Trip to Montana (Part 2)

The views from around and at the top of Mount Oberlin, the mountain we climbed in West Glacier National Park, were phenomenal.

Wild flowers were growing everywhere and the sky was a perfect blue.

All this natural inspiration motivated me to make dinner for Zack and his family. I chose a theme of fresh summer ingredients like yellow squash, zucchini, huckleberry, and peach. For starters, I quickly whipped up a herbed goat cheese spread for toasted French bread using this epicurious.com recipe. Everyone loved it and couldn't seem to get enough of it. The extra touch of heavy cream really makes it rich and flavorful. For the salad, I based it on this asparagus and arugula salad recipe and added sliced peaches and freshly picked huckleberries, since we had gone up to Big Mountain in Whitefish to go huckleberry picking. Instead of arugula, I used mixed greens.

For the main dish, I picked out a chili and honey chicken legs recipe. It was a team effort by Zack and his sister Melissa to coat the chicken in the chili-honey mixture and get it into the oven.

As a side, I made orzo pasta with yellow squash and zucchini using this recipe.

I think everything turned out well and I loved all of the different summer flavors. The goat cheese spread was so good that I made more after getting back from Montana. The bits of tartness from the huckleberry and sweetness from the peaches went well with the shallot vinaigrette. The chicken had a ton of flavor from the chili-honey rub and the meat was really juicy and tender after being baked with the skin. The orzo pasta was fresh and had a good mixture of flavors and textures from the fresh herbs like parsley and basil, the lemon, shallots, the crunchy hazelnuts, and last but not least, the yellow squash and zucchini. We finished off the meal with a pure and simple huckleberry milkshakes using Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream. There's nothing else like it in the world!