My lovely wife and I are just back from a lovely run to some of our favorite country in the world (Wyoming and Montana), visiting daughter Jess in Missoula and son Jake, his wife Kaitlyn, and grandson Brantley in Livingston.
Our primary trip mission was to spend time playing hard with Brantley; two-year olds have a great handle on the world – they’re for the most part content with life, mobile enough to explore everything, inquisitive as hell, and live most of the day happy as can be, enjoying the simplest things in the room, and scarfing up good food when they have a chance.
Though we cooked most meals in family kitchens, we also hit several of our favorite eateries back home in Montana and Wyoming (and even discovered a new winner in a very unlikely place in Amarillo), including Top Hat in downtown Missoula.
Their ginger pork lettuce wraps, above and to the right, are probably the best I’ve ever had outside our own kitchen, and Jess and I both think their Italian pork sausage sauté over spaghetti squash with a house-made cashew lemon herb ricotta (below) is outrageous.
Somehow I missed grabbing a pic of my wife’s pickled avocado topped house-ground burger, but the rice vinegar pickled, barely ripe avocado sent us scrambling for a recipe that afternoon.
If you’re headed to Montana or Wyoming this year, you’ll find the Rib and Chop House in a number of locales; including a fairly new one in Laramie where I sampled their eponymous pork chop above – what a great meal to ease the day’s road burn.
And finally, due to a quirk in our travel schedule, we happened to be near Amarillo one morning around breakfast time and had a killer meal at Girasol out on the far West side (amazingly on the site of a farm we used to bird hunt decades ago as I grew up about a mile from there). Their New Mexico inspired Benedict over cheddar jalapeño biscuits and topped with candied jalapeño bacon above was incredible, as was my wife’s green chile huevos. That dish isn’t Primal or Paleo, but hot damn, it was great.
With a bit of creativity and a healthy dose of common sense, it’s easy to eat well – and healthy – on the road.
Back to regularly scheduled Friday Feast recipes next week.
