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Recipe: corn porcini fritters

August is the Sunday of weekends. It’s still summer, but the school year is right around the corner and you realize that Endless Summer is a lie. I begin each August in remembrance of Kris, as her birthday falls on the first of the month. Her personality was the epitome of summer, and so I like to celebrate her with flowers. I took my photo and then drove the flowers down to Mom because she loves flowers, misses Kris, and well – I just thought it would be nice to see my folks on Kris’ birthday.

tulips on kris’ birthday

My parents’ summers in Boulder have become progressively more relaxed over the years. I don’t mean THEY are relaxed, but the way they treat our time together has fallen into a less urgent pattern. In the beginning, I would receive texts for every little thing and they would constantly ask when I was coming down to Boulder next. I think they treated their 2 month stays like a 2-day vacation in that they needed to see me as much as possible. It really stressed me out. With time, Mom and Dad have found a comfortable routine. They make friends easily and now when I ask when we should get together, I am presented with an obstacle course of a social calendar because they have so much going on with other people. I think that’s wonderful.

we went to see “the farewell”, an excellent film

lunch at corrida in boulder

I learned from my neighbor that our public schools start this week. That means the summer crowds will soon thin around the state, and locals – like cooler weather – will creep back into the mountains. Actually, we’ve been in the mountains the whole time, we merely maintain a lower profile during the busy season in true wamp (weird-ass mountain person) fashion. Still, we get the pups out for their exercise and we continue to take in the glorious wildflower sights. I’ve stopped fretting over the fact that our “want to do” summer list is never achievable in a single or even a couple of summers, because we make the most of it and I’m grateful for whatever we can do.

hike, swim, play

exploring our backyard

magenta paintbrush and elephantella

a skittles combo (purple, red, and yellow flowers)

In addition to the stellar wildflower displays in the mountains this summer, our generous snowpack and the return of our southwest monsoon have spurred a rather strange, yet prolific mushroom season. Seasons are crashing into one another as the spring mushrooms are tapering into mid-summer and the late summer mushrooms decided to get the party started a month earlier than usual. It’s mind-blowing and amazing.

the king of the rockies – boletus rubriceps (porcini)

i love the chubsters

Not all mushrooms are interchangeable in recipes. The delicate taste of a fresh porcini can be masked by stronger, bolder ingredients. If I’m hiking all over the mountains to harvest these little beauties, I’ll be damned if I prepare them in a way that masks their buttery, earthy, nutty flavor. The original recipe is for corn and shiitake fritters, but I had a hunch that fresh porcini would elevate this fritter recipe to new levels. And I was right.

vegetable oil (for fry and sauté), kosher salt, pepper, flour, milk, egg, baking powder, sweet onion, fresh porcini, corn

Slice the kernels from the corn cobs and divvy the kernels into two equal halves. Don’t compost those cobs, though! After you’ve sliced the kernels off, use a spoon to scrape the remaining pulp from the cobs. I do suggest scraping with the spoon concave down (it catches stray bits), unlike the way I did it in the photo. I managed to get about 2 tablespoons from three cobs. Aaand, if you don’t want to bother with that step or decided to go with corn that comes without a cob, I think you’ll be fine.

slice the kernels off

scrape any extra pulp from the cobs

ingredients prepped

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: morel-stuffed chicken fried steak

I have entered summer mode even though the atmosphere was several steps behind me for the last few weeks. School is out. People are on vacation. No one answers emails (apparently) and I’m letting the blog cool her heels with a reduced posting schedule of twice a month. I encourage you to get off the computer and mobile devices and engage with a carbon-based world.

Can you believe it kept snowing until last week? Snow in May happens all the time in the mountains, but a winter storm warning for the entire state in late May had all the skiers skiing and all the fair-weather folk losing their goddamned minds. That is springtime in the Rockies. We don’t fight the weather in the mountains, we live with it and enjoy it as much as we can. Some don’t have a choice like the moose who are looking for forage or the hummingbirds who arrived and can’t find flowers.

instead of hiking, we were still skiing

a young moose passing through and making the most of our wild currant bushes

aspens waiting to bud as soon as it warms up

These past few days have actually been springlike, just in time for true summer. The prolonged cold gave us a grace period to transition into summer living – installing a new screen door, tidying the garden in Crested Butte, swapping winter and summer tires, more spring cleaning (we should just agree to call it eternal cleaning, because that’s what it is). Windows are open and fresh mountain air circulates the house. Yuki and Neva receive scoldings from local hummingbirds for standing too close to their feeder. And despite being three weeks late, the flowers are coming and so are the mushrooms.

glacier lily

yuki and neva enjoy the last day of flannel sheets

i have been waiting for this (fun) guy to make an entrance

If there is one thing I eagerly await in spring, it is the arrival of our mountain morels. You must understand my anticipation is not solely stoked by the prospect of finding black morels. It is the whole experience of walking ground that hasn’t been uncovered since last October and witnessing the green blades and buds emerge, hearing birds converse through the leafless forest, smelling the earthy odor as mats of dead leaves drenched in snow melt warm under a high sun. Life. Death. And all of the rest. All at ground level and intimately so, because that’s what morels demand. Think like a morel.

I try to strike a balance between consuming the fresh morels now versus processing them and freezing for later. Jeremy’s favorite morel preparation is basically sautéed morels with steak. It’s easy, delicious, and involves a hunk of meat with good wine. I turned that concept on its ear and came up with something a little less easy, but just as delicious. How does morel-stuffed chicken fried steak sound? It’s like regular chicken fried steak but with a surprise! I break it down into three steps. First, we cook the morels.

morels, bourbon, shallots, butter, salt

chop the morels

minced shallots, diced morels

sauté the shallots in butter, then add the morels

pour the bourbon in when the morel liquid has simmered away

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: apple huckleberry pie

**First, I would like to thank every person who bid on anything during the RezDawg Rescue Spring Silent Auction. All three of my donated photographic prints sold and RezDawg Rescue was able to meet and exceed their fundraising goal! This means more kittens and puppies rescued this spring as well as continued funding for RezDawg Rescue’s education and spay/neuter campaigns in the Four Corners region to help reduce the stray population. Thank you.**

I have one foot in a ski boot and one foot in a trail runner. Spring storms are hanging around Colorado the way you keep returning to the refrigerator to sneak a bite of leftover dessert. They deliver a foot of snow, then wander off as green spring tries to take hold. And just as you get used to not wearing a jacket, the white stuff returns. This is nothing new for us. After 14 years we have learned to go with the flow – or rather the whiplash of lurching forward and backward – of spring in the mountains.

uphill skiing in rocky mountain national park

yuki and neva patiently waiting to ski out (in our national forest)

the pups are anxious to run around in another new foot of snow

jeremy enjoying his earned backcountry turns

A couple of months ago, I posted a photo of a local mama moose and her yearling. About two weeks later we saw the yearling in our yard, but solo. His mother had run him off so she could focus her energies and attention on her new baby. Make that babies, because last week she brought two beautiful, fuzzy calves by our house to feed. One stuck close to mama, but the other really enjoyed chowing down on our wild currant bushes and was willing to let its family wander pretty far before leaving the snack station. I love that spring is full of new things.

new baby in the neighborhood

Speaking of new things, Erin and I were wandering about on the plains looking for one thing when we found a different thing – wild asparagus! Actually, it’s feral asparagus because it is the same species as the one you buy from markets and stores, but it got loose long ago and has been growing on its own. I found the first stalk by pure accident, and then the two of us quickly consolidated our knowledge from asparagus gardening (Erin), reading (both of us), and growing asparagus fern houseplants (me) to identify many other patches. So exciting! We came away with some nice hauls of super sweet asparagus stalks.

hello beautiful, i am in love

spring bounty

Since it feels as if we are bouncing between seasons here, I thought I’d share a pie that also encompasses more than one season. Even though apples are available year-round at the grocery store, they tend to peak in fall and winter. As for mountain huckleberries (my very favorite absolute best most delicious berry), they are a late summer treat that I can only get by hiking into my local mountains and spending hours picking them by hand. Luckily, they freeze well so that I can access them all year from my freezer. People can substitute its suitable cousin, the blueberry, which is in season now through the end of summer. The whole reason I make this pie is because a pure huckleberry pie represents 12 hours of non-stop berry picking (it’s backbreaking work here because our huck plants and berries are small). They are simply too precious for me to throw all of them into one pie. Apples make up the bulk of the filling while happily absorbing the flavor and color of the huckleberries.

huckleberries, apples, cornstarch, sugar, more sugar, cinnamon, salt, lemon

peel, core, and dice the apples

for the apples: diced apples, sugar, pinch of salt, cinnamon

combine in a medium saucepan

cook until soft and the liquid turns into a thick syrup

**Jump for more butter**