Dinner at the Yurt

Last Saturday, Rich and I headed up to Solitude to have dinner at the Yurt. For those of you who are not familiar, a yurt is a Mongolian structure, historically, in which the Mongolian people lived in as their homes. A few fun facts about the yurts are that the door is always facing south to preserve heat, the tables are typically always in a circle around the center to create community (which is why they try to copy that will long family style tables at our yurt), the doors are always made smaller so that invaders might hit their heads and the Mongolians can defend themselves.

For us... nothing so extreme.. we were treated with utmost care and welcomed warmly. We hiked in about a half mile, an easy hike, we had the option of walking or xcskiing. We chose to walk and just enjoy. When we got to the yurt - all 27 of us!!- we made our way around the tables and sat with our new friends. We had 12 at our table and greatly enjoyed everyone's company. We were about half and half - locals and "out of staters". Our meal was superb: 5 courses. The first was a hearty white bean and beef soup with awesome warm bread. The second was seared scallops with carmalized onion on some type of greens. The next course was a salad: greens, cranberries, walnuts, green apple and goat cheese, the main dish was port tenderloin in some kind of demiglaze with shreaded brussel sprouts and potatoes, and then the dessert was a chocolate torte with rum soaked strawberries.... YUM. Everyone brought their own wine, and that made for a very festive occasion! :-)