use real butter

It’s just too much sometimes. Community Night at The Kitchen - it can be a bit much for me. Jeremy says I’m overstimulated. The shooting, the socializing, the fooding, the meeting of new people, the drying out of my contact lenses… Although we don’t make a habit of going all the time, we’ve been a half dozen times in the past four years. It’s just the ideal place to take visitors who truly love food if they happen to be in town on a Monday night. That’s what the original plan was: to go with Helen and her Bill to Comm Night along with our good friend, M this past Monday. But incompetence conspired against them and a bunch of nitwits in northern Colorado put the kibosh on those plans. I asked M if she still wanted to go and she did. So glad she did.

i drank the wine and forgot to keep the menu

Because I have raved about Comm Night and documented the hell out of what we ate in the past, I feel less compelled to do so with each subsequent Comm Night. I’m learning to relax (just a little) and enjoy the other aspects of the evening, like meeting cool people. Here is the freaky and yet fascinating part: I am meeting people at our table of 20 who have read use real butter. I shit you not.

fennel and ham salad

Last time, it was Mr. Social Tech Butterfly (total sweetie). [Edit: I almost forgot to include this little request! Have a favorite coffee you'd like to share with some good soldiers overseas? Andrew is asking people to send some beans or beautiful photography or nice letters to help his friend Skid set up a little old coffee shop in the desert. I'm shipping two large nature photographs this afternoon to Iraq. It'd be great if you wanted to pitch in! Thanks.]

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Recipe: triple layer lemon cake

I like spring. I do. I do. Love the sound of birds singing in the early morning. Love seeing the foxes traipse through our yard at dusk. The light is different outside and in the house. The sun is bright and high, but not yet oppressive as it will be in summer. This alternates with chilly, overcast, drizzly days that hover around freezing. The air is just cool enough that you need a jacket, but warm enough that you take the jacket off after hiking for an hour. Yesterday: sunny and warm (70°F, which borders on hot for me). Kaweah engaged in her seasonal brain-baking on the deck and then staggered into the office to cool down. Friday will be rainy/snowy and cold again - and Kaweah will stand at the deck door, making little grunting sounds, asking to be let out… because she thinks it’s always nice and sunny on the deck.

where could we take this?

No one fruit represents sunshine to me more than the lemon. It’s not just the vibrant yellow, but the liveliness of the juice and the scent of the freshly grated zest. It wakes me up, keeps me interested. I was recently asked to post a couple of links back to the website of a certain national magazine. But you know, I can’t endorse something I haven’t tried and to be honest, I have never tried any of their recipes before. I agreed to test-drive one of their desserts. [UPDATE: 5/28/09] Because those brilliant people can’t hold up their end of a simple agreement, I’ve removed the links. Food bloggers - I recommend not having anything to do with Better Homes and Gardens.

grating some lemon zest

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Recipe: cheesecake

We prepped a late dinner Sunday evening. As Jeremy opened the door to the deck to get the grill going, we noticed a nice little layer of snow everywhere. [I realize I talk about the weather a lot. It's not because I'm trying to be polite, it's because I am a bit of a weather dork.] Just a few hours earlier we were in Boulder, enjoying these:

tulips on pearl street

April is like that around here. Can’t make up its mind about the seasons. That’s sort of how I felt about this month’s Daring Bakers challenge… I couldn’t make up my mind about the flavor - so I did both.

daring bakers, baybeee - we knead to bake!

The official line: The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge. The unofficial line is that Jenny rocks it along with our Superstahhh founders, Lis of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice. I heart them all.

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