use real butter

Recipe: green chile hush puppies

It’s been quite a production these many days, cranking out cookies and confections for distribution. I’m nearly done and boy am I happy about that! The baking sheets and cooling racks are in heavy rotation and I won’t divulge the pounds of butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and chocolate I’ve plowed through in the past week. Thankfully, they’ve begun marching out of the house and into the hands of happy recipients.

chocolate chip cookies cooling

packaging

these went out tuesday afternoon

Tuesday was Kaweah’s birthday, but we had so much going on in Boulder that we didn’t get a chance to celebrate properly. So what better excuse than to host a giveaway in the pup’s honor? After all, she IS the official random number generator of this blog.

and official plush toy disembowler

It just so happens that my mentor, renowned landscape and nature photographer Michael Frye, has published his first ebook: Light and Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom. In the book, Michael walks the reader through his digital post processing workflow in great detail on five of his stunning images. Michael uses Adobe Lightroom for his post proc, but the methods presented are applicable to any image processing software.



Now I’m sure some people are thinking that they don’t need a nature photography book because they shoot something other than nature. I cannot emphasize enough how much nature photography has influenced and improved my food photography, event photography, and well… photography in general. I can pretty much guarantee that Michael will teach you something you don’t know that will change the way you think about making a photograph. I spent one day with the gentleman in Yosemite and within the first hour he was challenging me to push my boundaries. Michael is an ideal instructor – methodical and clear, he never holds back from sharing his expertise, motivations, and inspirations.

So to celebrate the launch of Michael’s first ebook – I’m giving away three copies of Light and Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom! The cool thing is this: even if you don’t win, it’s a mere $5 to purchase a copy of your own. Additionally, Michael has graciously agreed to provide a signed copy of his third book Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters to give away as well. Another gem of a book that I highly recommend.

FOUR BOOKS means FOUR WINNERS and here’s how you can enter:

1) Answer this question in the comments of this post: What special place would you most like to photograph?
2) One comment per person, please.
3) Comments will close Sunday, December 19th at NOON (MST).
4) Giveaway is open to everyone. All four prizes ship worldwide.
5) Winners will be selected at random by Kaweah and announced Monday, December 20th, 2010.

Full disclosure: Michael Frye Photography is providing use real butter with three copies of Light and Land and one copy of Digital Landscape Photography for the giveaway.

On to the recipe. You know how I moon over Hatch green chiles and hoard them when the harvest rolls around in late summer/early fall? This past summer we hit pay dirt and I bought many pounds of fresh Hatch chiles to roast and freeze myself. Well, when my in-laws were visiting in November, they brought us a cooler full of frozen roasted Hatch green chiles they had picked up for us around the harvest. Wow! But now I must inform you that my dear aunt ALSO purchased several gazillion pounds of roasted Hatch green chiles for us which are still residing in her freezer in New Mexico. That’s a lot of green chiles…

so let’s make hush puppies

mix up the dry ingredients

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: sweet onion dip

I let blogging get away from me these past few days. In truth, I kind of left it there – abandoned it, if you will. The weather was cold, snowy, even foggy at times. I just had to get out into it!

as did kaweah

We had a freezing fog blow in one morning. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does happen, it’s quite amazing because it coats everything in rime ice. This one was short-lived. Due to the flow of the fog, the ice crystals developed on one side of everything.

nature’s bad hair day?

branches that resemble candy

There was also the requisite “scoping out” of the snow. It’s soft, fluffy, and deep in places… windswept in others. We did *a lot* of postholing, which I guess is an effective form of the Ass Reduction Plan (ARP). Note to self: bring the skis until June.

heading into a squall

jeremy scouts the weather to the west

Jeremy is counting down the days until the solstice, because he can’t wait for the days to start getting longer. He’s a big fan of daylight. Me? I like daytime, nighttime, anytime. The short days don’t bother me at all. I have plenty of things to get done after the sun goes down.

our local sunset is around 4:30

latest acquisition of quilting flannels

While most folks kick entertaining and social functions into high gear come December, I’m actually trying to stay under the radar. I am keeping our social calendar pretty empty. Instead of indulging in the copious calorie-laden goodies, we’re eating simple fare that centers around what needs to be cleaned out of the freezer. And I’m exercising regularly because of Todd and Diane… or rather because of Todd and Diane’s sweet onion dip.

a baguette, cream cheese, mayonnaise, parmesan, sweet onion, and black pepper

I call it spreadable crack and damn it if they aren’t the pushers! They served this at the dinner party they threw when I was visiting them in Southern California. It’s so unbelievably good that even my friend Jack, a man sworn against white condiments, gobbled it down.

slice the baguette

brush with olive oil (both sides, please)

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: apple cider doughnuts

Autumn is when the nights drop below freezing and we throw the big flannel quilt over our bed. In the mornings, Kaweah is slower to stretch out because the cold makes her hind legs stiff. When I look south from our third floor loft, I can see fresh snow mantled over 13,294-foot James Peak turning pink as the sun breaks the horizon in the East. The changing season is invigorating and I find myself making mental notes of things I want to do now that the weather is cooling down.

our resident fox scouting the yard at dusk

the skeletons of summer’s glory

A modest little parcel found its way into my mailbox the day before I set off for San Francisco. Lara Ferroni’s new book Doughnuts had been sent to me by her publisher. I smiled because I would be having dinner with Lara in just over 24 hours. Travel, dining out, and cool temperatures conspire to make me long for cooking or baking after having avoided the stove and oven for most of summer. What better way to get reacquainted with the kitchen than making some doughnuts?

totally counterproductive to the ass reduction plan

Choices! Choices! The book offers all manner of doughs – raised, baked, fried, cake, gluten-free, vegan, and then some. You can pair those with various glazes, flavors, styles. If I weren’t obsessed with a specific kind of doughnut, I would have had an awful time deciding which recipe to try first. Malasadas: I had those in Hawai’i and nearly went BLIND eating them. Sopapillas – ubiquitous in New Mexico and a necessary ending to any proper New Mexican meal. Crème brûlée – because it’s so brilliant! Bavarian cream – my favorite. French crullers – my other favorite. But I had to try the apple cider doughnuts first because I have been plagued with the most frustrating failure from last fall when I attempted to make them from a different source and had to throw the entire endeavor in the trash.

add cinnamon

egg yolks taking a dive

The only deviation from Lara’s recipe was the apple cider. Instead of straight apple cider, I reduced mine to concentrate the flavor from one cup down to a quarter cup. Having never eaten an apple cider doughnut before, but always craving one at the very mention of it – I knew I wouldn’t regret that step.

pour in the apple cider (or in my case, the reduced apple cider)

stirring the dry ingredients in

**Jump for more butter**