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Recipe: futomaki

Last week we went on a vacation. Of sorts. We brought Neva and Yuki along with us to Steamboat Springs for a ski trip. Sadly, most of what we previously loved about Steamboat were absent: 1) fresh powder and 2) our favorite sushi bar in town (Yama has closed indefinitely). We did ski the mountain and took the pups skijoring on dog-friendly trails at a couple of the Nordic centers near town. Yuki’s endurance continues to improve and Neva is really becoming a well-behaved pup on the trails as long as she can run her brains out.

jeremy with neva and yuki at haymaker nordic center

this is what yuki does when she doesn’t want to go

Steamboat is great and all, but after our third day we were over it. A big winter storm was about to blast its way through the state (big winter storm = powder) and we were slated to check out and drive home in the thick of it. Instead, we left a day early before the storm and drove home – not east to Nederland – but south to Crested Butte. It was the right decision. We arrived just as the snow began to fall, and proceeded to ski amazing powder, celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary, and meet our friend’s new puppy, Moke (Moe-kee).

the road south

the snow piles up in crested butte

jeremy drops into a foot of fresh powder and free refills

enjoying our anniversary dinner

yuki playing with her new pal, moke

On our drive from Steamboat Springs to Crested Butte, we stopped at the Whole Foods in Frisco to grab salads for lunch and ran into my friend who lives in Breckenridge. We chatted and at some point in the conversation I apologized that we hadn’t seen one another in a while. He dismissed it with a wave, “Oh, you don’t have to explain it. You know me,” he chuckled, “I’m a homebody.” Back on the road, I mentioned to Jeremy that I didn’t think of Graham as a homebody – he spends a good deal of time outside running, biking, hiking, skiing. Jeremy was silent for a moment, then, “Most people think of homebodies as people who stay indoors, but I think Graham meant he doesn’t want to be away from home. Sort of like what we’re doing now by going to Crested Butte.”

It’s true. I am becoming more of a Graham homebody every day. Jeremy has always been one. This might also explain why I try to replicate my favorite restaurant dishes at home, to avoid the headache of driving into town and interacting with people. The futomaki sushi roll has eluded me for over a decade because I didn’t know that the sweet pink powdery ingredient, which is dried shredded sweetened cod, was called sakura denbu. Once I learned the proper name, I couldn’t find it anywhere. Last year, I ventured into Denver’s Pacific Mercantile Company on a little Japanese grocery safari with my pal, Ellen, and there it was in the refrigerated section. It was the final piece to my futomaki puzzle!

some of the less common ingredients for a home cook: unagi (grilled eel), sakura denbu, makizushi no moto (seasoned gourd strips with mushrooms)

I had always assumed there was a set recipe for making futomaki because most of the sushi bars I frequented made it the same way. It turns out you can make futomaki with whatever ingredients float your boat, so please feel free to customize! The version I make here follows the recipe from Just One Cookbook because this is how I like it AND I could either purchase or make the ingredients myself. I can easily find the unagi (grilled eel) and seasoned gourd and mushrooms at most Asian grocers, but I have only ever seen the sakura denbu in a Japanese grocery store. You can also purchase the tamago (egg omelette) at an Asian grocery store, but I find making tamagoyaki at home to be far tastier.

fillings: spinach, cucumber, tamago, unagi, kanpyo (gourd strips), mushrooms, sakura denbu

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: naturally colored homemade sprinkles

Today is Yuki’s first birthday! I find it hard to believe that we’ve had her for seven months because I feel as if Yuki has always been a part of our lives. This little girl came into our home as a shy and timid puppy and has since blossomed into a happy, bouncy adventure dog. Wrapping my arms around Yuki when she jumped onto the bed this morning, I whispered “Happy Birthday, Baby Dog” and held on a little longer than usual. She looked me in the eyes and lifted her nose to mine, then gave me several soft kisses. I typically make a big deal out of my dogs’ first birthdays, but this one seems extra special, because Yuki’s path into our lives hinged on the kindnesses of so many good people and great organizations.

introducing a 5 month old yuki to our local mountain trails

i made her a birthday cake (and got her a stuffed doughnut toy)

How do we know Yuki’s birth date? When we adopted Yuki, Linda, her foster mother, handed me a folder with a couple of documents. These few sheets of paper contained all of the information Rezdawg Rescue gathered on Yuki’s first five months of her life. I spent a late night looking through the pages and searching the web to piece together her journey. From what I could tease out, Yuki had a vet appointment at about 2 weeks of age in western New Mexico with her mother in February. Around mid-May 2018, Yuki boarded her “freedom ride” transport with Rezdawg Rescue, leaving Ramah, New Mexico for Colorado where she was lovingly fostered for several weeks until we brought her home. That’s all I knew until late October.

After our Guess the Yuki contest, I posted Yuki’s DNA results and was contacted by K in Arizona, who said she had Yuki’s brother, Dakota. I assumed she was mistaken because I see A LOT of pups on rescue pages that look like Yuki. But K patiently shared details about Yuki and Dakota that matched up and filled in the blanks.

Yuki and Dakota’s pregnant, feral mama approached a stranger near Ramah, New Mexico in the winter of 2018. The kind-hearted man took her in and she gave birth to eight puppies on February 1. The man’s housemate and owner of the trailer lost patience and kicked the mama and her litter out into the snow. Distraught, our dear stranger contacted Black Hat Humane Society and another compassionate individual came to collect the family and fostered them on her small farm 10 miles away. At three and a half months of age, Yuki traveled north to Colorado. Dakota remained in Ramah and was adopted by K around the same time we adopted Yuki. And we are familiar with the rest of Yuki’s story (to date)!

handsome dakota (courtesy of k)

This time I went all out and created a special birthday cake for Yuki because I knew Neva would help her finish it. I made everything from scratch except for the little party toppers which I purchased because WHY NOT?! The cake is made with applesauce, banana, whole wheat flour, egg, and coconut oil. It tastes like sawdust with hints of banana and coconut, but the dogs LOVE it. The frosting is whipped cream cheese with just a bit of powdered sugar to make it more spreadable. The colored dollops are cream cheese with raspberry powder (pink) and blueberry liquid (purple). The decorative dog biscuits are a mashup of apple bacon cheddar dog treats and chicken sweet potato dog treats (I used pumpkin instead of sweet potato). And the sprinkles are homemade naturally-colored dog-safe sprinkles.

yuki’s 4-inch, 4-layer birthday cake

it’s a naked cake because the dogs don’t need that much frosting

yuki wouldn’t let neva any closer to the cake

cross-section

waiting to eat their slices

birthday caaaaaaaaake!

It all started when I was looking for sprinkles at the store. Being a child of the 70s, I consumed my fair share of artificial colors and flavorings, but I thought I could do better for my pups. So I put the cute and brightly colored sprinkles back on the shelf and decided to tackle those homemade sprinkles I had bookmarked the recipe for months ago. Those recipes also call for food coloring, however it is an easy enough tweak to substitute homemade natural food coloring. The basic concept is to make an icing with powdered sugar, egg white (powdered or fresh), and water. You can add a little extract to make the sprinkles taste good to humans, but my dogs couldn’t care less about the flavor. I started with a dry color (pink) and a wet color (purple).

powdered sugar, powdered egg whites, water, freeze-dried raspberries, thawed huckleberries

For the dry color, I pulverized freeze-dried raspberries. I think any freeze-dried red berry could work and it must be FREEZE-DRIED and not simply dried. Once it’s been powdered, sift it through a fine-mesh sieve. The reason for this is that any tiny bits of seed or fruit will clog up your piping tip when you pipe the icing and it’s maddeningly messy to unclog. For the wet color, I smooshed my huckleberries and strained the juice only to remember that it comes out hot pink in icing and not so much purple. Luckily, I had some blueberries on hand. Upon mashing them, I realized that blueberries give up their color when heated. I put them over medium heat until the juices turned purple and strained that liquid.

smash the freeze-dried raspberries

sift out the larger particles

smooshed blueberries

giving up their purple juices

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: dynamo shrimp

We have had a snowy couple of weeks around here. You know what I think of when I see the snow in my yard, in the surrounding mountains, and pretty much all over town? Well yes, I think of skiing, but I also think of mushrooms and berries come summer. It’s all about water in the American West. And snowpack. I can’t stress the importance of a healthy snowpack. Snowpack is everything in the mountains.

sunny morning in crested butte after a storm

a few inches of super fluffy snow in nederland

neva loves window benches

The pups have gotten out to ski a number of times. In Crested Butte it is mostly uphill skiing on the mountain or skijoring on the Nordic trails. In Nederland we take them backcountry touring which is far more dependent on weather conditions. You have to catch recently fallen snow before the winds reshape it into a series of giant drifts and bare ground.

ski touring with yuki and neva

yuki’s way of telling me she’s cold (she warmed up when we skied down)

When I’m not skiing or working, I’m slowly chipping away at the long term task of tidying up the house. This activity wasn’t inspired by Marie Kondo – I have neither read her book nor watched her show. I simply like things to be organized. That included baking pies to finish off a few leftover fillings from the depths of the chest freezer: Palisade peach and sour cherry, and a handful of tired apples from the refrigerator.

pre-baked apple huckleberry pie (6-inch)

baked and stained with huckleberry juice

A reader recently emailed asking for recommendations and mentioned that they couldn’t wait to see what Chinese New Year recipe I would blog this year. Um, I hadn’t planned to share one and suddenly I wondered if I should try to shoot a recipe in time for the New Year (February 5th). But I only wondered for a second because the realist in me dope slapped myself and said, “You don’t have time to be shooting a recipe for free when you have a client shoot that pays ACTUAL MONEY.” So no, there is no Chinese New Year recipe. I’m not sure today’s recipe even counts as Chinese.

You can find Dynamo Shrimp on the appetizer menu at Lil’s in Crested Butte. It’s delicious and we’ve ordered it several times over the years. My friend replicated the recipe and shared it with me last year. When I began researching the recipe, I discovered that it is a variation of Dynamite Shrimp from PF Chang’s – a restaurant I’ve only set foot in once, by accident. It seems more Americanized Japanese than Americanized Chinese. It’s Asian-y.

shrimp, cornstarch, potato starch, panko crumbs, salt, pepper, eggs

the sauce: soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, sriracha, mayonnaise, lime, garlic, green onions, sesame seeds (these are white seeds, but i used black sesame in the photos)

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