Salt and Boulder

My mom arrived in town the night before we were scheduled to move.  We went to lala’s Wednesday night and Thursday morning we went down to get the elevator key when we found out that it was broken!  Dan started moving boxes down the stairs to lessen the load for the movers in case the elevator did not come back on.  Thankfully, the elevator came back on the minute the movers showed up.  Everything went smoothly and we’re completely unpacked and all I need to do is figure out where to put our pictures.  Yay!

 

Friday morning mom and I drove up to Boulder (via some stores of course! I have a new apartment to furnish!)  We got to Pearl St. just in time for lunch and decided to check out Salt.  I’ve heard so much good stuff about it that I was excited to check it out.

I loved the interior it was very simple and beautiful.  We sat at a small table right next to a window.

True to its name, the waitress immediately brought us salt.

Once we heard the specials I knew what we had to order.  First we started with a side of fries since I’ve heard that they are phenomenal.

They were.  What really stole the show was the homemade ketchup. 

It was perfectly sweet with a hint of vinegar. 

For her main course mom ordered a cup of the gazpacho.  I wish I could remember what it was made of, but I know that it was topped with grapes.  Mom couldn’t stop talking about it all weekend!

For my main course I ordered the tomato soup and a mini grilled cheese.

Wow, we were left with just the right amount of fullness and were completely satisfied by the complexity of flavors.

Yum!  After lunch we walked around and found some gifts for Keira and saw the street performers.  When we started melting from the heat we packed up and returned home to unpack my purchases and continue settling in.

I wish it wasn’t so hot, but we had such a good time!

 

Have you had a small meal that completely satisfied?

lost and found

I was getting my memory cards ready for the race this morning when I realized that I still had some pictures on one of the cards! 

 

This card is from our trip to Canada a few weeks ago (it seems like a million years ago!) 

 

The night after the race we went to downtown Montreal with Dan’s teammates Jordan and Amy and Jocelyn and Kevin.  We wandered around, and I loved how European the city was.

I tried to capture the artwork we saw but did not succeed.

We went to this little joint with beautiful outdoor seating.  Jordan and Kevin are both from Canada and they ordered Poutine.  I had to try it.

 

Poutine is fries, gravy, cheese curds…maybe some other thing….I dunno.

I had one bite and that was it! No more for me!  I had a burger, which was OK.

Overall it was a really fun night! I had never been to Montreal before so that was really nice!

July 4th

So, I’ve finally finished the recap of our trip to the east coast.  Now I’m moving on to Dan’s parents to Denver!  They arrived at lunch on Sunday (July 4th) and we started to show them around. 

 

As we were walking around our neighborhood the sky opened up and the rain started pouring.  The meteorologists kept saying that it wasn’t going to be a wash out so we thought that it would pass quickly.  It did not.  We ended up driving downtown for dinner at Bistro Vendome.

 

Dan and I were here once last year with his mom and had a great experience so we were excited to get back there!  Dan and I started with some Escargot.  Unfortunately they tasted just like butter and no other herbs or anything.  Oh well.

For dinner I ordered veal medallions, with asparagus, white truffle potato gratin, Dungeness crab salad and caper hollandaise.

I know I know, veal is not the most PC thing to eat.  But, then again, is it much worse than most factory farmed animals? 

 

Unfortunately the rain kept up and so we headed home and couldn’t see any fireworks from our balcony.  We saw a few while driving but not that many.  Oh well.

 

We called it a night as early as possible because we had big plans for the next day!  We were driving up Pikes Peak!

 

Do you eat Veal?

north end

As you can tell last Sunday was a busy day!  This is Part III.  You can find Part I here and Part II here.  After we went to Richardson's we went downtown Boston to meet our friends Paul and Gail.

They took us to the North End to one of their favorite places called Limoncello.  The menu was very impressive and I wish I had written down what we got.  I selected a squid ink pasta with main lobster.

YUM!  Dan got something that I just can’t remember. It was some kind of baked pasta with white truffle oil

For dessert  we got cannolis at this little place (not Mike’s) but at this point I can’t remember the name!

I don’t remember the last cannoli I’ve had.  This was so delicious.

Dan and I had such a busy and delicious day.  Good thing we walked so much :)

Have you had a epic day recently?  What did you do?

stawbucks

The two things that really made my college career are the beach (specifically Singing Beach) and ice cream.

 

We would go to the beach to study, walk, relax pretty much any reason.  Unfortunately in the summer the beach is pretty inaccessible since it costs so much ($25 to park and $5/person to walk onto the beach).

 

So, Dan and I walked to the beach and didn’t walk on since it wouldn’t be worth it.

Dan got a kick out of the fact that on our way to the beach someone stopped us and asked “is there a STAWBUCKS nea-ya hea-ya”  Total Boston accent :) 

 

After the beach we drove to Richardsons.  This place is awesome because the cows are in the back and there is a driving range and a mini-golf adjacent to the property.  When we got there I forgot all about the sizes in MA ice cream shops and ordered a small.  Dan was planning to order a large.  And then I got this.

Oops.  Dan got a small.  We took our ice cream and walked back to the cow nursery.  Poor things were really hot.

We also saw some ducks and

and some mamma cows.

I miss this place:)  Such great memories coming here after swim practice.  So fun!

 

What traditions did you have during college?

varsity memories

One of the benefits of flying through Boston to go to Quebec was that I could finally take Dan to my alma mater, Gordon College.  My campus is on the North Shore of Boston between Salem and Gloucester and I haven’t been back in like 8 years.  It had changed so much!

 

The dorm that my roommates Melissa and Jessie lived in was torn down and replaced by a huge and really pretty new building (small picture, sorry!)

The dorm my roommate Rachel lived in Freshman year was also torn down and replaced by a nice science building.  We only had two teeny out of date buildings, so this new building was sooo necessary.

Dan decided to pose in front of our library/academic building

From Gordon I took him to Bertucci’s the exact one I used to go to all the time with the swim team and family when they came to town.  Lunch started with the best rolls ever.  Love these things!

I had to order the Margarita Pizza, this is the quintessential margarita pizza for me.  So yummy :)

After lunch I took Dan by the cottage four of us lived in after Senior year of college.  I can’t believe we paid $1200/month for this!

Four of us lived there, the two “rooms” were divided by a curtain on the top floor, I lived to the right of the window.  Our “living room was behind the window to the back left of the house and our kitchen was behind an identical window to the back right. 

 

This house had absolutely No insulation and in June that year it was so totally cold that we once had to go to Jessie’s then boyfriend Kit’s apartment to warm up.  It may have been summer but he turned the heat all the way up and got blankets and hot chocolate ready.  Good times :)

 

Wow, this post is super long so I will finish our trip to Boston later :) 

 

Have you gone back to your college campus?  Has it changed a lot or just as you remembered?

20 hours in DC

I had to go back to DC this week for a meeting.  I was set to arrive about 10pm on Tuesday and leave about 5pm on Wednesday.  Yeah, relaxing trip…

 

Tuesday started out with Dan’s first trip to snooze!  I can’t believe that I have been twice now and he’s never been.  We thought we’d avoid the wait by going Tuesday morning.  Alas, there was still a wait, but 20 minutes was manageable.  We took that 20 minutes to enjoy the complimentary coffee and study the menu.  Dan had done a hard workout that morning so he was eyeing two entrees.

An omelet with garlic, basil and tomatoes

and strawberry rhubarb pancakes.

I knew my eating would be off that day so I decided to treat myself with the Rice Crispy French toast.  Yes, it was completely insanely decadent.  And delicious.

Thank goodness I had such a big breakfast because that would turn out to be my only meal of the day.  After breakfast I was headed to the airport to begin the first of two long days of travel.  Not only did I have to fly back across the country, I had layovers on both trips.  BOOO

Neither trip was all that bad, but I didn’t have enough time on my layover to get a real lunch/dinner.  I grabbed a bag of popcorn and walked onto the flight where, much to my surprise I bumped into an old friend of mine!  We were able to sit next to each other and spend the time catching up.  It was such a fun surprise and it definitely made the flight go faster!

 

The trip to the hotel was uneventful and I wish I could say the same for settling into the hotel.  I registered at The State Plaza hotel since it was close to my meeting and I’d only be there for about 8 hours.  Well, I should have checked some reviews.  It was totally bootleg!  I had serious issues getting to my room (had to exit the building and walk through a parking garage and then find the magic door that would lead me to my elevator.  It was a production and it was like 90 degrees with 90% humidity.  I was NOT a happy camper. 

 

I also noticed that the hallway didn’t seem all that cool and I got nervous.  When I got to the room I could hear water flowing and I was really nervous, I didn’t think I could get back to the front desk if I tried!  I walked into the room and assessed the situation, the toilet was off track.  Easy fix.  yay!  The a/c was another issue, it was at max and wouldn’t go any further. 

 

I then had a chance to look around the room and I swear, it looked like a low-rent studio apartment.

 

It even had a bootleg kitchen. 

Of course it also had a huge bleach spot on the floor.  Gross! I tried not to think about WHY they had to bleach the carpet (and why they didn’t just remove the carpet!)

 

But I was tired and hungry and all I cared about was getting some room service and going to bed.  Room Service ended at 9pm and the only close by restaurant was closed.  So…I had popcorn for dinner.

 

FAIL!  And then Wednesday morning I woke up to go to the meeting and couldn’t find a coffee/breakfast place close to the hotel and so I went without a meal until noon!  At least the meeting place had coffee but I was so hot and the room with the coffee didn’t have a/c…  Other than that the trip was a success, I planned ahead for the trip back and bought dinner at the DC airport, see I’m learning!

 

Have you ever bumped into someone randomly while traveling?

travelling with a bug

Dan and I have been traveling a bit lately and on Sunday I started to feel a scratch in my throat, my nose started running and my head started feeling fuzzy. 

 

uhoh.  I miss lowcarbing and not ever getting sick.  Especially since I had to fly to D.C. on Tuesday for 20 hours.  And because of the last minute nature of this trip, neither leg is nonstop.  Boooo. 

 

So, instead of going to a friend’s BBQ we stayed at home.  And since we’ve been traveling, we didn’t have many groceries.  So instead we stopped by Lala’s 

 

Dan got a pizza with prosciutto and artichoke hearts

I got the margherita pizza.

We both decided that the margherita pizza was better.

 

After lunch we spent the afternoon relaxing, I started drinking pineapple juice think that would help (and bc we didn’t have OJ).  But when that didn’t make my throat feel any better.  Then Dan reminded me that we had POM in the fridge.  It did make me feel a little better.

 

As we speak I’m in DC, I really hope the flights don’t make me sicker!

 

What do you do to avoid getting sick?

butter cream

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.  Sunday morning we woke up in Fort Collins still loving the cooler weather, we were surprised to step outside and feel that it was cool out there too! 

 

After breakfast we decided to head downtown and check it out.  I had read about a cupcakery and so we decided to stop by there.  Who couldn’t love a place called Buttercream.

Dan and I both chose cupcakes that went against our usual selections.  He usually picks chocolate and went for the Vanilla Bean.

I usually go for vanilla but decided to try out their special, the pina colada.

I thought they were ok.  The cake wasn’t delightfully moist, instead it was crumbly.  The vanilla bean’s icing tasted like there was a little too much vanilla extract in it. 

The pina colada icing was ok, it wasn’t to die for. 

Only one of the satellite locations was open so the main store may be better.  Also, I was disappointed that I couldn’t buy just one of the tiny cupcakes.  They came in packs of 4.  Oh well, it was fun to check out a new place. 

We headed back to Denver after the cupcake store and headed to Marczyks. 

I got the BLT again and it was delicious.

We got back to the apartment bracing for the worst and were welcomed by this sign.

yay!