I had been wanting to make some good flatbread or crackers to use under various crostini-like toppings. So I dug around and found a recipe by Mark Bittman that was pretty close. I modified it a bit, and I’ve made it several times. Here goes:

Basically, you put the first five ingredients in a food processor. Blend it a bit, adding water as needed. Get it so it sticks together, but in small pieces.

Roll it out very thin with a rolling pin, using extra whole wheat flour to keep it from sticking. Roll it down pretty thin – I try to get it under 1/4″ – even 1/8″. Then sprinkle it with good coarse sea salt (and some cracked pepper too, if you like), roll lightly over that to get the salt part way into the dough.

Use a pizza peel or similar. Once the dough in on the floured peel, score it with a dull knife so that it can break along those lines after it’s baked. Finally, bake on a pizza stone at 400 degrees for about ten minutes.

The best two toppings I made were a white bean purée with balsamic vinegar dribbled on top, and sauteéd greens and onions with chevré on top.

I can’t believe I didn’t get a picture, because they looked great! Next time . . .

I wrote first about our trip to Telluride, then about dinner in Telluride, and for my final post about the trip, here’s the skinny on lunch.

La Tapatia – The taco truck in town, about four blocks up Colorado from Oak, near the Ace Hardware. Living in LA, I get pretty good Mexican food, but this place is really, really solid. Everything I had, I’d recommend. Great for lunch if the weather is decent. We even got a whole mess of burritos for the plane ride home. The chicken is a stew, the veggies are full of real veggies, and the fish is freshly fried. Good stuff.

Fat Alley BBQ – Totally walkable from the ski runs, even in ski boots. It’s just a little up Oak Street from the bottom of the gondola and Chair 8. Great ribs and fries, but be sure to get the pulled pork sandwich. It’s huge, and it comes with cole slaw on it, plus a side (I went with the black beans and spinach, which I also enjoyed). My wife doesn’t eat meat, but even she did well there thanks to their supply of side orders.

Las Montañas – With no research at all (unlike me – I’m usually pretty good about digging around for restaurants when I travel, which, I guess, is why I write posts like this) we happened upon this place, just walking down Colorado. It was a good find. The chef here knows his stuff, and the place has a good vibe. We got an appetizer plate with queso fundido with chorizo (great), crab stuffed peppers (supposed to be spicy, and totally mild, but OK anyway) and I forget what the third item was, so it can’t have been that remarkable. The fundido was the star, along with my posole. Also, great chips and salsas. Can’t comment on the margaritas – as badly as I wanted one, I was skiing more that day and it didn’t seem prudent.

Some final restaurant notes are that if you need to eat lunch in Mountain Village, you should head to 9545 (gourmet-ish food in relatively small portions) or to Poachers (decent bar food – greasy and edible). Neither is as good as town, but they’re fine. Stay far, far away from the Crazy Elk pizza place. Tracks is OK, but just very mediocre. Coffee is pretty decent at the Telluride Coffee Company up there, and in town, the Steaming Bean makes good java, with a good attitude.

When I wrote about dinner restaurants in Telluride, I forgot one place. I shall now rectify that mistake.

La Marmotte – I’m thinking that I probably forgot about this place because the food really wasn’t too memorable. But I sure remembered it when I looked at my credit card bill – it was the most expensive restaurant we ate at in Telluride (although probably close to Allred’s). This is a French restaurant with a prix fixeé menu. I think the initial cost was $40, which seems reasonable, until you start with the supplements. All in all, the food was fine, although I really can’t recommend the fish dishes. Uniformly, at our table, the meat and foul dishes were far better than the fish, as lackluster as they actually were. I would also say that the desserts were pretty unimpressive. But they do have a good wine list, and they do have Chimay, so all was not lost.

If you read the other post, you’ll know that I spent a week in Telluride with eight members of my family. As with any trip, one of the most important aspects is the food. I’m a little amazed to say, the food in Telluride is outstanding. Like any tourist destination, there are some serious traps in there, but if you avoid the potholes, you’ll eat really well.

On the first night, we asked the concierge where to go for dinner. What’s with these guys? Do they get payoffs from the least interesting, most expensive restaurants around? Why are they never reliable? Why are the places they recommend so sterile? So the guy (who was later driving the shuttle bus) recommended La Piazza which was nothing to write home about (you get the vibe about how lame this place is from their contrived website). Just to give you a hint of the tenor of the place, I asked for a Dolcetto on the wine list. “Sorry, sir, we’re out of that one. We do have this one” with a point to a wine far, far down the list. I asked for another wine, between the two, and was answered with a grin, “Ah, no, that is out also. Again, we do have this one.” First night of the vaca, so I took it. So much for that place, and the concierge. I hope he got his cut from the wine choice. I probably should make sure they didn’t rip him off too.

OK – our fault – concierges are useless, at least anyplace where you speak the language. To prove it, the food we’ve had since then has been truly exceptional. Not just on a vacation-in-a-small-town-in-Colorado way, but in a real, world-class way. Maybe not the French Laundry, but really comfortable, delicious, innovative food served in great surroundings with easy, friendly service.

Cosmopolitan – In the Columbia hotel, in the town. Inspired American food (maybe really Californian food) with a big reliance on the meat of the West, but also with flown in seafood. I had three lobster corndogs that were great. We’re going back for seconds.

Second trip: the beignets were amazing! Lemony and light – really ideal! Funny enough, we had those at the next place too . . .

221 South Oak – Probably the best of the trip, and we consider than an honor given the other meals. In an old house in town, with a separate menu full of veggie options, there was no bad place on the table. Again, really great service (how do these places get good waiters in a seasonal vacation town?) paired with delicious food made for a memorable evening.

The Beignets at 221 South Oak

Allred’s – This place is on the mountain, at the gondola stop between town and Mountain Village. We’d heard it was good, with great views, from many people. We figured we’d get great views with overpriced food. The views were, in fact, great. You see across the valley, with the town below. It’s breathtaking. If the food were bad and overpriced, it would still be worth going, and I don’t really care about views. But the restaurant was a gorgeous building itself, and food, while maybe more towards the hotel dining room style, was really worth the expense, even without the views. It seems touristy until you go, but it’s worth it, no question.

Honga’s – Strange to eat in a Thai/Japanese/Fusion place high up in the mountains, but we got over it pretty quickly once we tried the food. The lamb, especially, was delicious – really more middle eastern than Asian, but great. The bbq pork was also a winner, as were the fish dishes. The panang tofu, which I usually really like, wasn’t so hot there. But overall, this place is fantastic, and it’s on a totally different wavelength than the other places in town.

So those are the restaurants for dinner. Lunch is coming soon.

I guess I’m realizing that I’m a big magazine consumer. I do like reading magazines – lots of fresh views on current topics. My faves are Wired and The New Yorker.

I posted earlier (twice now) on buying magazine subscriptions and renewals on eBay and elsewhere on the web for prices lower than going directly to the publisher. Here’s another way: use frequent flyer miles.

In many cases, your frequent flyer miles will be expiring, if you, like me, have miles on tons of different airlines. I don’t choose one airline over another for their mileage program – I just fly and get miles every time. But sometimes those miles will expire if the account had no activity for a period of time. Redeeming miles counts as activity (amazingly) so I often redeem them for magazine renewals. I’ve even redeemed miles from my kids’ frequent flyer accounts to extend my magazine subscriptions. So you keep the account going, and keep the miles from expiring, and you get free magazines. You can even send them to your friends.

I’ve done this from Continental/OnePass – here’s a screenshot:

and I’ve done this from American – you can find the list of magazines from AA online.

Even better than using eBay or another discounter!

After my first fabulous success with renewing some magazine subscriptions via eBay, I just got this email from my eBay seller:

Hello. You are receiving this message/email from me since you’re one of the buyers from my store.Today, Ebay implemented their new policy regarding Pre-Sale items and they
consider Magazine Subscription as a violation to this policy. We might not
be selling magazine subscriptions on Ebay but our store will be open and
selling different item instead. We will keep it open so we can answer any
order status and refund requests (if any).

So, does it affect the order you already placed? Absolutely not. Your order
was already processed and will still be received within the timeframe provided.

We will still continue selling magazine subscriptions, but not through Ebay.Com,
but one of their affiliates, prostores. Our prostores website address is
Http://www.Superior-Subscriptions.Com. Not all items have been added there
but we’re working to have all items today. So please bear with us while
we are making the transition.

We will provide the same prices and policies. The new addition to transitioning
to a website is that you can pay using your credit card directly and not
signing up a Paypal account. Of course you can still pay with Paypal. You
have the option for combined payments as well.

For more information on the eBay Presale policy, please visit:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/pre-sale.html

As always, we are here to answer any questions you might have. Please make
sure to include yuour Ebay userID when sending us an email or message.

Sincerely,

Superior Subscriptions
http://www.Superior-Subscriptions.Com

All strange capitalization aside (this company does sell on eBay, after all) I’m sorry the party stopped just after I found it.

But discount subscriptions are still out there. Just never, ever use the renewal forms right from the magazine. Go to a third party website like magazines.com or the one above. In my experience, they’re cheaper every time.

A week’s a long time, and a lot happens. But here’s what you need to know, where you need to eat (broken off into a different post now), and what you should avoid. Most importantly, I’m giving you the lay of the land – something I really didn’t understand until I arrived, and something which would likely change the way I organize a trip here next time.

Telluride is really two distinct areas: the old city of Telluride, and the newer area up on the hill called Mountain Village. The two are linked by free gondola (amazingly well designed and run), by roads, and by ski slopes. Beyond that, they’re two different worlds.

(Skiing down Telluride trail into the town)

So we stayed in the Mountain Village. Mountain Village is really a company town, like many of the big ski resorts these days. One company seems to own or at least develop the whole thing (you’ll get to know their logo with the mining pickaxe pretty quickly), but stays pretty low-key and licenses out the concessions to multiple vendors to keep the place from feeling too homogeneous. I’m not a big fan of these planned developments.

Our place is in Mountain Lodge, which is ski-out (so we can hit the slopes a few steps from our front door, and return to the condo just as easily). They offer a van/shuttle service around the village. And they have a concierge and a pool, etc. For skiing, this is great. For everything else, we really had to spend time getting down to the town, which we did almost every night for dinner, and most days for lunch and other commerce also.

(our cabin in Mountain Village)

The skiing is really pretty excellent. The skiing that is centered on Mountain Village is the beginner and intermediate terrain. It basically feeds down into one main area (the bottom of lift 4 and the top of lift 1) that has several restaurants (pretty uniformly bad – ski food like burgers and low-end draft beer) and a few sporting goods stores. That’s also where the gondola to town ends, and the second gondola starts.

The second gondola goes to the grocery store and everything at the other end of Mountain Village. The grocery store is really the star of the area. But it’s strange: if they recognize the need for good, gourmet food up there, why is it only available in the grocery, and not for lunch or dinner? Maybe this is to keep the town in the loop? I doubt it, frankly, but the town is pretty wonderful.

The town, down at 8750 feet (Mountain Village is at about 9500 and the lifts take you up beyond 12,000 feet) is a real charm. It’s basically an old western mining town, that’s been updated maybe once in the ’60s (it feels very Berkeley there) and then again in the late ’90s (gourmet food, high end clothes boutiques, and the ubiquitous real estate storefronts).

Through all of that, the town maintains both a sense of community, and great commerce. It’s like the little town that caters to the big town person. You can stroll down Colorado (the city’s main street) and get a good latte, some baked goods, a Stetson, and a new fishing rod. And the views are fantastic – from almost everywhere in town, you just look up and see the untouched or barely-touched mountains surrounding you.

In the end, there’s no question that for the skiing aspect of the trip, Mountain Village is the more convenient place to stay. If you do, try to stay in the village itself, where you can walk to the two gondolas. But for the rest of the trip (food and lazing around a comfortable small town) the town of Telluride is where you want to be. For me, I think next time I’ll stay in town and avoid the company-town feel of the new condos up in the Mountain Village.

Be sure to read all about the food in Telluride coming soon in another blog post!

Update: Dinner Restaurants in Telluride is now up. Lunch is coming soon.

One, I just found. A friend from high school emailed it to me. It’s called Stuff White People Like, and it’s amazing. Maybe even better are the comments. Somehow, this guy tapped into a pretty funny community.

The other tied-for-funniest blog I read is the Fake Steve Jobs blog. Half of the posts are just of the variety of “I’m speechless” with a link to a YouTube video or something, but even those are good editorial choices. Beyond that, his relentless attacks on the Borg (Microsoft), Hillary, Faceberg (Zuckerberg of Facebook), and, really, himself (the real Steve here, since he’s supposedly writing this) are really well written, and endlessly entertaining.

I posted last week about people posting on forums with really polished threads, solely to get links back to their sites. They get good screen shots, carefully tested info, and, of course, very specific links that they want to juice in Google.

Anyway, here’s a better screenshot of another spam post:

(weird – that picture got overwritten. I’ll have to wait for another, which is inevitable)

And if you get these on your forums, take the appropriate action: