use real butter

Recipe: vietnamese beef pho

NaBloWriMo day 14. I’m blogging daily and trying not to lose it.

Eat on $30 day 4. I’ll cover what we ate on day 4 tomorrow since the Daring Cooks challenge usually goes live at midnight. This posting date was set in stone millennia ago, but I made it (and we ate it) last week, so it isn’t part of the Eat on $30 challenge.

It’s my Dad’s birthday! Happy Birthday, Baba! I hope you have an awesome day. Love, JenJen.

Did you see the giveaway for 2 $25 Macy’s gift cards? Go! Go enter! Then come back because this recipe RAWKS!

daring cooks – we slice, we dice, we sizzle, baby!

It’s time for the Daring Cooks again after last month’s hiatus. Let’s pay proper homage to the ladies of the kitchen… the DARING KITCHEN, that is: lovable Lis of La Mia Cucina and irresistable Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice. Our hostess this month is one of my favorite chicas of the food blogging world, Jaden from Steamy Kitchen. I had the pleasure of meeting her in person last month at the BlogHer Food conference in San Francisco – such a sweetheart.

Here’s the official line: The October 2009 Daring Cooks’ challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.

The challenge for October was Vietnamese pho. Jaden gave us a lot of options to choose from, but I went straight for the long version of the Vietnamese beef pho recipe. I have been wanting to make beef pho for years and this was the kick in the patootie I needed. I only made a half recipe since we had to empty our fridge of perishables before starting the Eat on $30 challenge. The first step was to roast the ginger and onion in the oven. While that was roasting, I parboiled the beef bones ten minutes for the precious broth then drained them and cleared the pot of scum.

halved onion and ginger

beef bones

I’ve never made broth with this combination of spices before and I was so excited! The parboiled bones went into a fresh pot of water and were brought back to a boil. I placed the spices in a little mesh pouch and chucked those in with the ginger, onion, fish sauce, sugar, and salt.

spices

my favorite brand of fish sauce (oddly enough, three crabs)

into the pot the onion goes

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pan-seared sesame-crusted tuna

Helloooooo September! I’m so happy she’s here now. I love September. Love it. You know how you have 60 days’ worth of stuff to cram into 30 days? That’s my September. Oops! now 29 days…

There is no better way to kick off a new month than with a dinner party. I mean, a dinner partay. I was running a little behind schedule when folks began to trickle in yesterday evening. Luke and Nichole asked if there was anything they could help with. Normally (and my friends will verify) I say no and have people sit down with drinks, appetizers, and let the conversation roll. I’m a bit of a control freak like that. But the appetizers were not assembled yet, Jeremy was tending grill and dishes, and I was still getting my mise en place EN PLACE for dinner. I sliced up the grilled pork chops and showed Luke how to wrap spring rolls while Nichole became the mojito maestra. They took to their tasks like pros. The food was in good hands and I could relinquish those duties without a worry. Nice. I guess you *can* teach an OCD to delegate.

the spring roll brigade at work

It’s times like these when I am reminded why I should only serve Chinese food if the headcount is under 6… because we don’t have burners with enough BTUs to handle the volume. But it’s a known fact that you can’t get decent Chinese food in Boulder. Period. I wanted to treat our buds to something authentic, you know? It would have been great to whip up a quick meal so I could sit down and chill with folks more. I tried a newish recipe this week that was fast and amazing. We both loved it. Unfortunately, at $30/pound (okay, technically $27.99/pound – but when you buy 4 pounds, that $8 becomes negligible) it’s not an especially economical dinner to be serving at a dinner party. I dare say it’s worth the splurge for a lovely dinner for two.

wasabi (powder)!

spice up your life: a little wasabi mayo

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: korean bulgogi

Uh, it’s getting hot around here *tugs at collar*. Am I the only one who closes her eyes and dreams of snow? Dreams of The Tele*? Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy my summer. I am currently enjoying the hell out of my summer such that there is very little time. Peter recently tweeted that summer is a slow time on the blogs. It’s very true. I’ve also noticed Blogger Blah has been going around the ‘hood. People blog for different purposes. It isn’t wholly unexpected to one day find your mojo has disappeared. Mine is more of a waxing and waning, but that is easily remedied. I have two rules regarding my relationship with urb:

1) Maintain a repository of recipes for those stretches when you can’t or don’t feel inspired to cook or bake. I got into this habit during my treatment last year. While I like to maintain a steady posting schedule, life doesn’t work that way.

2) Life always comes before the blog.

* Tele – short for telemark skiing referring specifically to the telemark turn which differs from the alpine (downhill) turn in that only the toe of the boot is connected to the binding and the heel is free to pivot resulting in a graceful technique and skiers who deem themselves superior to all others (and rightly so). *snort*

the view from east maroon pass

I know that second one sounds like common sense, but it’s really easy to lose priorities when you’re into the mucky muck of blogging. I’m talking about the big picture like life and death. More life than death, of course! As I told Andrew the other day, “don’t dwell on death except to recognize it as a boundary condition to life” (not that Andrew is the type to dwell). Get out there, yo! Part of the value of blogging is sharing information and experiences – things you keep fresh by living your life. I’m busy, but I’m also enjoying the summer. I command you to do the same, however it is you choose to enjoy it. Just don’t hurt yourself or anyone else, alright? Have some fun while you’re at it.

So, just a couple of flower pics and we’ll get this ball rolling. You can see the rest at the photo blog: day 3 and day 4.

king’s crown

sunflowers and larkspur

**Jump for more butter**