Bikes. Food. Eating. Drinking. Wine. Travel. Skiing. Bozeman.
The occasional giant sandwich.
This is pretty funny. The humor herein about fixed gears, hipsters, lycra, leg-shaving, and Dura-Ace is spot on. Not that I have any..er...much...uh...years of...uh...personal experiences with any or all of of the above topics mind you.
Cook just about anything savory in garlic and butter and it will taste pretty good. Cook local chanterelle mushrooms in garlic and butter, and put them on top of a medium-rare flat iron steak, and it will taste way more than good. We paired our steak was a combo of roasted carrots and potatoes. It is a dinner like this one that makes going out seem like a poor decision, or at the very least, a waste of money.
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For the record, this was delicious. Homemade pesto with bacon dressed up plain spaghetti. Topped with the orange-hued chanterelles that had been sauteed in butter and olive oil, this simple pasta dish boasted favor that belied the limited number of ingredients. Thanks to the foragers at All Things Italian for picking - and selling these gems of the fungal world.
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Tonight we had a simple dinner of cannellini bean and tomato bruschetta. To drink we had Nina Franco Prosecco with raspberries from the yard. On this evening, life is not sucking.
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I love breakfast. I love any kind of meaty hash. Thanks to some leftover steak, I had both this morning along with some nicely poached eggs. Deliciousness.
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Saturday night became dinner and a movie night thanks in part to the newly opened Julie and Julia flick and Livingston's 2nd Street Bistro.
We had been warned: don't go to this film hungry. Good advice, as the food-porn-shots of sizzling-butter-in-copper-cookware along with Meryl Streep's/Julia Child's yummy sounds will taunt you throughout the 123-minute run time.Entertained, and now voraciously hungry, we escaped Sweet-Pea clogged Bozeman for our reserved table at the 2nd Street Bistro in the ever-charming Livingston.A bottle of 2005 Savigny-Les-Beaune gets things started along with appetizers of moules frites and seared scallops. Jen's moules were bathed in a gloriously heady broth of garlic, parsley, and Pernod. The broth was so delicious that she asked for a spoon to dispatch the remnants once the moules were gone. Nicely seasoned and crispy fries did their job as broth delivery vehicles.My scallops sported a particularly nice sear along with near perfect done-ness. They rested along-side a risotto of saffron and basil studded with crawfish tails. A drizzle of spicy oil rounded out the dish.Entrees included a seafood stew of shrimp, calamari, salmon, muscles, and a classic steak frites.Yet another enticing broth, this time with tomatoes, saffron, and fennel, was the backbone of the fish stew. It was an evening of aromas!The steak frites utilized a flatiron cut and was sauced with a red-wine bernaise. This particular sauce is what American brown gravy aspires to be. Medium rare and well seasoned, the steak was as delicious as I wanted it to be. The fries once again mopped up wayward puddles of bernaise.For dessert, it was a dark chocolate cherry tart and a bing-cherry cake. Chocolate-cherry-fudgey goodness was packed into a buttery shortbread crust. The delicious white cake took on a bit of a purple haze with the cherry-bits laced throughout. A delicious non-sequitur on each dessert plate was a stegosaurus-shaped crispy cookie that spoke in clear tones of butter and lavender. Yum.I really enjoy 2nd Street and its classic bistro-ness along with a very thoughtful wine list. Loads of gems can be found on the wine list from some of my favorite regions: Burgundy and the Rhone. Just to show they care (or brag), the restaurant even sports an empty 1970 Margaux bottle as a vase in the men's bathroom.Comments [0]
Who is your daddy? Your momma? It doesn't matter. Jen just made a cherry slab pie. It tastes as good, wait, WAY better than my crappy photos make it look.
Thanks to smitten kitchen for the recipe. Thanks to Jen for baking it.Comments [2]
To find yourself in McLeod, Montana, is to find yourself surrounded by space, mountains, and a handful of movie stars in their mountain hide-aways. A post office with the sign "Main Street" hammered to the building IS the downtown. Out on the main highway, just down the road from the Post Office, lies the Road Kill Cafe. Not just a cute name, the Road Kill offers burgers of elk, buffalo, and the common cow; all yours for $6.50.
The beer glass, frosty; the elk, rare; the bar's dogs and kitten outnumber the staff of two. Both basking in their newlywed bliss, the proprietors show off their wedding photos as my ungulate of choice cooks away on the flames outside. I catch up on ancient episodes of Law and (DUNK DUNK) Order on a tiny TV above the bar while I take on calories and enjoy the dim and swamp-cooled confines of the Road Kill.Comments [0]
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I needed a burger tonight. Here is how the decision of where to get it went down: Fast food? No. The Mint? I don't really want to drive to Belgrade. The Garage? No, I just don't feel like dealing with the on-the-street-ness of it all. Okay, Ale Works it is. Thankfully, Ale Works abandoned the all-too-bread-y-and crusty ciabatta for a proper soft roll (burger to bun-ratio rant forthcoming, can't anyone make a brioche roll in this town? errrggg). Also thankfully, Ale Works is one of the few places around these parts where one can fetch a local "Kobe" (Wagyu, yes? MT is not in Japan...) burger.
The local wagyu tastes great, with full beefy flavor. If you take a deep whiff, it almost, just barely, gives off a bit of iron-y-ness and game-y-ness - in a good way. I order mine rare - and the kitchen provides accordingly. This is one of the few burgers I eat naked. No cheese, no sauce of any kind, no plants, er..vegetables. Just the salt and pepper the broiler dude (or dudette) applies before slapping the patty down on the flat top. $16 is a bit steep for a burger, sure. But a $16 steak would be cheap, no? Thus, I justify the order...Ale Works fries are good. Not great, mind you. Take away the generous coating of parm and black pepper and they might not be that special. This doesn't stop my from consuming most of them.Before all that beef, I did have my vegetables: 1/3 of a head of iceberg lettuce covered in about 1 cup of dressing and a few rashers of bacon. The lettuce, cool and crisp; the bacon, warm. It's like the McDLT in spherical form.Comments [0]
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