use real butter

Recipe: passion fruit mochi

Before I forget, I wanted to share my composite of the eclipse so you could get a feel for the whole progression. It’s kinda cool and especially great to show and explain to kids, big and small.

starting at 6:31 pm (MDT) and ending 8:13pm (MDT)

Last month, I got a super sweet email from Viva Singer, a reader who told me that her office in Montreal loves to check out the recipes on use real butter and that everyone at work thinks Kaweah is adorable. As a thanks for sharing recipes, she wanted to send me a dog collar for Kaweah, because that’s what her business, Hot Dogs All Dressed, makes – beautiful, hand-crafted collars for dogs and cats. I said it wasn’t necessary to send Kaweah anything because she’s such a hillbilly dog, but that I’d love to donate one to a dog at my local shelter and perhaps arrange for a giveaway on the blog.

what viva sent me: the waterproof hydro (red with daisies) and the leather (black with hearts)

Viva mailed two durable, quality collars for Kaweah to model and said if she really liked one, she could keep one and give the other to a shelter pup. Kaweah is as fashion-ignorant as I am. She would only want a collar if it were made of meat, cheese, apples, peanut butter, well… food. But we took her for a walk wearing the nice black leather collar studded with shiny red hearts. She looked so hip!

love

i… i… i wanna go swimming

Once we arrived at the lake, it was obvious that Kaweah intended to go for a dip. I had anticipated this (she’s a lab, of course she’s going to want to go swimming) and brought the hydro collar along.

jeremy fastens the hydro collar while kaweah patiently waits

so pretty!

she fetched sticks

and she kept going back

These are lovely collars that can be custom-made to order and Viva was kind enough to offer me five dog or cat collars to give away to five of my readers. I, in turn, will ask each winner to name a local animal shelter to which I shall donate $20. Hot Dogs All Dressed works a good bit with their local rescues, so they thought this was a terrific idea. Kaweah agrees.

The Rules:
1) To enter, please leave a comment sharing why you love your pet by 11:59pm (MDT), Friday, June 1, 2012.
2) One entry per person (multiple entries will be disqualified).
3) Anyone can enter, but the animal shelter selected to receive a donation must be in the US or Canada.
4) Winners will be selected at random (by Kaweah) and announced next week.
5) Good luck!

Full disclosure: Hot Dogs All Dressed donated seven collars to me to donate and give away with no obligation and no compensation. All opinions expressed here are my own.

not too shabby!

I had blogged a chocolate mochi cake in April, but during my search for a recipe, I came across another recipe that caught my fancy. It was for a guava mochi and the recipe was even more simple than the chocolate mochi cake! A footnote at the bottom stated you could substitute passion fruit juice for the guava juice to make passion fruit or liliko’i mochi. So, you know where this is going…

four cups of passion fruit pulp, glutinous rice flour, and sugar

the cause of much unnecessary controversy

Now, this needs to be said, because some gluten-free people completely freak out when they see glutinous rice flour and assume it has gluten in it: GLUTINOUS RICE FLOUR CONTAINS NO GLUTEN. It’s an unfortunate naming convention to describe how damn sticky this stuff gets. Glutinous rice is sticky rice.

The passion fruit juice isn’t something that I come by easily around here. Most of the time I have to make it from frozen passion fruit concentrate that I find in California and hoard in my freezer. But I happened to have four cups of real passion fruit pulp in my freezer which I ran through my food mill to end up with about 2.5 cups of precious liquid gold.

keep at it and squeeze every drop out

the power of the sun in a pyrex glass

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chocolate gingerbread cookies

This post is coming to you from sunny (and hot) California. More specifically, you could call it sunny, hot, gorgeous, delightful, mouth-watering, seductive Sonoma County (and a little Napa too). It’s been looking like this:

vineyards

wine tastings

gardens

dinner at redd (those are scallops – bloody awesome scallops)

lovely grounds at wineries

the most brilliant lunch EVER

otoro sushi

Before I head into the sticks for a few days, I wanted to wish all of the wonderful moms out there a very happy Mother’s Day! The world would come to a halt without your love and dedication, so thank you for all you do. Of course, I have to give special shout outs to my two favorite moms: Mom (my mother-in-law) and Mom (my mom).

It seems fitting that today’s recipe should be something sweet, like those magical hugs that only moms can give. I recently tested a batch of these chocolate gingerbread cookies and I think they may be the new crack – but LEGAL!

butter, molasses, flour, dark brown sugar, ginger, chocolate, candied ginger, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda, spices, fresh grated ginger, sugar

sift the flour, cocoa, salt, and spices together

beat the butter and fresh ginger together

add the brown sugar

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: the woodward pizza

There’s something to be said for sharing a good meal with good people. Aran was in town this past week to teach at The Makerie in Boulder, so Jeremy and I met up with her at The Kitchen for a lovely evening. We shared a family-style dinner that was almost as excellent as the conversation, the company, and the laughter. Despite traveling and meeting people all day, after 20+ hours, Aran was delightful and genuinely sincere as always. Jeremy said it best, “Aran is good people.”

filet on spinach with bernaise

aran was happy to be back in colorado

So did anyone stay up to catch the Lyrids meteor shower over the weekend? I’m going to guess the majority of you did not. That’s okay, because I did and there are pictures to prove it! The best one I was able to capture was at 2 am while I stood in my neighbor’s driveway (they said I could). It was brilliant and lasted several seconds.

that’s my house in silhouette

We used to have to drive 4.5 hours to get to a decent dark sky site when we lived in California. Now? Less than 30 seconds of walking and I’m there (on my deck or in my neighbor’s driveway). You know what else we used to do? We used to order pizza when we didn’t have the time to make our own dough. Things have changed.

with the help of this book

I received Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day from St. Martin’s Press back in October. It was written by Jeff Hertzberg and my friend, Zoë François. Yes, I realize it is now April, but I didn’t want to write about my experience with the book until I could do it properly. We have made a lot of ghetto pizza at home in the past, but I finally went out and procured a pizza stone and pizza peel. And because a 550°F oven in warm weather makes me cranky, we also have a proper grill (one that doesn’t simultaneously undercook and scorch the same piece of food). Huzzah!

you will need: flour, water, salt, yeast, and olive oil

the water should be 100°F

add the yeast and salt

After learning about all of the equipment involved in pizza-making, I started with the olive oil dough variation on their master recipe. There are many other recipes in the book and not just pizza dough recipes (gluten-free too!), but focaccia, pita, tarts, pies, soups, dips, and spreads. However, we really needed to get our pizza dough down in this house once and for all.

add olive oil

add the flour

a slightly sticky, viscous dough

**Jump for more butter**