use real butter

Recipe: toasted coconut ice cream

Crazy month is off to a crazy start, but it’s the Good kind of Crazy. Wanted to check in and make sure everyone is having fun, keeping off the streets, being good. Yes? Great! Some highlights from the week:

My night-blooming cereus (Queen of the Night) bloomed! Grandma always says it is a sign of good luck. While I believe we make our own luck, I’m not going to argue with Grandma and it’s such a gorgeous flower that you can’t help but feel a little special when it opens at night for a few precious hours. Last year was the first time my plant sent forth blooms. This year, the first one had a much stronger fragrance… how to describe it? Floral, delicate, lighter than a rose and in my opinion, slightly sweeter yet sharper. One blossom filled my entire house with that heady scent for the 8 hours it was open. I photographed it for four hours and because it is a *night-blooming* cereus, I used flash(es). [As I’ve tweeted in the past, for those who say to only shoot in natural light, I say to you “Stick it!”] I have some of the photos of the Queen of the Night bloom on the photo blog.

this flower is as big as my face

My parents and some very dear friends of the family were in Breckenridge this week for a Colorado vacation. Jeremy and I went out to meet up with them for lunch yesterday and since we were making the 2-hour drive, we figured we may as well grab a hike in the morning. We hiked Quandary Peak – our first fourteener in Colorado (14ers are peaks over 14,000 ft.) – as training for an upcoming trip. We saw four full rainbows on our way up the mountain and then lowered our heads as we plodded through the associated squalls (including stinging hail). We got to summit just as another dark front neared. I am not a peak-bagger. I love walking through the mountains and forests because the journey heals me. But standing on Quandary, I felt a small victory. I grinned and flipped an imaginary middle-finger to cancer (imaginary b/c there were other people at summit around me) while the winds tried to knock me over while Jeremy took a snappie.

i doode it

It’s very entertaining when my parents go someplace I’ve been to (or live in) and tell me things like, “There’s a ski resort in Vail!” :) It means they are having fun discovering things for themselves in their retirement, which is the very least they deserve since they worked hard all their lives. At lunch, my mom said there was an error in the Chinese spaghetti recipe – that I wasn’t supposed to use sweet red bean paste, but sweet bean paste. Of course, I have never heard of sweet bean paste other than sweet red bean paste. The ingredient was lost in translation, so I’ll have to go back and fix that (and perhaps FIND this mystery paste). My parents and our friends got a good laugh out of that one. My parents’ friends are like family to us, so the visit was doubly sweet. I love their daughters as if they were my younger sisters. It felt great to catch up and see that they have become beautiful and fine young women – both doctors now (one MD, one PhD).

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: red currant cake

Today, August 1, is my sister’s birthday. Kris would have turned 43, but it’s been over five years since she passed away and so there are no pranks for her best gang of gals to pull on her, no flowers to send, no cakes to order, no surprise parties to plan, no phone calls to make, no cards to send. When I remember my sister, I find myself bursting out laughing more often than I need to reach for a tissue. I like that.

there were many laughs

I have no patience for Drama. It sucks up so much energy and is incredibly unproductive. So I make myself scarce on days like today, going with Jeremy and the pup into the high country where my thoughts are my own and Nature reminds me of how wonderfully insignificant I am. I take comfort in that.

some flowers i think she would have liked

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: blueberry (and raspberry) streusel bars with lemon-cream filling

The summer solstice was a month ago. When the winter solstice passes, I watch the daylight hours increase with great interest. But when the summer solstice occurs, I don’t really notice the shortening of the days because it’s so hot that I cannot wait for the sun to drop behind the mountains each evening. However, when we wake up at 5 am and the sun isn’t popping over the horizon, I become keenly aware of the approaching equinox. I start to feel giddy and panicky at the same time. Giddy, because I relish those cooler days and panicky, because there is far more left on my summer todo list than there is time to do it all.

But that doesn’t keep a kid from trying.

mango mojito at aji in boulder

mister hyde and his precious

jeremy on pawnee peak

columbines in bloom in the high country

**Jump for more butter**