The Front Range is a hotbed of innovation and passion for quality food with real flavor and real nutritional value. Whether it’s the micro-brews, coffee, chocolate, heirloom vegetables, pasture-raised meats, or ancient grains, or the gluten-free, paleo, keto, or vegan diet, Front Range Coloradans have shown great support and enthusiasm for slow, locally-grown, organic, fair-trade and creative, locally hand-crafted foods.
You can pick up a mouth-full or a basket-full of some of our favorite locally crafted specialty foods this month at our Holiday Gift Market all of them will easily keep through the holidays and beyond.
These are exceptional products made by people we know and trust. In previous years we’ve been able to offer samples of our edible selections, but because of the pandemic this year, we have to forgo the sampling. However, you can take our word for it: these specialty foods are fabulous!
Some, like Balsamic Reduction and Lemon-infused Greek Olive Oil from Healthy Harvest (Golden), are fantastic ‘secret ingredients’ that can elevate an ordinary dish to a dynamic culinary experience. Not just for dressing salads, either or both are great in marinades, glazes or last-minute drizzles on vegetables, meats, fish, and more!
Engrid’s Haystack Farm jams are lovingly produced in small batches from organic, mostly Colorado-grown (often hand-picked by Engrid) fruits with their true flavors singing out, unimpeded by excessive sugar. Some of our customers horde a year’s supply at a time, so don’t delay!
Honey is perhaps the ultimate natural treat, a gift from the bees, who gathered the nectar for it from the flowers. Honey is also medicine, with a history going back millennia (at least!), used for easing and treating an incredible range of ailments. The most efficacious honey is from local hives, and we are thrilled to offer delicious, raw, unfiltered, creamed honey from Kristina’s Bees, who live in hives at several locations around Boulder County, collecting from alfalfa, Russian olive trees, sunflowers, apple blossoms, and countless other plants in gardens and natural landscapes. Kristina Williams is our beloved beekeeping specialist, an entomologist with more than 35 years of beekeeping experience, and an amazing wealth of knowledge about bees, insects and the natural world.
If you have ever looked at the list of ingredients on a package of lozenges or pastilles, you know that it’s frightening to think of actually ingesting all those chemicals and corn-based ‘natural’ flavors, syrups, sugars, and who knows what else! St. Claire’s to the rescue! These are formulated and produced by our herbalist friend Deb St. Claire, using simple, organically grown ingredients and sweetened with nutrient-rich organic molasses. Eve always keeps some Tummy Soothers and Throat Soothers handy because they really work. And the herbal and fruit pastilles are some of the healthiest little indulgences out there.
Then there are Eve’s grain-free, gluten-free Pecan Shortbread Cookies, which she only makes for our Holiday Market. Eve takes the trouble to ‘sprout’ and toast the organic pecans to make them optimally digestible. The butter she uses is churned from cream produced by pasture-raised cows. The salt is Celtic Sea-salt, the vanilla extract is made from real, organic vanilla beans, and the hint of sweetness comes from Grade A Maple Syrup. These delicious, no-guilt cookies will melt in your mouth and satisfy your cravings without loading you up with bad fats and sugars.
Also offered at our holiday market are the very best gluten-free crackers we’ve ever tasted, made from high-protein quinoa, right here in Boulder County by our friend Trish at New Beat Foods. They provide a delicious, crispy and nutritious platform for any cheese or spread.
Did we mention chocolate??? Eve is a chocolate afficionado. This makes her very fussy about chocolate. Poor thing! She had to taste a lot of chocolates from local producers before choosing the two best, Cultura Craft Chocolate (Denver), and Moksha Chocolate (Boulder). If you are looking for locally-produced chocolate bars made from the finest fair-trade cacao beans, with the most exquisite flavors, ground to the smoothest textures, with no unnecessary additives like soy lecithin and other fillers, look no further!
