I absolutely love caramelized onions. This spread is super fast to make- that is- once you spend the 40 minutes or so caramelizing an onion. If you’ve never caramelized an onion, refer to my caramelized cipollini onion recipe for the basics. For this particular spread, I used peanut oil rather than butter or olive oil.

First, caramelize one yellow onion. Put half of the golden goodness into a food processor with 1/2 avocado, juice from 1/2 lime, 1.5 TB German mustard, 2 TB honey, and a pinch of sea salt. Puree until smooth.

I spread this on my Sweet Potato Black Bean Burger. Yum. Enjoy!

Let’s hear it for the Boulder food scene! We are so lucky to live in a town where people get a good idea and roll with it. The Root Cellars is just one of those great new ideas, and I was able to squeeze a 20 minute shopping trip into my busy Sunday (I do work for a living, you know…).

Here’s a photo of what I took home.

I finally tried some Kale Chips. It seems like they are all the rage lately and everyone is making them except me. When I have Kale in the fridge it usually ends up in one of my versions of a healthy lunch smoothie, not baked and dehydrated into chips. So, I was eager to get some from Sandy Robinson. I must admit, I didn’t enjoy the first bite. But, after a few kale chips, I kept on snacking. Finished them all in just a short while.

There were a lot of different specialty food vendors at Taste of Place, and a healthy gathering of foodie-shoppers who wanted to try something new, homemade, and small-batch produced. What could be better than that?

The most impressive food for me… the one that actually drew me into Taste of Place in the first place, was the homemade tempeh by Crispina Arkin. I sincerely hope that Boulder Tempeh becomes widely available in local stores because I am a tempeh lover!

I also went home with some local raw honey from Ann Mattson of New Moon Farms, and Peach Habañero Sauce from Handcrafted With Altitude. The Peach Habañero Sauce is fantastic, and I absolutely love the raw honey. I expect both of these jars to be empty shortly.

I can’t wait for the next Taste of Place by The Root Sellers. I will allow at least an hour next time to peruse all of the vendors’ tables and taste-test my way through Boulder’s “underground” food scene.

For this month’s Taste & Create, I was paired with My Green Mouth. It was perfect timing, because just as I was looking at the recipe archive to find one I wanted to re-create, I got some radishes from my CSA. I am not a fan of radishes, but My Green Mouth had a recipe for pickled radishes that struck my interest.

Here is what I did:

I washed and sliced a bunch of freshly picked radishes. These went in a Ball jar with a few (or more… how spicy do you like it?) dried thai chili peppers.

I a Pyrex measuring cup, I dissolved 1/2 cup evaporated cane juice and 1 TB pickling salt into 1 cup red wine vinegar. Then I poured the vinegar mixture over the radishes and put a lid on it. My Green Mouth suggests that these radishes are ready to eat after 24-hours in the fridge. I, unfortunately, will be going out of town, so I’ll let you all know how they turned out in a few days when I return.

Lately there seems to be nothing better than meeting our friend Sam in Portland, OR, for a meal before heading to the coast to see family. Sam is a native to Portland and has become quite restaurant savvy as of late. He knows the best place to get a coffee, best place for Lebanese, best food cart, best dessert, best pizza… you name it and he has an idea. So, we couldn’t wait to see what Ned Ludd had to offer.

While walking up to Ned Ludd it became clear that Sam had chosen a winner. The landscape of edible plants let us know right away that we were going to experience farm-to-table, local, seasonal fare. The re-purposed interior decor kept us quite entertained while waiting for Sam.

And then came the food. Our first plate of pickles was quite inspirational. I love that “pickles” is a word we associate now with a pickled cucumber, but it is actually a preserving method for many things. Here we enjoyed a plate of tomatoes, mushrooms, yellow squash, chard, cucumbers, beets, and onions. I plan to reproduce this… or something like it.

Next, I had a perfect cup of gazpacho. I could have eaten a huge bowl of this, but, one must show restraint while out in public. This gazpacho with heirloom tomatoes was without a doubt some of the best gazpacho I’ve ever had. (Let’s also note here that I used to live in Spain… land of gazpacho).

The late summer vegetable plate was my main dish. Potatoes fried in butter(…need I say more?), roasted eggplant, and a breaded and fried yellow heirloom tomato topped with an aioli. I was in heaven.

Ned Ludd’s menu reads a bit like The Jabberwocky, but that’s part of the fun. They play with turn-of-the-century English in their forebits, kaltbit, plats, and rearbits, but they don’t play with food. They’re seriously plating some of the best food we could have eaten one hundred years ago. Two thumbs up to Ned Ludd. I wish we had something like this place here in Boulder.