Thai chicken soup. Photo: elana's pantry, Flickr.

• Seven soup recipes from seven new cookbooks help Denver residents stay warm this season.
• Seared scallops, salad and rib-eye are the way to go at the newly revamped Simms Steakhouse.
• The Colorado Beer Festival descends on Colorado Springs this Saturday, and offers more than 70 beers to sample, as well as a designated-driver program.
• The Wynkoop Brewery will hold its own Beers of the Year mini-festival on Saturday, also.
• Dublin-made cream liqueur Coole Swan, which gets its name from Yeats' poem "The Wild Swans of Coole," is finally for sale in Colorado, and one food writer -- who claims it's the finest cream liqueur he's ever tasted -- couldn't be happier.
• A "gastropub" opens in Cherry Creek, inspiring food critic Tucker Shaw to explore the etymology of the word.
• A knife-wielding blogger discovers the bounty of the duck.

Earlier this week we reported that United Food Group had recalled 75,000 pounds of beef in Colorado. Now the company has expanded the recall to include New Mexico.

And it's not a little increase in the amount being recalled. To that 75,000 pounds you can now add another 370,000 pounds of ground beef that's being recalled. The details are a bit confusing. At first it sounds like only Colorado and New Mexico are affected, but the beef was actually distributed to 11 states, in over a dozen supermarket chains. Consumers are urged to either return or throw away any meat they might have in their refrigerators.

TechNewsWorld has the complete details at the link above, including the stores/brands affected and a phone number to call if you have any questions.

Update: Now it's 5.7 million pounds.

Yes, that's 75,000 pounds. The company has recalled the ground beef because of possible E. coli contamination, and the state of Colorado is urging consumers not to eat ground beef from the company and to throw it away.

The beef was distributed to several Albertson's stores in Colorado, and the store chain has removed all of the beef mentioned in the recall. Other products not mentioned in the recall are still on Albertson's shelves and are safe to eat.

Food Consumer.org has the full details on the recall, including a list of the products recalled and their dates and codes.

At least, in Colorado. And that's if you happen to be stealing from it a dumpster behind a produce market.

Two men, Giles Charle and David Siller, took 5 cucumbers, 4 apricots, 2 bundles of asparagus spears and a handful of cherries from a garbage dumpster behind the Sweet Pea Produce Market in Steamboat Springs, Colorado on their way to the city's annual family gathering. Tey will be spending six months in jail.

So much for Mom's lectures about eating all your fruits and veggies!

Fruits and veggies, shellfish and such are best eaten in season. When it comes to bragging rights over who grows the best grapes, is privy to the best fishing banks, you will certainly have a food fight on your hands. In this case, I'm talking about peaches. Georgia, the peach state, grows a good peach. Alabama, too. But I'd like to turn you on to peaches grown in western Colorado, and the several varieties that have peaked or are at peak right now. Specifically, peaches grown around the rural town of Palisade, CO., are among the sweetest, if not the sweetest I've ever tasted (in particular the O'Henry and the Rising Star). Western and Southwestern Colorado also produce some of the finest cider and applesauce apples in the world.

As to peaches. Check out this recipe for Peach Delight that won grand prize at the Palisade Peach Festival a couple of weeks ago. I tried a variation that did not include the egg replacement (since it's not cooked, don't mess around with raw eggs these days: salmonella) and it was divine.

Just in time for Easter, New York magazine offers a breakdown of all the varieties of lamb, providing details on the difference between Colorado and Australian lamb, for example. The article also offers up a recipe for Rack of Lamb with a Shallot Puree Chili Crumbs Crust. If you want more lamb recipes, check out the comprehensive list at web site Recipe Hound.

Guide to Differences in Lamb

• Colorado: Fed a mixture of grass and grain; lambs are larger; richer, more fatty meat.
• Australia: Grass-fed; leaner flesh; sweet mild flavor.
• Appalachia (Jamison Farm): Grass-fed; sweet and succulent.
• Milk-fed: Raised on milk and grain; slaughtered very young; tender and sweet meat.
• New Zealand: Grass-fed; lean and pale-colored meat; stronger flavor than Australian lamb.

You've been reading our ramblings here at Slashfood for months now, so isn't it about time you get to know us? Over the next few weeks, we'll be playing 20 questions with our Slashfood bloggers, just so you can see what kind of insanity is cooking in our brains. And kitchens. We've already met Nick, Stefania, Andrew, and Joe. This week, we welcome a brand new blogger to Slashfood, Heather Craven.

Do you have a personal blog? 
I do. It mostly chronicles my daily ramblings about my three children and my skills, or sometimes the lack of, parenting them.

What is your day job, or rather, what do you do when you're not food blogging?
I chase my toddler, try to find matching socks for my brood and figure out healthy food choices for us all.

How long have you been blogging with slashfood and what is your favorite post?
I am spanking new on Slashfood. I have been toiling away on The Life Sciences blog since late 2005.

Do you have any non-food-related, non-blogging hobbies?
I live in the mountains of Colorado so we have a fairly active outdoor life. I love to mountain bike, hike and ski. I also love to paint and read.

Not every foodie does, but do you cook?
Not very successfully. I like to accessorize. I can decorate a mean table, make children's food look spectacular and bake fun goodies.

What is your most prized utensil/gadget in the kitchen?
I have a lovely new red tea kettle. Its happy presence has prompted me to buy a red toaster oven and I am pondering the purchase of a red garbage can to round out the color splash.

Now, as a native Floridian, the idea of getting to a restaurant by trekking up a snowy mountain does not immediately appeal to me. The Denver Post, however, recently ran a review of three Colorado restaurants that ask diners to do just that. Some of the restaurants, like Copper Mountain Stables, also offer sleigh rides to their high-elevation dining rooms. In Copper Mountain Stables' case, the dining room is a replica of a miner's tent that seats 38. Similarly, the Tennessee Pass Cookhouse features a large yurt (pictured here) that seats 40. Prior to arrival, diners gather together and hike up to the structure, which sits at an elevation of over 10,000 feet. The Pine Creek Cookhouse, amazingly enough, is an actual cabin, which seats 100. You can choose to ski, sleigh, or snowshow the 1.5 mile trail to your dinner. As you might expect, menus for all of these places feature hearty, game-heavy fare.