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Foodies

Fattoush Salad mjpg Editor's note: The following is the second weekly column from new TIO contributor Lisa Barlow. Barlow is a writer and photographer who divides her time between New York, Telluride and San Pancho, Mexico. An enthusiastic omnivore, she specializes in stories about food.

 

It was only after I’d gotten home from our local Green Market that I realized that the large bunch of purslane I’d bought was the very same weed I’d been so vigorously deracinating from my garden all summer.

25 October, 2010 /

Noma1 Noma2 Noma3



  

By Lisa Barlow

 

Editor's note: This is the first weekly column from new TIO contributor Lisa Barlow. Barlow is a writer and photographer who divides her time between New York, Telluride and San Pancho, Mexico. An enthusiastic omnivore, she specializes in stories about food. The photos above, from left to right: glazed beetroot and apples; poached eggs and radishes; pork neck and bulrushes, violets and malt.  LB2

It’s easy now to imagine how Babette might have coped at the end of Babette’s Feast when she had revealed herself to be a kick ass French chef, but had run out of money and was destined to remain as a cook and housekeeper for two ascetic spinsters in the remote and unforgiving landscape of Jutland in Denmark. Forget the foie gras and the Veuve Cliquot, all she had to do to look for extraordinary ingredients and inspiration was to open her front door.

19 October, 2010 /

DSC02439 Our experience is that  upon venturing outside the bubble we call Telluride, it takes awhile to find our sea legs. Or in this case, our way around the kitchen.

Greece has it when it comes to food: the Pelopponese is a kind of Eden, growing all kinds of fruits and vegetables, producing amazing wines , cheeses, meats and olive oils too. Crete, where we are headed today,  is another food mecca. So it is no big surprise that Athens is a food town, with a wide range of choices of eateries from down and dirty tavernas to Michelin-starred restaurants. (There's one right next store to our hotel, Eridanus, but we failed to score a reservation.)

18 October, 2010 /
Sunday flag I’ve been a fan of the Telluride Blues & Brews Festivals for years. I’ve actually watched the event morph from a few tasting tents on Colorado Avenue to a full-blown, internationally renowned music festival with some of the best musicians on the planet, fabulous microbrews and a venue that simply blows the socks off most other blues festivals - outside of New Orleans, that is. And the 2010 TB&BF was no exception. It was, in fact, one of the best ever.

  Graced with magnificent, cerulean blue skies, mountainsides of glowing, golden aspen and temperatures in the 80’s, the stage was set for a weekend of stellar performance, outrageous weather and ecstatic experience.  Thursday evening opened the festivities with a free sunset concert at the Mountain Village Plaza featuring the Gold Kings – a talented local band of “brothers” – followed by on-the-rise British blues guitarist Matt Schofield – wow!

23 September, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with GM Ray Farnsworth]

Parlor This week, Telluride is positively a-glitter with gems, on screen and off.

Critics often describe Telluride Film Festival, this long Labor Day weekend, September 3 – September 6, as a "gem," even a "crown jewel" among the roughly 1,700 similar events around the world.

There are real gems at local galleries too: The Telluride Gallery of Fine Art (Hollywood fav Lori Rodkin for one), Lustre (Gurhan) and Dolce (Pamela Froman and Katey Brunini, also Tinseltown queens).

The historic New Sheridan Hotel is another sparkler. The Grande Dame of the town –  the heart and soul of the social scene 118 years ago, back in the days Telluride's streets were paved with gold –  was restored to her Victorian splendor by world-famous interior designer Nina Campbell a little over a year ago. And this year, once again, the New Sheridan is the place to be and be seen over the Telluride Film Festival weekend.
30 August, 2010 /


The Ah Haa School for the Arts in Telluride has classes for all ages, on any number of subjects. Along with our enthusiastic fellow students, Telluride Inside... and Out was getting smart about making bread (no, not an investing class) at the home of Larry and Sally Simpson on Saturday, August 28.

Our "professors" were Carole and Milt Quam, long-time breadmakers from California. As Milt puts it, "Carole and I regard ourselves as 'serious home bakers'.  We’ve been baking seriously for the last 15 or so years. Originally we identified with a group of whole grain bakers, most doing their baking in wood-fired ovens. There were some very talented bakers, as well as oven builders in that group."

29 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Susan's interview with Gary Lincoff]

2010HarvestAug14Hollinbeck The Telluride Mushroom Festival, Thursday, August 26  – Sunday, August 29, bills itself as the nation's "oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal." Which is saying a tasty mouthful since fungi have been around for a very long time. A lot longer than people, perhaps 500 million years. (The earliest known picture of a mushroom was found on a wall painting in the ruins of Pompeii.)

Fungi used to be classified as part of the plant kingdom. They become a kingdom of their own because fungi differ in biochemistry and structure from plants and cannot synthesize their own food. The mushrooms people collect are just the fruiting bodies of mycelium, a sentient cobweb-like web of cells. These "fruits" are created in order to manufacture spores for reproduction. Because so much shroom activity occurs underground in the fungal version of the world wide web, mushrooms themselves appear to pop up quite suddenly over night.
25 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Art Goodtimes' take on the Mushroom Festival]

IMG_5180 "The mushrooms have two strange properties: the one that they yield so delicious a meat; the other that they come up so hastily, as in a night, and yet they are unsown," Francis Bacon, "Naturall Histories," 1624.

Probably the best mushroom harvest in years has upped the ante for the 30th Annual Telluride Mushroom Festival, Aug. 26-29.

Wild mushrooms have always prompted wild debate, because they make great eats, but also can kill you. In some parts of the world – Telluride is one such address - mushrooms are prized for their culinary properties. But elsewhere on the map, mycophobes associate fungi with witches and serpents oh my.
22 August, 2010 /

IMGP1420Friday afternoon in Telluride, Tim Erdman called: Did we want to go mushroom hunting with him Saturday morning? Robert Allen and Susie Coit would be joining us as well. We had never hunted with Tim but enjoy his company, so why not. Turns out he is as addicted to the hunt as we are, so even when we all agreed it was well past time for lunch, we couldn't resist adding more mushrooms to an already impressive stash.

The Telluride Mushroom Festival takes place next weekend, so we got a bit of a jump on the event. When the word goes out in Telluride that boletes are everywhere, it's time to be in the hills.

21 August, 2010 /
[click "Play", Vivien Russell and Rick Fusting talk about One To One and the "Top Chef" event]

1__#$!@%!#__unknown A few smart Telluride non-profits seem to have gotten the message when New York Times columnist Tom Friedman entreated President Obama to make 2010 "the year of innovation" (NYT January 23 Op Ed).  Events such as the San Miguel Research Center's/Two Skirts' "Clutch for the Cause," The Telluride AIDS Benefit's "Intoxicating Cuisine," the Telluride Historical Museum's Muleskinners' Ball are all examples of what happens when the tough get going.

Telluride-based One to One San Miguel Mentoring Program has also stepped up to the challenge of  how to get enough pie when the overall pie has shrunk. Like many regional non-profits, One to One experienced funding cuts. The reaction: stage a lollapalooza of a first-ever fundraising event.

On Thursday, August 19, 6 – 9 p.m., at The Peaks, One to One hosts a Wine Tasting & Telluride Top Chef Competition, which also includes live music by Westward magazine's choice of Colorado's Singer-Songwriter of the Year, Rob Drabkin, also in the line-up for Blues & Brews.


14 August, 2010 /