cottage cooking

Mr. Tart and I spent this past weekend in between Lyons and Estes Park, Colorado, escaping to spend some time by ourselves at the end of my spring break. We went snowshoeing up by Bear Lake on Saturday, but otherwise were blissfully unproductive. As the little half-cottage by the river that we rented had a kitchenette, I prepared many of our meals in advance to save on the costs of eating out. (Though we did stop at--quelle horreur!--MacDonalds on our way down the mountain because we were craving French fries after tromping around in the snow.)

Somehow even simple foods like bagels with cream cheese and salmon taste better in front of a fireplace. Soupe au Pistou (vegetable soup with pesto, courtesy of my new cookbook Barefoot in Paris, a surprise from my Uncle Steve) is perfect on a cold Friday night after a dip in the hot tub. Scrambled eggs with turkey sausage one morning, followed by scrambled eggs with salmon the next. Most of the foods, in fact, did double duty on this trip; the champagne, for example, was romantic when we arrived, but just plain fun in our orange juice the following morning. And as Friday was St. Patrick's Day (and I'm Irish, and we love cheese), I made a point of bringing an aged Irish cheddar to nibble on in between meals and to add to the scrambled eggs.

You can't get too fancy with a hot plate and a toaster, but we didn't need fancy. We had cheese and soup and fish and tea and snow and river sounds, and we were content.