use real butter

Recipe: white peach sorbet

Saturday afternoon and evening, Jeremy and I drove down to Boulder to meet up with several friends for TEDx Boulder. I was pretty excited because I love TED talks and my friend Andrew was putting on an independent TED (thus TEDx) for Boulder. That, and my very own Jeremy was giving one of the TED talks that night. How could I not go?

tedx boulder

1400 people

vienna teng

Just some quick thoughts from that evening. I really enjoyed both of our musical performers: Jonathan Spottiswoode and Vienna Teng. Actually, I had no idea who Vienna Teng was and now I am hooked. Plenty of excellent talks on education, community, energy, environment, and making the world a better place. Some talks were like glorified Ignite talks and I’m on the fence about how appropriate they are at a TED event. There were a handful I felt lukewarm about and then there were two in particular that I thought were just wrong: one guy who gave a sales pitch over and over again (great idea, but did you need 15 minutes to say it five times? snoozefest) and another from a crank spewing bunk for 18 minutes – and poorly at that. How these two were allotted more time (talks ranged from 3 minutes to 18 minutes) than anyone else is remarkable. I wish that time had been given to someone more deserving like…

my congressman, jared polis

Jared Polis, my House Representative, rocked it with his talk on investment returns on early education. He is a superstar and I’m glad the organizers were so accommodating of his insane schedule, because for me, his was the best talk. My favorite presenter was Jeremy, who I think had the most challenging task at hand – to explain his research to the lay person. What I love about my astrophysicist is that he is sincere, humble, honest, and a damn fine scientist and educator.

jeremy discusses water in the universe

Really, the biggest offender of the evening was the heat. Chautauqua Auditorium is an amazing venue, but it is a barn and when the event started at 4pm – the hottest time of day – they had to shut every possible door and window to keep the place dark for the presentations. They didn’t allow food or drink because they would get rodents in the auditorium, so we all sat there sweating together. Times like these you really wish you had something nice and cold like some seasonal white peach sorbet.

ripe white peaches

slice in half and the pit should come out easily enough

**Jump for more butter**

Thursday and Friday slipped away from me. Saturday is on the slippy slide too.

You know that hamster running furiously in the little hamster wheel? I’m that hamster. At least I’m keeping off the streets. I’ve got a few minutes to share some of photos from the last few days: learning to cook (freaking amazing!!!) Indian food from my dear Manisha and an early morning engagement shoot for one of my favorite buds in Boulder. More to come. It’s good that way, right? Right!?

the fabulous spices

papadums

ivy gourd (my favorite!)

chicken makhani (butter chicken)

batata vada

the feast (which manisha said was “simplified” – oh my!)

I got up at 4 in the morning Friday – but this time it was for friends rather than my usual nature shoot. Luckily, I know Jason is as insane as I am and willing to get up that early to work. He met me in the parking lot at 5:30 and helped me photograph my friend, Jeremy, and his lovely fiancée as the sun rose on the Flatirons at Chautauqua. Beautiful. Enjoy your weekend and I’ll be back with a recipe!

yay, there were still wildflowers!

amazing golden light

at the ranger cottage

sweet

varoom!!

Recipe: savory goat cheese parmesan galette

I have a horrible habit of feeling like the whole day has gone to hell in a hand basket if I wake up late. And by late, I am talking about 7 am on a weekend… because I want to be on the trail by 6 am, see? [I’m pretty sure that was my dad’s doing because every weekend morning if my sister and I were not up and ready to go sailing by 7, he would come in and boom, “Are you going to waste your whole life away?!”] It’s not limited to mornings though. I missed a certain wildflower bloom while I was busy working on a major deadline. I met that bloody deadline. And yet I couldn’t help but feel like the wildflower season was over. But it’s not over, as I discovered.

the flowers, they are still there

plenty of parry’s primroses up high

I felt like I needed to get outside and do my thing, and that hike helped to jolt me out of this ridiculous mindset that the flowers were done and summer nearly ended. No, we are in the thick of summer and it is a glorious summer at that. I’m feeling refreshed, recharged, invigorated. Sure, I missed the early bloomers, but now I get to enjoy the mid-season flowers – brilliant pink parry’s primroses and fireweed; little blue forget-me-nots just starting in the alpine basins; pink, red, magenta, cream, and yellow paintbrush; purple asters, yellow sunflowers. I felt so wiped out last week, but I think I was just decompressing and bouncing back.

this is my therapy

[You can see the rest of the photos on the photo blog.] And believe it or not, I got some baking mojo back. Cooler, rainy weather helps with that and there has been a recipe I had been mulling over in my head for a year now. I love galettes, because they are easy and beautiful in that rustic way. Most galettes are sweet and while I enjoy fruity galettes, I really really had my heart set on a savory galette. I’ll take savory over sweet any day.

yup, butter goes into the parmesan crust

pour cold water in

I found a nice recipe for a Parmesan galette pastry and tweaked it a little bit. It comes together quickly in a food processor and then sits in the refrigerator. For the filling, I chose a bunch of ingredients I had on hand. You could put any combination of wonderful flavors in this galette as long as they aren’t too soggy.

mmm bacon, garlic, thyme, zucchini, goat cheese

Roasted garlic has always appealed to me for its nutty and buttery texture. It plays beautifully with goat cheese. If you want a punch to the filling, then you could mince the raw garlic and mix it in the with goat cheese – letting it bake in the oven instead.

roasted garlic

roasted garlic, goat cheese, salt, pepper, thyme

**Jump for more butter**