April 2024

Winter left with a bang here in Colorado so as not to be forgotten. And while I'm sure I'll miss it when it's 100 degrees in a few months, I couldn't be more excited for Spring.

Excited to start seeing Spring produce hit shelves and restaurant menus, and then to immediately judge those restaurants when they keep serving the same ingredients the moment they're out of season.

Excited not to eat another butternut squash for the next six or seven months. I love and appreciate you, winter squash, but we need some time apart.

While there are some months that I struggle to find anything interesting to talk about, others I look back on and don't understand how so much happened in just 31 days.

March was one of the latter, so I'll just hit you with the highlights.

First off, we celebrated one of the more underrated holidays of the year; Pi day. However, we focus less on mathematics and more on Pi's homophonic cousin.

If you missed out this year, be sure to mark your calendar for March, 14th, 2025.

March is also the month that I start preparing and getting my hopes for my small vegetable garden.

There's an endless amount of work to be done outside, but at least I've got a few seedlings that are well on their way inside.

We also hit the road in March for a quick jaunt to New Mexico. And while I don't automatically put New Mexico (Santa Fe specifically) as a top food destination, everything we had there was quite good.

Obviously, the New Mexican-Mexican is the best New Mexican-Mexican you're going to find, but I also had some of the best donuts I've ever had, and found a restaurant that I've been laying awake at night coveting.

Now, I didn't actually eat the food at La Mama, but in 2014 I stumbled into the original Aska at the Kinfolk Studios in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. An unassuming coffee shop in the front, with a sneaky, fancy restaurant in the back.

It's a simple enough idea, but that place is always in the back of my mind, and every once in a while it gives my brain just a slight little poke, a reminder.

Well, La Mama, in Santa Fe, in 2024 might not be quite as "cool" as Aska, in Brooklyn, in 2014, but it sure gave my brain that poke it hadn't had in a while.

And finally, an update on my 2024 resolution to make and eat more dinner rolls.

I think you'll be proud and pleased to hear that I have already made Cast Iron Dinner Rolls three times this year, already tripling my 2023 numbers and proving to be the only resolution I am still sticking to. Thank you very much.

New Recipes

• Pita Bread

March Eats