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OCTOBER 2026

PROUDLY SERVING THESE COMMUNITIES: Anthem Country Club l Anthem Parkside Desert Hills l New River l Tramonto October 2 0 2 6

i mages a r2i zo October 0 2n6a .c o m February 20 24

Lincoln Aviator

SANDERSON LINCOLN

602.375.7500 | SANDERSONLINCOLN.COM | PHOENIX - 2121 W Bell Rd | SCOTTSDALE - 15345 N Scottsdale Rd, K140 October 2 0 2 6

WHAT 'S INSIDE

THE MOVEMENT MAKERS

HOME WATERS

FLAGGED AND FEARLESS

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CANYON MYSTERIES

PHOTO ESSAY

RECIPE

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Photography by Bryan Black

FROM THE PUBLISHER

There is a morning in early October when the air changes. Not dramatically — a few degrees, a softness at the edges of the light — but enough that doors and windows shut since May are suddenly open again. We feel it across the Valley’s northern edge, from the washes of Cave Creek to the ridgelines above Anthem to the patios of North Scottsdale. Summer asks us to retreat, and we do, gracefully. October asks us to come back out. The calendar answers. Gallery walls fill with new work. Stages light up. Neighbors who spent the summer somewhere cooler return with stories, and the trailheads gather their early-morning regulars again. Markets, festivals and long dinners outdoors all arrive together, as if the desert had been saving them. This is the season we wait for all year. So take the longer route home. Linger over the second cup of coffee. Say yes to the invitation you would have declined in July. Welcome back. We’re glad you’re here. Cheers! Shelly Spence Publisher, Images Arizona

PUBLISHER Shelly Spence MANAGING EDITOR Joseph J. Airdo GRAPHIC DESIGNER Meaghan Mitchell CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Joseph J. Airdo, Francine Coles, Shannon Severson PHOTOGRAPHERS Francine Coles, Loralei Lazurek ADVERTISING SALES Cindi Calcinari 860-966-3271 cindi@imagesaz.com IMAGES ARIZONA P.O. Box 1416, Carefree, AZ. 85377 623-341-8221 shelly@imagesaz.com imagesarizona.com

Submission of news for community section should be in to shelly@imagesaz.com by the 5th of the month prior to publication. Images Arizona is published by ImagesAZ Inc. Copyright © 2026 by ImagesAZ, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction, in whole or part, without permission is prohibited. The publisher is not responsible for the return of unsolicited material. October 2 0 2 6

2026-2027 Concert Season

Joshua Henry | 2/15

Jeremy Jordan | 1/14

Direct from Las Vegas Frankie Moreno: Elivs for a Day | 11/9

Starring Tony Award Winner Paulo Szot 10/23 - 10/25 at the Herberger Theater Center

Postmodern Jukebox | 3/13

Kristin Chenoweth | 2/5 & 2/6

The Sixties Show | 11/20

Justin Hayward | 4/4

American Voices | 11/15

NORTH SCOTTSDALE’S PREMIER CONCERT DESTINATION

50+ CONCERTS FROM OCTOBER – APRIL 480.422.8449 | AZMUSICFEST.ORG

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MELINDA RISK / SABOO FINE JEWELS ALEXANDER LAUT / ALESSA JEWELRY

OCTOBER 15–17

Wine and hors d’oeuvre Thursday from 4–7 p.m. Friday and Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

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Discover the distinctive artistry of Melinda Risk, Saboo Fine Jewels, Alexander Laut, and Alessa Jewelry—four unique perspectives on jewelry as personal storytelling, blending exceptional craftsmanship, heritage, and imaginative design.

ITALIAN WEEKEND LA DOLCE VITA IN GOLD .. .. .. ..

OCTOBER 22–24

Wine and hors d’oeuvre Thursday from 4–7 p.m. Friday and Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

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Italian Weekend celebrates seven of Italy’s most celebrated fine jewelry houses, showcasing distinctive regional traditions, innovative craftsmanship, and extraordinary Italian design.

COLOR AND COCKTAILS: SAPPHIRES, EMERALDS AND RUBIES, OH MY!!! .. ..

NOVEMBER 5

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Cocktails and hors d’oeuvre Thursday from 4–7 p.m..

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Discover the extraordinary world of David Gross jewelry, featuring rare colored gemstones and oneof-a-kind designs. Explore exquisite sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and bespoke jewels where exceptional craftsmanship meets timeless luxury.

Historic Spanish Village | 7212 E. Ho Hum Rd. # 7, Carefree, AZ | 480.575.8080 | GraceReneeGallery.com

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SUTRA JEWELS WARMTH AND DEPTH

NOVEMBER 20–21

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Friday 10 a.m.–7 p.m. // Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

Sutra Jewels showcases bold, romantic designs featuring rose-cut diamonds, vivid sapphires and rubies, and sculptural 18-karat gold. Discover distinctive pieces created to move beautifully with the body.

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Grace Renee Gallery is a refreshingly beautiful way to explore fine contemporary art in the breathtaking shadows of the Sonoran Desert foothills of Carefree, Arizona. Artfully designed jewelry, inspiring sculptures, spectacular wall art, stunning ceramics and more await.

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PIRANESI POP-UP TIMELESS LUXURY

UPCOMING EVENTS

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JANUARY–MARCH

Tuesday–Saturday from 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

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Discover Piranesi’s signature reverseset jewelry, showcasing vivid tsavorite garnet, emeralds, and orange sapphires in bold, sculptural 18-karat gold designs. Experience Italian artistry where color takes center stage.

Historic Spanish Village | 7212 E. Ho Hum Rd. # 7, Carefree, AZ | 480.575.8080 | GraceReneeGallery.com October 2 0 2 6

COUTURE JEWELRY + ART

December 4–5

FRIDAY AND SATURDAY 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

Discover William Henry’s award-winning fusion of rugged sophistication and artisan mastery. Each meticulously crafted piece — from luxury men’s jewelry to collectible pocket knives — combines precious metals, rare materials and advanced alloys. Experience limited-edition creations designed for the discerning collector who values both timeless elegance and masculine distinction. Historic Spanish Village October 2 0 2 6 10

| 7212 E. Ho Hum Rd. # 7, Carefree, AZ | 480.575.8080 | GraceReneeGallery.com

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ST YLE

THE MOVEMENT MAKERS Seven Italian Houses Bring Kinetic Gold and Color to Carefree

A length of 18-karat gold slides over a wrist, tightens and settles — no clasp, no catch, nothing holding it in place but the metal’s own memory of how to bend. It took a Vicenza workshop decades, several patents and at least four distinct engineering solutions to make jewelry move like that. This October, all four of those solutions will sit in the same room in Carefree. Grace Renee Gallery’s Italian Weekend, running Oct. 22–24, brings together seven of Italy’s most recognized fine jewelry houses for three days under one roof. Four of them — FOPE, Mattia Cielo, Roberto Coin and Peruffo

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Writer Joseph J. Airdo

— already anchor the gallery’s standing jewelry program. The other three, Roberto Demeglio, Giovanni Ferraris and Chiarelli Milano, are new to Carefree, chosen deliberately by owner Shelly Spence and jewelry curator Natasha Lazarova to sit alongside them. “We didn’t want seven houses that all say the same thing,” Spence says. “We wanted a weekend that shows people what Italian goldsmithing actually looks like right now — not one idea of luxury, but several, sitting next to each other so you can feel the difference.”

The gallery’s storefront sits in Carefree’s Spanish Village, in the Sonoran Desert foothills, home to both Spence’s contemporary art program and the fine jewelry line Lazarova has spent years building house by house. Italian Weekend is the first time she’s assembled this many at once. The concentration itself is worth pausing on. Nearly two-thirds of Europe’s gold jewelry is made in Italy, and roughly a third of that comes out of Vicenza alone — a city so associated with the standard that it’s long been known specifically for 18-karat gold, the karatage behind FOPE’s Flex’it and most of the Vicenza houses in this show. Valenza, in Piedmont on the opposite side of the country, runs a different specialty: more than 1,500 goldsmithing firms there handle the bulk of the fine gemstones Italy imports, which is exactly the terrain Ferraris and Chiarelli Milano work from. Underneath both towns is the same apprenticeship model — skill handed from bench to bench, often inside one family for generations — which is why four of the seven houses in this show can each trace their name back to a father, grandfather or founding partner who was already working gold before the current label went up. That difference starts with engineering — and, in FOPE’s case, with nearly a century of practice at it. Founded in Vicenza in 1929 and still run by three generations of the Cazzola family, the house had already spent decades solving mechanical problems in gold before it patented

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We didn’t want seven houses that all say the same thing. We wanted a weekend that shows people what Italian goldsmithing actually looks like right now — not one idea of luxury, but several, sitting next to each other so you can feel the difference. Shelly Spence

Flex’it in 2007, the technology that lets 18-karat mesh stretch and release without a clasp. The 1985 Novecento chain, a woven mesh design, was an earlier attempt at the same instinct. Mattia Cielo, founded in 2006 by a jeweler born into one of Italy’s own prominent jewelry families but trained himself in commerce rather than at the bench, borrows from aerospace engineering, building coiling memory-alloy cores that let a piece move independently of the wearer’s own motion.

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Roberto Demeglio, working out of Torino on a family goldsmithing lineage that dates to 1922, solves the same problem differently: a patented stretch-coil system combining gold, ceramic and precision metal that lets bracelets twist and slide onto the wrist without losing their shape. And Peruffo — the current identity of Fratelli Bovo, a Vicenza house founded in 1977 and now led by second-generation CEO Enrico Peruffo, a cousin of the founding Bovo brothers — skips gemstones

entirely, building sculptural gold forms out of articulated, moving elements instead. “Four houses, four completely different mechanisms, and none of them borrowed from each other,” Lazarova says. “That’s what tells you it’s a real engineering problem worth solving, not a gimmick one brand happened to land on.” Roberto Coin sits at something of a hinge point. Also rooted in Vicenza’s goldsmithing tradition — Coin founded his company there in 1977, after an earlier career as a hotelier, and launched his eponymous label in 1996 — his signature isn’t mechanical at all. Every piece conceals a ruby somewhere in its structure, visible only to the person wearing it. The house produces more than 600 new designs a year and sells through over 1,000 retailers worldwide, yet the ruby stays a private detail rather than a marketed one. “It’s the opposite instinct from Flex’it or a coil system,” Lazarova says. “Nobody needs to see it work. You just need to know it’s there.” Where the Vicenza houses build identity around mechanism, Giovanni Ferraris and Chiarelli Milano build theirs around color and story. Ferraris has worked from the goldsmithing district of Valenza since 1985, alongside his wife and co-designer, Katia Olivucci, favoring large-format colored gemstones set into bold dome and cocktail rings meant to be seen across a room. His recent Riflessi collection clusters marquise, teardrop, cabochon and

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“Jessica isn’t asking a piece to be a technical marvel,” Spence says. “She’s asking it to mean something specific to the person wearing it, the same way a great painting means something specific to the person who bought it. That’s exactly the kind of thinking we look for on the art side of this gallery, and it’s why she belongs on the jewelry side too.”

round-cut stones — sapphires, tourmalines, a full range of color — into pieces built less around a single showpiece gem than around the interplay of several at once. “Ferraris is doing something almost architectural with color,” Lazarova says. “Most designers pick one great stone and build around it. He’s arranging several the way you’d arrange notes in a chord.” Chiarelli Milano is the newest name in the lineup by decades. Jessica Nasr founded the house in 2020 after years spent living abroad, returning to Italy and to her family’s roots to build a brand where the jewelry itself carries her own story — journeys, migration, the layered identity of someone who left home and came back changed. Every piece is still handcrafted by artisans in Valenza.

That refusal to separate the two conversations — serious art gallery, serious jewelry destination, neither one subordinate to the other — is what Spence built Grace Renee Gallery around, and it’s the same instinct driving this particular weekend. Seven houses, four Italian cities, one shared goldsmithing tradition pulled in at least two directions at once: toward mechanism and toward meaning. By the time a visitor leaves the gallery Oct. 24, they’ll have handled gold that flexes, gold that coils, gold that hides a ruby and gold that simply refuses to sit still. There was never only one right way to make a piece of jewelry move — or to make someone want to wear it. gracereneegallery.com

ITALIAN WEEKEND

Oct. 22–24 // 10 a.m.–5 p.m. (Thursday 4–7 p.m.) Grace Renee Gallery // 480-575-8080 // gracereneegallery.com

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CANYON MYSTERIES Where Legend Meets Stone

Writer Joseph J. Airdo Black + White Photography Courtesy of Grand Canyon National Park Service

Every evening, the same performance plays out along the rim: the light drains out of the canyon in long amber sheets, the crowds thin, and a handful of visitors linger past the point where the guidebooks stop talking. They drift toward a small stone marker behind a parking lot, or stand at an overlook where a honeymoon once ended without an ending, or picture a stubborn gray burro somewhere on a snowbound ridge, holding out against men who might not let him see spring. Since its dedication as a national park in 1919, the Grand Canyon has drawn visitors for its vistas — but it has just as steadily collected a second kind of record, one kept not by geologists but by rangers, hotel staff and the travelers who linger after the tour buses pull away. These are the canyon’s mysteries: three stories, each holding at least a thread of

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truth, each proof that Arizona’s crown jewel guards as much as it reveals.

THE HARVEY GIRL WHO NEVER WAS Walk past El Tovar Hotel’s parking area today and you’ll still find it: a weathered stone marker reading “Pirl A. Ward, 1934,” tucked into a small grove of trees a few dozen steps from the hotel’s front doors. Opened in 1905 as one of the original Fred Harvey Company hotels along the Santa Fe Railway, El Tovar has welcomed guests ranging from Theodore Roosevelt to Albert Einstein — and, if the stories are true, has kept a few of them long after checkout. The marker has spawned one of the South Rim’s most persistent ghost stories: that of a doomed Harvey Girl, one of the crispuniformed hostesses who staffed the company’s hotels, said to have died an untimely death and never left. Visitors and

hotel staff alike report a black-shrouded figure gliding past the marker on moonlit nights before vanishing behind the Hopi House. The truth is stranger for being more ordinary. The marker is a cenotaph — a monument with no body beneath it — and accounts of who Ward actually was don’t agree with each other, let alone with the ghost story. Some describe him as a cowboy passing through; others as a laborer who spent years working construction around the hotel before his death in 1934. He rests hundreds of miles away in Artesia, California, regardless of which story is true. Ward isn’t El Tovar’s only resident specter. A second legend has attached itself to the hotel’s founder: each Christmas, guests report an older gentleman in old-fashioned dress inviting them to the season’s festivities, seemingly unaware that Fred Harvey has been dead since 1901. Between Ward’s marker and Harvey’s holiday visitations, the hotel has spent more than a century proving that a good story outlives the facts that inspired it — and outdraws them, too.

WHEN WINTER CLAIMS ITS OWN The canyon’s mysteries aren’t limited to human tragedy. For roughly three decades, from about 1892 until 1922, a gray burro named Brighty wandered the inner canyon and the North Rim, named for Bright Angel Creek, where he spent his summers. He carried water for tourists, let children ride on his back, and by most accounts tolerated nearly anyone who arrived with a pancake in hand. He is even said to have crossed paths with President Theodore Roosevelt during one of Roosevelt’s own canyon visits — the kind of encounter that made Brighty as much a local celebrity as a working animal.

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The Grand Canyon has spent more than a century being explained and it has spent every bit as long declining to explain itself completely.

Brighty’s fame outlasted him by decades. A 1922 “Sunset” magazine article by former North Rim camp manager Thomas McKee — titled “Brighty, Free Citizen” — introduced him to a wider audience, and three decades later, author Marguerite Henry turned his story into a children’s novel. Henry didn’t take McKee’s word for it: she traveled from her home in Illinois to interview park rangers and wranglers and rode a mule into the canyon herself before publishing “Brighty of the Grand Canyon” in 1953, adapted for the screen in 1967. According to canyon legend, that same winter of 1922 was also his last. A man fleeing into the canyon is said to have encountered Brighty and, lonely in the season’s quiet, been followed by him up toward the North Rim. When a blizzard trapped the fugitive and a second stranded traveler together in a small cabin for months on end, the story goes, hunger eventually settled the standoff between them — and Brighty didn’t survive the spring.

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Nor, nearly, did his memorial. A bronze statue of Brighty had stood inside the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim since 1966, his muzzle worn bright by generations of visitors rubbing it for luck. The statue’s popularity later became entangled in a real fight over the canyon’s feral burro population, one that eventually led wildlife officials to airlift hundreds of the animals out rather than let them multiply unchecked. Then, in July 2025, the lightningsparked Dragon Bravo Fire tore through the North Rim, destroying the historic lodge along with dozens of other structures. Brighty survived — barely, with broken legs and a hole where his pedestal had been — and was moved to the South Rim, a century-old legend now standing somewhere he never stood in life.

THE HONEYMOONERS WHO VANISHED Perhaps no canyon mystery captivates quite like that of Glen and Bessie Hyde. The newlyweds set out from Green River, Utah, in the fall of 1928, hoping Bessie would become

the first woman to run the length of the Colorado River through the canyon while setting a speed record along the way. They stopped at the South Rim in mid-November to resupply and visited photographer Emery Kolb’s studio, where Bessie is said to have remarked to Kolb’s young daughter that she wondered whether she would ever wear pretty shoes again. Days later, the Hydes vanished. Searchers found their scow drifting near river mile 237 in December, upright, fully packed and empty. The mystery deepened nearly 50 years later. When Kolb died in 1976, his family cleared out his boathouse and found a human skeleton with a bullet wound to the skull, tucked away and forgotten. Speculation immediately ran toward Glen — and toward Kolb himself, who had once questioned the Hydes’ lack of life jackets and was now unable to answer for what he had been keeping. It wasn’t until 2008, when donated photographs linked the remains to an unrelated 1933 suicide near Shoshone Point that Kolb had once investigated as a coroner’s jury representative, that Glen’s name was finally cleared. Glen and Bessie themselves were never found. More than one woman has claimed over the decades to be Bessie, grown old and living quietly under another name — none of the claims have held up, but each has kept the case in the news a little longer. Their disappearance has since inspired its own small library, from Brad Dimock’s “Sunk Without a Sound” to a novel and multiple documentary treatments, proof that some canyon mysteries are still being solved — or at least still being told. By the time the last light drains from the canyon each evening, the ghost stories are usually just getting started. A marker that guards no grave. A burro who outlived the roof that once sheltered his statue, if only barely. Two honeymooners who never came home, and a boat that did. The Grand Canyon has spent more than a century being explained — geologically, historically, exhaustively — and it has spent every bit as long declining to explain itself completely.

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Melinda Risk, Saboo Fine Jewels & Alessa Jewelry // Oct 15-17

COMMUNIT Y

OCTOBER 2026

Editor’s Picks

MELINDA RISK, SABOO FINE JEWELS & ALESSA JEWELRY Oct. 15–17

Grace Renee Gallery brings together three very different approaches to jewelry as personal storytelling. Melinda Risk reverse-paints tiny narrative scenes into rock crystal and mother-of-pearl before setting them in gold and diamonds; Jaipur’s Saboo Fine Jewels, founded in 1935, custom-cuts diamonds stone by stone in a workshop that releases no more than 40 pieces a year; and Alessa Jewelry fuses designer Alessandra Robles’ Guatemalan roots with Yuvraj Pahuja’s Indian jewelry heritage into hand-painted 18-karat gold. // gracereneegallery.com

ITALIAN WEEKEND: FOPE, MATTIA CIELO, ROBERTO COIN, ROBERTO DEMEGLIO, GIOVANNI FERRARIS, PERUFFO & CHIARELLI MILANO Oct. 22–24 Grace Renee Gallery gathers seven of Italy’s most recognized fine jewelry houses, each rooted in a distinct regional goldsmithing tradition. FOPE and Mattia Cielo, both of Vicenza, engineer flexible 18-karat gold that moves without clasps.

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Roberto Coin conceals a signature ruby in every piece. Roberto Demeglio pairs gold with titanium and ceramic in stretch bracelets. Giovanni Ferraris builds bold gemstone cocktail rings. Peruffo, of Vicenza’s Fratelli Bovo workshop, contributes sculptural gold forms. Chiarelli Milano’s Venezuelan-Italian designer Jessica Nasr brings a storytelling sensibility drawn from nature and heritage. // gracereneegallery.com

ARIZONA MUSICFEST: MAN OF LA MANCHA Oct. 23–25

Musicfest steps outside its usual Scottsdale sanctuaries for this concert, co-producing a fully staged Man of La Mancha with the Herberger Theater Center in downtown Phoenix. Tony winner Paulo Szot leads as Cervantes/ Don Quixote in the Broadway classic built around “The Impossible Dream,” with a full weekend of performances anchoring the run and tickets starting at $79.50. It’s a rare pairing of Musicfest’s orchestral resources with the Herberger’s theatrical stage. // azmusicfest.org

ARIZONA MUSICFEST: REVISITING CREEDENCE Oct. 30 // 7:30 p.m.

Musicfest closes out its October concert slate back on its home turf at Highlands Church with Revisiting Creedence, a high-energy tribute built around the swamp-rock catalog of Creedence Clearwater Revival — “Proud Mary,” “Fortunate Son,” “Bad Moon Rising” and the rest of the hits that defined a generation’s soundtrack. One night only, with tickets starting at $57 and the kind of crowd-pleasing setlist that closes a season on its feet. // azmusicfest.org

ANTHEM COMMUNITY COUNCIL BOARD OF DIRECTORS CONTINUES COMMUNITY SERVICE

The Anthem Community Council’s volunteer Board of Directors, drawn from Anthem Parkside, Anthem Country Club and The Village at Anthem, continues to guide policy and oversee the community’s parks, facilities and finances. Members serve three-year terms and represent all of Anthem regardless of neighborhood affiliation. Residents are welcome at open board meetings. // anthemcouncil.com

Calendar Directory ARTS & CULTURE

JOEL SARTORE: AN ARCC TOWARD A BETTER FUTURE Oct. 16 // 5–8 p.m.

Wildlife photographer Joel Sartore, creator of National Geographic’s Photo Ark project, headlines this benefit evening at the Phoenix Zoo, with tickets ranging $125–$175. // phoenixzoo.org

BALLET ARIZONA: ROMEO & JULIET Oct. 22–25

Ballet Arizona brings Shakespeare’s starcrossed lovers to the stage at Symphony Hall. // phoenixsymphony.org

MATILDA JR. AUDITIONS Oct. 23–24 // 5 p.m.

MUSIC & PERFORMANCE

Musical Theatre of Anthem holds auditions for its upcoming production of “Matilda Jr.” // musicaltheatreofanthem.org

Phoenix Theatre Company stages Victor Hugo’s sweeping musical of revolution and redemption, with tickets starting at $59. // phoenixtheatre.com

PROMUSICA ARIZONA CHORALE & ORCHESTRA: HEART OF AMERICA Oct. 24 // 3:30 p.m.

LES MISÉRABLES Through Oct. 18

ENCORE: A ONE MAN SHOW Oct. 2 (6 p.m.) & Oct. 4 (2 p.m.)

Metropolitan Opera bass-baritone William Powers performs a scholarshipfundraiser one-man show at Pioneer Living History Museum’s newly renovated Opera House, with tickets at $75. // cur8.com/41258/project/140840

MUSICAL THEATRE OF ANTHEM: GUYS AND DOLLS JR. Oct. 2–10 Musical Theatre of Anthem stages the classic Guys and Dolls Jr., with tickets at $30. // musicaltheatreofanthem.org

PHOENIX CHORALE: LIFE, LOVE, AND LIGHT Oct. 10 // 3 p.m.

Phoenix Chorale performs a program exploring life, love and light at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, with tickets from $25. // phoenixchorale.org

SUFFS Oct. 14–Nov. 29

Phoenix Theatre Company presents the Tony-winning musical chronicling the suffragists’ fight for the vote. // phoenixtheatre.com

ProMusica Arizona Chorale & Orchestra performs a program celebrating American music at All Saints Lutheran Church. // pmaz.org

NORTH VALLEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: INSPIRATION BECOMES INFLUENCE Oct. 24 // 7 p.m.

North Valley Symphony Orchestra explores the composers who inspired one another at North Canyon High School Auditorium, with tickets at $10. // northvalleysymphony.org

PHOENIX CHILDREN’S CHORUS: LEGACY Oct. 25 // 3 p.m.

Phoenix Children’s Chorus performs its Legacy program at Phoenix Bible Church. // phoenixchildrenschorus.org

PHOENIX SYMPHONY: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN IN CONCERT Oct. 30–31 // 7:30 p.m.

Phoenix Symphony performs the Pirates of the Caribbean film score live to picture at Symphony Hall. // phoenixsymphony.org

MRCH, included with regular museum admission. // phxart.org

FAMILY & COMMUNITY CASINO ROYALE – AN EVENING OF IMPACT Oct. 21

A casino-night fundraiser benefiting the community takes place at The Bearded Barber. // anthemacts.org

TRAVEL

PRESCOTT AREA ARTIST STUDIO TOUR Oct. 2–4 // 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Seventy-four artists open 52 private studios and three art centers across the Prescott area for this free, self-guided tour. // prescottstudiotour.com

ARIZONA WINE COUNTRY ARTISTS VILLAGE Oct. 9–11 // 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Fri–Sat, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Sun

Juried artists sell original work at this outdoor market in Old Town Cottonwood’s wine country. // artistsvillage.com

SEDONA AIRPORT WINGS & WHEELS ’26 Oct. 10 // 9 a.m.–4 p.m. Vintage aircraft and classic cars fill the tarmac at Sedona Airport, with $2 admission. // sedonaairport.org

35TH ANNUAL SEDONA ARTS FESTIVAL Oct. 10–11 // 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Sat, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Sun Juried artists from across the country exhibit fine art and crafts at Sedona Red Rock High School for the festival’s 35th anniversary, with $5 admission. // sedonaartsfestival.org

SOUNDCHECK: MRCH Oct. 30 // 7–8 p.m.

Phoenix Art Museum’s SOUNDCHECK series features a live performance by October 2 0 2 6

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HOME WATERS Bartlett Lake // Photographer Jeff Shewan

Two Lakes Within Reach of the North Valley

By nine on a Saturday morning, the boat ramps are already busy, trailers backed halfway into blue water while paddleboards get lifted off truck beds and coolers get wedged under bow seats. Within the hour, all of it will be scattered across open water, framed by desert mountains that don’t look like they should have a lake at their feet. That’s the scene most weekends at two of the closest lakes to the North Valley — close enough from Anthem, Cave Creek, Carefree or North Scottsdale that a morning coffee and an afternoon on the water fit easily into the same day. Bartlett Lake tends to be the shorter drive for Cave Creek, Carefree and North Scottsdale readers alike, while Lake Pleasant sits closest to Anthem, a short run west on Carefree Highway. Between the two lakes, there are nearly 26,000 acres of water, and depending on which of the three communities a reader calls home, one or the other is almost always the more convenient option. The two lakes fall

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Writer Shannon Severson

under different management, too — Bartlett within Tonto National Forest, Pleasant as a Maricopa County regional park — which explains why their amenities and rules differ slightly from one shoreline to the next. Bartlett Lake creates a striking contrast of blue water against rugged mountain vistas, its 2,815 acres erupting into wildflower displays each spring — a bloom that typically peaks in March and April, drawing photographers as much as boaters. The family-run marina rents everything from jet skis to stand-up paddleboards, plus a two-story, 45-foot pontoon yacht that accommodates 20 passengers. The Cove at Bartlett serves a signature Copper State Burger topped with prickly pear chutney, and the marina’s boat club membership offers access to 14 different vessels without the commitment of ownership — a model that has made Bartlett one of the more approachable lakes in the Valley for first-time boaters.

Bartlett Lake // Photographer Kelly DeLay

West of Bartlett, Lake Pleasant Regional Park spans 23,000 acres framed by rugged desert mountains — roughly eight times the size of Bartlett, leaving plenty of open water even on a busy weekend — and offers everything from paddleboard yoga to nighttime scorpion hunting and stargazing. Below the surface lies one of the West’s premier inland scuba destinations, where the original Waddell Dam rests 260 feet deep alongside forgotten structures. Pleasant Harbor and Scorpion Bay marinas offer watercraft rentals and experiences ranging from hydroflying to overnight stays in floating cabins, plus Paqua Park, a floating obstacle course for thrill-seekers. Daily boat cruises and dinner cruises round out the no-hassle options for a day on the water.

Lake Pleasant // Photographer John Menard

Both lakes get crowded by midday on summer weekends, so an early start or a weekday visit rewards early risers with calmer water and easier parking at either marina. Two lakes, one short drive each — Bartlett for wildflowers and pontoon afternoons, Pleasant for scuba dives into sunken history and nights spent hunting scorpions under the stars. Neither requires more planning than a full tank of gas and a cooler; the hardest part of either trip is deciding which one to visit first, and there’s nothing stopping anyone from doing both.

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TALL TALES Three Cochise County Towns Where Legend Never Dies

Writer Joseph J. Airdo

The billboards start showing up a hundred miles out, long before Cochise County itself comes into view — faded paint promising mystery, alien remains, the wickedest town in the West. By the time a driver actually arrives, the promises have mostly held up. Bisbee, Tombstone and Dragoon sit within an hour of each other in Arizona’s southeastern corner, three towns built on mining booms and gunfights and one very persistent roadside oddity, and each one has spent more than a century getting the story just a little bit taller in the retelling. Bisbee climbs the walls of the Mule Mountains instead of spreading across them, a legacy of its mining-boom days when there was no room left to build outward. That vertical layout is why the Bisbee 1000 exists at all: the race’s nine staircases were built by the Works Progress Administration during the Depression, put up specifically to give out-ofwork miners something to do, and runners still start at the foot of the Iron Man, a 9-foot, copper-plated concrete miner erected in the same era. The 2024 running marked the 33rd year of the event, held every October since 1990 and drawing entrants from around the world for a 4.5-mile

Bisbee // Photographer Eric Jewett October 2 0 2 6

course through Old Bisbee’s staircases and switchbacks. The Smithsonian-affiliated Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum and the underground Queen Mine Tour fill out a day; the weekly farmers market and monthly art walk fill out a weekend. Thirty minutes northeast, Tombstone has spent 145 years living up to its nickname, the Town Too Tough to Die. The 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral is reenacted daily on Allen Street, but the better story might be underground: the Bird Cage Theatre, a former saloon and brothel, kept a single poker game running continuously in its basement from 1881 to 1889 — eight and a half years, a $1,000 buy-

in worth roughly $27,000 today, with Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and mining magnate George Hearst among the players who sat down. Helldorado Days, the town’s oldest festival, has marked Tombstone’s founding anniversary every October since 1929, filling Allen Street with parades and gunfight reenactments. Boot Hill Graveyard’s tonguein-cheek epitaphs round out an afternoon. East along I-10, Dragoon is barely a town at all — an unincorporated stretch of desert best known for the hundreds of billboards advertising The Thing?, a roadside museum built around a mummified mystery that’s been drawing curious drivers off the highway

Bisbee // Photographer A Guy Named Nyal

Tombstone // Photographer Mike McBey

Bisbee, Tombstone and Dragoon sit within an hour of each other and each one has spent more than a century getting the story just a little bit taller in the retelling. 28

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Dragoon // Photographer Cecilia Alexander

Dragoon // Photographer Dedhed1950

since 1965. The attraction underwent a major renovation in July 2026, adding life-sized alien and dinosaur exhibits without touching the original centerpiece, which still gets the same big reveal at the end of the walkthrough it always has. History buffs willing to look past the aliens can visit the grave of outlaw Johnny Ringo nearby, whose death remains almost as disputed as anything on display at The Thing. Three towns, one highway corridor, and a shared talent for turning uncertain facts into a good story — Bisbee’s staircases, Tombstone’s ghosts, Dragoon’s aliens. None of it is entirely verifiable. All of it is worth the detour.

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Simple Farm operates on Cactus Road in the middle of Scottsdale, opening its gates one morning a week for an on-site market and hand-milking its small Nubian herd twice daily — proof a working farm can still exist inside a major metro suburb. October 2 0 2 6

PHOTO ESSAY

ROOTS & RANGE Photographer Brenna Zumbro-Monke Instagram: @brennazumbro

Date Creek Ranch has raised cattle in the desert northwest of Wickenburg since 1966. Its herd is mostly Brahman — a breed built for heat, with loose skin and long legs, rather than the Angus common in cooler cattle states — and the ranch now runs entirely on solar power. October 2 0 2 6

PHOTO ESSAY

At Page Springs Cellars, punching down the cap of grape skins by hand keeps color and tannin moving into the wine during fermentation. The finished vintage won’t age in French or American oak — the winery uses staves cut from Arizona White Oak, a native species.

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At Rabbit Run Farm, every root that reaches a farmers market table comes out of the ground by hand — almost none of Arizona’s small organic farms harvest by machine.

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Rabbit Run Farm grows in Skull Valley, a high-desert grassland community west of Prescott sitting well above the Valley floor — cool enough that root vegetables like these carrots keep coming long after Phoenix gardens have given up for the season. October 2 0 2 6

PHOTO ESSAY

A newborn kid at Simple Farm in Scottsdale, part of the small Nubian herd whose milk becomes the farm’s chèvre, soap and caramel sauce.

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COMMUNIT Y

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The Boulder Creek Jaguars enter the season as one of only eight teams invited to the Copper State Fiesta Bowl Invitational this October.

F LBoulder A GCreek GGirls E DFlag Football AND Chases a Breakout Season

F E A R L E S S Writer Shannon Severson // Photographer Gina Brown (Capturing the Moments LLC)

The whistle blows, the ball is snapped and a quarterback drops back to scan the field. After a leaping grab, the wide receiver speeds past every yard marker — cleats digging into the turf — evading defenders all the way to the end zone. Her teammates swarm in for a touchdown celebration. This is not Friday night lights. It’s girls flag football — the fastest-growing high school sport in the country. Statewide participation more than doubled from 54 schools in the first AIA-sanctioned season to more than 100 the following year. At the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, men’s and women’s flag football will make its international debut. Professional leagues are forming with a $32 million NFL investment, and the National Football Foundation’s Bill Riddle Chapter is handing out scholarships to top Arizona athletes. Boulder Creek High School is part of that wave. A team founded just three years ago is setting records and getting noticed. The Jaguars are one of only eight teams invited to the Copper State Fiesta Bowl Invitational on Oct. 15 and 17, placing the team alongside some of the state’s elite programs.

Coach Todd Jubert is proud to have been here from the beginning. “It’s cool that I get to say I was the very first girls’ flag football coach at Boulder,” he says. “There was a lot of behind-the-scenes work to get a program started.” Senior Sarah Brutto already owns the Arizona single-game rushing record. She ran for 269 yards in one afternoon as a sophomore — a mark that still stands today. She walked away for club soccer last year and is back this fall with unfinished business. “I want to make it to the playoffs and take one more step,” Brutto says. She’s all in with her fellow seniors, determined to win games and leave the team stronger than they found it. Copper State is a stage for their progress.

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Junior linebacker Alice Betts anchors the Jaguars’ defense, having led the team with 86 flag pulls last season on her way to back-to-back AllRegion honors.

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“It shows we are better than people think,” Brutto says. “From our first year to now, it shows how much we have improved.”

BUILT FROM SCRATCH

Senior Sarah Brutto returns to the Jaguars this fall after a year away playing club soccer, chasing one more shot at the playoffs and the state single-game rushing record she’s held since her sophomore season.

Jubert never expected to coach girls flag football. He owns a custom upholstery business and works security at Boulder Creek. When the school fielded a team in the sport’s first AIA year, he put his name in the hat. “I went from coaching my kids in youth straight to head coach at a 6A school,” he says. The first season was a crash course. Only one girl on the roster had played before. The program grew by attracting multi-sport athletes. Soccer players brought cutting ability. Track athletes brought speed. Basketball players brought footwork. Wrestlers became natural blockers. Last year the team made the playoffs for the first time. This year, it enters with its first JV roster, a senior class ready to lead and a strong staff — offensive coordinator Kevin Coffman and defensive coordinator Dominic Ambriz.

THE SENIOR CORE The emotional center of the team is seniors like Brutto, Jada Johnson and McKayla Chapman — the only player who has played all four seasons. Jubert calls her one of the favorite targets of sophomore quarterback Sophia Coffman. Johnson, a nearly six-foot-tall wide receiver, earned honorable mention All-West Valley Region honors last season after catching 48 passes for 508 yards and eight touchdowns. She’s aiming for 1,000 receiving yards this season. She and Coffman have a quiet understanding: Coffman can throw 35 or 45 yards and trust that Johnson will be there. “I like being a senior,” Johnson says. “When I was younger I looked up to the seniors. It’s cool to see the younger kids look up to me now.” Brutto’s return adds another dimension. A year of club soccer sharpened her communication and defensive instincts. She returns with a desire for deeper playoff runs and one more chance to dominate on the ground.

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Senior wide receiver Jada Johnson caught 48 passes for 508 yards and eight touchdowns last season and is aiming for 1,000 receiving yards before she graduates.

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The seniors remind the younger players the program was built from the ground up. Hard work got it here. Hard work will keep it going.

Jubert praises her versatility. “She’s only a freshman, but I think that girl might set some records this year,” he says.

THE NEXT WAVE Coffman bridges the next generation. As a freshman, she earned first-team All-Region honors — throwing for 3,049 yards in 14 games — ranking 10th in 6A and second among all freshmen statewide. She completed 67% of her passes and threw 29 touchdowns. Jubert ranks her among the top quarterbacks in Arizona and believes a 4,000-yard year is realistic. Since starting in the NFL’s Core 5 league at 10 years old, Coffman and her father, Kevin, the team’s offensive coordinator, have worked together constantly and tend to read each other’s minds. Her communication on the field is similarly simpatico. “I don’t have to be fiery and loud,” she says. “I tell them something once and they get it.” Her goals: 3,500-plus yards, a higher completion percentage, fewer interceptions and more designed runs. Freshman Bria Hodges represents the next wave. A multisport athlete and barrel-racing rodeo competitor, she is already on the varsity roster. “I want to help some of the freshmen who didn’t play over the summer,” Hodges says. “I was like them when I first started.”

Kassie Terrell brings elite track credentials. One of Arizona’s top sprinters and mid-distance runners, she joined after encouragement from teammates. Her speed translates immediately, and she’s found joy in the game even as she learns the ropes. “I’m a rusher so I have to understand what the person in front of me is going to do,” she says. “It’s a different strategy than track.” Jubert has already seen the afterburner kick in. “She’s a natural athlete and very intelligent,” he says. “You only have to tell her once.”

DEFENSE AND DREAMS Junior Alice Betts gives the defense its identity. A natural linebacker, she has earned All-Region honors the last two seasons. Last year she led the team with 86 flag pulls (13th in 6A) and averaged 6.6 per game (eighth in 6A). “I look for the angle a girl is standing so I know where she’s going,” Betts says. “I watch who the quarterback throws to the most.” Jubert expects her to rank among the state’s top linebackers. October 2 0 2 6

Senior McKayla Chapman is the only Jaguar to have played all four seasons of the program’s existence, making her one of quarterback Sophia Coffman’s most trusted targets on the field.

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With these statistics, college recruiters are calling and scholarships are on offer. Last year, senior Valentina Ibarra became the program’s first Bill Riddle Chapter scholarship recipient. This year, four girls are being considered. Four of Jubert’s players are in talks with a California program. ASU and Grand Canyon University are fielding teams, and NAIA and Division III programs are adding the sport.

Sophomore quarterback Sophia Coffman threw for 3,049 yards as a freshman, a season that ranked her second among all freshmen statewide and set the bar for what she hopes to top this year.

“Colleges are contacting us all the time,” Jubert says. Brutto would take the right college opportunity. Johnson has an offer from a North Carolina school. Coffman is fielding calls. Hodges wants a Division I chance. Terrell is still discovering how far her speed can carry her. The sky’s the limit.

CHARGING INTO THE FUTURE Jubert’s goals are a top-eight finish in 6A, a playoff game at home, and surprising those who may underestimate what the Jaguars can do. “We set the standards pretty high this year,” he says. For the community, he wants folks to attend and experience the excitement. “The games are fast and the skill level is higher than many outsiders expect,” he notes. “The athletes from other sports bring those skills with them.” The girls who once wondered whether they belonged are now telling younger players that they do. Brutto and the other seniors want to finish strong, spurring the program to keep building after they graduate. In a sport that did not exist as a sanctioned high school option in Arizona only a few years ago, that Jaguar ambition already feels like progress. bchs.dvusd.org

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COMMUNIT Y

Rita Chait Brezka, 90, survived the Holocaust as a child in Poland before building a life that spanned three continents and seven countries. She now calls Anthem home.

WHAT THE FIRE COULD NOT TAKE A Holocaust Survivor’s Long Road to Anthem

O 46

Writer Joseph J. Airdo Photography Courtesy of Rita Chait Brezka

On the night of Sept. 24, 1942, the residents of the Tuczyn

Now 90 and living in Anthem, Brezka will share her

ghetto set their own homes on fire.

account of that night, and of the years that followed it across three continents and seven countries, at a

It was not despair — it was a plan. Word had reached the

community presentation Oct. 12 at North Valley Regional

ghetto that Auschwitz, despite German claims, was a death

Library. The presentation is the product of more than

camp and not a work camp, and its leaders had spent days

a year’s work by three of her friends: Debby Peck, who

preparing for this moment: torch the buildings, break

first proposed documenting Brezka’s story and worked

the fence line under cover of smoke and chaos, run for

alongside Cornelia Jensen researching and verifying its

the forest. Rita Chait Brezka was 6 years old. Her father

historical details; Jensen, who built and maintains the

struck the match in their own house.

accompanying slideshow; and Carolyn Richins, who has

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Rita Chait Brezka taught herself seven languages over a lifetime with almost no formal schooling, a fact she attributes to necessity rather than talent.

coordinated with organizations from the Arizona Jewish

Brezka was born in 1935 in Tuczyn, then part of Poland and

Historical Society to the library system to bring the story

now Ukraine, a town whose Jewish community numbered

to a public stage. The three eventually hope to bring the

about 3,000. She was the oldest of three daughters to Sam,

presentation into local schools as well.

a traveling candy salesman and Polish Army veteran, and Leja, who ran a bakery out of her mother’s home; her

“I wanted to do something special for Rita’s 89th birthday,”

sister Berta was born two years later and would spend the

Peck says. “A group of us were taking her to dinner, so I

war years at her side.

wrote a short history of her life during the Holocaust and later in Argentina, and pulled together photos she’d given

“I remember overhearing my father tell my mother and my

me from that time. I started passing it around to friends in

aunts about the plan to burn the ghetto,” Brezka recalls.

our mahjong and card games and asking Rita to tell them

“He got kerosene, poured it over the bed and pillows and

her story in person. Eventually I asked her if she wanted

across the house, and lit a match. Houses in Europe had

to tell more people. She said yes, so I asked my two hiking

metal roofs, and when the roof got hot, it made loud pops

buddies if they’d help, and here we are.”

— like shooting. When we ran, I was with my mother, and

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I don’t want anyone to go through that again. Today we are still not at peace — Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Palestine. We are still not at peace. I just want peace for everyone. Rita Chait Brezka

Long before she settled in Anthem, Rita Chait Brezka spent her childhood in hiding, her young adulthood in Argentina, and decades in Chicago raising a family — a journey she is only now sharing publicly.

my sister was with my father. Some men had cut a hole in

The Tuczyn revolt — among the earliest organized

the fence. My mother and I crawled through it and ran for

Jewish ghetto uprisings of the Holocaust, according to

the forest. My father and sister were caught in the stampede

historians — allowed roughly two-thirds of the ghetto’s

of people fleeing the ghetto, and my sister was trampled; my

3,000 residents to reach the tree line. Half of those were

father picked her up and ran. My mother always dressed my

recaptured within three days. For more than a year

sister and me in matching dresses — my father spotted us

afterward, the family survived in a shelter dug into the

because I was wearing a dress just like hers.”

forest floor, moving constantly to avoid German patrols.

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“We ate icicles in the winter and blueberries in the summer,”

In Argentina, Brezka went to work rather than to school,

Brezka says. “Sometimes we had a potato, or a loaf of

helping support her family in the years before she met Nate,

bread my father earned doing odd jobs at night. One time

a Jewish refugee from Russia, when they were both 20.

he brought home meat — it tasted sweet, and he told us it

They married in 1957, and their daughter, Elisabeth, was

was horse meat, cut from a dead horse. Another time he

born the following year. In 1964, the family immigrated to

brought home a loaf of bread, but my mother wouldn’t

Chicago, where a sister of Rita’s had already settled, and

let us eat it because it was Passover. By the time Passover

where their son, Glen, was born in 1965. Rita became a

ended, the bread had gone moldy. We ate it anyway.”

U.S. citizen in 1969 — and made official, at last, the name she had gone by since Argentina. Not Rebecca, the name

A cousin, shot and left for dead by a mobile killing unit,

on her birth certificate, but Rita, chosen simply because

was found alive by Brezka’s father and carried back to

it was shorter and easier to spell. She has never sat in a

join them; she survived the rest of the war at the family’s

classroom since those brief Hebrew lessons in Cremona;

side. Of the 3,000 Jews who had lived in Tuczyn before

the seven languages she speaks today, she taught herself.

the occupation, 20 remained in the region when it was liberated in January 1944.

Rita and Nate raised both children in Chicago before retiring to Anthem in 2009 to be near Elisabeth, who had

The peace that followed did not bring home. There was

moved to the Valley nearly a decade earlier to become a

no home left to return to. Brezka’s family spent two years

Phoenix school principal. Glen and Rita’s two sisters still

in a displaced persons camp in a former jail in Cremona,

live in Chicago.

Italy, where Brezka — then 10 to 12 years old — took her only classroom lessons of her life: Hebrew, in preparation

“A lot of people don’t know about the Holocaust and

for a move to what would become Israel. She also picked

what the Jews went through,” Brezka says. “Kids today

up Italian from friends in the camp and learned to dance.

don’t know about it. I want to tell them it happened, and that it’s true. There were so many people killed — mothers,

Rita and Berta were granted passage on the ship Exodus

fathers, sisters, brothers, children. They didn’t do anything

alongside their cousin Ida and her new husband, later

wrong. It was just because they were Jewish. I don’t want

famous as the inspiration for Leon Uris’ novel and film

anyone to go through that again. Today we are still not at

*Exodus*. But immigration officials deemed Rita’s parents

peace — Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Palestine. We are

too old to make the crossing, and the family refused to be

still not at peace. I just want peace for everyone. I want

separated. Instead, a distant cousin who had read of their

teachers to tell their students that it happened.”

survival in a newspaper arranged travel documents to Paraguay, landlocked and reachable only by ship to the

It is the question at the center of Oct. 12′s presentation,

Brazilian port of Santos. There, representatives of the Jewish

the one her moderator plans to ask her before anything

aid organization ORT met the family with different news:

else. For a woman who spent a childhood surviving in

Paraguay’s civil war had made the plan impossible. The

silence — in trenches, in forests, on forged papers, under

family spent a month in an ORT-provided hotel in Brazil

borrowed roofs — choosing to speak now, plainly and

before a cousin already living in Argentina helped smuggle

often, is its own kind of peace.

them across the border, where they would stay until 1964.

HEAR FROM A SURVIVOR Monday, Oct. 12 // 3 p.m. North Valley Regional Library // events.mcldaz.org

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RECIPE

Makes: 6 servings

Ingredients

For the spiced nuts, seeds and prosciutto: 1/2 cup (4 ounces) raw hazelnuts or pecans 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds (pepitas) 1 tablespoon unsalted butter 1 teaspoon smoked paprika 1/2 teaspoon ground chipotle 3 ounces thinly sliced prosciutto (omit if vegetarian) 2 tablespoons honey Flaky sea salt FOR THE SALAD: 1 pound orzo pasta 4 cups shredded kale 2 cups shredded Brussels sprouts 2 Honeycrisp apples, thinly sliced 1/2 cup pomegranate arils 1 cup cubed Manchego cheese (or white cheddar) 4 ounces feta cheese, cubed or crumbled FOR THE CINNAMON CIDER VINAIGRETTE: 2 tablespoons salted butter 1 shallot, sliced or chopped 2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves 1/2 cup apple cider 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil 2 teaspoons honey (optional) Salt and black pepper Chili flakes

FALL HARVEST APPLE ORZO SALAD

Writer and Photographer Francine Coles thefancypantskitchen.com

This bountiful fall salad layers hearty orzo pasta with crisp Honeycrisp apples, kale and shredded Brussels sprouts, then folds in Manchego and feta for richness. A brown butter dressing scented with apple cider and cinnamon ties everything together, while pomegranate arils, spiced nuts and crispy prosciutto add color, crunch and a touch of smoky sweetness. It’s substantial enough for a fall dinner table yet light enough to keep guests coming back for seconds.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 2. On the prepared baking sheet, toss together the hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds, butter, smoked paprika and ground chipotle, then spread in a single layer. Arrange the prosciutto around the nuts and seeds. Bake 10 minutes, until the nuts and seeds are toasted and the prosciutto is crisp. 3. Drizzle honey over the baking sheet and return to the oven 5 minutes longer. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt and let cool completely, then break the prosciutto into bite-size pieces. 4. Meanwhile, cook the orzo according to package directions and drain. 5. In a large salad bowl, combine the kale, Brussels sprouts and warm orzo. Add the apples and pomegranate arils. 6. To make the vinaigrette, cook the butter, shallot and thyme in a skillet over medium heat until the butter is browned, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the apple cider and cinnamon. Return to high heat and boil 5 minutes, until reduced by half. Whisk in the olive oil, honey, salt, pepper and chili flakes, tasting and adjusting seasoning as needed. 7. Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss to combine. Top with the toasted nuts and seeds, prosciutto, Manchego and feta before serving.

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