use real butter

Recipe: ispahan panna cotta

The longest day of the year just ended (well, the daylight part). I rather love the late light of the summer solstice. One year we were backpacking in Jasper National Park (Canada) on the solstice. I remember throwing disc with Jeremy in a huge field of wildflowers and green grasses that was littered with elk poop. Good incentive to NOT drop the frisbee. It was 9:30 pm and we didn’t crawl into our tent until 11:00 pm. It was still light enough to see without a headlamp. Love that.

While testing a high-altitude conversion for a cookie recipe this afternoon, I exchanged several emails with my lovely friend, Helen, discussing people’s manners – or rather the lack thereof. Face it, if you maintain a blog that gets a decent amount of traffic, you will inevitably encounter crackpot or inappropriate comments. Reminds me of the person who wanted a refund from Peabody for the cost of ingredients for a muffin recipe they got from her blog that they didn’t like. Wha?! I guess it isn’t just manners, but also an indication that the offender doesn’t reside on the Plane of Reality. For some reason, because people don’t have to say it to your face, they feel as if they can behave poorly and say stupid stupid things over the internet. So uncool.

The majority of my commenters are an incredibly funny, sweet, and caring group of people – they are so wonderful! And they respect me for the person I am. That means a lot because when you have cancer, plenty of people think this is an open invitation for their “advice” and I do use that term loosely. I appreciate how people have expressed their kind sentiments to me with, “I wish you well” or “I am praying for you” or “you are in my thoughts”. I don’t pray, but it’s okay if someone else wants to pray. However, it is not okay for someone to tell me what to believe in terms of faith. That is not only rude, but hugely disrespectful.

So what did I manage to do with all of today’s daylight? Here’s a sampling, but you can visit the photoblog for the full rundown.

i shot this in my yard

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It was too hot to eat dinner while the sun was still up this evening. Wait a sec… *we* felt it was too hot to eat dinner while the sun was still up this evening. We didn’t sit down to our meal until 9 pm and it was still light out (love that, actually). While I waited for the house to cool down a little, I stepped out onto the deck to admire the skies to the west and enjoy the cooling mountain air. I love clouds because they can form some incredible patterns, but I especially love clouds at sunset because the light can play some beautiful colors.

like a magic show

it almost looks organic

3000 feet lower in Boulder, the daytime temperatures are standing solidly in the 80s (F) and flirting with the 90s (F). What better timing then to continue our sushi tour? On Wednesday, we dined at Amu for dinner. Amu is situated next to and operated by Sushi Zanmai. Zanmai is a darling of Boulder and probably one of the venerated favorites. My experiences at Zanmai have always left me feeling that 1) I spent a lot of money 2) I got mediocre sushi for the price 3) the service suuuuuucks and 4) every damn YUH (Young Urban Hipster) and aging hippie flocks to the place making the wait all the more annoying considering what you get at the end of it all. However, my chemo nurse assured me that Amu was different and very good.

the sign is easily missed

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Recipe: blackberry ice cream

I’m not cooking or baking as much as I’d like and that’s mostly because I’m dealing with unpleasant physical issues related to my least favorite of my chemo drugs. [I know that the last infusion was almost 6 weeks ago, but please tell that to the drugs…] I met with my oncologist this morning and he hasn’t seen it before in his many years of poisoning cancer patients. Great! I’m exceptional in every frakking way… Meanwhile, it would seem that all of my medical appointments have piled together lately such that I fell asleep on the table last night during my heart scan. Well, I’d rather sleep through Journey wailing over the speakers than listen to it while isotopes go racing through my heart.

[While waiting for my radiation appointment this afternoon, I’m killing time by blogging from a bakery in Boulder. Dude half my age just walked past and winked at me. WTF?]

Yesterday evening as Jeremy drove me to my heart scan down on the flats, I spied some mammata forming in the distance. Mammata clouds are typical precursors to tornadoes. In very simple terms, they indicate instability in the atmosphere. We see a lot of them in the summer around these parts.

mammata: look like giant grapes or… boobies

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