Guest Chef Evening: A Summer Taste of Sicily with Fabrizia Lanza and Peggy Markel. Join Peggy and Fabrizia Lanza, longtime friend and one of the hosts of our Sicily: A Different Italy program for a special evening of Colorado flavor and Sicilian soul. Serving as guest chefs, the two women will design and present a special a la carte menu for guests.
The Boulder Weekly: “The Transformative Power of Travel and Food” by Cayte Bosler |The Boulder Weekly, February 21, 2013 | “Cooking is never a chore for Markel. It’s an adventure.”
The peach tree was laden down with the softest, peachiest peaches you can imagine. Although a small tree, she took the burden of the bountiful crop. It was a Sunday, a good day for making pies. Miss Peach, took her wooden bowl and filled it up with the sweet, downy fruit. It was a better idea than reading. After all, she’s only six. And reading is far too serious for a summer day with school already just around the corner. Master Peach agreed.
Caroline and I are both Colorado country girls. She lives in the mountains at 8,000 ft with a magnificent view of the Continental Divide and I live in the countryside at 5280 ft next to a creek that spills into two ponds.She is a vegan Kundalini yogini and I am not. I eat everything that’s good, all over the world, and bend my left elbow more than any other body part. Yet, I am as interested in saving the world as she is and believe that all sentient beings deserve kindness including the most minute. It is said that even fleas and spiders experience fear and have a desire for happiness, just like the rest of us, so why not follow that creed when it comes to the small creatures that scare us?
Carlos peddles up with his son and several choice Mexican snacks. He has freshly steamed green chili tamales and these chilled mango ‘flowers’ which he cuts on the spot. He rubs them with lemon, dusts them with cayenne and a pinch of salt. It reminds me of the beach vendors in Mexico, right here on the streets of Longmont, Colorado.
The creek is high, rushing and coffee colored. Surrounding trees are full and green, happy with a full drink of water from yesterday’s rain. The Flatirons sit pretty in the distance looking down on the plains with barely a glow of early morning light coming from a vast, cloudy, yet blue Colorado sky. Birds and hidden animals take delight in the moist air and cool temperatures, and so do I.
“It would be too simple to say that a passion for extra virgin olive oil guided Boulder’s Peggy Markel toward her career. Just as it wouldn’t be quite right to say that it was her upbringing in Alabama where the fruit she ate came from hundred-year-old trees…Of Markel’s gift for …
“Peggy aims to give people a meaningful travel experience by immersing them in a foreign culture through food, food artisans, hands-on cooking and traveling. The bonus: Her daily work usually means immersing herself in the same. Just read her example of a “typical day” and see if it doesn’t make …
I heard the cicada’s sing in the tall cottonwood trees, midday today. For them the conditions were delightful. It was a sign. There are cucumbers in the garden, as well as scallion and dill, perfect for a cool summer evening soup. It would be refreshing and fit the sunset hour. I thought, if it’s hot enough for them to sing, it’s hot enough for us to eat cool cucumber soup.
Fishing in the Black Canyon, a video by Graham Markel.