use real butter

Recipe: french toast

Greetings from Crested Butte, Colorado! It’s one of my favorite places to be, especially right now at the height of the wildflower bloom. We chucked our bikes on top of the car and packed our hiking shoes in case the flowers were a bust. Turns out the flowers are great – but we’re still hiking and biking because it’s just too good not to. So it’s a lot of shooting, hiking, biking, eating, and not getting much sleep. Totally worth it. I’ve been taking some snappies with my backup camera because I realized a few trips back that I don’t do enough of that on my photoshoots.

lupine in bloom

the beautiful elk mountains

aspens in the rain

The town of Crested Butte is as charming as its surrounding wilderness is spectacular. We made sure to swing by our favorite place for dinner the first night – Secret Stash.

a soaking rain enveloped the town

there are t-shirts to be had

the interior decor is mountain hippie

but the pizza is 100% nomsilicious

This is where I’m happiest. Not Crested Butte specifically (although it is definitely in my top 5 favorite places ever), but outside, in and around the mountains. As offices go, I have to say it’s not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.

stalking hummingbirds

we are talking carpets of wildflowers

mount crested butte

mix and match

I’ve often said that breakfast is my least favorite meal of the day. I am just not a brekkie kind of girl. And if I *do* eat breakfast, I prefer something of the savory persuasion like bacon, sausage, or hash browned potatoes. Because we are waking up so early to shoot sunrise on this trip, we start to feel hungry by 9 am because we’ve been up for several hours by then. For simplicity’s sake, I just stuff a bunch of fresh fruit into my mouth and keep on shooting. But the one thing I love with fresh fruit is French toast.

cinnamon, vanilla, challah, eggs, and milk

thick slices of bread

**Jump for more butter**

I just got back from the mountains of Park City, Utah, to come home to the mountains of northern Colorado with enough time to unpack and repack to leave… for some other mountains in 36 hours. I AM NOT COMPLAINING. I had a lovely time at the Evo ’11 Conference in Utah. Rachael Herrscher, Jyl Johnson Pattee and their remarkable team managed the herculean effort of pulling this huge event off. Truly impressive and so much fun! So let me share some photos and keep the yammering to a minimum…

they held evo ’11 at the canyons resort in park city

the speakers’ luncheon hosted on site at the farm (great food)

taking the gondola up

the beautiful mid-mountain trail

Todd and Diane’s photo session at red pine lodge

taking the orange bubble up with genie to my workshop at the lookout cabin

inside the lookout cabin

the view looking out

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: feta artichoke sandwich

I’m going next door… to Utah. It’s just a quick trip for the Evo Conference taking place in Park City. I’ll be teaching a photography workshop with a panel of supah fine laydeez including the funniest one of all. Additionally, I’ll be shooting Todd and Diane in action during their photography workshop at the conference. I guarantee they will have some good beta to share – which is why it’s so awesome that they’re teaching Food and Light with me and Matt Wright in Boulder this summer! Solid.

utah back in 2005… hopefully it will be tens of degrees cooler this time

Our monsoon season is here. Every afternoon the clouds build like a furrowed brow on the sky. In the distance there is a low rumble and a breeze begins to pick its way through the aspen leaves. We typically get a few strikes of lightning out yonder, then closer. The boom of the thunder nears until that big flash overhead and a crack so loud you feel it in your bones. There is the rush of air from the updraft and then the rain – glorious rain for the parched ground – drenches everything. I love it.

zing! (that one was kinda close)

Up here in the mountains, afternoon thunderstorms in summer are the norm. The orographics make for some incredible weather. However, down on the flats, the topography or lack thereof creates some dramatic weather in its own right. As the storms clear off and head east from our house, I watch with longing as the thunderheads billow high and set up pretty light shows for my friends in Boulder and Denver. You know what else they have down in Boulder and Denver that I long for? Snarf’s. It’s a sandwich shop. My favorite sandwich shop in town. [Of course, if you’re in Williamsburg, that would have to be the Cheese Shop which makes THE best sandwiches. EVER.] If sandwiches are my favorite class of food and Snarf’s is my favorite sandwich joint in Boulder, then that sort of says something about their sandwiches. But I don’t go to Boulder every day and well – you know where this is going…

bread, artichokes, feta

pickles, prosciutto, lettuce, tomato, pesto

I’m hooked on Snarf’s. I even say it the way Snarf says his name in Thundercats. Ever watch Thundercats? I was an 80s cartoon junkie. Anyway… these sandwiches are so good that I’m willing to wait the THIRTY minutes it takes for the staff to slap it together. Everyone is willing to wait the THIRTY minutes which is why there is a line out the door at lunchtime. After standing around for my second thirty minutes, watching the staff and marveling at how slow they could possibly be, I punched their number into my phone. Now I call (way) ahead. Problem solved. I usually get the pastrami and Swiss – hold the onions, please. Snarf’s size. Toasted with mayo, mustard, pickles, hot peppers. That’s because it took too long for my old iphone1 to load the menu so I could peruse my other choices. I go with what works. But my buddy Jason sings the praises of Snarf’s feta and artichoke sandwich. I happened to have both feta and artichoke at home the other day.

choppy choppy

pesto is the new mayo over here

**Jump for more butter**