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Recipe: lemon heaven cake

Happy first day of spring, northern hemispherers! Even though the past few days have felt rather springish to us – lots of sun, dust on crust, hardpack, mud, warmer temperatures, snowmelt – we have come to embrace the passing of the baton from winter to spring in Crested Butte. We had a most excellent winter, but I think I’m experiencing a little bit of spring fever. Crested Butte remains mostly covered in a blanket of white, but it’s a happy blanket under a sun that climbs higher in the sky each day. The tops of some trail signs are beginning to emerge, jogging our memories of summer hikes, rides, and trail runs. The little birds have returned to the mountains, filling the air with song and my heart with joy. I feel so energized!

skiing mount crested butte

nordic skiing from middle earth to mordor

kaweah likes the smells of springtime

the beautiful little town of crested butte

Ski-wise, I have only just made the transition to spring. Food-wise, I have been in spring mode for a couple of weeks. There was a bag of lemons demanding to be turned into something wonderful, so I obliged and made a four-layer lemon chiffon cake with lemon curd, lemon buttercream frosting, and limoncello soaking syrup. I’ve made it several times before, but never blogged it. I shared most of the cake with my neighbors and some friends, saving a few slices for Jeremy when he returned from work travel. Nichole dubbed it Lemon Heaven, which I thought was the perfect name.

lemon curd: lemons, eggs, sugar, salt, cream, butter

cream, lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, salt, butter, eggs

pour the cream and lemon juice into the sugar, salt, and butter

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Recipe: bourbon caramel chocolate banana cream pie

Well wow. We have had so much snow lately that I started getting picky about the powder reports. “Oh, just 7 inches of fresh powder this morning?” Crested Butte has received 7 FEET of snow in the past two weeks. Needless to say, we’ve been skiing powder and more powder.

evening ski touring before dinner

ski touring among giant trees (the little green dot at the bottom is jeremy)

ski touring beautiful terrain

quad burns and tele turns on the mountain

This being Colorado, we also have our share of sunshine. After a morning of getting pounded with 2 inch/hour snowfall (and epic skiing – face shots!), the sun came out to play. There is a good bit of snow piled up outside our place. Jeremy has had to dig out a little area for Kaweah to go potty in the yard. It now has walls of snow 3-8 feet high, which is kinda nice because it means she doesn’t wander off.

kaweah for scale in the driveway

jeremy has to chuck the snow quite high

Despite the cold weather, Kaweah enjoys a daily scoop of her banana pupsicle. It’s just frozen bananas. I make a habit of collecting ripe or overripe bananas at the grocery store and blitzing the frozen chopped up bananas for her every few weeks. But right before we came out to Crested Butte, I decided to commandeer a few of those bananas for the two-legged critters in the house. I wanted to make banana cream pie.

pie crust: butter, flour, salt, confectioner’s sugar, cream, cider vinegar, chocolate

pulse the butter into the dry ingredients

add the cream and vinegar mixture

pulse together until just moistened

wrap and chill

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Recipe: black bean soup

We’re back home on the Colorado Front Range where the weather seems unseasonably warm compared to Crested Butte. I know the whole country (except for California) was dogged by frigid winter weather for several days, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary for us in the mountains. The thing is, Crested Butte has ruined me. It is my idea of perfect winter. The snow is fluffy and powdery, the temperatures are quite cold which preserves that nice powdery snow for a long time (in January, the average low is -8°F, but we measured as low as -22°F last week), there is a lot of sunshine, and there is no wind. Okay, they can get a little wind from time to time, but nothing like the winds that ravage us in Nederland and along the Front Range. So it’s a bit of an adjustment coming home to weather that feels so antagonistic at times.

there was decent snow in the trees

The wind is a real bitch here on the Front Range. But it makes you tough. Skiing ground blizzards, getting pummeled on the ski lift in gale force winds, navigating death cookies and busting wind slab – it all builds character. And then you have those blow outs where the winds have scoured bare ground right next to a 20 foot snowdrift. It makes the good days REALLY good, but winters here are not for dilettantes.

jeremy carries his skis across a giant blowout in 45 mph gusts

Once home our usual routine is to put the gear away, set the boots out to dry, remove sunblock, change into warm clothes, check that Kaweah is alive and well, and get something hot in our bellies. It doesn’t always go in that order (we usually check Kaweah first), but the need to warm up with a bowl of soup ranks high the moment we set foot in the house. I like to make a lot of soup and keep it handy in the refrigerator for these very occasions.

let’s start with black beans

black bean soup: pepper, olive oil, sherry, salt, cumin, oregano, onion, garlic, bell pepper, beans, chicken broth, tomato paste

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