June 21, 2017

The Foothills Art Center is at the end of our block, housed in a beautiful old church building.

This morning I accompanied my next door neighbor on a visit to the gallery.

The main exhibit included work by a wood sculptor who created this stunning piece.

The photo does not do it justice - it was really stunning in person.

It was made of hundreds (thousands?) of layered wood pieces.

It reminded me of the stalactites we saw in the caves we explored in Missouri when we lived there.

I love the variegation of color.

This mobile of waxed leaves was pretty awesome too.

June 19, 2017

Jed participated in an advancement ceremony with his Trail Life troop tonight.

He was pretty excited.  :)

June 12, 2017

I've never been a fan of pork chops, either fried or baked - they're too dry and chewy to me. 

I ran across a recipe for slow cooker pork chops and decided to try it,

though I wasn't expecting anything different.

Boy, was I in for a surprise!

These pork chops are the most tender, juicy meat I've ever had from a crock pot,

with an apple cider and brown sugar glaze that is perfect.

Recipe can be found here.

June 2, 2017

Jed and I finished up our study of Poland today with a Polish food field trip.

The first stop was Pierogies Factory in Wheat Ridge.

The owner, Cezary Grosfeld, moved to Denver from Poland 10 years ago and uses his Grandma's recipes.  

We bought 6 pierogies, 3 pork and 3 potato and onion, with a caramelized onion topping.  

Pork pierogie.

Potato and onion pierogie.

Yum!

We also bought bogis, but I had forgotten it was made of sauerkraut.  

At least it came with more pierogies!  :)

Jed got a chocolate croissant for dessert.  

He was a lot happier about it than he looks in this picture.  :)

Next we drove to downtown Denver to Rosenberg's Deli - 

the first Jewish deli I've ever been in!

We took this order home and had it for dinner this evening.  

First up was matzoh ball soup.  

I liked the matzoh, but I wish I had bought two balls - 

they priced the soup by the ball and I was being cheap.  :)

I was excited to try their kugel, but I was surprised to see that it was a muffin!  

I was pretty happy to find that it tasted very similar to the one I made, 

but it had apples in it, which really helped the texture. 

We got a potato knish and the last spinach knish!

What's not to love about mashed potatoes and pastry??

I was also excited to try hammantaschen for the first time...

I've been wanting to try making it for years, 

ever since I learned about it while studying the book of Esther, 

which talks about Haman, the man for whom the cookie is named.  

We only bought one cookie, a raspberry, 

and I was sorely tempted to drive back to Denver to pick up a few more.

I see another field trip in our future.  :)

Jed was pretty fascinated with the whole cooked fish.  :)

I am deeply grateful that last spinach knish was still there when we arrived

These were both so good.

Smacznego – Bon appetite!