use real butter

Recipe: italian meatballs

It snows here in June. It snows, it rains, it thunders, it sun showers, it gets misty.

it’s gorgeous

and we love it

miss kaweah especially loves it

And people get married. It’s like a conspiracy, but June is the time. Take my friend, Kitt, for instance. She got married this weekend. It’s June. I rest my case.

lookin’ good!

the gals get ready

the flower girls share a laugh with kitt’s mom

vows

congratulations, you two!

Since it is wedding season, I could not think of a better time to tell you about the book my friend, Lorna Yee, has written. It would make a fabulous gift for any couples getting married.

the newlywed kitchen

The subtitle is Delicious Meals for Couples Cooking Together, but I’ll tell ya – Jeremy and I don’t really cook together. 17+ years and the formula is as follows: I cook and he does some prep and washes the dishes. I figured the book wasn’t really meant for us (and by us, I mean me), but I was willing to flip through and see what it had to offer. I sat down for what I thought would be fifteen minutes of perusing. It turned into an hour reading the delightful interviews with well-known food couples, including two of my favorite people on the planet, Shauna and Danny. And don’t let me forget the recipes. I have about two dozen pages dog-eared; they all look so fresh and good. But there was one recipe that I just had to try.

start with bread soaked in milk

let’s make meatballs: beef, pork, veal, egg

Italian grandmother meatballs. The recipe looked authentic (I checked it against this meatball recipe from my dear Susan), quick, and easy. Remember, I am a fan of quick and easy right now!

egg, garlic, oregano, red pepper flakes, flat-leaf parsley

add the parmesan and mix

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: savory chinese soybean milk soup

Hi hi hi hi! We up and left town a few days ago…

denver international

across the sierra nevada

I’m in California, spending a quiet evening with my mom, my aunt, and my grandmother. We’re having a really sweet visit together. Jeremy picks me up tomorrow morning to head into the sticks. Before he drove south to meet with colleagues at UC Santa Cruz, we had a lovely lunch with Lisa Is Bossy at Sushi O Sushi. I love sushi. I love Lisa. She gave us some of her special passion fruit French macarons. There are no pictures because they were THAT delicious (thank you, sweetheart).

sashimi for me me me (and lisa and jeremy)

the something something roll – exceptionally wonderful

You just can’t have a visit with family without some GOOD Chinese food (at least you can’t in my family). We’ve been enjoying the noms in between running errands for Grandma. I swear it blows me away that these three beautiful women each look several years younger than they really are. Mom just told me I couldn’t divulge her age on the blog, but I think it’s okay to say that Grandma is 88 and still kicking ass. In fact, all three of these ladies kick ass.

mom (left), my aunt (right), and grandma (bottom)

beef noodle soup

soup dumplings (tan bao)

I thought an appropriate recipe to share this time would be a Beijing-style Chinese breakfast. It’s my Daddy’s favorite. He used to make this on weekends when I was in high school. So I’m posting this in honor of Dad since we’re having a girls-only visit this time. It starts with Chinese doughnuts.

chinese doughnuts – not quite what you were thinking

soybean milk

**Jump for more 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**