One of the reasons I love living in Utah is the changing seasons. (Ever spent a Christmas in Hawaii? It’s nice but weird.) But honestly, out of the list, winter ranks last. It just takes more fortitude, I guess. So each year when it finally descends, I have to relearn how to love it. The best way I’ve found to do that is to get out in it. We live at the base of the Wasatch Range after all and access to its terrain tops the list of why we live here. (It isn’t the bad air, that’s for sure, see page 22.) So I have, over the years, collected a varied group of friends who I can count on to get me out the door—the Sunday ski bunch (Powder -day Saints), the Saturday hiking crew or the Salt Lake concert team. I enlist them to deliberately make me feel bad if all I want to do is hunker inside and grumble. Random mid-week shows at the State Room, midday hikes and ski days are the only way to survive folks. You gotta have a support network.
Executive Editor Jeremy Pugh. photo by Chris Pearson, Ski Utah.
And that’s why we wrote this issue’s feature “Winter in the Wasatch”, our guide to helping you find ways to give winter a big ol’ hug.
But we can’t always be go-getters, so we also wanted to share another tip: eat your way through it. Our cover story (“Six Spots for Comfort Foods,”) takes a look at the delicious and comforting dishes on the menus at some of Utah’s best restaurants.
And, while we cover a range of cuisines, all have common elements. In order to be comforting, a meal needs to be familiar, approachable and, above all, nostalgic. (Oh yeah, and warm. That probably should have been first.) Comfort, it turns out, is not relative, at least when it comes to food. What we loosely label comfort food is actually comforting because it triggers happy memories that warm more than our bellies.
Are you ready to embrace winter now?
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