You never know...

Monday morning this is what it looked like outside our house:

(I feel I must point out the obvious - that it's the last week in April and it's still snowing regularly here.)

The next day this is what it looked like in our neighborhood:

(And yes, those are more elk wandering about, enjoying the day.)

Don't Try This At Home

Here's my most recent salad experiment:

Looks rather strange, right? It tasted like a fruit salad mated with some ceviche. I would say it's not for the faint of heart. Mr X and I enjoyed it but you can take that with a grain of salt because we have strange tastes in things. Mr X suggested that next time I make it I swap out the prosciutto for shrimp or even smoked salmon. I think it would be great with either of those.

Basically I made a dressing out of: olive oil, lime juice, fresh parsley, ground aniseed and grated lime peel. (The dressing was fantastic!)

Then I tossed the blueberries, fennel slices and red onion slices in the dressing and let it sit for a bit.

I put a few thin slices of prosciutto on a plate and then covered it with cubes of cantaloupe. Then I spooned the dressing/blueberry/fennel/onion mixture on top of that.

Celestial Seasonings Tour

Boulder Colorado is home to the Celestial Seasonings tea company. They make more than just tea, but tea is their main focus. Actually, herbal tea is their specialty. So I dragged Mr X with me up to the factory in Boulder to take the free tour. I love free. Before the tour starts you have to watch a short film about the company and then at the end they go through safety tips - the usual, no running or sliding (apparently the floors in the factory get covered in tea dust which makes them perfect for slipping and sliding). They also require the use of hair-nets and beard-nets from everybody entering the factory. For the first time in my life I was bummed Mr X didn't have a beard because the men in our tour that did have facial hair looked positively silly in both hair and beard -nets. Upon entering the factory I immediately noticed the incredibly strong smell of, well, herbs and flowers in the air. It smelled fantastic, though I imagine that people with allergies would HATE the tea factory. We were shown where in the world the ingredients come from (my favorite part of the tour) and then how they arrive, how they are cleaned, sifted and chopped. And then we saw how they were packaged. We were also taken to the peppermint room (my second favorite part of the tour). The peppermint has to be kept separate from all of the other tea ingredients because the smell and taste is so strong that it contaminates everything with which it comes in contact with. Our tour guide explained that they originally had kept the peppermint room right next to the other rooms but the next thing they knew, all of their tea flavors had a decidedly minty taste to them. So now they keep the peppermint in a double-walled room with empty rooms next two it because even double-walled the flavor oozes out. We were allowed to enter the peppermint room and it actually almost hurts to breath in there. It clears out your sinuses and makes your eyes water. Oh and for the rest of the day you smell like mint. I liked that part.

After the tour was over, Mr X and I went to the sampling room to sample all sorts of interesting teas. Then we perused the gifts shop breifly before we were on our way. It was an interesting tour and I enjoyed it, though it's definitely not something I'd want to do twice.

(Note: Celestial Seasonings didn't allow us to take photos of the factory so I didn't bother to bring my camera. These photos were swiped from the Celestial Seasonings website.)