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Recipe: sautéed morels and scrambled eggs

The past seven days have been the epitome of March in Colorado. It was sunny and warm on Tuesday, then Wednesday we hosted The Bomb Cyclone which dropped a good foot and a half of snow at our house, and by Friday it was back to sunshine and bluebird skies. Some refer to this as crazy or “drunk” Colorado weather, but for anyone who has experienced more than two springs in this state, it’s par for the course.

snowy days are perfect for baking pies for pi(e) day

we set the pups up by the front window to watch us shovel snow

yuki and neva dashing through the deep snow

yuki supervises jeremy’s snow clearing technique

grabbing a backcountry ski with the pups

Our Colorado snowpack sits comfortably above average this season and we have fingers crossed that it bodes well for the health of the mountains and their denizens this summer. Water is everything in the American West. If you spend time getting to know the land, this axiom is paramount. Watching the big dump snow days is doubly exciting for us because 1) we love skiing powder days and 2) springtime snow is good for our local morels.

hoping to see many of these beauties this spring

Yes, ever since February, the obsession over morels has been steadily increasing despite several feet of snow on the ground. Sometimes Jeremy and I will be working quietly in the office and I’ll say, “I love morels!” or “We should check X location for morels this spring.” We are weeks away from morel season in Colorado, but I recently saw fresh morels make an appearance in the mushroom bins at Whole Foods. These babies are now coming online in other parts of the country and that is exciting. If you happen to get your hands on morels, one of the easiest preparations with big return on investment (of time) is morels and scrambled eggs.

morels, eggs, salt, pepper, butter, and shallots

clean and slice the morels

beat the eggs

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Recipe: baked huckleberry doughnuts

Remember when I was rejoicing over the cooler weather last week? I went shopping for all manner of ingredients to make soups and stews only to learn that this week is going to be hot as hell (again). Well, I made my soups and stews anyway, because I’m stubborn like that. I put some in the freezer as a favor to Future Me, but it’s nice to eat with a spoon again! Even with highs hitting the lower 80s (don’t laugh – we’re at 8500 feet above sea level!), the days are shorter which means the house has more time to radiate its heat away at night. This is good. I’m ready for the autumnal equinox!

the leaf litter gets prettier by the day

Amazingly, the wildfire smoke has kept away for over a week. This means more time outside for the pups to hike and for us to verify that we need not expend any more energy mushroom hunting. And we saw my folks off this weekend as they left for Virginia. I feel as if the winding down of summer’s hectic demands means I can focus a little more. I’m reining in our eating habits, putting regular exercise back on the schedule, and setting training goals for Yuki so we can all be ready come ski season.

pausing off trail

neva waits patiently as jeremy investigates a potential mushroom

dinner out with mom and dad before they flew home

While taking inventory of the chest freezer, I was delighted to see I had collected a good many huckleberries this summer. It’s enough to get me through next summer just in case it turns out to be a bad year. I often seek out recipes that don’t require a lot of huckleberries, but still deliver the essence of the huckleberry. Huckleberry cheesecake ice cream is a great example of such a recipe. Another is baked huckleberry doughnuts. I think we can all agree that baked doughnuts are not the same as fried doughnuts. Baked doughnuts are more like cake in doughnut form with glazes or sprinkles or dustings. It’s all good in my book.

huckleberries, eggs, vanilla extract, flour, sugar, vegetable oils, baking soda, salt, buttermilk

mix the dry ingredients

mix the wet ingredients

stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients

If you are lucky enough to make these doughnuts with fresh huckleberries, you can fold the berries into the batter straight away. If you are using frozen huckleberries, I would recommend tossing the frozen berries with some flour so that they all get coated, then folding those into the batter. The flour helps to prevent the juice from bleeding too much as you fold in the fruit. If you don’t care about potentially turning the batter purple, then go for it. Same applies for blueberries if you choose to substitute them for the huckleberries.

fold in the berries

fill the greased and floured doughnut pans

baked and possibly overfilled, but i rarely miss the hole in a doughnut

cool on a rack

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Recipe: sourdough waffles

Our floor lamp in the great room is on an automatic timer. I generally try to have it come on a little after sunset, when the skies give up their light at the end of each day. We’ve been doing this “chasing the sun” schedule for nearly 13 years now, but I still feel a boost of giddiness when I get to start setting the timer for later each day. It’s not that I don’t love winter, because I do love it very much. I just think with a little over 3 weeks left of official winter, I’m looking forward to spring backcountry skiing, longer days, and hopefully some big ass spring storms to replenish that high country snowpack. In the meantime, we are dutifully logging our ski days as best as we can. And Neva is definitely happier for it.

little neva lives for the dog-friendly nordic trails

happiest pup on the planet

When I first read the care and maintenance instructions for my starter, Wheatley, I thought there was a typo. It said to take a small fraction of the starter, feed it, and discard the rest – either in the trash or the compost, but don’t pour it down the sink as it could grow and clog up the pipes. Discard? Food? I soon understood that keeping it all would be an exercise in madness. In an effort to reduce waste, I began to take the very smallest fraction (5 grams) of starter for feedings before bread-making and save the discard in the refrigerator for things like delicious, fluffy waffles.

starter discard

flour, starter discard, eggs, butter, baking soda, salt, sugar, buttermilk

Waffles and pancakes are a great way to use up discard or unfed starter. This recipe uses a cup of discard and easily doubles if you want to freeze waffles or pancakes for quick breakfasts on weekdays. It does require a little planning, which may present difficulty for the non-planners, but the rest of you will be just fine. The night before you make waffles (or pancakes), stir the discard, buttermilk, flour, and sugar together in a large bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave it on the counter overnight at room temperature. That’s called the sponge.

combine the discard, flour, sugar, and buttermilk

cover with plastic and let sit out overnight

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