We just spent 10 days in Jackson, Wyoming; Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons and wanted to share our favorite restaurants:

Jackson, Wyoming:

Local 

Local is a modern, high end steakhouse on Jackson’s town square. Along with steak, the menu also has fresh seafood, shellfish, house-ground burgers, and seasonally-inspired food.

The brisket sandwich was a great dish. It was house-smoked beef brisket, coleslaw, bbq sauce on a brioche bun.  Also, the crab salad was made up of  wild Alaskan king crab, avocado, grilled corn, watercress, blue corn chips and a cilantro-lime pesto. (Mom loved it).  The pork rolls in lettuce were recomended by our waitress as a restaurant favorite, so dad and I ordered them, and they lived up to expectations. It was slow roasted pork shoulder, cabbage slaw, bibb lettuce, cilantro and korean bbq sauce, and make it your own style.

Liberty Burger 

Liberty Burger was a more low end spot only a block away from the town square. The only downside was that they didn’t take reservations and there was a 40 minute wait for a table.  (Maybe if we hadn’t come at prime time (7:15 on a Saturday night when the 8:00 Jacskon Rodeo was on), it would have been faster.

Anyway, the Nooner Burger was one of the best burgers I have ever eaten.  It had an egg on it,bacon, ham, hashbrowns, and cheese. It combined lunch into dinner for one amazing meal. The chocolate shake was also very good…especially with the whipped cream and chocolate sauce!

Mom ordered a turkey burger that seemed like it had more vegetables (cucumber, tomato and lettuce) than turkey so she like that. Alex ordered a traditional cheese burger that looked really good too. And of course the fries were great:

Thai Me Up

Thai Me Up had exeptionally good Thai food.   I (Alex) ordered my personal favorite, sesame chicken with rice and broccoli.  It was a little spicy but the rice and veggies cooled it down. My brother amd mom ordered a noodle dish: Pad See EW with broccoli, green cabbage, egg, oyster soy sauce. They loved it, plus the servings were huge so they brought some home. Meanwhile my dad order the red curry which inclued noodles with a coconut chili-turmeric sauce, broccoli, tomato & red bell pepper. Plus he added shredded pork.  He ate it all!

Hand Fire Pizza

My (Alex) other favorite was Hand Fire Pizza (also close to the main square).  It had a very wide variety of yummy pizza toppings.  In fact we loved it so much, we went there twice throughout our vacation. They had two massive brick oven stoves that made the pizza amazing (and you can watch them tossing the pizza dough in the air!!) One of our personal favorites was a pizza called Even Mo’ Bettah BBQ pizza which has BBQ sause with mozzarella, slow roasted pork shoulder, pineapples and finally japapenojs (I picked those out). To finish the meal, we had a Cast Iron Brownie with vanilla ice cream and fresh whipped cream, which they cooked in the brick oven stoves. DELICIOUS!  Also, they gave us an extra pizza just because so they definitely get two thumbs up.

Tonight for dinner we (finally Alex is back to help cook) made a quick and simple dinner of pork chops, cous cous and an arugula salad. We also roasted cauliflower and broccoli to serve on the side or in your salad (diner’s choice.)

The first thing we did was chop up cauliflower and broccoli florets, drizzle them with olive oil and put them in a 350 degree oven.

Then I (Max) took care of the salad. I combined arugula, tomatoes and goat cheese.

Meanwhile I (Alex) started the pork chops. I Just salt and  peppered them and sauteed them in a little olive oil for 5 minutes each side…they were pretty thick.

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(I used a splatter mesh to protect from the splattering oil.) Then I let them sit for a bit while we made the cous cous. Finally we plated and ate!

Today we went blueberry picking so of course we had to bake something with them (and when I say “we”, it’s still just me…Max. Alex is still having fun off at camp while I do all the work at home.)  Anyway, mom, dad and I picked A LOT of blueberries so I decided to make a blueberry pie, including the crust, from scratch.

For the crust, you need 2 cups of flour, a little salt, 1 and 1/3 cup cold butter cut into pieces and 6-8 tablespoons of cold water.

You mix the flour and salt and then “cut in” the pieces of cold butter.  When the butter is in little pea size pieces you add the cold water and form into two balls (I was making a two crust recipe…if just making a bottom crust, use half the ingredients and only form 1 ball.)

Then you wrap the two balls of pastry in saran wrap and let chill in the fridge. Meanwhile you prepare the blueberry filling. Blueberries are very juicy so you have to add either cornstarch or flour to absorb some of that liquid.  Adding a little sugar also helps.

Then it’s time to roll out one of the balls of pastry, make the bottom piecrust and add the blueberries.

Finally, roll out the other ball of dough, cut strips and make a lattice top.  Then into the oven for about 40 minutes (cover the edges with foil if you like to keep them from getting too brown), then serve with whipped cream or ice cream…too bad Alex was at camp. This pie was really good!