use real butter

Recipe: chewy brownies

I’m learning to say no.

Sometimes I’m too enthusiastic and take on more than I should – more than is good for me. I do try to be careful about saying yes to everything and short-changing myself and everyone else. That’s why I think saying no is just as important as saying yes because I don’t like myself when I’m spread too thin. I thought about this while I was in Yosemite last week as I had a lot of time in my own head and offline.

el capitan in late afternoon

After rummaging around my thoughts, I decided to make a few course corrections which all boil down to de-cluttering my life both literally and figuratively. I know I’m being vague. All you need to know is that I’m feeling good about it… feeling like my priorities are back on track. And speaking of priorities, I was passing through the produce section of Whole Foods in Boulder the other day when I spied Buddha’s hand citron. As you can guess, I totally bought (remember me, the hoard shopper) the hell out of them because I had to make this Buddha’s hand citron vodka. I’ve got 2 gallons infusing as I type because in addition to making great lemon drop martinis they also make fantastic gifts.

buddha’s hand… ever see district 9?

do not open until december 25

But Jen, you don’t do Christmas! This is true, however the end of the year is a great time to express your appreciation to those you rely upon for their services or friendships. I enjoy making handmade gifts of the edible persuasion and it seems that our recipients rather like them too. I tend to mix it up from year to year because variety is the spice of life. One evening last month, I tweeted “chewy or cakey brownies?” and everyone chimed in with their preferences. I had forgotten to include fudgy brownies in the choices. The majority stood behind chewy or fudgy, but whatever they stood behind, they were adamant about it. I didn’t know people were so particular about the texture of their brownies!

butter and chocolate

melting over a hot water bath

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: alice’s chocolate chip cookies

Coming home feels good. There are many aspects of southern California that I miss and love: friends, food, cultural diversity (OMG, something other than WHITE!), and it’s familiar. But I can do without the heat, the smog, the traffic… the stress. For us, living in Colorado has fewer stressors – it’s simpler and we like it that way. That is why visiting California is so great. I caught up with more friends during the week over lunches and dinners and election results. Todd and Diane were so incredibly sweet to take an entire day off to meet with me and take me around Little Saigon.

a knock-off hello kitty seal on my milk tea boba

banh mi to kick off the food fest

These guys are like family to me – so generous, loving, open, honest, sincere. They are also ridiculously funny, protective of my interests, silly, and just plain fun to be around. Family. To walk through Little Saigon with the two of them is quite the experience. Todd speaks in Vietnamese with the little ladies in the stores asking about various produce and they LOVE him (who doesn’t?) while Diane explains what the popular snacks are or the difference between a Viet baguette and a French baguette. I noticed that she beams with pride and love when she shares this with me. It’s such a part of who she is and I really love that. I love those two.

diane smiles at a jar of her favorite pickled mango (i am addicted to it)

pâté chaud (puff pastry filled with chicken and vegetables)

But I was on a mission to find passion fruits. Most of the passion fruits on Todd and Diane’s vines were still green (and I don’t want to be picking their bounty clean anyway) and some were supposedly arriving in the markets and getting bought up quite early. We decided to try our luck and just see what was around. Lo and behold, there were passion fruits. BAGS of them! Let me just point out that the bougie bougie grocery stores like Whole Foods and Bristol Farms carry passion fruits. They carry about 12 small ones in some neglected corner of the produce department and they want $3.69 FOR EACH ONE. Diane asks the little lady in Vietnamese how much a bag is. The lady replies and Diane turns to me and softly says, “$10 a bag” and turns right back to the lady to haggle. There were 20 passion fruits in each bag. Diane is haggling, speaking softly in her beautiful native language and I whisper loudly to her, “Tell her I’ll pay $20 a bag! I’ll buy them all!” Without turning around, Diane waves her hand at me – the sign language for “SHUT UP!” She laughs and says, “If you buy three bags, she’ll sell them to you for $9 a bag.” I bought four bags. I hoard shop. It’s a Chinese thing.

score – big time

Next they brought me to their studio in LA for a tour and then to relax and start prep for dinner. We took a stroll around the ‘hood, visited with one of my oldest college friends back at the studio for a short while, and then guests began arriving.

this is willie

diane made passion fruit juice from some of our loot!

totally addictive sweet onion dip and the last candy-sweet tomatoes from their garden

We had a lovely evening with Allison, Son, Melissa, and Rene. [Brooke had to cancel at the last minute because of work and we were so sad to miss her.] The food was exceptional. I think that is a given with food bloggers – we know how to throw a dinner party! We began with that sweet onion dip (aka crack) and the tomatoes, then a lovely green salad with fresh picked fuji apples and homegrown pomegranate seeds. I believe Todd mixed some homemade apple cider sidecars for folks (a drink would have had me under the table). He also made his sinfully magical potatoes au gratin to accompany a one-pot chicken dish they learned from Three Many Cooks’ latest book. Allison brought her light-as-a-feather vanilla cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting for dessert. The conversation was a roller coaster of laughs, revelations, “tweetable” moments, stories, and musings.

who knew a small group could be so boisterous?

diane dishing up some amazingness

thankfully it cooled down enough to open the windows

By the end of my trip, I was feeling drunk on all of that quality time spent with people who are important to me. Several of these friends I’ve known longer than I’ve known Jeremy. It’s good to catch up in person even if you are in touch via email or other social media fairly regularly. In the morning, I watched the sun’s approach over the mountains in the East and began to pack my things, including the haul of 60+ passion fruits. It was time to go home. Home was calling to me.

sunrise through our filthy window

You know what I like to do at sea level? I like to run. I ran and hiked during our trip to southern California because I feel like I’m on jet fuel with all of that extra oxygen in the air. There are things that are more difficult to do at elevation, like run… or bake. Some of my food blog pals like recipe testing and do it for a living. I have to wonder if they would love recipe testing if they had to bake at high altitudes. Because I *hate* recipe testing high altitude baking recipes. So one night I’m looking online for a good chocolate chip cookie recipe. I found Alice‘s recipe and it sounded like the perfect cookie. I gave it a try.

beat the butter and sugars until super light and fluffy

add eggs and vanilla

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chocolate espresso crème brûlée

I got up before sunrise and tip-toed around the house this morning. We dipped below freezing overnight. Sticking my nose to the open window, I took several shallow sniffs then one deep inhale. No smoke. Scanning to the east I saw clear skies. The absolute best news? Calm winds. This in contrast to yesterday morning’s hostile 60 mph gusts that slapped our aspens around like rag dolls, ripping leaves off the branches. We found some wood siding from our house had been torn off by the winds as well. At noon, Manisha emailed to ask if we were all right. There was a fire near Boulder Canyon.

It’s September. In parts of the American West, this is synonymous with fire season: the driest (we had 4% humidity yesterday) and sometimes hottest time of year. Toss strong winds and bone dry vegetation in, and you are primed for a fire. We are no strangers to fire season having lived at the boundary of the Angeles National Forest in Southern California. The price one pays to live in Awesome. I hopped on Twitter and the stream of information was flowing fast. Boulder is a good place to be on Twitter. Those crazy winds whipped the wildfire into a nightmare starting in Four-Mile Canyon. It quickly spread in almost all directions and we followed news of evacuations and road closures. Good citizens updated maps in real-time or tweeted updates from the police scanner. When the reverse 911 system failed, authorities asked people on Twitter spread the word that they were going door to door to evacuate.

Smaller fires popped up around the area, but were quickly put out. It was the big one, now called the Emerson Gulch Fire, that was consuming homes and whole neighborhoods. If you look at the satellite imagery of the area, the houses are not next door to each other – they are scattered about, in the woods and canyons/mountains. It’s rough and rugged terrain (people are not on municipal services there – they have giant propane tanks for heating… which explode in wildfires). If someone dropped you into that scenario where several fronts are threatened, how do you go about deciding what to save, what to defend? It’s heartbreaking. That firestorm was so bad, the only thing authorities could focus on was evacuation. Photographs, video, descriptions and links to more information poured in on the hashtag #boulderfire. We watched as the evacuation zone expanded, inching closer to our home.

smoke from the fire was the only cloud in all of colorado (taken at dusk looking east)

When the zone was within 6 miles of our house and authorities closed Boulder Canyon, we began to gather our things. Things are just things. As I packed up letters from and photos of my sister, I realized that the only “things” I could not do without are Jeremy and Kaweah. The rest – even those cherished items that I had of Kris – I could let go of. But while we had the time, we packed what we might need if we had to evacuate and if ultimately the house was lost. [For those of you with an invested digital existence, it’s a handy thing to have an external drive (updated daily) to unplug and grab.] Without a doubt, my mind turned to Ivory Hut who just last week lost all of her worldly possessions to a fire. Thankfully, the winds had calmed considerably since the morning and tankers were finally able to fly in the waning light before nightfall grounded them.

the plume of smoke rising into the evening sky

By last night, the evacuation zone had extended again – to within 2 miles of our home. Evac zone and fire are not the same things, mind you, but we were ready. Here is an incredible time-lapse shot from Flagstaff Mountain last night. Right now Boulder lies choking under a blanket of smoke from the fire. I’m trying to reconcile those images with the clear, sunny day we are experiencing just west of the fire. Our hope is for containment. Thank you for all of your concerned and caring tweets, FB messages and comments, and emails. We are sending good juju to the victims of the fire and the incredible rescue, firefighting, and relief personnel.

Life goes on. My dear friend, Andrew, is leaving today to travel the world for a year, or two, or six. Boulder will miss you, Andrew. We will miss you. Thanks for spending an evening with us on Sunday. Thanks for being such a Force of Good in the community. Safe and remarkable travels, friend. Come back to us any time.

andrew on the terrace at the flagstaff house

perusing the wine list (the guys got cocktails instead)

crab- and salmon-stuffed squash blossoms with caviar (zomgdelicious!)

Well now, there is a recipe after all. This one dates back to my pre-blog days when I had a static website. I have a little sticky note (the virtual kind, not a paper sticky) on my desktop telling me to transfer some of those old recipes over. I think it might be one of Jeremy’s favorites.

chocolate, of course

espresso powder and cream

Chocolate espresso crème brûlée. The chocolate and espresso are enough to win most folks over, but crème brûlée will surely round up the rest of the holdouts. Crème brûlée is one of the more annoying things to have to type out, so I’m glad the fabulosity of the dessert itself far outweighs any inconvenience experienced in writing about it.

add chopped chocolate to the hot cream

whisking egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla

**Jump for more butter**