My birthday and an awesome local find

We found the most awesome little pizzeria on my birthday. It's called Kaos Pizza and it's on Pearl St. in Denver (near DU). We went looking for an old favorite restaurant, but found it had closed, so we found this little gem instead. The food was unbelievable! It's a 100% locally-sourced restaurant (and apparently, they are the only one in the Denver area, surprisingly) with fresh food, a lovely atmosphere, and friendly staff. I could spend every afternoon just soaking up the feel of that place. But I would soak up a lot of pizza and wine, too, and that would be bad for my waistline and the concept of a juice fast. Ah, well.

 This picture was taken under the leafy arbor where we ate. The chair back you can see in front of me is at our table. They have misters running to keep it cool out here. Having my sense of smell for my birthday meant this was a really excellent place to hang out. Everything smelled really good and clean and natural. It's been 11 years since I could smell on my birthday. This was such a welcome experience. I really do attribute it to the juice fast. I decided to go ahead and eat for my birthday. So, we went out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was really fun. We were planning to eat salads, but each restaurant Jason had planned to take me to didn't work out for one reason or another. So, I ate a veggie/egg dish from Blue Sky Cafe in Golden for breakfast (Blue Sky runs a double-business by having a rastaurant in the morning and a yoga studio in the afternoon. Their food is really good and really good for your body, too.)

Then there was this incredible place for lunch. Sorry for all the pictures of me. Jason wouldn't take pictures without me in them. I feel a bit over-present on this post. This is the garlic bread and the most excellent pasta sauce we've ever tasted. We bought a gallon of it. The bread had fresh rosemary on it. We watched the dude step out of the kitchen onto the patio to cut rosemary for it. Pretty much amazingly awesome. The kitchen is detatched from the main building. It's right behind me in this picture. The street is in front of me and the main building is to my right.

 You can see the windows on the kitchen in this shot. That's where the magic happens. Seriously, if you're in Denver, try this place. It's affordable and delicious. Best pizza ever. And go this summer. It's so beautiful with the patio open!


Jason took me shoe shopping. He's the best shoe-shopping companion because he knows my taste in shoes and he also has good input himself. It was a lot of fun and I got some cheap shoes that are more like sneakers, so I wear them all the time. We also went to the book store, and the sneaky man let me buy a cookbook for a slow-cooker. I've been hoping to have a slow-cooker for a long time now. I just thought it would make my kitchen more effective and fun. Below is a picture of me with my birthday brownie (I was trying to be careful with calories, but still enjoy the day). And beside it is me with my gifts. Jason doesn't wrap presents. Nope. He kinda makes a mess and they're super easy to get into when he does wrap them. So, he let Amazon's wrapping be enough.

I got a VitaMix blender from our entire family and from Jason, and I got a slow-cooker to go with my cookbook. Both are amazing. I made fresh flour with my VitaMix the other day. About 2 lbs of flour! It's sweet! The dress I am wearing is an awesome birthday find by my mom and sister at Charming Charlie. LOVE that place. Ladies, it's organized the way we think, so only bring the money you plan to spend! It's that incredible.

 For dinner, Jason took me to Indulge Wine Bar in Golden. And they were having a party and the patio was closed and we had a long wait. Sooo....we went to Simms Landing in Lakewood. We dined on the patio and our view was spectacular!

I was completely amazed at the quality of the service, as well. Seriously, the waiters treated us like royalty. They were incredibly accommodating! The place is very well-decorated and classy. It's a really elegant place to go. And the food was amazing. Really amazing.

 We watched it get dark and our view transformed into this. It was gorgeous. We were there a long time. Behind us were lounge seats with fire pits between them so people could have more casual dining or more formal like our seating. And yet, the atmosphere was very relaxed.

 These are apparently the faces we make when we have not had wine in a long time and have a glass each. Haha. Behind me, you can kinda see the lounge seats and fire pits. Not really though. There's a bit much of a glare off of my white face!
Wine makes Jason feel suave, but it comes across like this. It was a lot of fun. Thanks, Jason!
Being able to taste everything and smell everything was well worth the month of not eating food. And I am not hungry, per se, just miss the experience of eating. My friends have noted lately that I am posting a lot of comfort food on my pinterest account and then I blog about drinking juice. Yes, it's a paradox, haha. I miss those cheesy, bread-filled dishes with pasta and meat, but I am also much happier to be losing weight and experiencing summer without the allergy overload. It's well worth it, but those of you who see me on Pinterest know what I am thinking. :) My final day of the juice fast is August 3rd. Still have a ways to go.

Some of this and a little of that

Hello! We've been a little busy around here lately. I have made no new progress on the understanding of my old fashioned (and lovely) sewing machine. But I DID get another family heirloom. My husband's parents were in town this last weekend and his mom brought a family heirloom to share with us. It's a rhubarb plant. I guess it's been in the family for several generations. It's from Illinois and belonged to my husband's great grandma. It has traveled many miles and lived a long time to make it to our house here where we've begun to baby the thing. Not expecting much off of it this summer, but hoping for a lot next year!

We also have begun to recognize the scope of the work our yard is planning to be for us....and it's a bit daunting. Our goal this year is to simply return the yard to a workable place (of course, learn a bit about gardening, too) and make it something we can start to really make positive changes to next year. This year's basically all groundwork. The video really explains it well, I think. The front yard's a bit more put together, but it needs to change a lot, too. For one, we'd really like to be the kinds of homeowners who can park their car IN a garage. It'd be cool, especially since we have massive hail storms that move through the area from time to time. Our siding is a testament to that!

I figure if each day, we make some part of this home stand up a bit straighter and shine a little more, eventually, the whole thing will come together. It's already come SO far!

We've been experimenting with pizza dough recipes, too. Found our all-time favorite, I think. It's called a stracciatella pizza crust. It's basically crispy where it should be and chewy in the middle and really pretty easy to use. We make the entire recipe and divide it into pizza-sized lumps of dough and freeze them. Best pizza dough yet, and we are kinda turning into homemade pizza officionados. I would rather make pizza than buy it for SURE. I am never disappointed by the homemade stuff any more and I know what's in it. I should be more clear, the homemade pizzas are better than anything else and I don't have to take the risk of going out and paying for something I don't really LOVE, plus, some of those really delicious pizza places charge like $3 per topping...I mean, really?! A good pizza has to have at least 5 toppings. Who wants to pay $15 JUST for toppings? Not us. So this is the new thing. My husband does the crust and I make the sauce and assemble the toppings. I love cooking with Jason, so this is quickly becoming one of my favorite meals.

Best toppings we have found for pizza: fresh (very thinly sliced) jalapenos, home-roasted red peppers, some of a fresh pineapple all cut up, fresh mozzarella (that comes in the containers with water), kalamata olives, and fresh basil when the pizza comes out of the oven. Trust me, it's amazing! A white-sauce pizza is also really amazing with some olives, artichokes, thyme, cream cheese, and pineapple. Wow, writing about pizza is making me pretty hungry. I started this post a few months ago, and now that I am smack in the middle of a juice fast, this sounds unbelievable. Well, in a month, it will be!