use real butter

Recipe: porcini butter

Today (Wednesday) was my last day of my 6-week skate ski program. While I will miss meeting up with this fine group of women and my awesome instructor, I have to say I’m happy to get my Wednesdays back. That, and I look forward to not being completely wiped out at the end of a long day of skate skiing and drills. I signed up for this program to jump start my introduction to skate skiing. On the registration form, I was asked to mark my ability level, so I checked off “Green: Beginner”, because that’s what I was. Little did I expect to be grouped into the intermediate class. I came into this program with the willingness to work hard, but this level of instruction required even more than I had anticipated.

So I worked. Hard. It wasn’t enough to just show up to class once a week, I needed to practice several times between classes so I could improve and take full advantage of the instruction I received. In the beginning it was crazy frustrating trying to piece together all of the elements of the technique while being completely exhausted from the hills. But I stuck with it as punishing as it felt, and within a couple of weeks I noticed some improvement. I am by no means what I consider a proficient skate skier, but I feel like I can practice and skate toward that goal equipped with the knowledge and understanding that our instructor shared over the last month and a half.

my wonderful skate gals

After a day of skating up and down the hills at Eldora, it’s necessary to come home to an easy menu. I’ll tell you what, though – I think easy menus are perfect just about any time. We gave up going out to dinner on Valentine’s Day over two decades ago, opting for a delicious home-cooked meal in the privacy of our own home. This spared us the headache of having to jostle among crowds of couples with unreasonably high expectations for the evening. When I tried this recipe, my intention was to shoot for “easy”. Only after sitting down to eat our dinner, did I realized how a simple porcini butter could transform a meal into a swoon-worthy experience.

The name, porcini butter, is practically the recipe itself. It requires dried porcini mushrooms and butter – a match made in heaven. If you are using unsalted butter, you can opt to add salt. I personally hold off on adding salt because I like to add it separately. Unlike fresh porcini, dried porcini are mush easier to find in grocery stores if you don’t have your own. They are usually packed in 1 oz. bags or containers. The butter should be at room temperature so you can cream it easily with a fork. Use a spice grinder or a mortar and pestle to turn the porcini into a fine powder. Everything will start to smell of porcini at this point.

you’ll need: salt (optional), butter, dried porcini

cream the butter

place the dried porcini in a spice grinder

grind it into a powder

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: spiced plum jam

I’m rained out at the moment, trying to get work done and taking periodic peeks out the window for a break in the weather. The giant mountains that typically tower over town are completely obscured by thick layers of clouds, but they can move out as quickly as they move in. Stormy weather can be a blessing and a curse. Photographers love when snow and fall colors mingle – it adds new dimensions and moods. But to get that secret ingredient, you need to endure the rain and cold and zero visibility and deep mud and fallen trees. Tap tap tap tap. Tappity tappity tappity tap tap tap! That’s the rain on the roof of the motel. I traveled south for a couple of days to catch this very storm when it lifts.

we got snow in crested butte a few nights ago

then we got more snow

snow!!!!

You can never hit all of the great places for fall colors at just the right time, but with today’s connectivity, you can get color reports from your network of photography pals as they scout across the western half of Colorado from late September to early October. Text messages, Facebook comments and posts, emails, forums, and face to face. There is a lot of flipping through mobile photos. Of course, when you meet in person, it’s practically a requirement that you grab a meal together.

jimmy and mike ready for pizza after camping in the pouring rain

stash pizza (pinhead pesto)

jimmy is very happy

On my drive south, I listened to a David Sedaris audio book and laughed my way up and down the back roads, pausing to gauge colors or take photos or to slowly make my way through cattle congregating on the road. The skies were a little moody, a little mixed, a little rainy. And even if the aspens were still green or completely stripped bare, the smell of the forests and soil after the rains was invigorating.

every so often the sun would poke through the clouds

i love the white trunks of aspens

spotlight on the aspens

stormy sunset

It’s been less than two weeks, but I’m feeling just a little burned out. Not so much burned out on the fall colors – I don’t think I would ever tire of autumn’s glory – but burned out on not cooking in my kitchen and not eating fresh, seasonal, and delicious food. And because sunrise and sunset are always dedicated to shooting, it really derails my trail running schedule. As the weather cools, I want to cook and bake! I did get a little of that action before the fall shoot, because the end of summer offers so much in the way of late season fruits.

italian plums

let’s jam: plums, lemon, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, pectin

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Recipe: angry edamame

Indian summer is here. Of course it is! It always arrives when I have a chocolate shoot to finish. I think I’m done foraging for huckleberries (are we ever REALLY done, though?) and instead I’ve been gathering breakfasts, lunches, and dinners to tide Jeremy over the next 3 weeks while I’m on the fall shoot. It is time. The colors are starting and I’m getting that itch to hit the road.

blue blue colorado skies and dynamic clouds

my local indicator aspen stand

Since I have yet to pack my gear in addition to the 114 other things on my to-do list (let’s call it a to-do novella), I’m just gonna dive into the recipe and its backstory. My friend, Kathryn, was visiting us from Norway last month when we got on the topic of food. Actually, we never stopped talking about food – this is why we are friends. She had an obsession with Kona Grill’s angry edamame. More specifically, she had an obsession with the angry butter. I’ve never eaten at Kona Grill, nor have I ever had angry edamame, but it sounded good. It’s really all about the angry butter. So I did a quick Google search and found a list of ingredients as a handrail.

edamame, butter, lime, kosher salt, sambal, garlic, red chile powder, cayenne powder

In essence, we are making a spicy, tangy, garlicky butter. How could this possibly be bad? I guess it’s bad that this is so darn easy and quick to slap together that you’ll want to slather it on corn, pan-seared scallops, roasted chicken, grilled asparagus, roasted Brussels sprouts… EVERYTHING.

add the sambal, chile powder, cayenne powder, and salt to the butter

grate the garlic

add lime juice to taste

**Jump for more butter**