use real butter

No recipe today, kids. I didn’t want to mix things up too much here, as there is a giveaway to announce! I trust everyone had a pleasant weekend?

We had a small group of people (and their assorted extensions) from Jeremy’s department up for a barbecue on Saturday. Our intention was to invite them oh… two years ago, but we got waylaid for well over a year with my treatments and randomly leaky appendix. Once that was mostly behind us, it was winter and we don’t invite the uninitiated up to our place in winter lest they never want to return again. So finally(!) we could feed the starving graduate students and the not-so-starving non-graduate students properly this past weekend. It was nice to meet the people behind the names.

the menu
crudités and spinach dip
chips, salsa, and guacamole
citrus, almond salad
german roasted potato salad (sans bacon)
honey wheat rolls
roasted pepper, goat cheese tart (sans prosciutto)
grilled marinated flank steak
barbecue chicken
vanilla bean, matcha green tea, chocolate, and coffee ice creams
chocolate stout cake

busy eating

That morning we purposely took Kaweah on a trail run so she would be a little too pooped out to shamelessly beg for food from guests. She still shamelessly begged, but at least it was more hopeful than shameless. J’s two young children kept themselves amused with Kaweah and then with our yard, bringing in giant bouquets of dandelions, gold banner, and bluebells they had picked. As we saw folks off that evening, I noticed that our yard had gone from gold- and blue-dotted to pure green. I should have known better than to leave the flowers in the house because my eyes were gummy and weepy the next morning what with all of the pollen from our yard concentrated in our living room. And I see the pine cones out my window are primed with the yellow powder of passionate pine tree sex. It begins. My arsenal of steroid nasal sprays, antihistamine drops, and pills are at the ready.

While it will be another month before wildflowers make their entrance in the high country, the wildflowers of our neighborhood trails are ramping up while the ones down on the flats (Boulder) are at or just past peak. For a flower-dork such as myself, this translates into wildflowers from April through September. Nice.

fo shiz on that, yo

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: shrimp toast

I’m done processing my photos from Yosemite and I think the latter half of any shooting trip always suffers. By the end of a multi-day shoot, I’m less inclined to sit around trying to get the perfect shot and by the end of my photo processing (which proceeds chronologically) my threshold for photos to even bother processing goes way down.

foothill poppies and lupine

yosemite falls (upper and lower)

You can see selected photos from the trip on the photo blog: waterfalls, flowering trees, Yosemite valley shots, foothill wildflowers, and wildflowers within Yosemite. After Yosemite, we spent three days getting stuffed to the hilt on amazing Chinese food. I can’t keep doing that. Next time I see Grandma, we’ll have to make a deal that we only eat out once a day and nosh on fresh fruits and vegetables the rest of the time. After the third meal out, I feel as if I’m going to blow up from all the sodium intake. Of course, the menus never fail to entertain.

you can always find chinglish

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Recipe: fried shrimp wontons

I’ve been hearing/reading about the broiler weekend everyone has been having on the East coast. Something to be said for the ridge-trough-ridge systems that march through. Our mild and sunny days in the mountains this week gave way to a thick fog this morning followed by drizzle and then… snow. I know some of you will grimace at the mention of snow as we’re almost into May, but if I didn’t like snow, I’d be (even more of) an idiot to live here, don’t you think? I like my snow and drizzle and frizzle and grauple and hail and t-storms and rain and sun. I love the weather. Makes me feel alive. Okay wait, I am not a fan of the winds here. THAT I could easily do without and since our wind season is over, it’s time to sand and oil the patio furniture again!

I must plug a new site that Chuck [of SND, of foodgawker, of many talents] has recently launched. It’s beautiful! It’s craftgawker! Go check it out - nice craft porn.

Speaking of crafts… I had a little gathering of my betties for another stitch-n-bitch, but this time only one knitter. Everyone else - well, we all worked on different projects: bee keeping, drawing, beading, and sewing. Here’s what came of my distracted efforts (there was a visiting puppy running around that needed to be played with, you know):

bright and little

handy wallet

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