This week, I'm in Utah. This is the second post of the trip. You can view the previous post here.
Part of any trip to Utah usually involves food. In all the years we've either lived or visited Utah, we've had fantastic experiences with food. This trip, we actually made some of those experiences of our own. One evening, we had a BBQ in the backyard of my in-laws. They have a huge set of raspberry bushes. After picking a healthy amount of berries, we made fresh raspberry ice cream:
Even as good as that was...the star of the show was definitely my wife's Nutella Gelato. If you don't know what Nutella is...stop reading this right now and find some. Anywhere. It's a hazelnut-chocolate combination that adds magic to many recipes. The gelato ice cream was as smooth as silk...and delicious.
Needless to say, it didn't last very long. I was lucky to get a picture before it disappeared! Another part of the BBQ was a favorite of mine, when visiting Utah in the summer. The corn here is better than anything I've ever had. We took fresh ears of corn and prepared them two ways. First, the traditional boiling method. The second was interesting - my wife grilled them on the BBQ. She's a genius. Both ways produced fantastic, mouth-watering corn on the cob.
In Provo (and now Orem), I've finally discovered what others have been talking about for a while. Since I'm a huge fan of hot dogs, people are shocked to find out that my first visit to J Dawgs was only last year. I'm now trying to catch-up on years of hot dog neglect. They just opened a new - larger - location in Orem. We got there just before the lunch rush:
It's all about the "special sauce"....
Our trip was about more than just food ; ) I always try to take my kids up to the BYU Campus. I think it's one of the prettiest college campuses I've ever seen:
President Brigham Young statue
This is the Harris Fine Arts Center - where my wife spent a lot of her early college days...
We arrived on campus around noon - and were treated to a concert of bells from the Carillon Bell Tower:
According to family legend, my great-grandmothers name is on one of those bells...
While here, there were quite a few fires throughout Utah. It's quite hot and they haven't had a lot of rain. Combine that with some wind and you have the potential for fire. One broke out just a few miles from us, in American Fork Canyon. You could see it from quite a distance:
We have plenty of friends that live near the fire. Thankfully, they've only been evacuated. None of their homes were burned. Thank goodness for vigilant firefighters!
While preparing for the 4th of July, I took two of the older cousins with me to the store. G-Man and Cousin M were good helpers. I gave them both American flags and made them march - patriotically - throughout the local Wal-Mart ; )
Just part of our civic pride....
We also had a chance to visit my aunts, who both live here in Utah County. Their home is always open for us, and the kids love to play games in the basement, with the giant ping-pong table:
As you can see, we're having a blast! The fun is only beginning. Stay tuned for the next post...the Cousins Party!!
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