use real butter

Recipe: lemon bacon goat cheese flatbread

You still have until Sunday to enter to win a Wii console and a Wii Fit Plus package! So if you haven’t entered yet… go do it!

I was all set to sit down and post Wednesday night when our power went out due to some awesome thunderstorms rolling through. And then I had surgery the next morning. I tried to log on from the surgery wing, but their wi-fi was really hosed. I was negotiating local anesthesia and sedation with the anesthesiologist, but he was a no go – he told me the pain levels would be too much for that and so I had to get general anesthesia. Then he asked me why and I replied, “Because I have stuff to do?” Hey, I tried. He promised it would wear off quickly. It was thankfully outpatient surgery, yet it left me feeling queasy and in a fog for the remainder of the day. I wasn’t sure if that was the pain or the drugs, but I don’t fight it so much anymore. I’ve learned my lesson after a lumpectomy, chemo, radiation, and that blasted emergency appendectomy (traditional, mind you, not that nice less invasive laparoscopic kind). I know by now when to push myself and when to let the body rest. And now it’s Friday. I have to remind myself that scheduling surgery is not like scheduling a haircut… But I’m feeling much better today! Thanks for all of the emails, FB comments, and tweets :)

A few months ago I was meeting up with my ladies for happy hour. As my dear Nichole sat down, she handed me a page torn from a magazine and said in her sweet tone, “Would you make that for me!? It looks sooooo good!” It was a picture of a pizza with lemon slices and greens and bacon – maybe some caramelized onions? It was lovely. “Sure!” I said, as I looked around for a description. Oops, that was on the other page, which was still connected to the magazine which was… not here. It was in my queue of recipes to try when Nichole posted on her FaceBook page that she and Luke had made the pizza. I was still determined to try it. Of course, my memory of the photo was further diminished after having recycled the page. You can tell this is going to be a winner.

i’m guessing bacon, onions, goat cheese, arugula, meyer lemon

slice the onions because we want to caramelize them

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: tortilla de patatas (spanish omelette)

Um, the cost of spring is apparently $8.50 for one adult! That was the price of admission to the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster. I took my aunt who was in town on Tuesday. We had a blast checking out the incredible displays of insects, spiders, millipedes, scorpions and I even held Rosie, the Chilean Rose Hair tarantula. Her feet were so soft and furry and her step was light on the palm of my hand. What a truly gorgeous and amazing creature! But the real reason we went: the butterflies.

paper kite butterfly

The moment I removed my lens cap, my filter fogged up. It was so warm (dare I say, hot!) and humid in the Wings of the Tropics Conservatory compared to the cold and dry Colorado winter air outside. I suppose the word Tropics should have clued me in, no? Good thing I had a short sleeve t-shirt under my pullover. I was sweating within minutes. We enjoyed the variety of tropical plants almost as much as the variety of butterflies. Everywhere we looked we saw butterflies flitting, chilling out, taking off, landing, spazzing, sipping up nectar. They were enormous, delicate, exotic, simple, brilliant, striking, mellow, ADD (the postman butterflies were seriously spaz), but each one was fascinating. Every now and again I would look past the dense growth of flowering plants and catch a glimpse of the sunny, but snowy landscape through the glass. Oh yeah – it’s winter.

postman butterfly

But I like winter :) So for me the foray into this world of the colorful, humid tropics was nice in part because it was so stunning AND because it was short-lived. You can see more photos from the afternoon on my photo blog.

I’m unclear if it’s the whole Easter Bunny hoopla or just the association with the color yellow, but eggs have always been a springy and cheerful food to me. I love when Helen or Aran post their beautiful creations and have eggs littering the pages. They make me want to jump up and down like a kid and go running over to their respective kitchens to get my paws into the baking and my spoon in for a taste! So Aran has been tempting me for nearly a year with talk of her beloved tortilla de patatas.

simply put: eggs, onion, potatoes

medium dice on the onions

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: spicy tuna stuffed squid tempura

**Note**: Daring Bakers, it came down to the wire and I chose sanity over the DBs yesterday. Forge ahead and hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving had a great one. xoxo

I expect most everyone is in a complete state of food coma at this point. Am I right? We are actually quite happily not in food coma over here just because I’ve sort of had it with food lately (the making, the eating, the documenting). December is less than a week away and that entire month is about FOOD, so we gave ourselves a little break. Plus there was work to be done this morning. We had to pick a winner for the scarf giveaway.

your mission, should you choose to accept it…

Kaweah loves to participate in picking random numbers as long as the motivator is food. Try throwing a ball and she’ll run after the ball, then run right past it, then keep on running, until you wave a dog biscuit in the air and holler, “TREAT!” So the set up was to place ten pieces of paper numbered zero through nine around our great room with a bit of carrot on it. Then we let Kaweah into the room and recorded the first number she ate. Jeremy had to police her because the last time we tried this, Kaweah ate one number and then mowed through four more before we could stop her. Then we repeated this twice more. I’m sure some of you are thinking if she hits the first number, she’ll just return to the same place each time. Nope. Our good pup isn’t that bright. Seriously. She is totally in the moment.

jeremy chases after kaweah to make sure she doesn’t eat the rest of the numbers

our crazy random number generator gave us 983

We took 983 mod 221 (I know a few people said they weren’t entering, but anyone leaving a comment is considered entered because it’s too much work for me to remove them) and got #99. Congratulations to Dani of Dani Dishes! You win the scarf and you get to pick the colorway of your choice! I’ll be sending an email shortly. Thank you to everyone who shared what Thanksgiving was about to you. Food was probably the biggest along with family, and some of you really tugged at my heartstrings especially remembering those who aren’t with us anymore. It was so nice of you to share with me.

Our Thanksgiving was very low key foodwise because we are both swamped with work. I kept our “meal” simple, but special. Mostly, we just wanted to have a quiet day including a nice walk before sunset. I’m thankful for the little things as much as the big things in life.

this snow will likely last through the spring

someone was particularly happy and well-behaved today

definitely thankful for these two

What we ate for our Thanksgiving meal (it’s too early to be called dinner, too late for lunch) is known as Tiger’s Eye at our favorite sushi restaurant in South Pasadena. It is spicy tuna stuffed calamari that is tempura fried, sliced, and served with ponzu sauce. I didn’t have ponzu sauce on hand, so I had to make my own. The recipe I use calls for bonito flakes. I never have bonito flakes on hand either (although you can buy them in Asian markets and I recommend this – or better yet, just buy ponzu sauce). However, I did have a giant piece of dried bonito.

it looks like driftwood

pouring lemon juice and rice wine vinegar into the soy sauce and bonito flakes

**Jump for more butter**