use real butter

Recipe: mussels in white wine sauce

My dad skyped me this evening and I was all giggles because Jeremy and I had already broken into the champagne. Even though we stay up past midnight most evenings, we usually turn in before the year flips on New Year’s Eve. We enjoyed a bottle of bubbly with our dinner tonight.

i know this is a favorite of squid, barbara, and mollie

The typical thing to do at the close of the year is to reflect and perhaps list favorites or tick off milestones of the year. I feel I got a very good look at 2008 during 2008 – like traveling the road with my face 2 inches from the pavement. All of the bad times are quite fresh, but more importantly all of the good times are also vivid in my mind. I am really happy to not only be alive, but to be more or less healthy (it’s hard to really know), and definitely living on my terms. In volleyball, we always used to tell each other, “on your toes!” so you’d be ready for anything the offense would dump over the net – a dink, off the block, hard line, cross court, six-pack in the face. I feel as if I live my life “on my toes” now. That comes with the territory when you lose someone close to you or don’t know if you will survive your disease or experience one of those curve balls (I like to think of it as a wicked floater serve instead) that life pitches and sends you sprawling on your ass. Keep your eye on the ball.

back to breckenridge with my honey

**Jump for more butter**

I got an early start this morning because I had a lot going on today. After I dropped Jeremy off at the Park-n-Ride, I was turning out of the parking lot when I saw a police car racing through our town’s only traffic circle to my right, and an ambulance from the fire station coming from my left headed in the same direction as the police car.

Odd for our little mountain town.

And my busy day went as planned. Jeremy came with me to my appointment with my oncologist in the afternoon. We gathered groceries for the rest of the week, and as we drove home, we caught on the local NPR station that there was a fatal shooting at Eldora Mountain Resort this morning (Dec. 30). Eldora is our local ski hill.

We only gathered the details after getting home and hopping on the internet.

Eldora is a small hill compared to the big mountain resorts off of I-70, like Vail, Breckenridge, Copper… But we love Eldo because it’s ten minutes from our house. We love Eldo because there are more telemark skiers on that mountain than alpine skiers on a powder day. We love Eldo because it is a true family resort. They have the most professional staff we’ve ever encountered, the best ski patrol, the finest telemark instructors – good people and a good ski resort. I never knew, but the man to thank for the exceptional way in which the mountain is run is the general manager, Brian Mahon.

I’ll not get that chance to thank Brian, because he was shot and killed this morning by the gunman at Eldora. Brian is survived by his wife and two daughters. Jeremy and I are so very sad about the news.

Recipe: french yule log

It’s that time again… time for another Daring Bakers Challenge! This month’s challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

daring bakers: we knead to bake!

I very much have a love-hate relationship with the Daring Bakers these days. I love learning new techniques and skills that I would otherwise never think to try on my own and there are some really fantastic bakers in the community who inspire me to keep coming back each month for more punishment. I’m almost always glad to have completed a challenge no matter how many disastrous steps along the way, I just don’t know how long I will continue to keep it up.

At first blush, I rolled my eyes when I read that our challenge was a yule log. We did that last December. However, after reading up on the difference between this month’s French yule log and its jellyroll cousin, I was game. It’s a more complex assembly and required some fast thinking when various components didn’t work out. I felt the instructions were overly simplified in many places and just plain vague in others. In the end, it came together nicely, but I won’t lie to you and say I didn’t do a fair bit of cussing along the way.

**Jump for more butter**