Ivar & Susan
It was time to stretch our wings, and so we sprung ourselves from the anodyne Spring of Telluride and headed for our second home: Denver.
Our loft is downtown, just on the edge of LoDo in Curtis Park, a neighborhood in the throes of a full-throated appeal for gentrification, but still a bit rough around the edges.
What do you get when you cross Mario Batali with Mario Lanza? Dinner theater in Telluride featuring The Singing Chef, Andy LoRusso. In the high stakes super star chefs sweepstakes, LoRusso is sure to bag the talent segment.
Sergio Gonzalez
The San Miguel Resource Center is the Telluride region's only nonprofit in the business of eliminating domestic violence and sexual assault. The upcoming Chocolate Lovers' Fling is the Center's only public fundraiser.
Chocolate’s history dates back at least 1,500 years, when the Mayans of Central America crushed cocoa beans into an unsweetened beverage. Closer to home, last year tests of cylindrical clay jars found in the ruins of Chaco Canyon confirmed the presence of theobromine, a cacao marker. Researchers now believe the ancestors of modern Pueblo people of the Southwest used the jars to drink liquid chocolate. Years later in Europe, chocolate was prescribed for depression and made into love and death potions. (Its bitter flavor masked poisons.) You are in good company if you find the allure of chocolate irresistible. (Cravings may be in part be attributed to the natural chemicals in chocolate, including theobromine, thought to produce feelings of well being.) But did you know chocolate is good for you in other ways? According to the Harvard Women's Health Watch, over the past 10 year chocolate has undergone an extreme makeover from "fattening indulgence" to "health food."
Chef Bud and Jenna Thomas
Telluride is always high. And we mean that in a good way. The town and its surrounding mountains range between 9,000 – 14,000 feet, great if you like skiing, hiking, parasailing, mountain biking, lots of sports, but challenging for basics such as breathing and cooking. Just ask "The Tomboy Bride," Harriet Backus.
In her memoir, Backus wrote “'The Rocky Mountain Cook Book' became my guide, philosopher and daily companion.” One memorable Thanksgiving at their Tomboy cabin, the Backuses and friends sat down for what was sure to be the best meal of the year, only to find the bird still quite frozen.
Winter at Indian Ridge
We at Telluride Inside... and Out hope to sweeten your Christmas with a recipe from master chef/baker Barclay Daranyi of Indian Ridge Farm & Bakery in Norwood, active members of the Telluride Farmers' Market in summer. In winter, not so much.
Christmas Stollen is loaf-shaped fruitcake, with chopped candied fruit and/or dried fruit, nuts, and spices on the inside, powdered with icing sugar on the outside. Barclay's family has made this traditional German holiday treat every year for decades. "I can't imagine Christmas morning without it," she exclaimed.
Longtime Telluride locals referred to them as les deux Bertrands, the two Bertrands: Bertrand Lepel-Cointet, now deceased, worked the front of the house. Bertrand Marchal was the chef. Together, the two owners turned La Marmotte Restaurant into a local institution.
On the road, Telluride Inside... and Out, especially on family visits to big cities on both coasts, tends to build our days around friends and museums and our evenings around theatre, music, or dance. Now and again, food is the main event.[Editor's Note: In time for the 16th annual Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, this weekend, September 18– 20, anthropologist/cook book author Dr. Susanna Hoffman has come up with a recipe for elk (or other game meat) and brews.]
by Dr. Susanna Hoffman
Denver is Telluride's big sister city today, but back in the days of the wild, wooly West both were prosperous mining towns.
Young Denver was a rich gold-rush city, a way station for many wagon trains and cattle drives, and a merchant capitol where intrepid folks crossing the mountains could stock up on whatever goods they needed. Back then, Denver was relatively small, edging towards half million hardy souls, surrounded by open plains and, just up the road a piece, mountains teeming with game. In young Denver, it was easy to eat buffalo, elk, moose, and pronghorn. Any good butcher had the meats as did some of the finer eating establishments such as El Rancho, The Old Navarre, and the Wiltshire Country Club. I never lost my taste for the game morsels I acquired as a girl and mourned their disappearance from shops and restaurants as more and more people, along with mega-chain grocery stores, invaded my hometown.
In Telluridespeak, the event is known as Mushfest. The 29th annual Mushfest, aka Telluride Mushroom Festival – billed as "the nation's oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal" – happens this weekend, August 27 – August 30. In the context of the Telluride Mushfest, the world wide web takes on a whole other meaning: we are talking about mycelium, the sentient web of cells, which, in just one magical phase of its life cycle, fruits mushrooms. Shroom evangelists from writer Terence Kemp McKenna and avant garde composer John Cage to Paul Stamets, a Mushfest regular, filmmaker Ron Mann ("Know Your Mushrooms), and this year's special guest Gary Lincoff ("Mushroom Magick") head the list of true believers who contend fabulous fungi have the potential to save the planet.
