Jake & Telly's

Rachel Ray is just too energetic for me. Try as I might, I cannot make one of her "30 Minute Meals" in less than 60 minutes and I when I am finished, I am too tired to eat the meal. However, I picked up a good tip from her on one of her travel shows, "Ask a local for a restaurant recommendation."
Saturday, Robert and I decided to take advantage of one of our few free days this fall to wander through Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. We planned to finish off our excursion with a stop at Patsy's candies in Manitou Springs. We hadn't been to Manitou Springs in quite a few years and, sadly, we were reminded why. We could not for the life of us find a parking place. I could digress and talk about people who take two places when one would do, but...
So we went off to the Patsy's factory on 21st in Colorado Springs. Robert is a fan of the rosecup mints and I'm rather fond of the butterscotch popcorn. There might have been some Christmas shopping going on as well, but I'm not telling.
Our shopping done and the sweet teeth sated,, it was time for real food. We so rarely go to the Colorado Springs area lately that we had no idea where to eat. I asked the clerk for her recommendations, adding "I'm a vegetarian." She said, "So am I" and suggested that Jake & Telly's between 26th and 27th on West. Colorado Avenue in Old Colorado City had some of the best falafel she'd ever had. I was sold.
Actually, I saw no mention of falafel anytwhere on the menu, but the food was great, the service was attentive, but nor obtrusive and we'll find many more reasons to visit Old Colorado City, all of them including Jake and Telly's.
Along with the menus comes a plate of what must be housemade pita (delish -- as long as we have a little Rachel Ray theme going) with Balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
We ordered Saganaki, that wonderful sheep's milk Kasseri cheese served flaming and extinguished with lemon juice. I didn't take a picture. In fact, I didn't take my phone with me -- talk about a real vacation day!
By the time our main courses arrived, Robert remembered he had his phone with him, so I refreshed myself on taking pictures with his cell phone and we got pictures of his Salmon Mediterraneo -- an attractive dish if Alaskan sockeye salmon on Greek rice and seasonal vegetables , finished with a lemon caper butter sauce.Robert had already done a bit of nibbling before I mastered the cellphone camera. Apologies, dear reader.
I was absolutely overloaded with the Vegetarian Mixed Mezze with grilled zucchini, eggplant and red pepper; gigantes beans, Spanakopita, Dolmadakia, Feta, olives, hummus, tzatziki, Tiropita and pita.The leftovers were more than I could finish for lunch the next day and made a nice afternoon snack. As you can see from the picture, it is hard to arrange so much food artfully. Try as I am sure they did, it just looks like an incredible amount of food on a plate!
There was absolutely no way we were going to eat dessert, but the menu was seriously tempting with baklava, stuffed figs, Greek yogurt and much more.

A New Computer

After spending almost $200 and a hectic week trying to get my laptop so it could limp along for a couple more years, it lived just one more week before the motherboard died. I really did not want to buy a new computer, but I've become addicted to my laptop. I replaced it with the closest I could come to my old laptop, a couple steps down on the power scale and a couple steps up on the price scale.
Wouldn't you think I could get a better laptop for less money? Not the case. Sigh...
So if I've missed anything, send it again because it may have been lost between computers.

Could I have this without the "user friendly"

My laptop is on the fritz and I was drug, kicking and screaming to Windows 7. Before I subjected my trusty laptop, repository of all knowledge of my life to repair people and an OS upgrade, I decided to backup my data to a DVD "just to be safe." In my day, this was a simple process -- "Backup C: A:" A bit frightening the first time, but... Now it took endless searching and numerous "You are not connected to the Internet" (of course I am not connected, my network adapter is fried) messages before I gave up on backup and just copied essential files to a DVD. When I mentioned this to the nice guy at the computer store, he seemed mystified as to why I would back up to a DVD and not to my second hard drive. I decided he thought these computers were bullet-proof. Then I was at another store looking for an alternative to the built-in wireless adapter. "But your laptop is more than two years old," he said, "surely you just want a new computer." He proceeded to tell me all the dreadful things to expect of my aging laptop. By the time he was done, I had absolutely no idea why the guy at the other place didn't comprehend the need for a complete back up not connected with the physical computer.
Our first computer lived a healthy 6 years. Frankly, we couldn't get a larger hard drive for it and we were finding that 5Mb was not enough for our needs. Our second lasted a similar time before we found we needed a 3.5" drive and there was no way to install one in the box. Its replacement is still in the basement, in case we need anything off the thousands of 3.5" floppies we have carefully stored away.
We live in a throw away society where user-friendly is so user-complicated we have to throw away good hardware because it is too user-friendly to keep it safe and working.
I think all this "user-friendly" stuff applies to far more than computers. I think we have come to depend on others to form our opinions for us instead of putting in the time and energy to form our opinions on facts rather than others' opinions. We saw this a year ago with health care when every fifth email I got was someone telling me what I should think about health care based on what someone told them. When I had the audacity to suggest that what was contained in the emails was less than accurate, the senders were offended, even when I gave them specific lines in the actual legislation so they would have complete information. Now we have people telling us that our current President got us into Afghanistan and people believe it despite that we were all alive to know that the President when we entered Afghanistan was George W. Bush and that the President in office when were sidetracked from Afghanistan to Iraq was named George W. Bush.
I can't even begin to understand those who, despite all the assurances from officials (including Republicans) in Hawaii that our President was born there, persist in believing someone who told them he was born in Kenya.
We've come so much to rely on "user-friendly" that we accept misinformation, mistaken information and pure lies rather than rely on our own resources, brains and (yipes) facts. We live in a time when it is too difficult to type "backup C: A:" and rely on some company which may have taken away our ability to backup our own data where we want to backup our data. At the risk of being called a Luddite (look it up, I am not going to be user-friendly with you), I think it is time we take back a bit of control over our information flow.

El Diablo

We're not trendsetters. We are decidedly not trendsetters. Normally, no matter how appealing the press, we wait a year or so for the crowd to thin out before we visit a restaurant. There are restaurants at the local mall that have been appealing to us since they first opened and I think that was more than a year ago. So what, pray tell, led us to a brand-new, just opened the day before restaurant?
We're planning a vacation in Mexico and there was this article about a new restaurant that offered high-end Mexican food and, most importantly, OpenTable found us a reservation time that worked for us.
So now you have the long story of how two old fogeys found themselves at El Diablo, 101 Broadway, Denver on it's second evening of official opening.
My advice, don't go unless you have time and don't expect to carry on a conversation. As is the current trend, the acoustics are lively and the room is noisy. At the risk of sounding even more old fogey than I already have, I am not a fan of noisy restaurants. As for needing a lot of time, the menu offers a lot of choices, even when the Tortas and Combinaciones sections are not available as was the case on Saturday. The kitchen is small. If you take this to the logical conclusion, it takes at least half an hour to get your meal. Were the room less noisy, one could enjoy a conversation with one's dining companion and the time would fly by. In a loud room, one can only look at the interesting decor and wish the headache would go away...
The drinks are served quickly. My fellow old fogey ordered the O.G which is described as their original house margarita, made with 30/30 reposado and triple sec. All margaritas are made with fresh squeezed lime juice. The drink had a bit twinge of unpleasant aftertaste, maybe the result of not-so-great limes or something.I went for the Especial, described as a coin style made with Gran Centenario Plata, Agave nectar and fresh lime juice. It was smaller, stronger and avoided the odd taste we both found in the O.G. Of course, by the time our food arrived, I had nursed my drink for far too long and the melted ice gave the drink a water-down tone.Still, I would order this drink again. One of the interesting things about the tequilas at El Diablo is that they are from small taquerias (I think I spelled that correctly) that do use only the best ingredients and do not sell in liquor stores. Also, El Diablo freely allows the customer to specify any tequila in any drink at no extra charge. The priciest of the margaritas is just $9.50, a very reasonable price in my experience.
When our meals finally arrived, they were tasty. Robert's Pecho de res, described as all day roasted organic beef brisket with chile cascabel, frijoles charros and cilantro rice, featured fork-tender brisket on a bed of rice (we didn't notice cilantro in the rice) with some beans and a couple of tortillas. There was a bit of annoying fat on the brisket which I know is typical of the cut, but it would have been nice to have had it trimmed before serving.I had nice guacamole tostadas, described as crisp corn tortillas with frijoles negros, guacamole, quesco fresco, "El Diablo" salsa, rice and frijoles negros. I think the frijoles negros must be listed twice because they appear in the tostadas as well as on the side. The rice was, I suspect, a casualty of the busy small kitchen rushing too fast and too new to the large menu to remember everything that is supposed to be on the plate.
I loved the freshness of the guacamole and the crisp tortillas, but the guacamole was piled high on the tostada and it was almost too much of a good thing to have two identical tostadas. It might have been nice to have a different flavor to the second tostada for more variety or just one tostada with the promised rice.
We split a dessert of Tres Flanes, which were actually creme brule, not flan. Each little cup held a treasure of flavor, the Mexican vanilla being the favorite of both of us. I expected that Robert would prefer the Abuelita chocolate, but it was more a nice chocolate pudding than either of us expected. A more intense chocolate, perhaps with the intensifying quality of certain chiles, would have been better. The third dish described as Horchata and translated by our waiter as a much loved drink of milk and rice, was a nice dessert. I like the idea of three choices, but each needs to have more intensity. The Horchata and the vanilla were rather similar and it might be nice to switch out one of them for a tropical fruit flavor like mango, but only if it had an intensity to stand as unique among them.
We will return in a few weeks to see how things sort out in this new restaurant, to see if the menu doubles in size as our waiter promised (and I hope it doesn't until the kitchen can handle what it has right now), and to see if the chefs make the necessary tweaks so the food lives up to its potential.

El Diablo on Urbanspoon

Amazing Deceptions

I just watched the You Tube video of Wendell Potter discussing his new book, out this fall, Deadly Spin. This former insurance industry spokesperson outlines in great details the techniques the industry uses to appear to be supporting reform while underwriting "grassroots" or "business people" shadow groups to undermine the same reforms. While I probably knew, deep inside, from my own years in public relations that a lot of this goes on, it turned my stomach to hear his description of something so detrimental to so many people in this country.
It makes me wonder how many other shadow groups operate in politics. Certainly we see less sophisticated and hidden efforts when Republicans are involved in crafting legislation they know they will vote against. At least they can't use a shadow group to vote...
We've seen something like this here in Colorado when the Romanoff campaign used someone to secretly shop a negative story about Bennett to national media. They may succeed in defeating Bennett in the primary. In the end, their opponents may publicize such under-handed techniques to the detriment of Romanoff. The end result? The people of Colorado lose! It happens all too often in politics. Good candidates knock each other out of the ultimate race with dirty tactics and negative advertising.
I was raised to be honest. My faith leads me to seek justice and truth. Everything in me seeks a way to help good people triumph over evil. Yet I am at a loss to see a way to overcome the evil that runs so deeply throughout the layers of society where real change can happen.
Sigh...

Off the Subject

Okay, this post has nothing to do with food, religion or politics -- unless you count slurping the pages of a book as food. I have one other obsession that I don't talk about much -- I am a voracious, indiscriminate reader. Much of my reading is non-fiction -- theology for my adult education work, organizational development for paid and unpaid work, books for cook club and so on. Recently though, I found a web site called Read It Forward. My first book was a SciFi thriller called Ancestor by Scott Sigler. I picked it up about 7:30 last night after a hard day of curriculum development, designing promotional materials and creating PowerPoint to back up my presentation. I put it down at 2 this morning when I finished the last page. I can't tell you if it was plausible or if it was well-written, I can only tell you I was immediately sucked into a world of medical research gone horribly wrong. This would be a great beach book, but only if you never burn and you have really high SPF sunscreen!

My Latest Favorite

My instructions to Robert regarding a restaurant to celebrate my birthday: Here is 5280's list of top restaurants in Denver. Start with Fruition and call. When you reach someone at the restaurant, say, "I need to make a reservation for my wife's birthday. She's a vegetarian who cannot eat tomatoes, citrus or chocolate. Is that a problem?" When you reach a restaurant where they say "No problem," that's where I want to go for my birthday.
He only had to make one call. The person who answered at Fruition said it would not be a problem and she would leave a note for the chefs.
When we got to the restaurant, Matt, the manager, was handling the front of the house. He knew it was my birthday and he knew I was a friend of Jackie Rebideau. The waitress knew I was a vegetarian with food restrictions and the chef knew that he would substitute mushrooms for the tomato chutney that normally accompanies the vegetarian entree. I was thrilled not to have to explain any thing. I could sit back and enjoy a wonderful meal! This level of service was not limited to friends of friends, but offered to each diner who entered the restaurant.
Needless to say, Fruition won me over before a single dish hit our table. While the best front of the house people in the world cannot make up for lousy food, great service really enhances a restaurant experience when the kitchen is good.
That Alex Seidel of Fruition is one of Food and Wine Magazine's Best New Chefs of 2010 is no surprise to anyone who has eaten in the restaurant.
Don't expect huge quantities of food. This is not one of those places where you expect to eat tonight's leftovers for dinner tomorrow. This is a place where the servings are adequate, not super-sized. And that is as it should be. The food is superlative. I savored each bite and marveled at how each ingredient balanced another and the flavors bounced around in my mouth.
We enjoyed bread with butter topped with sea salt and parsley. Robert commented that it was nice to have room temperature butter to spread on the bread. It is a small detail, but, if the bread is not warm to melt butter, the butter should be room temperature. Who hasn't struggled with the icy cold butter clump on a slice of bread? I probably should have taken a picture of the butter, but you will have to imagine butter in a tiny white ramekin with a frosty looking topping of salt and parsley.
Apparently, the vegetarian option at Fruition generally involves two or three courses. Last night was a two course night called Grazing Vegetarians. The first course involved a single ravioli atop a bed of vinegary greens and topped with shreds of peppery radish and sweet white raisins. I forgot to take a picture until I had toppled the whole thing for my first bite, but imagine this all carefully in a tower. It was savory, vinegary, smooth and creamy, sweet, tart and more in bites that picked up all the ingredients.

The entree was similarly a tower of contrasting and complementary ingredients that pleased the taste buds with every bite.
Robert had the Prosciutto Wrapped Scallops.
There were carrots, peas, micro-greens and fingerling potatoes atop the scallops and all this rested in a puree of peas. Robert is not overly fond of peas, but he certainly cleaned his plate.
I don't know that there was a specific name for my entree. Unfortunately, the colors in the photo are not nearly so intense as they were in person, but it was a beautiful dish.
Bits of lettuce and mushrooms toppled off the grilled fennel and polenta into a pool of veggie puree that I thought was pea until I saw that Robert's English pea emulsion was much more intensely green. At any rate, I loved the blend of flavors and textures. the fennel offered a slightly licorice flavor, the mushrooms were tiny bursts of earthiness and the polenta was amazingly creamy but with a crisp crust. I don't have a list of all the ingredients, but whatever they were, they went together quite well.
I could have been quite content after the two courses, but a birthday dinner requires dessert!
My first choice would have been the cheese plate with apple beignet. honey-orange marmalade and petite radish salad, but the cheese, Vendeen Bichonne, is made with animal rennet. My second choice, the warm vanilla crepes, was delightful!
Those little dots and swirls around the outside of the plate tasted like a balsamic reduction. There were lovely chewy pistachios on top of the whipped marscapone cheese. It was a lovely birthday dessert in it's strawberry-rhubarb sauce.
Robert loved his chocolate cake.
I had a nibble of the peanut brittle in the salted caramel sauce. I loved salted caramels the first time I had them, but I am getting tired of seeing the combination everywhere. Robert thought the sauce and peanut brittle set off the intense chocolate in the flourless chocolate cake.
The owners of this restaurant label their food as comfort food. It certainly is comforting and comfortable, but it has a level of sophistication that goes far beyond what one would normally consider comfort food. If comfort food is the kind of food your mother made, this is comfort food if your Mom was one of the Food and Wine Best New Chefs.
I know that we will not wait for a special occasion to visit Fruition again!