use real butter

Recipe: pumpkin soup

I have 36 hours, but I need about 72. It’s times like these that sleep takes a back seat. Oh well… I plowed through the photos from this last shoot in record time knowing full well if I didn’t get them processed now, it would be 2011 before I’d look at them again. So here ya go:

this hillside was ablaze (in the good way)

mixed bag: reds, greens, yellows, stripped

sunset

aspens lean

You can see the rest of this fall shoot set on my photo blog.

I have many fond associations with autumn. Besides the fall colors and our (mine and Jeremy’s) birthdays, it’s also that time of year for BlogHer Food in San Francisco. BlogHer Food ’09 is where I met Shauna and Danny and little Lu. I don’t go to these conferences intent on meeting (or stalking) specific people unless they are already my friends. So when I met Shauna, I was vaguely aware that she was Gluten-Free Girl. I just knew she was incredibly sweet and that her baby girl kinda ran off with my heart. It was only on our second meeting together at Kingsford University that I became aware of her rock star status (so I’m slow on the uptake, cut me some slack!). But that rock star status is nothing compared to the lovely woman she is. I got to talk with her and Danny on the bus ride into wine country and by our final dinner of the trip they told me about The Beatles, their first date, tattoos, and why Danny was sharing his bottle of lemonade with me.

and now they share this act of love

When I was at IFBC in Seattle, I got to flip through Shauna’s only copy of the book. It made me hungry. I don’t go out of my way to be gluten-free since I like gluten and I can eat it. I can eat the hell out of gluten. So a gluten-free cookbook has to appeal to me at the cooking level, not at the gluten-free level. And this is what I find so special about the book: if you were to erase all mention of gluten-free in the book, it would stand on its own merit as a damn fine cookbook. That’s the magic in the book. That’s the magic in how Danny and Shauna cook and live their lives.

i couldn’t wait to try their pumpkin soup

little pie pumpkin

By the way, this isn’t a proper review – it is merely my heavily biased opinion. I haven’t read the book cover to cover yet as autumn is my busiest time of year. But when I began flipping through the book to tag the recipes I wanted to try, I found myself reading. Shauna has a beautiful writing style and writing voice. A couple of paragraphs into the introduction, her words made me catch my breath and I had to blink back a few tears… because Shauna and Danny are two people I care about very much and their hopes and happiness bring me great joy. It’s about the journeys of discovery, growth, love, happiness, learning, and really incredible food.

oiled and seasoned, ready to roast

scrape out the flesh after the pumpkin has cooled

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: parmesan bacon crackers

There was frost on the ground when I was waiting for the sun to rise. I wasn’t alone. A few other nutjobs were scattered about, standing in the dark and cold, all pointed toward the mountains. We were waiting for magic. Jeremy was in the car either reading a scientific paper or getting some shut eye. Shivering in the blue glow of twilight, I moved my feet in a silly little dance to keep warm. But, I do like sunrise shoots better than sunset shoots. Mornings tend to be quiet, thoughtful. By sunset, I’m usually tired, hungry, hot, dusty, and smelly. Sunset requires a little more discipline to remain inspired.

i love mornings

On this last shoot, Jeremy accompanied me for the 1000-mile drive around southwestern Colorado. This is my fifth year shooting the fall colors in Colorado and I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. I know the location of remote favorite stands of aspen better than how to get to most of my friends’ houses in town. The aspens feel like old friends. There is something to be said for the tranquility you find among mature aspens – majestic white trunks, shimmering yellow and red canopy, gold leaves gently floating down around you. Autumn delights and soothes. And winter is just around the corner.

token “we were here” photo

my subaru ad

the moon high overhead

Normally, I don’t think about winter during the fall shoot unless there is an early season snowstorm. There hasn’t been a real snow storm yet. In fact, it’s been outrageously hot. However, we swung by Telluride to scope out the colors and some of the trails. As we stared down from the top of a grassy green field dotted with late season thistles and salsify, I looked up at the sign: a black diamond run. I got antsy for ski season. Despite the sun beating down on me, I envisioned the gorgeous mogul field which must grace that slope in winter. I turned to say as much to Jeremy whose glazed over look indicated he was dreaming of tele turns in hip-deep powder. Oh Telluride…

On our way back, we spied the Telluride airstrip. Jason wasn’t kidding when he told me it’s a cliff.

it’s a cliff

As far as my schedule goes, the fall shoot is done. Stick a fork in it! I have my sights set further west for the next couple of months and then hopefully by then it will be cold enough to start cooking again – I mean really cooking. But if you want a quick baking project that doesn’t turn the entire house into a furnace, might I suggest trying homemade crackers? They are so unbelievably quick and easy, and of course they taste better than any store-bought cracker. How is it that we don’t all make our own? There ought to be a revolution.

all you need to know is that there is bacon

…well okay – and butter and cheese

The greatest hurdle to finally making my own crackers was deciding on a flavor. I knew I wanted it to be savory, so that helped to narrow down my choices a little bit. Ultimately the winner was a baconized version of a New York Times Parmesan cream cracker. Well, I made both versions – one with and one without the bacon in the off chance the bacon cracker didn’t turn out to my liking. Off chance, ha!

add cream, because butter alone doesn’t make it decadent enough

this pinch test is quite handy

**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**