Sunday morning we found a new coffee shop that is walking distance from our house called Wash Perk at 853 East Ohio Ave. Both Kim and I had a big cup of their coffee of the day and we split a couple of croissants and a piece of coffee cake. We enjoyed all of this from the spacious outdoor patio with a large group of others gathered on neighboring tables. It was the perfect little start to our day, which soon included walking all around town for a total of seven miles. I guess Kim was a little jealous of the five mile hike I took the day before, and wanted to some walking of her own. It was a nice way to spend a Sunday though, that’s for sure.

I’m not sure why it took us so long to check out the Bull & Bush Brewery, but that’s where we headed for dinner and drinks on Friday. I was familiar with the brewery after trying a few of their brews at the Great American Beer Festival this past year. I’m not sure what those selections were, but now after visiting the brewery and restaurant I would highly recommend their “Man Beer” IPA, if you are a hop lover. I washed down my turkey sandwich with a couple of these beers on our visit. Kim had a chicken sandwich with a couple Hefeweizen’s that were equally as good. Overall we had a very good experience, minus a couple of loud fellas on the patio, but we will definitely be back soon.

Since we were traveling on my birthday we decided to head out for my birthday dinner last night. Having always been a big fan of Italian food, I wanted to try a place that I had often heard about but never visited (or driven by for that matter), Carmine’s on Penn. This family style restaurant serves giant dishes of food that can server up to four people and is consistently rated among the highest restaurants in Denver for this style. If you do visit the restaurant, I encourage you to read over the menu before going, as once you get there only the names are written on chalkboards. It is then the duty of your server to guide you through the menu to help you select the best dish to fit your needs.

Fortunately for us, I remembered a few things that I had read on the menu the day before. I asked about the Chicken Montana and was delighted to find out that it is actually one of the most popular dishes in the restaurant. It pairs rosemary chicken with sun dried tomatoes, asparagus and a gorgonzola cream sauce. Let me tell you that it tastes just as delicious as it sounds. And since the portions are so large, we still have over half of the dish in our fridge for tonights dinner as well. We also started with their house salad, which I was equally as impressed with. The entire meal was delicious!

Last night I had my first taste of Chuck and Ed’s famous amber ale. While we were in Cincinnati over Christmas I helped Kim’s dad make some homemade beer. And after we left it went through the fermenting, bottling, and whatever other phases that beer goes through. This all led up to the big first tasting last night, which went over pretty well. I was honestly surprised by how good it tasted, and I definitely want to have some more before we leave to go back to Denver. My first attempt at brewing went really well and I hope to do it again. Maybe I should add a beer kit to the registry…

Over the weekend we also found the time to have breakfast at a new Denver area restaurant. This joins Lucile’s on our list of must hit breakfasts when visiting, though they are very different. The new place is called the Duffeyroll Cafe and their namesake, the Duffeyroll, is one fantastic cinnamon roll! I sampled both the mountain maple and the irish cream, along with a bite from Kim’s original style roll, and if I had to pick a favorite it would be the mountain maple, but they were all so good. I honestly cannot wait to have another!

I made some delicious chicken enchiladas last night, loosely following this recipe. Typically I just take a can of enchilada sauce, combine it with some chicken and cheese and call it a meal. This time I wanted to find something to add to the sauce to make it even better. This recipe definitely did the trick.

Instead of using ground chicken, I baked a chicken breast and then shredded it. I didn’t have any jalapeños, but I did have the diced tomatoes with green chile peppers. I’m not sure it was exactly 10 ounces, as I had used one cup from a 14.5 ounce can earlier in the week for an Indian dish. Other than that I tried to stick to the recipe, although I did add extra onion, both to the inside mixture and on top of the enchiladas once they were rolled into the dish. Once they were done I topped them with some hot sauce and sour cream and they were fantastic! I’ll definitely be making these again.

I apologize for the delay, but I’ve been busy entertaining a couple of friends from high school who are visiting through this coming Sunday. We’ve been eating good so far, including dinner last night at CityGrille and lunch today from Breckenridge Brewery. It was the first time for all of us at CityGrille. I chose it after my friend Ken had his heart stuck on a buffalo burger, which I’m told was very good. Everyone else was also satisfied with their order, so I’ll add this to my list of great places in Denver. Breckenridge Brewery has always been on my list, and was delicious as usual. Ken and Jon should be finishing up their tour of Coors Field shortly, so I better wrap up some work and get back downtown. I’m off the rest of the week and should be busy, so I’ll write more next week.

We found another great Denver area pizza shop over the weekend called Nicolo’s. Kim was in the mood for pizza of the thicker variety, and what better style to look for than Chicago style pie. After searching online, I found that Nicolo’s was in fact Chicago style and had good reviews, so we took a chance and placed an order for delivery. We had the ultimate veggie stuffed pizza and I must say that it was delicious! Most of the time I prefer New York style, but this pizza was loaded with tons of fresh veggies and definitely hit the spot. I wasn’t too impressed with the garlic bread we ordered, to get our purchase up to the minimum needed for delivery, but the pizza easily made up for it.

There are multi locations in the Denver area, including the one we ordered from at 1205 East 13th Avenue.

Last night I made a pasta dish that I’ve made many times before and is still on the top of my list. If spicy sauce is okay with you, I would definitely recommend trying this out sometime. I like it so much that I just had it again for lunch today, minus the wine that we had with it last night. After we ate last night Kim gave me a gift for Christmas. I had been wanting a big pot to cook with, and that’s just what I got, along with a bunch of other new pots and pans. It’s a full set of hard anodized cookware from Kitchenaid. I can’t wait to cook again!

We started off the weekend by going to see SoundRabbit at the D Note in Arvada. We got there early so we could try their pizza that we had heard good things about. It turns out that the pizza is delicious and they have quite an array a vegetarian pizzas. We would definitely head back there often, if it wasn’t a fifteen or twenty minute drive from our house.

The room itself is definitely better suited as a restaurant than a concert venue, although I do appreciate the effort in doing both. The stage is oriented in the center of the long narrow room, so that there aren’t many tables directly in front. The only available table when we arrived was on the far side and directly on the side of the stage. This didn’t make for the best acoustics, but I always enjoy watching drummers closeup when presented the opportunity. As always, the music was great and it was a perfect way to kick off the weekend.

Also, I’d like to point out that SoundRabbit is donating 100% of online album sales in December via SoundRabbit.com to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. So, pick up their latest disc, and support a great cause all at the same time.