September 2026 Happenings

September was the usual crazy month for me. Back to school really occupies a lot of my time and energy in September. And the garden was pumping out lots for Jac to deal with. We were busy. But, we did manage to squeeze in some Jac & Betsy time.

My birthday!

I turned 55. Wowsa! Jac made it special, as usual, with this yummy cake:

And he made what was my favorite food for the better part of a decade — Olive Garden’s Tortellini a la Fini. Olive Garden hasn’t had this on their menu since the 90s, but Jac resurrected it and made it to perfection! Mom came over to celebrate with us, and with the addition of flowers that people at school gave me, it was a very wonderful birthday night!

SLC “Tasting Day”

Since our birthdays are just a week apart, we do a combined birthday celebration each year. This year we decided to visit different spots in Salt Lake to taste some of ‘the bests’ the city has to offer. Here’s where we went.

(1) Hruska’s Kolaches in American Fork
A kolach is a traditional Czech pastry made from a pillowy, slightly sweet yeast dough wrapped or topped with sweet or savory fillings. This place is always packed and is actually right around the corner from our house, not in SLC (but we needed to grab something for breakfast before driving into the city so we made an exception.)

We like kolaches. We’ve had them before — even made some at home — but these weren’t so good. I chose poorly! I tried to get ones that sounded “interesting” and that backfired.

(2) All Purpose Bakehouse  @  779 South 200 East
This place is supposed to have the best laminated pastries so this was our first stop. It was crowded

but we found a spot by the window and enjoyed a little of our chocolate croissant (yum!) and a frangipane pie (super yum!) and took the rest home for later.

(3) Liberty Heights Fresh  @  1290 S 1100 E
Liberty Heights Fresh is a tiny, specialty grocery store packed with unique, expensive foods. Jac was having fun. I, on the other hand, found it entertaining to see so many new things, but I didn’t have a clue what most of it was! Check out this amazing cheese collection:

These are the three we decided to buy:

And here’s what we walked out of the store with. Not much for $80, but this day was more about ‘new experiences with food’ than it was simple grocery shopping, so we were good with it. 🙂

(4) Deseret Industries
Okay, this isn’t food related, but we squeezed in a trip to the nearby D.I. so that we could buy more cheap DVDs for our budding collection. Our shelf still has room; we had no choice.

(5) Shop-N-Go Indian Grocery Store  @  573 E 300 S
Our next stop was an authentic Indian imports store. We were the only non-Indians there the whole time. It was fun to walk around and see all that they have to offer, but in the end we picked out some duds! ($8 on lotus seeds that were just inedible, and that green bumpy thing — bitter melon — eek. Who eats that?)

The curry samosas saved the stop from being a total loss. Those were yummy!

(6) Caputo’s Market & Deli   @  314 W 300 S
Our last stop of the day was the amazing

Tasty Food