use real butter

Recipe: candied lemon slices

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Despite being insanely busy and turning down a lot of fun, exciting opportunities and events this month (only because I’m doing a ton of other fun, exciting things already!), I promised myself that I would participate in Barbara’s annual LiveSTRONG: With a Taste of Yellow event. This is important to me, not because I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, but because I know a lot of people who had or have cancer. I have lost beautiful friends and family to cancer. And just last night, I learned that someone who saved my life is fighting for his own right now – fighting cancer. Barbara holds this food and wine blogging event each year in support of The Lance Armstrong Foundation to raise cancer awareness around the world. Last year was the first time I participated.



So if you want to participate there is still time (Barbara has extended the submission date to September 18th). Whip up something yellow – be it savory or sweet, and hop over to Barbara’s page for instructions on how to be a part of LiveSTRONG: With a Taste of Yellow. My submission is past the jump.

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I’m in the middle of the “getting to know you” period with my new camera. I haven’t taken it out for serious shooting yet, but I have managed to screw around a bit. Of course, the inaugural photo had to be Kaweah.

our sleep olympian hard at work on her exhausting training regimen

But you didn’t see the first few captures because I always shoot in RAW and my software was not compatible (i.e. it’s OLD) with the latest Adobe RAW version. After yet another upgrade (phase 4 now complete), we are now cooking with gas! I jumped from CS2 to CS4 (sorry CS3, never knew ya) and I like it so far… as long as it doesn’t require a desktop upgrade because we have all of $.52 to our names now.

the last of the harebells

the local stands are still predominantly green

Our nights are flirting with frosts again and it is starting to smell like autumn. I have apples on the brain too! Okay, but we have just under two weeks left of summer, so let’s not shortchange anyone.

organic lemon

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: lemon ice cream

I have a cold. *hack* In summer. Pisser.

A food blogger pal once mentioned in a post that she was under the weather. Someone had written she didn’t want to hear about bloggers being sick, and can we get on with the recipe already? It happened a while ago but it’s been stuck in my mind lately, I think because sudafed does that to me – the stuck-in-the-mind part. What is wrong with people? If I made that remark to someone’s face, I’d expect them to haul off and bust me across the chops (and deservedly so). Thankfully, the majority of my readers are nothing like that. You guys rawk! It’s a relief for me that I can do a little (or a lottle) spilling of guts here from time to time and you roll with me. People get sick, people die, pets get hurt, bad things happen to good people – that’s all part of life and that’s why it’s important to be here for one another. Food bloggers are not automatons who exist for the sole purpose of cranking out recipes for the masses. We are people with lives and personalities (don’t you know it!). So thanks for letting me be human in all my flawed glory, and thank you for being human yourselves. It makes ours a richer community.

Speaking of community, I have tossed my hat into the ring to give an Ignite Boulder presentation! Trust me, I didn’t make this decision in a congested haze. I got jazzed about giving a talk ever since I attended Ignite Boulder 5 in July. In case you’ve been hiding out in your broom closet, you can find out what an Ignite presentation is and if you are anywhere near Boulder, you should plan on attending Ignite Boulder 6 on September 16th. Get your ticket(s) before they sell out! And if you’re so inclined, you can also vote for talks through August 26th or better yet – submit a topic to present! Not local or can’t make it? No worries, the good coordinators of this fine event will have a live stream for you to laugh and shout along with the hundreds (dare we hope for a thousand?) attendees. Good times!

If you will recall, my last post featured a luscious and summery blueberry peach crisp which I served with lemon ice cream. That was homemade lemon ice cream and the recipe came from my good friend, Helen who swore to me that this was the best lemon ice cream ever. Five out of five Coloradoans agree. This is creamy citrus heaven.

pucker up

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: toasted coconut ice cream

Crazy month is off to a crazy start, but it’s the Good kind of Crazy. Wanted to check in and make sure everyone is having fun, keeping off the streets, being good. Yes? Great! Some highlights from the week:

My night-blooming cereus (Queen of the Night) bloomed! Grandma always says it is a sign of good luck. While I believe we make our own luck, I’m not going to argue with Grandma and it’s such a gorgeous flower that you can’t help but feel a little special when it opens at night for a few precious hours. Last year was the first time my plant sent forth blooms. This year, the first one had a much stronger fragrance… how to describe it? Floral, delicate, lighter than a rose and in my opinion, slightly sweeter yet sharper. One blossom filled my entire house with that heady scent for the 8 hours it was open. I photographed it for four hours and because it is a *night-blooming* cereus, I used flash(es). [As I've tweeted in the past, for those who say to only shoot in natural light, I say to you "Stick it!"] I have some of the photos of the Queen of the Night bloom on the photo blog.

this flower is as big as my face

My parents and some very dear friends of the family were in Breckenridge this week for a Colorado vacation. Jeremy and I went out to meet up with them for lunch yesterday and since we were making the 2-hour drive, we figured we may as well grab a hike in the morning. We hiked Quandary Peak – our first fourteener in Colorado (14ers are peaks over 14,000 ft.) – as training for an upcoming trip. We saw four full rainbows on our way up the mountain and then lowered our heads as we plodded through the associated squalls (including stinging hail). We got to summit just as another dark front neared. I am not a peak-bagger. I love walking through the mountains and forests because the journey heals me. But standing on Quandary, I felt a small victory. I grinned and flipped an imaginary middle-finger to cancer (imaginary b/c there were other people at summit around me) while the winds tried to knock me over while Jeremy took a snappie.

i doode it

It’s very entertaining when my parents go someplace I’ve been to (or live in) and tell me things like, “There’s a ski resort in Vail!” :) It means they are having fun discovering things for themselves in their retirement, which is the very least they deserve since they worked hard all their lives. At lunch, my mom said there was an error in the Chinese spaghetti recipe – that I wasn’t supposed to use sweet red bean paste, but sweet bean paste. Of course, I have never heard of sweet bean paste other than sweet red bean paste. The ingredient was lost in translation, so I’ll have to go back and fix that (and perhaps FIND this mystery paste). My parents and our friends got a good laugh out of that one. My parents’ friends are like family to us, so the visit was doubly sweet. I love their daughters as if they were my younger sisters. It felt great to catch up and see that they have become beautiful and fine young women – both doctors now (one MD, one PhD).

**Jump for more butter**