Shooting Stars of Thought |

I decided this is a great situation to find yourself in: flying into a city you’ve never been to before, staying in a house that is throwing a Saturday barbeque, and being able to bike to a farmers market, pick up local produce, and make the guests a local dish with local foodstuffs that, despite living in the city, they’ve never had. The pleasures of introducing people to foods that came from their own foodshed is so rewarding, I wish I could do it more often.

This weekend I headed over to Fort Collins, Colorado, to visit my sister who just bought a house and was throwing a housewarming party. I was willing to sacrifice my local meal for the week (I didn’t have time to make one before leaving town) until I discovered a.) Ft. Collins has a Saturday farmers’ market, b.) the farmers market was less than 2 miles from my sister’s house, and c.) my sister’s roommate had several bikes in the garage conveniently equipped with bike racks. So while the roommates were out picking up beer and ice, we pedled over to the market to survey the situation. All I can say is wow, Colorado produce is big!

This is a zucchini, an onion, and a squash. I put a fork in the photo to try to show their monstronsity, but I don’t think the photo conveys it well enough.

I nearly fell off my bike I was carrying so much home. Here’s the market’s bounty.

I quickly set to work slicing and chopping and firing up the grill. I figured the charred flavor of the veggies would allow me to get away with using only olive oil, salt and pepper as the non-local ingredients.  This decision was confirmed when I tasted the fresh orzo I had picked up at the market (by Pappardelle’s Pasta, which is actually based out of Denver, not Fort Collins, but was as close to local as I was going to get). Their Spring Medley Orzo was incredible–a blend of lemon, parsley, and chive flavored pastas (although according to their website, it was inspired by Rice a Roni–great.)

I grilled up all the vegetables in about three rounds of completely filling the grill (I was feeding 50). Then I let all the veggies cool, cooked the orzo, tossed it with olive oil, cut up the veggies and mixed everything together. While it chilled, I baked the two oversized squashes, and piled as much pasta salad as I could in them for serving. The rest just stayed in the big casserole dish, although were this more of a sit down meal I would have loved to serve everyone a stuffed squash…

Of course, my meal turned out to be only half local when I decided I couldn’t refuse a brat. Although I did manage to grill a bunch of onions and peppers for a local topping. Oh, and that’s a pint of Odell’s IPA to accompany the meal–from one of Fort Collins’s many local craft breweries.

All in all, for flying a thousand miles and not realizing I was going to be able to pull this off, I’m pretty satisfied!  (although, I was definitely intrigued by this sign, which we passed on our way to New Belgium Brewery for a tour. If I had more time, I definitely would have tried to incorporate this into the meal!

Although someone needs to tell “Ben” that next time he makes a sign, he should probably include his phone number, and also consider a color of paint other than blood red…)