use real butter

Recipe: stir-fried mi fun

Congratulations to the winners of the Menu for Hope bid items from Boulder! All of the raffle winners are listed on Chez Pim and I’m happy to announce the winners of the local prizes I hosted on use real butter:

UW23 an original photograph by Jen Yu (that’s me) goes to Lee Knapp!
UW24 a $100 gift certificate to the Culinary School of the Rockies goes to Laura Vanderschaaf!
UW25 a $100 gift card to SALT goes to Susan Tamaki!

The winners should contact me with their email addresses so I can get you your prizes. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this annual fundraising effort which raised over $78,000 for the UN World Food Program. As always, a huge thanks to the regional hosts and a huge thanks to Pim for everything.

***************

We haven’t had much snow this winter, which is not atypical for an El Niño year in the Rockies. Many of my ski pals are getting antsy in the pantsy for some fluffy, white powder because we’re at the end of January. While I might bemoan the paltry number of epic ski days this year (um, NONE so far), it really hasn’t cramped my style. I always shake my head at people who complain that they are bored. I don’t even know how to achieve that. I cram as much as I can into every day because every day is a gift… aaaaand because I’m hyper. Oddly, when Work gets busy, Play seems to get just as busy. I like busy. We’ve been having plenty of fun.

fun at the movies

fun on the slopes

fun at the sushi bar

fun with fellow food bloggers

And don’t forget the mi fun. What is mi fun? It’s Chinese for rice noodle vermicelli. Or would that be rice vermicelli? It is yet another Asian noodle I grew up eating and loving. I’ve never found them fresh, only dried in the Asian grocery stores. I usually have at least a package or two of the dried, delicate noodles in my pantry.

here’s what they look like right out of the package

after soaking in lukewarm water

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: tomato garlic pasta sauce

My old office was directly across the hall from the Los Angeles Times Press Room in the Seismology building at Caltech. Every time there was a local earthquake in California or a sizable earthquake around the globe, the press would flock to this room where Dr. Kate Hutton would calmly answer questions. During my years at Cornell, graduate students got word of seismic events and went down to the seismograph on the first floor of our building to see the three paper records tracing out first motions. The seismology group would be analyzing the digital records, but the rest of us watched the drums roll as the wave signatures slowly came into view. Sometimes a rupture was merely scientifically significant – occurring out in the middle of “nowhere”. Or it was a scare near population centers where there was thankfully no loss of life… And other times, like this past week, it was catastrophic.

I remember talking on the phone with the lead investigator on the Sumatran plate boundary research project right after the Banda Aceh earthquake and Tsunami in 2004. As he gave me a list of maps and images he needed from our group in preparation for his flight to Sumatra, he choked on his emotions and quietly said, “So many people have died.” Part of his research involved outreach and education for the local population including posters that instructed the island inhabitants to run inland after a seismic event. Even though he felt so helpless, his work saved lives. We do what we can, however we can.

If you want to make a contribution to a charitable organization that is working in Haiti, I recommend going to Charity Watch for a comprehensive list of top-rated organizations based on how effectively they use donations to meet their aid goals. We chose Doctors Without Borders. Whatever you choose to do, make it count.

There is a recipe for you because I’ve actually been cooking AND shooting despite an insanely busy schedule. Go figure. My only explanation is that we haven’t had any snow. Thankfully, it started snowing Sunday afternoon to my utter delight.

tomatoes and garlic

blanching tomatoes

I don’t tend to post a lot of pasta recipes because I don’t really eat a lot of pasta. I know it sounds strange considering I call myself a noodle-girl, preferring noodles to rice any day of the year. Maybe it’s because I eat rice noodles, cellophane noodles, ramen noodles, somen noodles, soba noodles, udon noodles, All Kinds of Asian noodles, that I never think to make pasta. On occasion though, I have made a pasta sauce that my Chinese mother taught me to make.

peeling the tomatoes

slicing in half

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: gluten-free peanut butter cookies

For folks who were wondering about the famous Williamsburg Cheese Shop house dressing that *everyone* raves about, they don’t give out the recipe. However, my pal, Rob, and I tinkered with some recipes and I settled on this one which is awesome on a sandwich. Have at it!

Cookies, I lament thee. Back in the day when I lived at sea-level, I used to bake a lot of cookies. A LOT of cookies. I would crank out several double batches a week and bring them in to my department or my workplace to give out to everyone. Jeremy always claims that caffeine fuels science, but I dare say that sugar, butter, flour, and chocolate did their fair share to support science research too. I had several go-to recipes that I could whip together in my sleep and bake to perfection consistently. Oh sea-level, if there is one thing I miss about you it would be your atmospheric pressure. At my elevation, cookies don’t behave the same way. Hell, NOTHING behaves the same way. I almost gave up on baking entirely, but over the years I was able to tackle and learn about cakes (some are still in the temperamental category), and breads (I don’t do a lot of breads), and I discovered that shortbreads had fewer issues than drop cookies.

Still, I don’t bake cookies much around here… and it’s one of my favorite things to give to people. Here! Have a cookie! That’s so much easier than “Here! Have some crème brûlée!” A couple of months ago, I decided that I needed to put cookies back in the driver’s seat because to me, a cookie is a little nugget of love. When you hand out cookies, you are handing out LOVE.

let’s start with a classic: peanut butter

I chose peanut butter cookies and I chose to make them gluten-free. It’s not that I have an aversion to gluten, but I have friends who are celiac and well – it’s always good to know how to do things. My inspirations for all things gluten-free are Shauna and Danny. When I told Shauna I was making her peanut butter cookies, she told me not to bother with that old recipe. But I needed something easy because I didn’t want to have to run out to the store for ingredients, so I made a batch.

plop goes the egg

**Jump for more butter**