Denver Life Magazine

Growing up on a farm changes the way you think about food. My dad raised wheat, corn, and sunflowers, and I learned early that a meal starts long before it reaches a plate. There’s the weather and the soil, and then there are the days that start before sunrise and end well after it sets. My July birthday falls right during summer harvest. Countless cakes were consumed huddled in the shade of a combine, a quick song and back to work. I remember the quiet tension that would settle over the house when a storm rolled in. Hail could wipe out a year’s worth of work (and income) in minutes, and my dad watched the sky closely. My sister and I tiptoed around, sensing the unease. When it rained, the…

Colorado Rockies Home Opener APRIL 3 ■ Baseball is back in the Mile High City. The first game of the Rockies’ season brings down-town Denver to life with purple pride, sunshine (hopefully), and the unmistakable crack of the bat at Coors Field. Whether you’re there for the game, the signature Rockie Dog, or the opening-day pageantry, it’s one of spring’s most electric traditions. mlb.com/rockies First Friday RiNo and Santa Fe Art Walk APRIL 3 ■ Denver’s creative spirit shines during First Friday, when galleries throw open their doors and neighborhoods pulse with art lovers and live music. It’s the perfect excuse to soak up the city’s thriving arts scene. denversartdistrict.org/first-friday Collaboration Fest APRIL 4 ■ Colorado’s craft beer takes center stage at Collaboration Fest, where breweries team up to debut…

@denverlifemagazine @denverlifemag Want to be featured? Tag @denverlifemagazine in your Instagram photos. Social Chatter Some mornings are worth setting the alarm for. Photographer Tom Kingsford (@tomkingsford) captures Red Rocks Amphitheatre just as the sun crests the horizon, washing the sandstone in that unmistakable Colorado glow. Quiet, empty, and impossibly golden, it’s a reminder that the best seats in the house sometimes belong to the early risers. Tag @denverlifemagazine in your favorite Colorado moments for a chance to be featured. Online Exclusive In Sunnyside, Moon Raccoon Baking Co. is putting a bold twist on familiar favorites. Co-owner Kate Lange shares the bakery’s five spice snickerdoodle, where warming spices like star anise, clove, and Sichuan pepper replace the traditional cinnamon for a cookie that’s equal parts nostalgic and unexpected. Get the full…

Dig In, Denver For DENVER URBAN GARDENS, food doesn’t begin at the grocery store. It takes root in the ground and in the belief that growing what you eat should be a path accessible to everyone. What started in the late ’70s as neighbors reclaiming a parking lot so local Hmong women (an ethnic group mainly residing in Southwestern China) could grow their own food has spread into a network of more than 200 community gardens, food forests, and school plots across the metro area. But DUG’s impact isn’t just measured in square footage; it’s also measured in meals. This spring, DUG’s classes read like a syllabus for anyone who thinks eating well starts long before the oven turns on. Zero Waste Kitchen Practices (April 22) shows home cooks how…

Drink more sake. Its future depends on new audiences discovering it, supporting its makers, and keeping a centuries-old tradition alive.—Adam Boggeri Adam Boggeri didn’t stumble into sake. He circled it from every direction. “My path into sake was a perfect storm,” he says. Raised in a food-obsessed Italian household between Napa Valley and San Francisco, he grew up fluent in wine while quietly absorbing the Japanese culture nearby. During the pandemic, curiosity turned hands-on when he began brewing sake at home, setting off a deeper pursuit that eventually pulled him out of tech and into full-time sake education. Now based in Colorado, Adam is one of a small handful of certified master sake sommeliers in the U.S., consulting for brands, guest-somm’ing at top restaurants like Sushi by Scratch, and building…

The origin story of Dry Land Distillers begins, as many good Colorado stories do, in a garage. In 2017, founder and president Nels Wroe was leaning over a workbench trying to assemble a five-gallon copper still he’d received as a gift. He had never bent or brazed copper before, but he was about to learn. Soon he was spending weekends running experimental batches, bringing samples into the house and explaining the process to his kids. Then his son asked a simple question: when were they going to build a bigger one? “That’s the moment it hit me,” Nels says. “Yeah, we’re gonna do this.” His family, apparently, had already arrived at the same conclusion. “They rolled their eyes and said, ‘Yeah dad, we know.’” Today that backyard curiosity has evolved…