use real butter

Recipe: herbed popovers

I thought I was done with winter. I should have known better. It’s a good thing I only put my skis away mentally, because we have a foot of snow on the ground outside this morning and there is at least another foot coming today and tomorrow. The ski whore season is alive and she is kicking!

this would have been better back in march, but i’ll take it!

Luckily the snow held off until most of my appointments and engagements were done Thursday. I met up with Nichole and Manisha at noon to get some education at the Indian grocery store. I love Indian food, but I know very little about preparing it or even what the ingredients are. Time to remedy that, don’t you think? I especially like when I ask Manisha her opinion on such-and-such Indian (or Nepalese) restaurant in Boulder and she gives me her trademark “how do I say this politely?” look. I’m on it, girlfriend. I will study and learn :)

indian bitter melon – beautiful and *more* bitter than chinese bitter melon!

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Recipe: cinnamon rhubarb mini loaves

Did you eat vegetables growing up? Did you like them? How about now that you’re (presumably) an adult? I love vegetables and I loved eating them as a kid. Vegetables in my youth were crunchy, bright green, delicious. My mom and grandmother are such brilliant cooks and they always made sure we ate fresh and healthy food. In contrast, it was rather puzzling to stand in the lunch line at school and wonder what the hell that puke green, tasteless mash was on the plate. It was broccoli – and no one was the wiser, but then again we were all like… seven years old.

We eat vegetables and fruits regularly here at urb. I take that for granted until we go on week-long backpacking trips or I have to fast before surgery or medical procedures and then I begin to crave fresh produce and salivate at the sight of… green grass on the side of the trail. I have yet to meet a vegetable or fruit I refuse to eat. Pushing the limits would be durian (I’ve tasted durian fruit paste – very interesting) and bitter melon (my mom makes a terrific bitter melon stir fry which I love, except for the bitter melon – but I eat it because my mom’s cooking rocks).

This may come as a surprise to some, but I’ve never cooked with rhubarb before, until last week. I just remember reading about something rhubarb being poisonous (it’s the leaves, not the stalks) and so I avoided it for many many years and left it to others to slay the red cousin of celery. I’ve tasted rhubarb and strawberry muffins and rhubarb and strawberry pie (my days in Ithaca) and it was always an exercise for me to figure out what the rhubarb tasted like because it was never separate from the strawberries. Kind of like couples who have to do everything together and you really want to hang out with the one but the other is always there? Yeah.

rhubarb is showing up at our markets

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My head hurts this morning and I all I had last night was a sip of Jeremy’s Sauv Blanc. The hell? [I’m pretty sure it was my 2-hour cardio workout because my ass hurts when I walk right now.] A very good friend of mine is in Colorado all the way from Sydney. She and her husband came to Boulder last night to meet up with us for Community Night at The Kitchen. Oooooh Comm Night…

herbed gioia ricotta and fennel confit wood roasted flatbread

This was our fifth time at Comm Night. Come hungry and wear elastic waistband pants: fixed menu, family-style dining with a bazillion courses! Well, to be honest, over the past 4 years, Comm Night has gone from serving *insane* amounts of food to just *quite a bit* of food. I don’t feel like I’m going to pop and die at the end of the meal anymore. Or perhaps I’ve just learned to pace myself. Either way, it’s still a big treat partly because we don’t typically eat like that and partly because we aren’t made of money. Because our friends know their food (the hubby is a chef in Sydney), we thought Comm Night would be a perfect meal to share with them… and the dozen other diners at our table!

marinated shell bean salad with prosciutto, country terrine, grilled bread

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