use real butter

Recipe: green chile hush puppies

It’s been quite a production these many days, cranking out cookies and confections for distribution. I’m nearly done and boy am I happy about that! The baking sheets and cooling racks are in heavy rotation and I won’t divulge the pounds of butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and chocolate I’ve plowed through in the past week. Thankfully, they’ve begun marching out of the house and into the hands of happy recipients.

chocolate chip cookies cooling

packaging

these went out tuesday afternoon

Tuesday was Kaweah’s birthday, but we had so much going on in Boulder that we didn’t get a chance to celebrate properly. So what better excuse than to host a giveaway in the pup’s honor? After all, she IS the official random number generator of this blog.

and official plush toy disembowler

It just so happens that my mentor, renowned landscape and nature photographer Michael Frye, has published his first ebook: Light and Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom. In the book, Michael walks the reader through his digital post processing workflow in great detail on five of his stunning images. Michael uses Adobe Lightroom for his post proc, but the methods presented are applicable to any image processing software.



Now I’m sure some people are thinking that they don’t need a nature photography book because they shoot something other than nature. I cannot emphasize enough how much nature photography has influenced and improved my food photography, event photography, and well… photography in general. I can pretty much guarantee that Michael will teach you something you don’t know that will change the way you think about making a photograph. I spent one day with the gentleman in Yosemite and within the first hour he was challenging me to push my boundaries. Michael is an ideal instructor – methodical and clear, he never holds back from sharing his expertise, motivations, and inspirations.

So to celebrate the launch of Michael’s first ebook – I’m giving away three copies of Light and Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom! The cool thing is this: even if you don’t win, it’s a mere $5 to purchase a copy of your own. Additionally, Michael has graciously agreed to provide a signed copy of his third book Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters to give away as well. Another gem of a book that I highly recommend.

FOUR BOOKS means FOUR WINNERS and here’s how you can enter:

1) Answer this question in the comments of this post: What special place would you most like to photograph?
2) One comment per person, please.
3) Comments will close Sunday, December 19th at NOON (MST).
4) Giveaway is open to everyone. All four prizes ship worldwide.
5) Winners will be selected at random by Kaweah and announced Monday, December 20th, 2010.

Full disclosure: Michael Frye Photography is providing use real butter with three copies of Light and Land and one copy of Digital Landscape Photography for the giveaway.

On to the recipe. You know how I moon over Hatch green chiles and hoard them when the harvest rolls around in late summer/early fall? This past summer we hit pay dirt and I bought many pounds of fresh Hatch chiles to roast and freeze myself. Well, when my in-laws were visiting in November, they brought us a cooler full of frozen roasted Hatch green chiles they had picked up for us around the harvest. Wow! But now I must inform you that my dear aunt ALSO purchased several gazillion pounds of roasted Hatch green chiles for us which are still residing in her freezer in New Mexico. That’s a lot of green chiles…

so let’s make hush puppies

mix up the dry ingredients

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: cream scones

I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had an enjoyable day. Ours was fairly low key as Thanksgiving goes, although I was probably cooking and baking as much as the next person – or more. It’s not so much the food as the thanks that are most prominent in my mind on Thanksgiving. I’m thankful, so thankful… for my life and all of the wonderful family and friends who populate it. And when I say life, I mean all of it – I’m referring to the joy of waking each day and knowing I’m here to make the most of it because there is no other way to live in my book (that book being the Rules of Jen, which isn’t published… it’s just in my head, you know). The winds were howling and hammering at our house on Thursday and driving to and skiing in ground blizzards didn’t appeal to us, so we stayed home and had sushi for dinner. Last year there was enough snow on the ground to make for a lovely walk with the dog. This year, Kaweah was perfectly content snuggling up on the couch with the occasional treat and belly rub for good measure.

last year’s thanksgiving walk

very thankful for these two

As for Black Friday, I avoided shopping altogether. I hate shopping in general because I feel like my time could be better spent doing something else rather than looking for crap stuff. I’m a search-and-destroy kind of shopper. In and out and no one gets hurt. Too much stuff makes me crazy, which is why I donated several bags of (nice) stuff earlier in the week to Goodwill and the Humane Society’s Thrift and Gift shop. But I’ll admit that I did have some items on my “to do” list which count as shopping…

tea cups

I scoured three thrift stores in Louisville (with Manisha) and Boulder in search of tea cups and saucers. The treasures one can find at a thrift store are many. These are items that someone doesn’t want, but someone else could use. I like that idea. I hate waste. Why the hunt for tea cups and saucers? Well, last month I had treated Manisha to afternoon tea at The Brown Palace in Denver after a meeting we had with the Denver Botanic Gardens.

which tea to order…

Our first reaction was to say, “oooh!” and “ahhh!” at the beautiful little pastries, tea sandwiches, scones, and tea. Then, as any food-obsessed pair of friends would do, we began to analyze every bite. We whispered to one another:

“That must be cream cheese.”

“Yes, but that curry is weird.”

“You know, we could totally do this ourselves!”

And the wheels began to turn. Certainly, we could put on our own tea, no? We could put on a better tea. Manisha recalled one of Lisa’s blog posts on a bridal shower tea she and her family threw. Oh that was gorgeous and Lisa’s tea had some fantastic ideas. Wouldn’t it be nice to put on a tea for our gals? Why, yes indeed!

campari, prosecco, fresh squozen orange juice, orange peel curls

campari mimosa

Tea appeals to me not for the tea, but for all of the little foods. I am quite fond of little foods and tiny servings. And variety. Variety is the spice of life (I say this all the time, I don’t know where I got it from). Afternoon tea is a great excuse to make all manner of sweet and savory bites for your guests. But what makes me happier than making all of this food is watching the people I care about dig into it. We call people with good appetites who enjoy eating and can appreciate good food “good eaters”. I think all cooks love a good eater. I can’t tell you how much it makes me smile when I see Erin’s eyes light up at the sight of chocolate.

we hadn’t even finished putting everything on the table

it’s not a tea without scones (also pictured: chocolate chip banana bread)

chocolate mousse, fresh fruit

salmon sandwiches, chutney and cucumber sandwiches, cocktail samosas, chocolate macarons

The day before Thanksgiving, Manisha taught me to make cocktail samosas. I’m a whore for any “dumpling”-esque savory food – essentially a dough filled with vegetables or meat: samosas, pot stickers, ravioli, empanadas, and the list goes on. Manisha’s samosas are different from traditional samosas. Cocktail samosas have a delicate and thin pastry shell and are quickly devoured in two or three dangerously easy bites. In my opinion, they’re so much better! That could very well be my bias though. Manisha has never made anything that I didn’t like. She arrived at my house on Saturday with about four dozen cocktail samosas. Half of them potato and the other half chicken. Both types are phenomenally addictive. There will be a post on those adorable savory pastries soon enough.

waiting for teas to steep

a full table

nichole pours her tea

pinky out!

the menu
cucumber sandwiches with cilantro-mint chutney
salmon sandwiches with dill and capers
chicken salad puffs (I got this idea from Lisa)
cocktail samosas (chicken and potato) with tamarind-date chutney, cilantro-mint chutney (Manisha)
crostini with sweet onion dip (recipe from my good friends White On Rice Couple)

black currant cream scones
chocolate chip banana bread
zucchini bread
apricot bars (Kitt’s mom)
chocolate macarons with chocolate-espresso ganache
chocolate mousse cups
digestive cookies (Drea)
fresh fruit
lemon curd (Nichole)
clotted cream (Drea)

campari mimosas
assorted loose teas from everyone

Whew! That was a huge amount of work, but it was worth it and so much fun! I had extraordinary help from my one and only fella. In between all of the work he had to get done (science doesn’t stop for holidays) Jeremy cleaned the house before the party, taste tested everything I made and gave me constructive feedback (hey – anyone can eat food, but I have standards to maintain), washed the parade of dirty dishes, mixed mimosas for the ladies, kept track of steeping teas (he is our tea and coffee expert), kept Kaweah from goosing guests with her wet nose from under the table, cleared dishes, and was generally as incredible as ever. He even sat down with us briefly to enjoy some pastries, mimosas, and tea before the conversation got too giggly and ridiculous. I know no better awesome than he.

nichole’s beautiful tea pot

Believe it or not, I had the presence of mind to shoot one of the recipes I made for the tea in the midst of three days of prep. Scones. I hadn’t tackled scones at elevation before. I figured they would be easy enough. Right? Right?!

a little sugar in the dough

add dried black currants

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: apple cider doughnuts

Autumn is when the nights drop below freezing and we throw the big flannel quilt over our bed. In the mornings, Kaweah is slower to stretch out because the cold makes her hind legs stiff. When I look south from our third floor loft, I can see fresh snow mantled over 13,294-foot James Peak turning pink as the sun breaks the horizon in the East. The changing season is invigorating and I find myself making mental notes of things I want to do now that the weather is cooling down.

our resident fox scouting the yard at dusk

the skeletons of summer’s glory

A modest little parcel found its way into my mailbox the day before I set off for San Francisco. Lara Ferroni’s new book Doughnuts had been sent to me by her publisher. I smiled because I would be having dinner with Lara in just over 24 hours. Travel, dining out, and cool temperatures conspire to make me long for cooking or baking after having avoided the stove and oven for most of summer. What better way to get reacquainted with the kitchen than making some doughnuts?

totally counterproductive to the ass reduction plan

Choices! Choices! The book offers all manner of doughs – raised, baked, fried, cake, gluten-free, vegan, and then some. You can pair those with various glazes, flavors, styles. If I weren’t obsessed with a specific kind of doughnut, I would have had an awful time deciding which recipe to try first. Malasadas: I had those in Hawai’i and nearly went BLIND eating them. Sopapillas – ubiquitous in New Mexico and a necessary ending to any proper New Mexican meal. Crème brûlée – because it’s so brilliant! Bavarian cream – my favorite. French crullers – my other favorite. But I had to try the apple cider doughnuts first because I have been plagued with the most frustrating failure from last fall when I attempted to make them from a different source and had to throw the entire endeavor in the trash.

add cinnamon

egg yolks taking a dive

The only deviation from Lara’s recipe was the apple cider. Instead of straight apple cider, I reduced mine to concentrate the flavor from one cup down to a quarter cup. Having never eaten an apple cider doughnut before, but always craving one at the very mention of it – I knew I wouldn’t regret that step.

pour in the apple cider (or in my case, the reduced apple cider)

stirring the dry ingredients in

**Jump for more butter**