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: grilled corn and chilpotle soup

Wednesday night I participated in an event that is rooted in a community I never even knew existed until a few months ago. Ignite is a movement that I have briefly mentioned in the past. I attended my first Ignite Boulder (#5) in July this year. The only reason I know anything about Ignite Boulder, Ignite in general, or the tech startup community in Boulder is because of my friend, Andrew Hyde (follow on twitter @andrewhyde). Ignite started in Seattle in 2006 – it’s an evening of presentations for those with short attention spans: 20 slides that advance automatically every 15 seconds. That’s right, 5 minutes. Ignite Boulder (founded by Andrew) is a boisterous, raucous good time. The audience is loudly supportive and the topics range from whimsical to erudite and EVERYTHING in between. The first time I viewed an Ignite online from another city, I was surprised to see how tame, respectful, and quiet the audience was. I think the Ignite Boulder speakers on average are far more dynamic and engaging… certainly the entertainment value is high.

The majority of my online networking has been with people from all over the world because of this blog. But it was only a year ago that I began to interact with the local community when my immune system had recovered enough after the treatments. I think I have more readers in New Zealand than I do in Boulder, Colorado. Or at least, I used to. So last night, I was one of the presenters at Ignite Boulder 6. In fact, I was the first if you don’t count Ef Rodriguez (follow on twitter @pugofwar) who energized the crowd with his awesome warm up talk/singing/performance. I was glad to go first, because then I could truly enjoy the rest of the 13 talks without worrying about my own anymore. I met people who read use real butter, people who I follow on Twitter but never met IRL (in real life), and people I had no idea existed and vice versa – but I’m glad they do, because they’re wonderful and fascinating… like a shiny new mountain bike.

dave burdick (@daveburdick) draws parallels between journalism and “ghost busters”

It was the first time there were more female speakers than male speakers. Sweetness. Overall the talks were terrific. I have too many favorites to call them favorites. There were a few rows of seats reserved in the front for the evening’s speakers and I sat next to a quiet and unassuming gentleman who seemed a little nervous. We introduced ourselves and he told the rest of us he was going last. We all sympathized – that’s hard to do. Lots of pressure and stress, but huge potential. He told me his talk was titled, “Reward and Risk”. I figured it was about pure game theory.

michael brown (@seracfilms) on reward and risk

He’s the president of Serac Adventure Films and put reward and risk in the context of mountaineering. At the end of the presentation, there were three short trailers he played that moved me to tears. You can see the first of these breathtaking trailers Farther Than The Eye Can See at their website.

Helen told me she couldn’t see the live feed of my talk until the last slide, but luckily for all of us, Manisha was in the audience recording the presentation (thank you, sweetie!!). That amazing woman had it on YouTube before the night was out! I’m including a link to my slide presentation because some folks have complained that the slide in the venue was dim. Just remember that Ignite Boulder is LOUD, the audience traditionally participates enthusiastically (and I can hear Nichole giggling nearby in the audio). Definitely watch the video to see how the timing works.

The Jeremy who graciously tossed cookies (hee hee) out to the audience for me at the end of my talk is Jeremy Tanner (@penguin). My Jeremy (@drdarling) was in Australia giving a talk at the same time (he literally missed my talk by a few minutes)! Except his talk was on astrophysics, not food porn.

mountain standard time performed for the intermission

I’m so glad I gave an Ignite presentation because it makes me less of an observer in this community and more of a participant. I think I’ll always be dabbling on the periphery just because I value our quiet mountain life over The Scene in Boulder, but I am meeting fascinating people with big ideas and even bigger hearts. And I dig that.

**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**