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Feb 24
Love0

Canyon Country Solitaire

By Adventures, Travel
For what feels like eons, I’ve been trying to get someone to take my picture.

Handing a DSLR camera to a stranger is like giving a toddler a Rubik’s cube and expecting success. I’m desperate enough to offer someone my cracked iPhone. It met its fractured fate a week prior as I dashed out of the camper van to snap a mind-blowing sunset on The Trail of the Ancients Scenic Byway.

I decide, instead, to hold out for a particularly advanced toddler.

It smells like desert rain from the late-morning monsoon, the first spring precipitation on my three-week trip to San Juan County. After weeks filled with solitude, I am finally surrounded by people. Gobs and gobs of tourists.

Monument Valley’s iconic Mittens touch the clouds behind me; I hear people speaking Mandarin, Dutch, Japanese and German. The sweet sounds of my native tongue are nary to be heard. English isn’t even the second language during high season in Southern Utah. For someone who has travelled the globe, I can get by with charades-like gestures. But that doesn’t work for communicating the camera-tech nuances of focus
and composition.

After the third tourist’s attempt at taking my picture, I concede: good enough. Probably 10 dozen tourists board open-air jalopies for the noon tour of the valley, and two unrelated things leap to mind: What would John Wayne think of Monument Valley now that it’s become Desert Disneyland? Second, I’m starving.

Across the state line, back in Utah, folks flock to Goulding’s Lodge for the famous dish (beans and taco fixings piled atop fry bread). I wish I liked Navajo tacos—even a little bit. The real treat here, however, is Goulding’s Trading Post Museum.

Inside, I find a trading post, a throwback to when it sold provisions in the 1920s and 1930s, along with movie memorabilia and posters—from John Wayne-John Ford’s classic The Searchers to Back to the Future III. If trading post owner John Goulding hadn’t lured Hollywood to the area way back when, I might not be here.

Despite devouring cinematic history lessons, my hunger has not subsided. The Swingin Steak beckons. A family-run joint at the Mexican Hat Lodge, this is where you get your beef fix. Fat, juicy steaks are cooked over an open fire on a grill that, you guessed it, swings back-and-forth.

But this isn’t a culinary tour of the Four Corners. There are plenty of other travel destinations for high-brow (or even dive-y) noshing. We travel to Canyon Country for the canyons.

Mexican Hat sits at the end of a 26-mile float trip on the San Juan River. The murky brown waterway takes its color from silt deposits and only runs clear in the winter before snowmelt. A few days ago, I hopped a boat near Bluff and snaked through the monstrous river-cut canyons with Wild Rivers Expeditions,.

While craning my neck to see the top of the canyon walls, our guide Luis, a resident Navajo , filled us in on the local lore, the story of the land. We made little side-trips to spots like Butler Wash, where a short hike took us to one of the biggest and most pristine collections of petroglyphs in the Southwest. The region is replete with ruins.

Natural Bridges National Monument

We explored River House Ruin, a well-preserved cliff dwelling. The famous House on Fire is my next stop, and a must. Good luck getting the same answer twice from a local on the best time to visit the ruin to photograph it illuminated by reflected sunlight. Every person offers a different time.

You can’t walk 100 yards without tripping over remnants of the ancients in San Juan County. It’s a mysterious window into the past. Anthropologists say Grand Gulch had more residents 600 years ago than today’s population of the entire Four Corners area.

After ruin peeping (and missing the House actually on Fire), I head to Natural Bridges State Park.

At one point in every wanderer’s life, he falls in love with a park ranger—wind-swept hair, thoughtful eyes that peer over romantic vistas, who wears her beige and iconic hat with confidence. It’s all there. My itinerary is set, but I linger just to hear Azure (made-up name) talk a bit more. “Will you be leading the educational stargazing seminar tonight?” No, she says. Sigh.

Aside from its three landmark bridges—Kachina, Owachomo, and Sipapu—Natural Bridges is known for its view of shimmering balls of nighttime light, and in 2007, it was the nation’s first International Dark Sky Park, certified by the International Dark-Sky Association. Yes, a truly milky Milky Way, vivid scenery and massive stone bridges make a memorable package at this forgotten park.

One tourist asks the surprisingly common question: “Where is the dark-sky part of the park?” It’s everywhere, my friend. What San Juan County offers is sagebrush and solitude. He leaves and I look up at the stars.

Resources

Goulding’s Lodge and Goulding’s Trading Post Museum, 1000 Main Street, Monument Valley, 435-727-3231

Swingin Steak, 163 Main Ave., Mexican Hat, 435-683-2222

Wild Rivers Expeditions, 2625 S. Hwy. 191, Bluff, 435-672-2244

Natural Bridges National Monument, PO Box 1, Blanding, UT

Feb 24
Love0

Single in the City

By City Watch, Lifestyle
Courtship has changed through the years. Or has it?

 

What is Dating?

Adam, a 30-something professional, posed this as a serious question recently.

“When are you allowed to say that?” he continued. “When are you dating? When are you friends-with-benefits? When are you just sleeping together and not even friends-with-benefits? It has come to the point where people ask me ‘Are you two dating’ and I saw, ‘I don’t know.’ I say, ‘We’re hanging out,’ because that seems to be the failsafe answer.”

“There are no boundaries,” sighed Adam. It is Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdomeout there.” Adam isn’t alone in his frustration with modern courtship. Single Utahns in the thousands are desperately trying to find love or something that passes for it in a strange new landscape.

 

Dating in the 21st century is hard, even in tradition-bound Utah. Meet someone at a bar, a coffee shop or through friends or at church? No more. It’s all online and through phone applications now. What used to be a fairly straightforward mating game has become far more complicated and nuanced digital cat-and-mouse game.

Swipe left. Swipe right. Wink. Like. Match. Message. Poke. Be charming. Be smart (but not too smart!). Flirt (but don’t act like a slut!). Be agreeable, but have opinions (not too many opinions, am I right, ladies?). And gentlemen, please be at least 6-foot-1 with a six pack. Ladies, make sure you’ve got a yoga butt and perfect hair. Isn’t dating fun? No pressure, everyone!

And even as dating apps congratulate themselves on having blended the human rainbow, sites pop up prism-like to subdivide Utahns into Jewish singles, Christian singles, Mormon singles, elite singles, farmer singles, single-parent singles—even a Utah-based white singles site.

 

But what app developers promote as the best of times for singles is becoming the worst of times for couples. Once you’re past the initial meeting and seeing each other on the regular, things should get easier. Everything should fall into place; a routine should begin. Ordinarily, you’d be in a romance, or at least a “relationship.”

But, when the entire dating population of the city is still at your literal fingertips, you wonder. Is someone better just a swipe away? Authentic relationships are rare as everyone keeps looking for the next best thing.

And, to Adam’s question, what defines “dating” these days? Like everything else with courtship and sex, it’s a bit of a negotiation.

“When you go out and have dinner with a woman and then you go back to her place and have sex, I would think that constitutes a date,” says a Salt Lake high school teacher. “I was doing that with one woman for three months, but she insisted we weren’t dating.”

Linda, a petite social worker, puts it bluntly: “If I’m sleeping with you, I might not be dating you. But if I’m not sleeping with you, I’m definitely not dating you.”

 

In Victorian times, courtship was strictly regulated with comforting rules for both sexes such as: “No physical touch is to be permitted between the sexes before marriage, excepting a gentleman offering his hand on an uneven road.” The 1990’s had so many dating rules that women turned to a book, simply titled, The Rules. Advice within included: “Don’t accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday,” and “Don’t call him and rarely return his calls.” The Rules, such as they were, were simple: Be coy, coquettish, play hard to get and you will land the Big Fish. (Note to men: In this scenario, you are a dimwitted fish to be hooked.)

But the dating landscape has evolved drastically in the last two decades. With the advent of smart phones and texting, it’s easy—and often expected—to be in constant communication with your partner. But how soon after meeting a new someone do you text? How soon after a date? Should you mark time after a text arrives before responding to it, or risk looking needy? After all, you’re a busy person doing very important things—definitely not checking your phone every five minutes, right? And if he or she doesn’t text you back, well, you’re obviously a hideous monster. Or they’re dead. It could go either way.

“Nobody knows what the new rules are,” says Dr. Claudia Geist, a sociology professor at the University of Utah. “Because there are no clear rules.” Oh well, that clears it up.

And is it true that we’re all just jumping in bed with each other all the time? Well, yes and no. And is that a bad thing? Again, yes and no. “The shift in gender relations has made it much easier for women to own their sexual agency,” Geist says. Hooray!

But wait! Geist warns there’s still the same old double standard in the way women who sleep around are treated compared to men with the same behavior. And, she says, “one of the things we don’t know yet is the link between casual sex and relationships.” In other words: Researchers don’t yet know if we are entering lasting relationships with people we’re having sex with or if casual sex is even conducive to healthy relationships at all.

So, will he still respect you in the morning? The data is inconclusive.

 

Jon Birger, author of Date-onomics, sees things a bit differently. He told Salt Lake magazine the current dating revolution is happening because there are more women than men on the market (It’s woefully out of balance for Mormons, page 80). Right now there are more college-educated women than there are men and, Birger says, people like to date within their socio-economic class. When the male-to-female ratio is out of balance in species from penguins to people, evolution pushes everyone into promiscuity.

Birger says it’s no coincidence that the Roaring Twenties came on the heels of World War I casualties—resulting in a shortage of young men. Nevertheless, a Georgia judge blamed the party era on the automobile, a “house of Prostitution on wheels.”

In other words, society will always skip a complex issue of biological imperatives to blame the latest technology for anything seen as moral slippage. Birger argues the current state of dating probably isn’t the fault of the iPhone or Tinder—it’s just 21st Century socio-economic gender imbalances.

Dating has always been hard. Dating in the digital world is insane. Read more about #dating here:

Illustrations by Savvy Jensen

Feb 24
Love0

Mating While Mormon

By Lifestyle

When Barbie Berg moved to Salt Lake City, she expected a different dating scene than she was used to as a Colorado Mormon. What the 35-year-old didn’t was how different: “The first week I moved here, I remember thinking I had stumbled into the land of models who happened to be LDS,” recalls Berg. “The women were tall, strikingly beautiful and incredibly put together.”

And there were so many of them. Berg was assigned to worship at a congregation of more than 800 members—all of them single. Her ward, made up exclusively of unmarried men and women ages 31 to 35, reflects the demographics of Utah Mormons: a ratio of two women to every man, according to a Trinity College study.

This can create a “kid in a candy store” mentality for the men of Mormonism, as Brock, a divorced LDS male in his 30’s (who asked for a pseudonym), described it. With so many single women in the faith, Brock says each potential mate he meets seems better than the last. When asked what “better” meant—Prettier? Younger? More spiritual?—Brock answers: “Sure.”

It’s a phenomenon. Berg has experienced firsthand: “Men I met couldn’t concentrate on making a connection with one woman because everywhere he looked there were different options. I’ve had multiple experiences where a guy would approach me to chat, and within 30 seconds, he was breaking eye contact and looking over my shoulder every time someone new came in. It was like the entire singles scene had been taken over by FOMO [Fear of Mission Out] syndrome.”

Though some Mormon women cast a net outside of their church’s dating pool, a partner in the faith is still a priority for the majority of Latter-Day Saints. To tip the odds in their favor, some women step up their dating game by calling in reinforcements. LDS Matchmaker, a Salt Lake dating service with a deep Rolodex of vetted, marriage-minded LDS singles, has seen an increase in the number of clients taking advantage of services such as relationship coaching or makeovers from a team of stylists.

“We think of ourselves as a “personal trainer” when it comes to love,” says Kristin Sokol of LDS Matchmaker. “It’s typical for someone to hire a trainer to help them overcome the odds when it comes to health, fitness and weightloss. We think it makes sense to hire an expert to help overcome whatever odds you feel are stacked against you when it comes to dating and finding love.”

But all the coaching and hairspray in the world can’t overcome a woman’s biggest obstacle in securing a dinner invitation: the guy’s cold feet.

“Dating itself is not horribly complicated, but people overthink it. They think a date is more than a date. Men get scared to ask women out because they are worried the girl will assume they are automatically getting married,” Berg says, laughing. “A first date should be just that—a first date!”

Though the two-to-one ratio creates a certain scarcity in the Salt Lake dating scene, Berg says there’s little, if any, hostility between LDS women: “I am not a competitive dater. My goal when I go out is not to get the most men or to look better than other women. Seriously, the majority of single women I have met here are gorgeous, intelligent, have great careers and are well-educated. If guys need more than that to be interested, they might need to get their heads examined.”

Dating has always been hard. Dating in the digital world is insane. Read more about #dating here:

Illustrations by Savvy Jensen

Feb 24
Love0

Coloring Outside the Lines

By Arts & Culture

The handwritten sign over James Bennion’s office at Harmons Bangerter Crossing reads “La Artista.” As he steps out, he’s immediately greeted by a coworker with a request: Can he make a sign for the cooking school? One with a life-size drawing of Julia Child?

Bennion is one of 10 chalk artists employed by Harmons Grocery, a Utah-based chain with nearly 20 locations. His job is simple, but vital to Harmons’ emphasis on local products: Add unique signs to accompany unique groceries. Each Harmons displays upwards of 800 signs.

Taylor Hellewell is Harmons Grocery Emigration Sign Artist

“We ‘re really able to make products stand out. The creativity is up to us, and the sky’s the limit,” says Bennion of Harmons’ artists. From the store’s second-floor cafe, Bennion points out the seafood section’s five-foot-long chalk image of a polar bear stalking fish. Like many of the hundreds of signs in any given Harmons, the polar bear creates a sense of unique place and demonstrates that signs go beyond  pricing and description.

“Food in itself has a world of depth and variety that a printed vinyl sign has a hard time expressing,” says Bob Harmon, Vice President for the Customer and Harmons co-owner. A sign with a photorealistic image of a product and machine-made lettering sometimes falls short, Harmon says. But a hand-drawn fisherman’s boat or a polar bear on seafood signs or something humorous for no apparent reason—a scene from Star Wars on a Caffe Ibis coffee display, add personality and attract eyes.

James Bennion

Chalk as a medium creates a sense of the temporary, connoting freshness. The signs, made with chalk markers on blackboard, average between two to four hours to complete. (The polar bear took two days.) “When you look at our signs, you can tell someone is delivering art personally, from themselves, to you. It means a lot,” Harmon says. The company’s first chalk artist was hired in 2008, and all artists are salaried employees with full benefits—a rarity in the art world.

“This type of expression feels more tangible and real, and offers more breadth and clarity,” Harmon says. “It also helps us differentiate ourselves from our competitors.”

HarmonsGrocery.com

Feb 24
Love0

A Lid for Every Pot: A Field Guide to Utah Dating Fauna

By Lifestyle
Dating. Yuck. Dating in Utah? Weird. Yes. Weird.

Meet the Utah Guys

Peter Pan

  • The forever man-child who hangs out exclusively with a crew of “bros” while indulging in adrenaline-junkie playdates: mountain biking, backcountry skiing and snowboarding, motocross and, of course, Olympic-class drinking. Pete vacillates between wanting to spend all his time with his buddies, and including a cute girl into the mix, only to back-pedal the second she shows any interest. He lives with roommates.

Smooth Operator

  • He’s got all the moves and he knows how to use them. This guy is fully aware that he’s playing Russian dating roulette and he’s not about to lose. His dates are extravagant and the girls seem handpicked from ABC’s The Bachelor—but his season never ends. His phone is constantly buzzing with mysterious texts and when you sneak a peek, his contacts are organized by his first name and online dating app—”Jane Tinder” or “Susan OKCupid.”

Lumbersexual

  • This metrosexual dons plaid everything and has a collection of moisturizing beard waxes special-ordered from his boutique barber: He wears a skinny jeans, drinks Bulletproof coffee, hangs out at Bar X, and sports tattoos of ’70s retro cartoons, American-Indian symbology or Chinese characters he pretends to know the meaning of. He doesn’t recreate much outside of clipping his bonsai trees or puffing on flavored e-cigarettes while listening to NPR.

Mountain Man

  • On your first date, he takes you on a full-moon snowshoe hike to a yurt where he cooks you a meal over an open fire. His every activity involves extended periods sleeping under the stars, foraging for food and not showering for days on end. If you aren’t sweating, it isn’t fun. At any given time, the back and roof of his Subaru Outback holds skis, climbing gear, a kayak, fly fishing equipment, a camp stove, sleeping bag and, if you’re special, toilet paper.

Sad Dad

  • He talks a little too much about his children and still checks with his ex-wife before making plans. It’s obvious he hasn’t been out in a while because, in his mind, dinner and a movie are still the only real dates. He wants to settle down and be in a committed relationship, but he has intimacy issues stemming from his frigid ex-wife’s refusal, for reasons still unknown to him, to have sex. Finding time for a new relationship between soccer practice, dance recitals, piano and ski team is nearly impossible.

The Horndog

  • He’s just in it for the sex, and he’s not keeping it a secret. His opening line when you connect online is, “Hey, what are you wearing tonight?” His profile photos include pictures of him surfing, riding a motorcycle, petting a tiger and posing with a hot girl he claims is his sister. He works in marketing or advertising and drives a jacked-up truck with chrome wheels. Dates start and end at his place—where he has a basket full of condoms on his bedside table and disposable toothbrushes in his bathroom vanity.

Meet the Utah Girls

City Slicker

  • Despite Utah being basically a basecamp for outdoor activities, this princess eschews them all, preferring instead to shop at city Creek, get her nails replaced every two weeks and hit the spa to gossip with her girlfriends. Her hair is amazing, her makeup is impeccable, her clothes are the latest style and she drives a killer car. She doesn’t ski, bike, hike or camp, but she will do a number on your credit card at Nordstrom.

Husband Trap

  • She is sweet, agreeable, fun . . . and just wants to move in and spawn babies after five dates. Don’t be surprised if you invite her over for dinner and she shows up with a bag of toiletries, a cute nightie and her favorite pillow. She drops the “L” bomb with reckless abandon and posts photos of couple activities all over social media, calling you her bae. She gets angry if you don’t respond to her texts immediately and accuses you of ignoring her.

Rad Chick

  • She shreds, she swears, she hangs with the boys. Hell, she is as cool or cooler than the boys. The sassy female equivalent of the “Mountain Man” is all active, all outdoors, all the time. On any given weekend, she is tearing up the ski hill after a morning hot yoga session and bouldering indoors in the afternoon before hitting the trails for a quick six-mile run. Keep up, boys, or keep going.

Man Eater

  • This lady is hungry and she ain’t afraid to show it. She’ll proposition anything with a pulse and begins exchanges with sultry [she hopes] invitations like, “Cum meet me tonight.” Subtlety is not her strong suit. She believes flirting involves beating a man over the head with her overt sexuality. She might also boast decade-old ‘bait and switch” photos from more svelt days in her online dating quiver.

Alpha Girl

  • This no-nonsense girl gets sh*t done. She is put together, knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it with 110 percent of her energy. Not one for sitting around, this A-type personality would rather make her own fun than wait for it to come to her. She is most definitely a lawyer, banker, real-estate agent or works for a large tech firm. And she didn’t get ahead by sleeping her way to the top. She outsmarted all the other men in her way—storming her way through life while opening car doors and pulling seats out for herself. She’s very lonely.

Child Bride

She got hitched when she was barely legal, had kids and realized in her mid-thirties that she didn’t know who she married or who she is, for that matter. Now, she’s sowing overdue wild oats and, creepily, looking for a father-figure for both her and her children. Exhibits characteristics of Husband Trap and Man Eater, but is on a path of self-discovery that involves binge drinking and meeting up with MILF friends at da club.

Dating has always been hard. Dating in the digital world is insane. Read more about #dating here:

Feb 18
Love0

Deer Valley Music Festival Schedule Announced

By Music
Utah Symphony has announced the line-up for the 2016 Deer Valley Music Festival. With everything from kid movie scores to David Bowie and The B-52’s to bluegrass tunes, there is a little something for everyone this year.

The venue, a BYOB outdoor stage positioned on a hillside at Deer Valley Resort, is a must-visit in Utah summers, especially since you can count on a lovely temperature drop in Park City when traveling from Salt Lake.

Subscription, group, and VIP tickets are on sale now. A local sale for residents of Summit and Wasatch County residents will take place on April 2, 2016 from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Park City Utah Visitor Information Center. Concert tickets for the general public will go on sale on April 5, 2016 at 10 a.m. Call 801-533-6683 or online at deervalleymusicfestival.org. There are reserved seats and lawn seats available.

 

Patriotic Celebration with Broadway’s Doug LeBrecque and the Utah Symphony
July 2, 2016 (Saturday) | 7:30 p.m.

Rock On! Hits from the 70s and 80s with the Utah Symphony
July 8, 2016 (Friday) | 7:30 p.m.

The B-52s live with the Utah Symphony
July 9, 2016 (Saturday) | 7:30 p.m.

Under the Streetlamp with the Utah Symphony
July 15, 2016 (Friday) | 7:30 p.m

Matthew Morrison with the Utah Symphony
July 16, 2016 (Saturday) | 7:30 p.m.

A Rodgers & Hammerstein Celebration & Singalong with the Utah Symphony
July 22, 2016 (Friday) | 7:30 p.m.

The Music of David Bowie with the Utah Symphony
July 23, 2016 (Saturday) | 7:30 p.m.

DreamWorks Animation in Concert with the Utah Symphony
July 29, 2016 (Friday) | 7:30 p.m.

Steep Canyon Rangers with the Utah Symphony
July 30, 2016 (Saturday) | 7:30 p.m.

Feb 17
Love0

Dining Awards Success

By Eat & Drink
Face it: “Best” is a moving target, especially when it comes to the restaurant business. There are so many variables. Chefs and servers come and go. Menus change for the better or worse. Businesses expand too quickly. A concept gets stuck in a rut as food trends evolve. People get tired, cooks get bored and diners get jaded.

And attaining excellence in the restaurant business means more than serving great food. The great food must be served graciously and knowledgeably in a pleasant if not delightful space. These days, there’s an additional requirement: Food must be sourced conscientiously and carefully.

So, even though some restaurants have achieved excellence so many times we have named them to our Hall of Fame, it’s a bumpy road to the top. One year a restaurant may peak; the next year it’s in the middle of the pack. After careful review and much discussion, here’s our list of the Utah restaurants that hit the top in 2015.

 

Winners (in alphabetical order):

Alamexo

Current Fish & Oyster

Del Mar al Lago

Frida Bistro

Forage

Handle

J. Wong Thai & Chinese Bistro

Manoli’s

Naked Fish Japanese Bistro

Pallet Bistro

Pizzeria 712

Provision

Sea Salt

Stoneground Italian Kitchen

The Paris Bistro

Tin Angel Café

Tosh’s Ramen

Tupelo

Hall of Famers:

Aristo’s

Hell’s Backbone Grill

Log Haven

Mazza

Red Iguana

Squatters Pub Brewery

Takashi

SLC’s most delicious food is calling your name. What are you waiting for? Start dining!

For more coverage of the 2016 Dining Awards, click here. 

Feb 16
Love0

Idomeneo

By Arts & Culture, Music
Idomeneo doesn’t have the performance history in the United States that many of Mozart’s other operas do. But it’s nevertheless an exquisite work that goes far beyond the confines of opera seria and shows Mozart’s innate genius for bringing emotional depth, passion and subtle characterizations to his stage works.

Local opera lovers had a rare opportunity to see Mozart’s 1781 masterpiece last week when the University of Utah’s Lyric Opera Ensemble and the Paradigm Chamber Orchestra joined forces once again and collaborated in the Utah premiere of Idomeneo. The costumed and staged production was under the baton of Joel Rosenberg, and stage director Anthony Buck made good use of the limited physical resources in Libby Gardner Concert Hall in his well conceived and executed staging.

For years, Robert Breault’s opera ensemble has been a remarkable pool of young talent. And year in and year out, these versatile singers haven’t disappointed, no matter what they’ve performed. And they certainly outdid themselves in many ways with Idomeneo.

The story of Idomeneo takes place in Crete immediately after the Trojan War and deals with Idomeneo’s dilemma after vowing to sacrifice the first person he sees upon his safe arrival home, not knowing, of course, that it would be his son Idamante who first greets him.

The leads were double cast. At Friday’s show, David Sauer gave a thoughtful account of the title character. His singing and acting brought depth to his role. He has a fine voice that’s well suited to Mozart; he brought lyricism and, when needed, power to his portrayal.

No less impressive was Kelly Southworth as Idamante. She imbued her characterization with heartfelt sincerity. She, too, possesses a voice that is made for Mozart, and her singing Friday was expressive and tempered with finely crafted lyricism.

Whitney Kimball, as the Trojan princess Ilia, was also in fine voice, singing with clarity and wonderfully drawn phrasings.

Particularly impressive was Daysha Lassiter in the role of Elettra. She has a dramatic voice with power and depth that is also gorgeously expressive. And her acting talent is on the same level as her vocal chops. She gave a stunning and memorable portrayal that truly stood out.

The large chorus was also magnificent, and added much to the overall success of the production, as did Garrett Medlock, Keanu Netzler and Seth Keeton in minor roles.

The Paradigm Chamber Orchestra had another fine outing, playing with clarity and depth.

idomeneo_(whitney_kimball)

Feb 11
Love0

NOT my recipe, but a Valentine from Leslie Nielson

By Eat & Drink

Many years ago, Lesli Neilson was a food editor at Salt Lake Tribune and she edited my restaurant reviews. We had a lot of fun (the things we said were more amusing than the stuff that got printed) and have both gone on to other things. But, as foodies do, we have kept up. She is working with Harmons now and just posted this great short video of how to make an easy chocolate Valentine cake. I’m going to make it this weekend and thought you might like to, too. Thanks. Lesli!

 

-Mary Brown Malouf

Feb 08
Love0

Mary’s Recipe: Asparagus Tips

By Eat & Drink

Daffodils and asparagus—sure signs that winter is on its way out.

Some prefer thick spears, some prefer thin—we like both, and white asparagus, too. Because asparagus is one of the few vegetables that intensifies the taste called umami, it pairs well with proteins and makes a terrific base for a first course or luncheon dish. To help make asparagus part of your springtime celebrations, we offer four easy-to-make recipes guaranteed to help you herald the season in very good taste.

crabby-asparagus

Crabby Asparagus  

Dress asparagus with a lemon vinaigrette and arrange on plate. Mix 1 cup lump crabmeat with 1/2–3/4 cup mayonnaise, 3 tablespoons chopped green onion and the grated zest of one lemon. Season with salt and white pepper. Top asparagus spears with crab salad and garnish with a lemon slice.

bacon-asparagus

Bacon Asparagus  

Make a vinaigrette combining one part rice wine vinegar with three parts canola oil. Dress the asparagus in the vinaigrette and arrange on the plate. Cross two slices of cooked bacon on top of asparagus spears on each plate and sprinkle with sliced toasted almonds. (For a supper dish, top with a poached or fried egg.)

pink-asparagus

Pink Asparagus  

Fold 3–4 tablespoons of tomato paste into 1 cup of whipped cream. Season with a pinch of smoked paprika. Place a dollop of tomato cream on asparagus and scatter with a handful of halved grape tomatoes.

asparagus-nicoise1

Asparagus Nicoise    

Dress asparagus with vinaigrette and arrange on the plate. For each serving, slice small boiled red-skinned new potatoes and arrange around asparagus. Scatter with whole or sliced black olives, a tablespoon of chopped scallions and 1/2 of a hardboiled egg, chopped.

Photos by Adam Finkle

-Mary Brown Malouf