Winery visit, homemade pizza and good company

This weekend, John's mom and grandma came to visit from Michigan. On Saturday, we decided to take them up to Childress Winery for a tour, lunch, and wine tasting. The tour was interesting and it was a beautiful day outside. I would have never imagined that a NASCAR team owner would end up owning a winery (maybe brewery, but, wine?) anyway, it is a beautiful place and makes for a nice time! We sampled several wines, but I think my favorite was either the Pinnacle or Cabernet Sauvignon.

Lots of grapes

Teri, John, and Grams

For dinner, we decided to make homemade pizza, it was yum! John is the expert on this, he makes a whole wheat crust, and we topped it with cheese, spinach, pepperoni, red peppers, and onions. I made a salad, which changes depending on what we have on hand, but we had some wonderful lettuce and spinach from the farmer, so I added goat cheese, candied pecans, dried cherries and lemon vinaigrette. I think we were all stuffed after that meal!

John making the pie

Almost ready!

Bon Appetit!

Swiss Chard

This year, we joined a CSA and so far it has been wonderful. I like that I get to try things that I otherwise would not buy, like swiss chard. Now, just by looking at this pile of leafy greens I had no idea what it was, but thankfully our farmer always tells me what we are getting. So last night, I experimented with swiss chard. Here is what I did. Fried up some bacon in a pan. Then I removed the bacon from the fat (did not want to turn our healthy side into a grease pile!) and I poured a little of the fat onto Morgan's dogfood, she loved it! Back to the recipe... then I chopped up some garlic, added a bit of fresh squeezed lemon juice and then added the chard. All in all, it took about 10 minutes and we scarfed it up.

Goin' back to CO!

We arrived on thursday night and did not do much but sleep after getting in. The following morning, we had some errands to run for my mom's retirement party the following night. After we were finished, we headed to New Belgium for a tasting and tour. I love this place and am amazed that they still offer free beer in the tasting room. They go through about 65 kegs on the weekend for all the visitors. It is such an admirable company with a great mission, story, and of course beer! Sunshine is my fav! While we were there, we sampled a new beer called La Folie. It is aged in French Oak barrels for a few years before being bottled. It tasted really sour to me and I did not even finish my sample, but apparently some people really like it. It is pricy too... I think around $17/bottle. Now, I would rather have a nice Oregon Pinot for that, ha!

My dad and I

Afterwords, we headed over here for some margs and dinner. I love Mexican food and the Rio has always been my favorite place to get it when I go home. So many good memories from college there! As always, it was packed but we managed to drag my grandpa out for the evening which was nice.

John and my mom

The next day, was all about getting ready to celebrate my mom's retirement from teaching, woo-hoo! I think everyone had fun and we had some great BBQ to go along. Slow roasted pork from my dad was the favorite I think, everything else we catered to make it easy. The school gave my mom a retirement party, but this one was given by us for her friends. We had a great turnout and a good time.

Julie, Mom, Me

On Sunday we headed up to Boulder for a little Boulder Creek Festival action and stroll along Pearl Street. I did not buy anything except food though (seems to always be the case when I go to things like this). And of course, no trip to Boulder would be complete without seeing a street performer stuff himself into a box. Now that is some serious flexibility! I have seen him do this act a few times and even saw him once in Vegas, guy must get around!


We headed home on Monday and are looking forward to the next trip out for Christmas.