My first restaurant (well, coffee shop in this case) review: The Laughing Goat, Boulder, Colorado

One of the things I'm constantly in search of is a coffee shop that offers a tasty menu as well. This is actually a good bit harder than it might appear. I don't really want a coffee shop that offers a full menu, in fact, the food doesn't even need to be made on premises; I'd much rather the place focus on good, high quality coffee and good service. I'm fine with a light menu, after all, if I want a more full meal, there are plenty of restaurants that offer full fare. Tasty pastries, maybe a few  sandwiches or some soup/chili are all that a coffee shop really needs to offer.

A place that offers both high quality food and high quality coffee is rare. Fortunately, Boulder's Laughing Goat Coffeehouse is one of those. Offering both locally made food and locally roasted coffee, "The Goat" as it's known by the locals, is located on the eastern end of Pearl Street, well out of the rush of the touristy Pearl Street Mall.

The Laughing Goat has become a regular stop on my Saturdays in Boulder. After running my various errands, I stop by there for a quick lunch or snack and cup of coffee. My favorite meal is a cup of Kaladi Brothers Coffee (one of four local roasts that I like out of the several roasters that exist in the Denver/Boulder area...more on that soon), a caprese sandwich, and a big old slice of chocolate pie. The sandwich and pie are made by Boulder bakery, Breadworks.

The coffee is rich, almost decadently so, and a splash of cream makes it perfect; no sugar necessary. The sandwich is light and offers a variety of textures and flavors from the chewy bread to the roasted tomatoes balanced out nicely by the cool pesto and greens, then finished off by the smooth mozzarella cheese.

The pie is...well, addictive, especially when paired with the coffee. Not too sweet at all, but speaking of rich, the pie is an absolutely perfect compliment to the coffee, creating an explosion of intense mocha in the mouth that comes dangerously close to short-circuiting the brain. Reasonably priced, there are very few ways I'd rather spend an early Saturday afternoon.

Scallops marinara

Well, definitely not everything I cook has cheese and/or cream, or even bacon on it. (Hmmmm...bacon!) This quick and easy dish made for a tasty yet indulgent tasting treat for dinner tonight, and while scallops are a violation of my "local preferred" ethos, I do treat it as a "as much as I can" instead of a "only" type of guideline anyway.

At any rate, this plate of scallops marinara was quick and easy to make. I pan-seared the scallops in a bit of olive oil and garlic then served them on a bed of spaghetti noodles that were covered in a basic marinara sauce. The whole dinner took less than 30 minutes to cook, which is a huge bonus for me on a weeknight. I considered adding a few more scallops, but I didn't want to overwhelm the marinara sauce, so the balance ended up being just about right (I might add one more scallop next time.)

Healthy, quick, and tasty: this is one to be repeated for sure!

Breakfast sliders

Thought up this tasty little treat last night. It's pretty much just a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, but I put it on slider buns this time around, washed down with a glass of milk. A nifty start to a Sunday morning!

Bacon cheeseburger casserole!

I've pretty much come to the realization that whenever I get creative in the kitchen, it often tends toward "heart attack on a plate" land. Tonight's dinner was no exception.

My son and I both enjoy macaroni and cheese, and I've been making it from scratch (versus a box mix) for a few years now. I often add in various things from tuna to peas to chicken to tomatoes...whatever happens to strike my fancy and call it "______cheesy casserole."

While I've added in ground beef before and called it "cheeseburger casserole," tonight I decided to go the extra indulgence and added bacon....voila! Bacon cheeseburger casserole!!

It was amazingly simple to make. Start by making basic macaroni and cheese. While waiting for the water to boil and for the pasta to cook, brown the ground beef then cook a few slices of bacon. I cooked up a pound of pasta and a pound of ground beef, then a half pound of bacon.

After the cheese sauce is done, add in the pasta and ground beef, stir to mix well. Put in a two quart casserole dish, top with sliced cheese; break up the bacon and add it on top, then pop it all in the oven at 350 for about ten minutes. I topped mine with mesquite ketchup, which tasted more like barbecue sauce, so in essence I had a barbecue bacon cheeseburger casserole...or something like that anyway.

Simple, super basic comfort food (well, sort of). It may not be gourmet, but it sure was tasty.

2011: Off to a rib-sticking start

Well, the goal of this blog certainly was not to wait months between updates. With luck, I will be able to be more faithful about it. In fact, if all goes well, I'll be updating almost weekly.

One of my resolutions for the year is to make one dish a week that I've never made before. This should help keep me from getting into a rut in the kitchen, which I hate doing, particularly since it tends to take the joy and fun out of cooking.

My first meal of 2011 started off with me doing just that. I'd never made grits before, even though I like them, and while I was in my local Natural Grocers/Vitamin Cottage, I came across a package of yellow corn grits. I bought them and the next day put my resolution to work. My first breakfast of 2011: grits with a touch of butter and Backyard Bees honey, bacon from Rocky Plains Meat, and Windsor Dairy eggs topped with raspberry chipotle salsa from Secret Recipes from the Corner Market washed down with a glass of Windsor Dairy milk and a cup of Silver Canyon Coffee right out of the French Press. Yum! Quite a satisfying start to the first meal of the new year if I do say so myself.

Making the grits was a lot easier that I thought it would be. Encouraged, I searched for a recipe for flan, which I absolutely love, but don't want to make with either condensed or any sort of processed milk. I found one, but then chickened out...for now...when I saw how much is involved in making it. The fact that I don't (yet) own any, let alone 12, custard cups was admittedly a contributor to my decision as well. Stay tuned for that down the road.

At any rate, I'm back, so stay tuned for more!

Take those tomatoes and stuff 'em!

The inspiration for this dish came to me as I was thinking  about tomatoes and various things people use to stuff them. I have a deep appreciation for both crab and scallops, so decided to use both for this really easy to make meal.

I picked up the tomatoes, lettuce, celery, and goat cheese from my local farmers market, and I used Monterey Jack cheese as well as the scallops and crab meat.

First, I cut the tops off the tomatoes and set them aside. Well, that's not completely true. I set some aside and ate the rest with a bit of salt on them. :-) While munching tomato tops, I scooped out the tomatoes then chopped up some celery which I had decided to add for both color and crunch. A dish like this definitely needed some texture, and celery came to the rescue nicely. I then shredded the Jack cheese and crumbled the chevre (goat cheese), then set both aside.

That done, I sautéed the scallops in butter with a touch of olive oil (olive oil helps the lycopenes in tomato become soluble and thus more easily absorbed into the body) and just a dash of white wine. Once done, I tossed in the crab, celery, and Jack cheese and mixed them together just long enough to warm the crab and slightly melt the cheese.

Next step was stuffing the tomatoes, which was easy. I added the chevre to two of the tomatoes just before popping it into the oven. Chevre is a creamy cheese that melts easily, so I didn't want to add it too soon and have it become too watery. I covered two of the tomatoes in shredded Monterey Jack and covered the two with chevre with slices of the Jack cheese simply so I could tell them apart since my son doesn't like chevre. I placed all four tomatoes on a stone pizza sheet and put them in the oven at 250 for about ten minutes... just long and hot enough to melt the cheese without softening the tomatoes too much. I cut the tops I hadn't eaten in half for garnish and served them on a bed of lettuce.

This slightly indulgent dinner was quick and tasty. I'm looking forward to making it again, though I'm considering other meats with which to stuff the tomatoes, perhaps ground beef with cheddar cheese and a little onion and green pepper? We'll see!

Grilled pizza!

One of my goals every summer is to turn on my oven as little as possible. It heats up the house, which is the last thing I want in the middle of a Colorado summer. As a result, I spend as much of my summer as I can putting things on the grill. I'd heard about grilled pizza, so I figured, why not?

The recipes I found all involved making the crust from scratch, which normally I'd be all over, but by the time I decided I wanted to grill my pizza, I was way too hungry to wait. I decided instead to use a pre-made crust from Rustic Crust. It's a healthy, tasty crust, and it isn't all that pricey; a definite good thing. After that, it's pretty easy: first, start up the grill. While the grill is warming up, prepare your pizza. I started out with pizza sauce from Eden Foods. I like Eden Foods particularly since their cans are BP-A free (the only company with BP-A free cans).

After that came pepperoni from Applegate Farms, cheese from Organic Valley, onion from my local farmers' market, and some fresh pineapple. At this point, the grill was ready.

One thing to definitely keep in mind when you put the pizza on the grill is to not put it directly over the heat source. If you have a gas grill, turn off one burner and put the pizza over that burner. If you're using a charcoal grill, move the charcoal off to the side. You definitely don't want to burn the crust...burned pizza crust just sucks. Once the grill is ready, just put the pizza on the grill, close the cover, and let it cook for about 8-10 minutes, just long enough to melt the cheese and heat up the toppings.

The pizza itself ends up with a nice, crispy bottom and a smoky flavor you just can't get from popping it in the oven. It's quick, easy, and a recipe I plan to repeat.