Our traditional Christmas-time lunch with the Gorskis took place on Dec. 30th this year, with friends and family old and new attending. Left to right, in there back row is Naomi, Liam, Nadia, Dave, Miles, John, Annette, Eric, and in front, Amber, Ben, Sylvie and Will. Our guinea pigs Mr. T and Speedy didn’t make it into the photo but they got a lot of attention and vegetables from all the kids! They can be seen here. For lunch, we had falafel sandwiches with hummus and Jerusalem salad from Sultan’s Market, with coffee, mimosas and a stout that Eric brought…

The contents of the pan are under pressure, lots of it! John got a pressure cooker and is making garlic confit. Earlier today he boiled black beans in 12 minutes. That’s down from 90 minutes in a conventional pot! The close up shows the spring valve with marker lines to indicate the contents are under pressure.

John doesn’t let a little snow stop him from running errands, here he is suited up to cycle to farmer’s pride for some avocados!

After arriving home late on Sunday night (at midnight for Liam and me, since we spent a lot of quality time in the Dallas airport due to delays on Sunday), we decided to open presents on Monday morning. As Miles said, it would be a better Christmas morning experience. Santa, the elves and family were very nice to us! Santa brought the gift of molecular gastronomy to our house this year, with a cooking kit for Liam and Miles and a mixology kit for John. Santa also heard that Miles outgrew his pajamas and brought him some University of Chicago…

There are lots of day trips from Paonia to take. You can ski at nearby Powderhorn but we chose not to do that because we had already been skiing. Instead, we drove to a great sledding hill at Grand Mesa park. The hill was pretty intense — I went down just once and got at least a snow cone worth of shaved ice in my face, formed as I dragged my boots on the ground in front of me in an attempt to slow down! Our sledding group, with John, Liam, Miles, Art and Amelia. It’s hard to resist taking…

Paonia is a real center for people doing interesting artisinal work, and we were very lucky to get some insight into this world through Art and Erin’s friends. One day we visited their friend Oogie’s Black Welsh Mountain Sheep farm, called Desert Weyr. Oogie showed us all around, starting with the girls’ dormitories   and the boys’ dormitories Oogie breeds this variety of sheep and, as an computer engineer by training, creating an app called LambTracker that will allow them, and other sheep farmers, to manage data about the flock much easier. She also shears the sheep and spins the…

We sat down and had a discussion today, and yep, we’re finally ready to admit it: Liam is by far the better of our two sons. It wasn’t even really a contest. Our judging was based upon height, odor, beard growth ability and many other factors.

We’ve gotten a lot of snow on the past few days and it’s very pretty and untouched in the backyard. Following Colette’s model of taking a photo with my phone then posting it right away, here’s a view from our upstairs. The second photo looks like we threw a party and only the snow arrived!

After leaving Telluride, we drove north and east through mountains and desert mesas to arrive at our friends the Wisehart’s home in Paonia. It was great to see them! We arrived on Christmas Day and spent the next several days hanging out and getting to know their new home and meeting their friends, eating and drinking many local specialties and generally catching up. From the room that John, Miles and I were in, the floor to ceiling windows gave a quite amazing view. In the morning when the sun came up over the mountains, this is what I informally called…

After getting adjusted to the altitude and reminding ourselves how to ski, we all had a great time skiing in Telluride. The mountain is really varied with a lot of beautiful green and blue (beginner and intermediate) slopes even way high up the mountain where it’s quieter and the views are amazing. Once we figured out how to use the funicular from our apartment to the slopes, we were really quite the pros at skiing in and out. Here are some photos showing how we would end a day of skiing. First, we’d ski down a particular run, the Lower…