use real butter

Recipe: cream scones

I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had an enjoyable day. Ours was fairly low key as Thanksgiving goes, although I was probably cooking and baking as much as the next person – or more. It’s not so much the food as the thanks that are most prominent in my mind on Thanksgiving. I’m thankful, so thankful… for my life and all of the wonderful family and friends who populate it. And when I say life, I mean all of it – I’m referring to the joy of waking each day and knowing I’m here to make the most of it because there is no other way to live in my book (that book being the Rules of Jen, which isn’t published… it’s just in my head, you know). The winds were howling and hammering at our house on Thursday and driving to and skiing in ground blizzards didn’t appeal to us, so we stayed home and had sushi for dinner. Last year there was enough snow on the ground to make for a lovely walk with the dog. This year, Kaweah was perfectly content snuggling up on the couch with the occasional treat and belly rub for good measure.

last year’s thanksgiving walk

very thankful for these two

As for Black Friday, I avoided shopping altogether. I hate shopping in general because I feel like my time could be better spent doing something else rather than looking for crap stuff. I’m a search-and-destroy kind of shopper. In and out and no one gets hurt. Too much stuff makes me crazy, which is why I donated several bags of (nice) stuff earlier in the week to Goodwill and the Humane Society’s Thrift and Gift shop. But I’ll admit that I did have some items on my “to do” list which count as shopping…

tea cups

I scoured three thrift stores in Louisville (with Manisha) and Boulder in search of tea cups and saucers. The treasures one can find at a thrift store are many. These are items that someone doesn’t want, but someone else could use. I like that idea. I hate waste. Why the hunt for tea cups and saucers? Well, last month I had treated Manisha to afternoon tea at The Brown Palace in Denver after a meeting we had with the Denver Botanic Gardens.

which tea to order…

Our first reaction was to say, “oooh!” and “ahhh!” at the beautiful little pastries, tea sandwiches, scones, and tea. Then, as any food-obsessed pair of friends would do, we began to analyze every bite. We whispered to one another:

“That must be cream cheese.”

“Yes, but that curry is weird.”

“You know, we could totally do this ourselves!”

And the wheels began to turn. Certainly, we could put on our own tea, no? We could put on a better tea. Manisha recalled one of Lisa’s blog posts on a bridal shower tea she and her family threw. Oh that was gorgeous and Lisa’s tea had some fantastic ideas. Wouldn’t it be nice to put on a tea for our gals? Why, yes indeed!

campari, prosecco, fresh squozen orange juice, orange peel curls

campari mimosa

Tea appeals to me not for the tea, but for all of the little foods. I am quite fond of little foods and tiny servings. And variety. Variety is the spice of life (I say this all the time, I don’t know where I got it from). Afternoon tea is a great excuse to make all manner of sweet and savory bites for your guests. But what makes me happier than making all of this food is watching the people I care about dig into it. We call people with good appetites who enjoy eating and can appreciate good food “good eaters”. I think all cooks love a good eater. I can’t tell you how much it makes me smile when I see Erin’s eyes light up at the sight of chocolate.

we hadn’t even finished putting everything on the table

it’s not a tea without scones (also pictured: chocolate chip banana bread)

chocolate mousse, fresh fruit

salmon sandwiches, chutney and cucumber sandwiches, cocktail samosas, chocolate macarons

The day before Thanksgiving, Manisha taught me to make cocktail samosas. I’m a whore for any “dumpling”-esque savory food – essentially a dough filled with vegetables or meat: samosas, pot stickers, ravioli, empanadas, and the list goes on. Manisha’s samosas are different from traditional samosas. Cocktail samosas have a delicate and thin pastry shell and are quickly devoured in two or three dangerously easy bites. In my opinion, they’re so much better! That could very well be my bias though. Manisha has never made anything that I didn’t like. She arrived at my house on Saturday with about four dozen cocktail samosas. Half of them potato and the other half chicken. Both types are phenomenally addictive. There will be a post on those adorable savory pastries soon enough.

waiting for teas to steep

a full table

nichole pours her tea

pinky out!

the menu
cucumber sandwiches with cilantro-mint chutney
salmon sandwiches with dill and capers
chicken salad puffs (I got this idea from Lisa)
cocktail samosas (chicken and potato) with tamarind-date chutney, cilantro-mint chutney (Manisha)
crostini with sweet onion dip (recipe from my good friends White On Rice Couple)

black currant cream scones
chocolate chip banana bread
zucchini bread
apricot bars (Kitt’s mom)
chocolate macarons with chocolate-espresso ganache
chocolate mousse cups
digestive cookies (Drea)
fresh fruit
lemon curd (Nichole)
clotted cream (Drea)

campari mimosas
assorted loose teas from everyone

Whew! That was a huge amount of work, but it was worth it and so much fun! I had extraordinary help from my one and only fella. In between all of the work he had to get done (science doesn’t stop for holidays) Jeremy cleaned the house before the party, taste tested everything I made and gave me constructive feedback (hey – anyone can eat food, but I have standards to maintain), washed the parade of dirty dishes, mixed mimosas for the ladies, kept track of steeping teas (he is our tea and coffee expert), kept Kaweah from goosing guests with her wet nose from under the table, cleared dishes, and was generally as incredible as ever. He even sat down with us briefly to enjoy some pastries, mimosas, and tea before the conversation got too giggly and ridiculous. I know no better awesome than he.

nichole’s beautiful tea pot

Believe it or not, I had the presence of mind to shoot one of the recipes I made for the tea in the midst of three days of prep. Scones. I hadn’t tackled scones at elevation before. I figured they would be easy enough. Right? Right?!

a little sugar in the dough

add dried black currants

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: apple cider doughnuts

Autumn is when the nights drop below freezing and we throw the big flannel quilt over our bed. In the mornings, Kaweah is slower to stretch out because the cold makes her hind legs stiff. When I look south from our third floor loft, I can see fresh snow mantled over 13,294-foot James Peak turning pink as the sun breaks the horizon in the East. The changing season is invigorating and I find myself making mental notes of things I want to do now that the weather is cooling down.

our resident fox scouting the yard at dusk

the skeletons of summer’s glory

A modest little parcel found its way into my mailbox the day before I set off for San Francisco. Lara Ferroni’s new book Doughnuts had been sent to me by her publisher. I smiled because I would be having dinner with Lara in just over 24 hours. Travel, dining out, and cool temperatures conspire to make me long for cooking or baking after having avoided the stove and oven for most of summer. What better way to get reacquainted with the kitchen than making some doughnuts?

totally counterproductive to the ass reduction plan

Choices! Choices! The book offers all manner of doughs – raised, baked, fried, cake, gluten-free, vegan, and then some. You can pair those with various glazes, flavors, styles. If I weren’t obsessed with a specific kind of doughnut, I would have had an awful time deciding which recipe to try first. Malasadas: I had those in Hawai’i and nearly went BLIND eating them. Sopapillas – ubiquitous in New Mexico and a necessary ending to any proper New Mexican meal. Crème brûlée – because it’s so brilliant! Bavarian cream – my favorite. French crullers – my other favorite. But I had to try the apple cider doughnuts first because I have been plagued with the most frustrating failure from last fall when I attempted to make them from a different source and had to throw the entire endeavor in the trash.

add cinnamon

egg yolks taking a dive

The only deviation from Lara’s recipe was the apple cider. Instead of straight apple cider, I reduced mine to concentrate the flavor from one cup down to a quarter cup. Having never eaten an apple cider doughnut before, but always craving one at the very mention of it – I knew I wouldn’t regret that step.

pour in the apple cider (or in my case, the reduced apple cider)

stirring the dry ingredients in

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: blueberry pie

We watched as two young men played around in the snow, trying to impress their female companions. They were goofing off, acting stupidly. I turned to Cory and said, “So if one of those guys got himself into trouble, would you go rescue him?” Cory squinted under his sunglasses and looked in their direction then looked back at Jeremy who was setting an anchor in the snow, “Yeah, I would.” Cory, our wise Zen Master of the Mountain, taught us crevasse rescue several years ago. More than that, he taught us to be mindful of the mountains and their weather. Most of the time when we are in the backcountry, Jeremy is the most cautious one of the bunch. I think that’s partly his nature, but it’s also because of his training and experience in high-angle search and rescue. Cory is the only person I’ve met who is more careful than Jeremy. Cory is good people.

jeremy on the flanks of mount baker

You might think that if someone were in trouble, it’s a no-brainer to go and help them out, right?

We were hiking Saturday morning on a favorite trail of ours, making good time toward Pawnee Peak. As we neared the last set of switchbacks to the pass, we heard rockfall in the distance and hollering. Rockfall isn’t all that uncommon, but hollering – it sounded like someone was getting mauled. The wind was strong and I stopped, straining to listen. I asked Jeremy if he heard what I heard and he said yes. Then there was a distant shout to the east. Jeremy left the trail walking to the edge of the plateau that looked across a basin to a craggy ridge. I followed and we listened. Calls for help. We scanned the steep, loose slopes below the ridge for signs of a person, but nothing was visible. Jeremy said we needed to head back down the trail to get closer and see if we could locate the person. We returned to the trail and quickly made our way back across the plateau. A woman rounded the corner and we asked her if she had heard anything. Yes, she had. We asked if she had cell reception (we tried the iphone – nada). She said she had a spot transmitter – that it would notify authorities with her GPS location. Jeremy’s face lit up, but she said, “It won’t do any good because they’ll come here to me.” She asked if we were heading down and we said yes, that at least one of us was planning to go to the trailhead to get help and we were going to try and locate the person calling for help. She said, “Oh good, then I won’t bother going if you’re going.” She told us she was going to continue on up. We offered that there was no way to reach the person by going up. She insisted that this was the only way she could help, by maybe spotting him from above and she forged ahead. Really?! REALLY?! We were astonished. Neither of us believed her.

Jeremy was annoyed, but he didn’t want to waste any more time and we continued down. Why wouldn’t she offer to help? She could have handed that spot transmitter to Jeremy and if he located the fellow, could have sent for help right away with coordinates – it’s all about time. We figured she was just a selfish woman (not the word I used) who wanted to finish her hike. Nevermind that a man’s life could be on the line. I paused to listen and shouted back several times on the way down (because as Jeremy says – I’ve got the pipes) and we heard a few more calls for help. When we reached the closest point on the trail to the basin, a woman was there with two packs. Her husband had gone into the basin to try and locate the victim. Jeremy handed me unnecessary stuff that would slow him down. I gave him what little food we carried, and anything first-aid worthy. He said he was going to try and find the guy and maybe stabilize him if he could and that after I contacted authorities, we’d meet at the trailhead. With that, he set off – his sights on the scree slopes above. I took off down the trail and encountered a hasty search team a few miles later. I stopped to give them information. Someone who was climbing with the victim had run out for help ahead of me. That’s whose pack was on the side of the trail at one of the junctions. When I hiked out, the parking lot was full of Sheriff’s, emergency, and mountain rescue vehicles.

lots of commotion

I spoke to an officer who was taking witness accounts. The young man sitting across from the officer was the one who had run out for help. He looked so shaken. The officer took me to the search team and I showed them on the map where we thought the voice was coming from. The gentleman asked if they should approach from Blue Lake. No, no, I said. He’s on the south side of the ridge, approach from Long Lake. I realized that he wasn’t familiar with this part of the backcountry – rescue teams come from a wide area to help. I waited for Jeremy as teams of two and three carrying all manner of emergency equipment: a litter, oxygen tanks, racks of climbing gear, braces, first aid, marched into the forest. Helicopters thumped overhead. A couple of hours later, Jeremy emerged. Two other well-intentioned hikers had wandered about with no progress, but Jeremy got to within a few hundred feet of the victim. Turns out it was a father and his adult son. The father had fallen, the son went to find him and we assume was the one calling for help. Jeremy communicated a little with the son, but couldn’t get up to the rock chute without climbing gear. He heard coughing, some rock movement, but then nothing more. He went down and met with a search and rescue pair. They told him several SAR members were already on the plateau headed for Pawnee Peak. Jeremy said they wouldn’t be able to reach them from Pawnee Peak because of the technical ridge. They didn’t know where the victim was, so Jeremy pointed to the easternmost chute on the ridge and said he located them there. The safest way to reach him was by helicopter.

from an old photo of mine, jeremy showed me where the victim was

We learned via (really poorly reported) news that the man was airlifted out and that he was alive, albeit with severe injuries. We were relieved. Then we were angry because of this report (now defunct). Apparently, the woman we ran into on the trail whose hike was more important than helping someone in trouble was the one in the story. She most certainly didn’t activate her rescue beacon as soon as she heard the rock fall. We heard the accident around 9:05 am and we ran into her around 9:15 when she insisted it would do no good to signal for help. Even better than that, we now know why she wanted to finish her hike so badly… to write up a bloody trip report (also now defunct) published at 5:51 am Sunday morning. Despicable woman. What is wrong with some people?!

Okay, enough about that (I hate wasting energy on jerks). I’ve got quite a bit of travel coming up and I wanted to post this summer recipe before mid-autumn came and smacked me upside the head. You don’t see a lot of pies on urb. I love pie. Love pie. If I make a pie – especially a fruit pie – I will eat it. It beckons. That’s why I don’t make pie. I know, it’s an odd form of self-control, but it works.

summer’s bounty – blueberries

and butter, how apropos

As a I’ve mentioned in the past, my favorite way to eat fruit is straight up and fresh. The most wonderful thing about summer fruit is the (almost) overabundance. That’s when you don’t feel so guilty about using some of that bounty in a dessert… like pie.

add cold, cubed butter to dry ingredients

pulse, add water, gather the dough in a disk (or two)

Pies are dangerously simple. It’s a little scary how simple, because after you make one you think to yourself, “I should do this more often.” I made two of these pies because we dug into the first one so quickly, I never got a photograph. Following Elise’s recipe for blueberry pie, I used flour the first time around. That was excellent, but very oozy.

roll out chilled dough

line the pie plate

**Jump for more butter**