use real butter

Recipe: matcha green tea shortbread cookies

Someone has been doing their snow dances, because we are finally seeing a little winter love over here. Last week it snowed a nice half-foot at the local hill. I knew it was going to snow. You see, every time Kat comes to visit Boulder from Colorado Springs, it snows!

of course, the winds were not far behind

It mostly cleared up by the time Kat arrived for lunch the next day. We are huge fans of The Pinyon, but when they announced the start of lunch service in the new year we promised one another that this would be our next get together. I mean, a favorite resto that serves my favorite meal of the day? Booyah! We met up with two other fascinating and uniquely wonderful friends: Butter (how can you not love a girl who goes by the name Butter?) and Michael.

we all shared the fried brussels sprouts leaves salad, which was *amazeballs*

my shrimp po’ boy

Jeremy returned from travel and we spent the weekend driving to and from IKEA, disassembling and reassembling the house, working, and waiting for more snow. It was warm, windy, and not snowing.

while we waited: dramatic cloud formations at sunset

a little pink afterglow

But it did start snowing this morning on our backcountry ski and it continued to snow all day, dropping a few inches in the neighborhood and more in the mountains. Our winter weather pattern in the Colorado mountains is mostly like this: if it isn’t snowing, it’s sunny. Sometimes it’s both snowing AND sunny. Usually when it snows, it tends to be overcast and cold. That’s how we like it. Jeremy invariably makes himself a hot cup of coffee or tea when he comes inside from the cold, and if there is a sweet nibble of cookie, cake, or pastry to be had, his day is pretty much golden. I figured, if one likes tea and cookies, surely one would like tea in cookies!

flour, butter, sugar, confectioner’s sugar, egg yolks, matcha green tea powder

mix the matcha and confectioner’s sugar together

I’ve had this recipe on my “to try” list for years. I don’t know why it was buried for so long. I love matcha green tea anything because it’s such an easy and lovely “Asian” ingredient to incorporate into so many western desserts. And because this is a shortbread, I knew it would be reliable to bake at altitude with essentially no need for adjustments. You have no idea how much I love that.

beat the matcha, confectioner’s sugar, and butter until smooth

mix in the flour

add the yolks

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: blackberry macarons

What a weekend! We had some pretty crazy (read: extremely high) winds in Colorado Saturday night, clocking as much as 115 mph at Breckenridge. Based on our 6+ years in this house, we gauged it probably gusted to 90 mph here… and this wasn’t even the worst wind storm we’ve experienced. We watched in moderately alarmed curiosity (before the power went out) as the front wall of our great room flexed with each gust. Of course, it would have to be the weekend that my in-laws were visiting, but thankfully the guest room is on the ground floor. Our bedroom is on the third floor and so we endured 8 hours of the Northridge earthquake. Kaweah slept (happily) through the whole thing. Ah well, there’s always a price for paradise.

Aside from the windstorm, we took my ILs into Boulder for some shopping and dining. We enjoyed a beautiful family dinner at The Kitchen one evening and introduced them to The Pinyon and Chef Theo.

the kitchen: rabbit leg confit

the kitchen: alaskan halibut

the kitchen: apple doughnuts

the pinyon: butternut ravioli, brussels sprouts, mushrooms in brown butter sauce

Before the winds went cuckoo, we did have some really beautiful clouds set up over the house last week. Even if I didn’t have some background in atmospheric science, I would still be 100% completely enamored with our Colorado skies. Who needs television?

wave cloud at sunset over my house

still there long after sunset

And now, I’m happy to be home to work on long-term projects and resume a much-needed routine! No more travel or house guests for over a month! All of the local ski hills are either open or opening within the next week. My list of recipes to try is growing almost as fast as the list of things we need to fix and do around our neglected house. Speaking of recipes, I came across these macs that I made earlier this year. Even though blackberry season is over, you can use frozen blackberries for the curd and the buttercream. I find frozen organic blackberries to have decent sweetness and flavor.

sugar + red + blue = purple sugar

whipped whites with purple sugar

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: membrillo (quince paste)

It’s so good to be home after a week of driving around Southwest Colorado and shooting fall colors alone. I don’t mind being alone, but it gets mentally exhausting because I’m all up in my head with myself from before sunrise to well after sundown assessing weather, light, topography, and of course the aspens. After a couple of days traveling backroads I noticed a lot of drivers in their trucks with their dogs. Colorado is a dog-lovin’ state, to be sure. It made me miss Kaweah and it almost made me wish that she were along for my trip. I say almost because Kaweah is a very annoying (read: bad) car companion. She associates car rides with hikes. She loves hikes. She gets so excited she just cries the whole time. Sometimes for several hours on end. Kaweah becomes a giant stress ball so we try to avoid subjecting her to that. I guess in some ways we are trying to avoid subjecting ourselves to it too. There’s something to be said for shooting the fall colors in peace.

in crested butte

off ohio pass road

anthracite range

[See the whole set from Crested Butte on my photo blog.]

When reports posted winter weather advisories for the mountains, I debated if it might be wise for me to wrap up the shoot in Crested Butte and hightail it back home before the storm arrived. Instead, I took that window and drove south to the San Juans and I’m glad I did. Places with big sky, big mountains, big weather, big swaths of pine and aspen – they take my breath away. There were times when the visibility went to pea soup, but the weather is so dynamic that you could count on it changing from hour to hour if not minute to minute.

the scrub was also in full color

from the dallas divide

hillslope

sunset on the sneffels range

rising clouds from fresh snowfall

[You can view the rest of the set here.]

We had five inches of snow on our deck Saturday. A-basin and Loveland have begun their race to make snow with a jump start from the cold snap. And Wolf Creek opened this weekend with 44 inches of snow from the storm! But it’s not winter. The snow has melted (mostly) from our deck and the days ahead will be sunny and warm. That’s autumn for ya. I’m happy to get as much of it as I can including in the edible form. Our local Whole Foods is carrying quince now, and despite the fact that it costs an arm and a leg to buy it here in Colorado, I couldn’t resist. I know of people from various parts of the U.S. who have had quince trees… and never once knew what to do with the fruits. Seriously? That makes for sad pandas everywhere.

related to the apple and pear, but you can’t eat quince raw

cut, cored, cubed

I first tasted quince paste – membrillo – in Argentina over a decade ago. Becky and I were in the field on a GPS campaign and dropped by to visit with a farming family she knew from the previous field season. They were warm and friendly, inviting us in to join them for snacks and a game of World Cup Soccer: Argentina vs. England. Slices of a mild, soft cheese were paired with slices of the deep rose-colored quince paste. Floral, fruity, and sweet bouncing off the creamy, salty cheese. Because I didn’t know a lick of Spanish, I learned to speak the way Argentinians speak. I didn’t say mem-BREE-yo, I said mem-BREE-zho. Lots of je je je sounds. It’s so beautiful. By the way, Argentina won that game which made for a country full of happy people.

slice lemon rind

simmer in a pot with lemon peel, vanilla bean, and water

**Jump for more butter**