use real butter

…sucks unless you pay out the nose (and then it’s still not worth what you paid).

We are in a ski resort town tonight. I dragged Jeremy and dog out for the weekend to shoot the fall colors. It’s beautiful out here. There is nothing to report food-wise other than I cannot wait to get home to a decently prepared meal again.

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: choco-crisp cookies

One night during my pastry skills course, I was in a discussion with two other classmates over cookie recipes and how to achieve the proper texture at elevation. I’ve learned from Shan to try removing the leavening agent for my elevation and it seems to work well with most of the cakes I bake. He was passing by during our conversation and couldn’t help but interject, “freeze the dough”. I made a mental note to give it a try.

I used to bake a lot of cookies. It was easy in graduate school because I could bring in a double batch of cookies, set them in the office, and send the email out to the department. They’d be gone in a couple of hours. Graduate students are always hungry. I made cookies at least twice a week for stress relief and I fine tuned my recipes to the perfect texture – at sea level. When we moved to Colorado, I was disappointed with how many of my recipes had to be readjusted. I didn’t feel like wasting my time because I didn’t know where to start tweaking.

**Jump for more butter**

[Go to the updated posole post.]
I’m not sure where I got my recipe for posole, but I know who introduced me to it. Jeremy is a native son of New Mexico (which is one of the 50 states and not a separate country as some US citizens might think). Despite being a white boy, he is particular about New Mexican food and scoffs at what Coloradoans try to pass off as Mexican food. I love Colorado, but damn it if these people don’t know how to cook…

Okay, so with the cooling temperatures and changing aspens comes my appetite for hot soups and stews – things I generally avoid during our warm months. Posole is incredibly simple and yet it produces such a satisfying and hearty meal. It is named for the star ingredient: hominy or posole. I use whole dried red New Mexican chile pods for this stew. I’ve substituted with other dried chiles before and I didn’t like them so much. So if you can get your hands on some New Mexican reds or bribe a friend in the state to send you some, it’s worth the trouble. I also like to add roasted Hatch green chiles (of New Mexico – see a pattern here?) at the end of the cooking.