final touches on my next recipe to enter in the Food and Wine "Taste of Something Better" contest. An afternoon barbeque was planned for later but until then I had most of the day to myself.
I saw the contest on my Twitter account and it looked easy enough; the recipe and a 200 word essay on why I thought my entry was 'better.' While at home I decided to lean toward freshness and simplicity, using garden tomatoes, oregano, basil, mint and lemons from the neighbors tree. My first pass at the entry came out great and Laura generously offered to let me play in her kitchen on Monday for a second run and critique. My recipe was geared toward 4-6 servings but as the weekend progressed we would soon have about 15 guests for dinner on Monday night. I needed to write up two versions and adjust the quantities accordingly.
Later in the afternoon Laura and I drove downtown to Pearl Street Market. There was a food and wine event taking place that I thought would be fun to attend. We borrowed the neighbors vintage Fiat, put the top down and cruised around downtown Boulder. She showed me some of the older houses and buildings before we ended up at Pearl Street.
The food and wine event was nowhere to be seen, so we ditched that idea and went to plan B. Laura wanted to show me the Dushanbe Tea House. (http://www.boulderteahouse.com) The Tea House was a gift from the mayor of Dushanbe, Tajikistan to commemorate the establishment of sister cities in 1987. The house was meticulously planned and constructed by over 40 artisans in Tajikistan during a three year period. The structure and it's surrounding gardens were breathtaking. We took our tea outside under one of the umbrellas and, even though it was raining quite hard, we stayed reasonably dry and comfortable while we drank tea and had hummus and tangerine tea bread.
Upon our return to the house, the barbeque commenced with neighbors new and old stopping by with food, wine, kids and dogs. Even Scott, the busy college student, stopped in to say hello.
