use real butter

Recipe: pepita brittle

********* PLEASE VOTE FOR MY CHARITY *********

It’s finals week! I mean, it’s the week where all of the semi-finalists from The Awaken Your Senses Challenge go head to head for $10,000 for their favorite food charity. Living in a cave? Need a recap? Twelve food bloggers described their favorite food memories and Chef Dave of Good Bite recreated those memories using Quaker instant oatmeal. Every two weeks, viewers voted for their favorite of four food bloggers’ creations to select a semi-finalist. This week, voters determine which of the three semi-finalists’ charities will win the $10,000:

1) Catherine McCord of weelicious championing Stone Barns Center For Food and Agriculture

2) Jen Yu (that’s ME!) of use real butter (this blog!) championing Farm to School

3) Laura Levy of Laura’s Best Recipes championing Food for the Poor

I’m in the finals, yo! I SO TOTALLY NEED YOUR VOTE! Only with your help can we win $10,000 for Farm to School, a wonderful organization that “…brings healthy food from local farms to school children nationwide. The program teaches students about the path from farm to fork, and instills healthy eating habits that can last a lifetime. At the same time, use of local produce in school meals and educational activities provides a new direct market for farmers in the area and mitigates environmental impacts of transporting food long distances. More than 30 million children eat a school lunch five days a week, 180 days a year. If school lunch can taste great, and support the local community, it is a win-win for everyone.”

Think about it – feeding children healthy food, helping local family farms, educating children, strengthening the community. Won’t you please do me the honor of voting for my charity? It’s as simple as four clicks!

Click #1) Go to the Quaker Talk site

Click #2) Click on “Vote” or “Watch & Vote”

Click #3) Click on Cherries Jubilee video

Click #4) Click on the GREEN THUMB to vote for my charity, Farm to School!

********* THANK YOU! *********

Hey, I hope everyone had a nice weekend! Mine was jam-packed full of friends, time-sensitive clandestine plans, work, rejoicing in cooler weather, and a few epiphanies. One of those epiphanies: this weekend was use real butter’s five year blogiversary. My plan was to have a big blowout of a giveaway, but… you’ll have to wait a little because 1) I am deciding on a good giveaway prize and 2) there’s just too much going on (for me) in November. So please be patient with me… you always are :)

Five years. You could call five years a long time, a short time, whatever. It’s enough time to see a pattern in what urb has become for me. urb has always been a personal blog with a good bit of talk about food. When I went public with it in August 2007, I had to clean it up – clean up my language, censor what I say (oh, you didn’t think I was censoring anything? ha!), move a good fraction of old posts to the other blog, put recipes up in a format that someone other than myself could follow. I spent several months finding my groove in my posting frequency – basically how often I could post without turning it into a chore. My photography evolved with the blog. It is still evolving which I take as a good sign.

The food blogging community has changed a lot in the past two years from when I went public to now. Some for the better, but I feel most of it isn’t for the better. Notice a lot of burnout lately? There’s some unspoken (well, actually it’s probably spoken all too often) mantra about HOW TO BE A FOOD BLOGGER which makes me throw up a little in my mouth every time I hear about it. One of the best ways to start a food blog is to be yourself. It’s like dating. If you present yourself as something you are not, you’re going to attract the wrong kind of partner and you’ll probably be unhappy. And if you’re just in it for the money, well – there’s a name for that too. I’m all about the love here.

I found myself swearing up a storm this weekend because I wasted four hours and a lot of ingredients trying to make a recipe that flopped. WHY? Why was I even making those? For the blog? Right. Well, no more. I don’t want that. I never wanted this blog to be a chore and it’s starting to feel like one. And once I announced that urb was not the boss of me, I felt better. Much better. urb was never solely a dedicated food blog and I don’t want it to be. It’s my creative space for sharing food, photography, my opinionated rants, and random bits of life. Anyone looking for a recipe source in a vacuum has likely left this place long ago.

So, five years – plenty of learning and a little adjustment here and there. I have met so many wonderful people and made some incredible friends through this blog. True love, I tell ya. Thanks for sticking with me. Now on to the food.

pepitas, flaked salt, baking soda

**Jump for more butter**

Local readers often ask me where I get my Asian groceries. The truth is that I hunt and gather Asian groceries wherever I go. Typically when I visit my grandmother in California, I’ll bring an empty duffel bag and pack a small boatload of hard to find items to take home with me. For special ingredients required to prepare big meals like on Chinese New Year’s Eve, I make the trek to Denver’s H-Mart because their Asian produce is probably the best selection and quality in the state and the store is huge by Colorado standards. Pacific Ocean Market in Broomfield is another good source for Asian groceries (the produce is pretty disappointing, although I haven’t been back in a year so maybe it’s changed). I’ve even purchased a Peking duck there before. But I have to admit that I quite hate driving all the way to Denver or even to Broomfield just to look for basics like Three Crabs Brand fish sauce, bean thread noodles, Shao Xing cooking wine, hoisin sauce, chili garlic paste, black vinegar, or pickled mustard greens. Luckily, I have access to a well-stocked little store in Boulder, Asian Seafood Market.

they carry more than just asian groceries

it’s a little store that packs a lot of goodies

One of the first things I did after moving to Colorado was search for an Asian grocer. I found a couple of tiny places that had less on their shelves than I have in my cupboards. This would not do. Luckily, I stumbled across Asian Seafood Market which happens to be on my normal grocery shopping route in town. Like most of my favorite places to buy Chinese, Thai, Japanese, or Viet ingredients, this place was packed to the hilt. There are no empty shelves. The more I delve into Asian cooking, the more I am finding at this little local store. It’s a little like an adventure in the good sense. And if I can’t find something, I can always ask Maria.

owner: maria nguyen (left), sweet pastries and fresh longans

Maria Nguyen was born in Vietnam, but eventually settled in California. She told me she had terrible allergies in California back in the day. When she moved to Boulder over 20 years ago she opened Asian Seafood Market, building the business from scratch. And her allergies went away. Maria has a precise knowledge of the store’s inventory. If I can’t find something, she’ll shout down the aisle to ask what I’m looking for and then either show me where it is or shout that it will be restocked on Wednesday, or Thursday, or Monday…

indian dal (top left), dulce de leche from argentina (bottom left), and oodles of rice (right)

I often bemoan the fact that Boulder doesn’t have a good authentic Chinese restaurant (according to the Official Jen Yu Council of One on Authentic Chinese Restaurants in Non-Coastal US Cities). Luckily for me, I am moderately competent at cooking Chinese food and so I like having a dedicated Asian grocer in Boulder. Just a short list of things you can find: noodles, rice, beans, lentils, Asian vegetables and herbs, frozen fish, live crabs, spices, sauces, pastes, vinegars, flours, starches, frozen dumplings, frozen pork or vegetable buns, wonton and eggroll wrappers, mushu shells, edamame, fishballs, tempura cakes, ice cream (e.g. green tea, red bean), mochi, kimchi, quail eggs, miso paste, soft drinks, tofu, daikon radish, udon noodles, a few boxes of seasonal fruits, canned fruits and vegetables, dishes and cooking equipment, Asian candies, Asian snacks, curry pastes, dulce de leche…

canned jackfruit, lychee, mangosteen (top left), customer for scale (bottom left), 8.5 pounds of chili paste! (right)

daikon radish and bok choy (left), cute little rice bowls (right)

I’ve been shopping at Asian Seafood Market for over four years – much of that time as a passive patron. When I underwent chemo last year, there were long stints where I didn’t venture by the store because I wasn’t cooking as much and I definitely wasn’t eating as much. At one point while paying for my groceries at the register, Maria said she hadn’t seen me in a while. I smiled and said I had been… busy. I had thought I was some sort of invisible customer, but from then on we have made small talk whenever I come through the store. I consider it my store in many ways because Maria checks that I find what I am looking for and tells me about what is fresh and what is on special.

miso paste and jars of kimchi (left), little frozen mochi treats (right)

Asian Seafood Market sells wholesale and retail, and they can arrange for special orders if there is something you need. The store receives new shipments of dry goods every Monday, fresh produce on Wednesdays, and Japanese products on Thursdays.

Asian Seafood Market
The Villa Shopping Center
2829 28th St.
Boulder, CO 80301
Ph: (303) 541 9377
Monday through Saturday: 10am to 8pm
Sunday: 10 am to 7 pm

Full Disclosure: I am writing this post of my own volition and without compensation from Asian Seafood Market.

Recipe: roasted parsnip purée

I took a much needed break from posting after NaBloWriMo ended. I realize a lot of people are blogging daily for their variant of NaBloWriMo this month. I have absolutely no desire to do that for a second month. Blogging takes a certain amount of time which I permit because I enjoy it. When I posted daily, I not only didn’t enjoy it, I began to loathe it. My two other blogs fell into neglect because of the daily posting. Clearly, it tipped the scales into the “blogging as sucky obligation” camp. I maintain two philosophies with regard to this blog:

1) I blog for myself. (Anyone else who comes along for the ride is welcome as long as they aren’t an asshole about it.)
2) Life comes before the blog.

I’m not sure I’ll be doing it again next year unless I find myself with an enormous amount of free time and… that will never happen.

Jeremy and I drove home from New Mexico on Sunday under sunny skies. We stopped at Trader Joes in Santa Fe, hunted for Mexican food near the border with Colorado, and spotted several dozen antelope on the plains. Sunday was also our “smoochiversary” or our “I’m glad I met you” day. Call it what you will, it has been 17 years. I consider myself fortunate for every day I spend with Jeremy. I could not have asked for a better partner in life. We had lunch in Trinidad, Colorado. I don’t know what it is about that border between the two states, it’s like the border between good spicy food you can taste (NM) and Mexican food that is as bland and flat as a Swedish cracker (CO).

don’t be fooled: looks good, tastes like nothing much

Tami and Helen were wondering why I hadn’t been on Twitter much of late. It never fails, but the autumn months seem to be the busiest ones. When I say busy, I mean work, travel, and fun. Last night was muy fun.

you got it: community night at the kitchen

amazingly good: rabbit leg confit with chanterelle mushrooms

We were joined by a familiar crew of friends and had a terrific time full of laughter, stories, plans, and incredible food. As we stood outside of the restaurant, saying our very long good-byes, Luke told me, “I feel so full. About the same as when I had dinner at your place last time!” The difference between dinner last time and dinner at Community Night was that I didn’t have to cook at Community Night and could spend my time with my favorite people. But Luke’s comment made me remember that I still had a recipe to share from the dinner party we threw last month.

parsnips

peeled

**Jump for more butter**