Lifestyle

[click "Play", Ashley Deppen talks about stocking stuffers]   Google "gift giving advice" and over 7 million sites pop up. 'Tis the season in Telluride and everywhere else on the planet. And we are down to the, well, the 10th hour anyway, with Christmas...

[click "Play" to listen to Seth Wescott's conversation with Susan]

 

 

Seth Wescott There's gold in Telluride's Victorian past. And a very special group of prospectors returns this week with plans to dig deep for more, hoping to get lucky. One of the men is two-time Olympic gold medalist, 34-year-old Seth Wescott of Carrabassett Valley, Maine, arguably the most influential man in the sport of snowboardcross.

Watch for Wescott and his team, December 16 – December 18, when the Telluride region hosts the VISA US Snowboardcross Cup for the second year in a row. Teams from around the world were drawn back to the region by the world-class snowboardcross venue created by Olympic builder Jeff Ihaksi, the cold winter weather offset by warmth of the towns of Telluride and Mountain Village.

Last year, was up and down for Wescott. Part of the down was Telluride, where the snowboardcross superstar experienced multiple crashes. But Wescott came back in the X Games, winning second place. He topped that performance big time in Vancouver, successfully defending the gold he won in Torino, Italy, in 2006, when Wecott became the first Olympic champion ever in his event.

Staff-AnnMellick
Ann Mellick

Tuesday, December 14, 6:30 p.m., Sheridan Opera House, Colorado Avalanche Information hosts a fundraiser. The event features ski and snow films courtesy of Mountainfilm in Telluride, including the feature, "The Edge of Never," as well as some shorts by local filmmaker Mark Plantz.  Beer (included in the ticket price of $15 to benefit CAIC's Northern San Juan field office) thanks to Stone Brewery. In addition there will be auction items, including a Telluride ski pass.

Since 1950, avalanches have killed more people in Colorado than any other natural hazard.The purpose of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center is to minimize the economic and human impact of snow avalanches on recreation, tourism, commerce, industry and the citizens of the state. With a staff of just 15 avalanche professionals, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center achieves its purpose two ways: forecasting and public education.

Unknown Dr. Susanna Hoffman wears many hats: anthropologist, chef and food writer. (In fact, she is a regular contributor to Telluride Inside... and Out.)

In October 2011, Hoffman is the featured chef (along with Jane Lee Winter, executive chef and president of the Gourmet Travel Club) on board the Seven Seas Voyager for a 10-night luxury cruise from Athens to Istambul.

Hoffman has lived and worked in Greece and other Mediterranean regions. She is the author of The Olive and The Caper: Adventures in Greek Cooking and a regular contributor to  Saveur, Fine Cooking, Bon Appetit, Gastronomia and Greek Gourmet Traveler as well as numerous other food publications. Hoffman has appeared on cooking shows from coast to coast, including Good Morning America, The Food Network, Oprah, Discovery, CNN, and PBS.


by Lisa Barlow

Times clippings72 You don’t have to be a New Yorker to have accumulated a thick file of favorite recipes clipped from The New York Times over the years. My grandmother, who lived in Texas, kept tear sheets with recipes from the Sunday New York Times Magazine tucked into the cookbooks in her kitchen.

If the New York Times motto is “All the News that’s Fit to Print”, you could say that I was raised on “All the Food that’s Fit to Eat”. My mother, an avid cook, eagerly followed every recipe written by Craig Claiborne, the paper’s inspired food columnist during the years I was growing up. She kept her recipes for the hearty stroganoffs, ratatouilles, pistous, and even the sad soy burger, an outlier among the richly flavored favorites, in a drawer next to the grocery money in the kitchen. 

In her new magnificent compendium, The Essential New York Times Cook Book, Classic Recipes for a New Century, Amanda Hesser, a longtime food writer and staff member at the Times, gives new life to many of the fragile yellowing scraps of paper in my own file. Not only have I reconnected with the staples of my childhood: the David Eyre pancake and Welsh Rarebit, she has introduced me to the intriguingly named “Epigram of Lamb”, which first ran in the paper in 1879, and to the myriad delights of recent recipes published while I wasn’t paying attention.

 

by Eliot Brown; photos by Mary Sama-Brown

Part 2, "Park City to Yellowstone"

(Ed. note: The first installment of the Browns' road trip was published on Telluride Inside... and Out on November 22)

Wind power At 8:30 AM, Monday we put Park City in the rear view mirror and headed out on Interstate 80 toward Evanston, WY, and then North on US 89 along the Idaho/Wyoming boarder toward Jackson Hole for Grant Village in Yellowstone National Park.  The 6 3/4 hour drive past huge windmill power farms, huge ranches, beautiful prairies and valleys with little or no traffic allowed the 911 to strut her stuff.  My wife Mary only had to close her eyes a couple of times as I enjoyed the open road, albeit, sometimes a bit aggressively.

It is only fitting that I insert a little Yellowstone history here to pay tribute to our first national park.  Near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, an area home to the Shoshone Tribe, John Colter, in the early 1800s described what was mocked as Colter’s Hell, a place where mud boiled and steam rose from the ground. 

[click "Play", Nancy Landau talks about Friends of the Library and Funday Sunday]

 

12-12 Dinner Why does Telluride's Wilkinson Public Library need Friends?

The Wilkinson is a five-star book mecca in part because it attracts a steady stream of traffic. Locals and guests love the place and use it as a regular hang-out, a kind of safe haven. The kids' section is always alive with activity. And Scott Doser's programs attract regular weekly crowds.

December 12 is Funday Sunday at Telluride's five-star Wilkinson Public Library. The all-day event begins with a brief annual meeting of the Friends of the Library, 1 p.m., to explain the role of the Friends.

The meeting is followed by a High Def/Blu-Ray screening of "The Wizard of Oz." (The High Definition Blu-Ray format projector was gifted to the Library by the Friends.)

 Telluride Inside.... and Out was on our way home from a booksigning at the Wilkinson Public Library, Bob Rubadeau's latest novel, ("Gatsby's Last Resort," a murder mystery set in Telluride), when we remembered that Jeff Badger, owner of Siam, had let slip that the "soft" opening of his new bar on Pacific Street was Tuesday night. It was Tuesday night. Why not check out the scene just down the road a piece?

This is not, I promise you, the grapefruit martini speaking. Which followed the glass of a crisp sauvignon blanc. Just before the shitaki sticky buns. The shrimp lettuce wraps. And the asparagus hand wraps. Nope, none of the lubricants or the taste treats or the good vibrations from the crowd had any influence whatsoever on what I am about to uncork. I mean, reveal.

Gertrude Stein eat dirt. There is a "There" there. And "There" is here in Telluride.

[click "Play", Susan Carrolan talks with Susan about her hats]

 

Loden bow hat Hats for winter? In Telluride, that's a giant DUH. 

But we are not talking the knitted or shearling numbers that help you retain body heat for winter warmth. This is Fashion Friday and the subject is millinery by Susan Carrolan.

Carrolan's hats crown the heads of the crowned heads of society and the word of entertainment: in her last Vegas revu, Bette Midler wore a hat Carrolan built with a team, and the swells at the Kentucky Derby and Ascot wear original Carrolans. In other words, a Carrolan is a top hat. We mean that in the best of the best sense, not the magician's variety. Though Susan Carrolan is something of a millinery magician.