use real butter

Recipe: fish tacos

Hoo boy! I have been busy… in the good way. You know, getting things done. I still have plenty more on my plate, but I imagine that keeps me off the streets more or less. I got a request from Antarctica the other day. Apparently the dwindling NSF (National Science Foundation) budget translates into crappier than usual fare at McMurdo Station this season. I spent a little time today scampering about Boulder with BethBeth, gathering precious food stuffs for our bud(s) way down south. Who knew it was so damn hard to find whole fat powdered milk?! And I had to take care what to include in the package because trash is a big issue in Antarctica. While I don’t think trash is as trivial an issue in “civilization” as most people do (chuck it out, don’t think about it anymore), it really does factor into what to send to Antarctica because, well – it’s Antarctica!

Recipe: wassail

I’m in California now, wrestling with the suckiness of what hotels claim to be “wireless” connections… my ass. I can’t transfer any of the photos I shot today (yet). But I need to get this post off because I’m blogging each day for NaBloWriMo! Luckily, I planned ahead and have a recipe ready.

[Edit: With the help of my remarkable guy, we have photo-age! Thanks, Jeremy!!]

Recipe: chocolate stout chili

It can get pretty cool where we live… sometimes down to -20F. I don’t mind the cold. I actually enjoy stepping out into the winter air and feeling the inside of my nose crackle when I breath in. The only real hardship of winter that we encounter is the wind (because snow isn’t hardship, it is recreation). And we encounter it up to 100 mph at times. So while I might not feel cold in 10F, I will feel chilled to the bone at 32F with a wind whipping away every unit of heat my body produces (and I produce a lot of heat – some may call it hot air). It’s blowing today and I can hear the loose sections of roofing flapping in the gusts. I sincerely hope the roofers call before the pieces go flying off into… Kansas.

Soups and stews are so utterly perfect for cold weather days. When I was a graduate student in central New York, I would rally a chili cookoff among the graduate students during this time of year. We always had an impressive array of chilis that included: curry, chocolate, beer, vegetarian, chicken, or the hottest hot you could imagine. It was always a geochemist who went for entering the hottest chili. That’s when my friend Ben thought he made chili from the butt of a pig. He kept chuckling, “Mine is made from Pork Butt.” We finally told him he was an idiot and that the pork butt is part of the shoulder. I should also note that the majority of our cookoff participants were men!

My most recent incarnation of chili involves two of those inspired variations from the cookoffs: chocolate and stout. Chocolate stout, to be precise. I have one of those prize-winning recipes that requires throwing in chorizo, a cow, and a pig, and a million other ingredients, but I like this simple recipe because it’s something you can whip up fairly quickly and because the guys at the local liquor barn get a kick out of my food-related booze purchases.