Influencer Dinner w Kite Hill at Food Labs Boulder
In case you missed my stories on Instagram here is a clip!
Read on to find out more about it!
May 9th Wednesday I was invited to a dinner party hosted by Kite Hill Foods. The dinner party was at Food Labs in Boulder and involved lots of cooking, eating, a nd of course chit chatting with other awesome influencers in Colorado. The event was hosted by the ever lovely Katie & Ellie co-founders of Wellevation HQ.
What is Kite Hill?
Kite Hill Foods specializes in nut-based cheese products. Think of any cheese product and they can make it only they don't use traditional ingredients like cow's milk. All products are made with almonds!
Whaaaaat? I bet it sucks though right? Nope! Kite Hill managed to discover the perfect almond that had the right amount of carbs to fats to protein ratio so that when they made a milk and cultured it, like you do regular cheese, it curdled into a creamy "cheesy" product.
Some of the familiar items on the market are their dairy-free yogurts, cream cheese and ricotta cheese. They have a variety of flavors you can check those out here.
So my friend Tricia and I drove from Denver to Boulder together. If you are not familiar with the area Boulder is about 40 minutes to an hour depending on traffic north west of Denver. We were driving in the thick of rush hour and it took about 55 minutes, really not too bad at all!
Finally we arrived and got the perfect parking spot, yes there was parallel parking involved but Tricia handled it like a champ ;- ) and we were right in front of Food Labs!
What is Food Labs?
Food Labs is an interactive culinary workshop & educational space. Picture a big open room with a family dinner table long enough to seat like 30 people (I did not count) and an island long enough to have groups of people cooking. Seriously, so fun! I 100% will be going again because I love the idea of cooking and eating , and skipping the cleaning haha.
Anyways! So Food Labs definitely has a mission in alignment with mine which is to bring people together to teach them about a variety of cooking methods, global cuisine and then sharing a meal. They host a bunch of kids classes and camps too, how amazing is that!?
Definitely a cool place to visit and to support. The chefs curate the menus with creativity and mindfulness. On this particular night we were cooking with a few of Kite Hills products and I want to say the food culture theme of the night was South American.
Here was the menu:
Chimichurri
Pupusas with Kite Hill Cream Cheese filling
Massaged Kale with Avocado Goddess Dressing
Dark Chocolate Kite Hill Ricotta Mousse
The entire menu was gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free. Food Labs was SO accommodating to everyone's dietary restrictions.
A variety of Colorado bloggers / influencers were invited and we all divided into groups of three. I was in a group with Steph from The Grateful Grazer. She specializes in mostly plant based recipe development, has 2 sweet pups & is an RD. Alex Kunkel of Eating at Altitude was also in our group and she is a food blogger from Fort Collins!
Right away, we were getting started with our recipes. First on the list was the filling for the pupusas which are a South American dumpling. We mixed seasoned corn masa with water to make a dough, then flattened the dough out into several discs. There were roasted Anaheim peppers involved too which we diced and incorporated into a cumin, Kite Hill creamy cheese mixture. Honestly, it would be a delicious spread on its own! We dolloped the filling evenly, well, as evenly as we could throughout the process (haha!) onto the pupupsas and then folded them up into round puck-like dumplings. They rested and were cooked last.
Next we started making the chimmichurri which was so easy to put together, why don't I make this more often is beyond me! It is essentially a collaboration of freshly minced herbs, lemon juice, salt, Serrano pepper and extra virgin olive oil. There was maybe a half a shot's worth of red wine vinegar. So unlike a traditional dressing which is almost equal part vinegar to oil the chimmichurri was mostly oil. You know I love my olive oil ;-).
On to the Kale Avocado Goddess Salad
1 bunch of kale, fennel, & radish were sliced into thin cuts or chiffonade to create ribbon-like pieces. The kale was massaged with salt and lemon juice. The other half of a lemon, avocado, salt, Kite Hill Plain Yogurt, dijon mustard, avocado oil and a few other aromatics were placed into a container and blended with an immersion blender.
PS if you don't already have an immersion blender, get you one! One of my favorite tools for making dressings, sauces (especially when its tomato season!) and even smoothie bowls! You blend the contents in the container which you make it so its lot more convenient than transporting form one vessel to another, in my opinion.
Anywhoo so that salad whipped up together in a snap!
Liza, our amazing chef instructor, demoed the Chocolate Ricotta Mousse with candied almonds and fresh berries.
I love watching people make food and have it appear effortless. It's so natural! I definitely want to recreate this dessert because it was so easy. I may add a few more dark chocolate chips to the final product, but that is just me ;-).
After she demoed the dessert we moved on to cooking the pupusas in a iron-skillet with coconut oil.
We then transported the pupusas to a plate with a paper towel to absorb the excess oil and dinner was served... well, after all the food pics were taken haha!
That about concluded the night other than the free goodies we got to take home! Kite Hill gifted us ricotta, cream cheese, and yogurt plus vouchers! I took 1 of everything haha and the next morning I was already suing the ricotta on my veggie frittata breakfast!
I can't thank Wellevation HQ , Kite Hill, and Food Labs enough for an amazing night!