The Wonder of Fondue
Last night a couple of the young ladies I write with and I headed off to a small gathering that was to celebrate the end of National Novel Writing Month. There was a bit of a snafu when we got there, however. Boulder’s Holiday Parade was just getting ready to kick off, and we couldn’t cross the street from the parking garage to the coffee shop where the group was meeting.
Dinner was suggested, and we headed up the street to the Boulder Cafe, one of my favorite places. There had just been a conversation about fondue. The girls had never had it.
I am a child of the 70’s. Fondue was hot then, in more ways than one. Most suburban families, like mine, had a fondue pot and knew how to use it. I remember the fondue pot being brought out on holidays or when my mom and dad had a party. Along with the polyester jump suits and long skirts came the fondue pot. Ours looked somewhat like this, although I think it was harvest gold, not olive green:
Mmmm, fondue was tasty. Melted cheese and other flavors, usually wine or beer, with lots chunks of bread to dip into it. No matter what you dip into it, the fact is, it’s cheese, and there’s not much that can go wrong when you are covering food in cheese.
I hadn’t had fondue in years until four or five years ago, when I accidentally bumped into an old friend on one of my trips to Boulder. We walked Pearl Street Mall, a great walking space that is full of shops and restaurants, and happened upon the Boulder Cafe. It was Friday night, chilly since it was mid-November, and we were hungry. Oh, and there was happy hour, and the promise of half-priced appetizers. We split a bottle of wine and a pot of Alpine Fondue, which was served with chicken sausages, chunks of bread, roasted potatoes, steamed broccoli, carrots and squash, and slices of apple.
It brought back some wonderful memories.
So of course I’ve been there since several times, especially since moving here. I took my student workers for fondue a few months ago. And last night, I got to enjoy it again. I’m not sure my writer friends were as impressed with it as I was, but that’s okay. They are no longer fondue virgins!
Love fondue – Had you ever been to the Melting Pot in Chesterfield? I’ve only been once – it’s pricey but well worth it!
Ah Harvest Gold – everything in my mother’s house was Harvest Gold! The stove, the sink, the washer and dryer, the referigerator and all the small appliences like the toaster, cookware, everything! Mom has a love of yellow and gold. After we had lived in Arizona for 9 years the first trip home when I walked into her kitchen I thought I would need sunglasses! The walls were still that wonderful wallboard that you could buy in the 70’s with flowers as big as your head in yellow, red and orange! IT was quite the thing in 75 when mom redid the kitchen – but by the 90’s it was so obnoxiously bright – it was painful. LOL.