use real butter

Recipe: salted caramel ice cream

Remember my plan to keep things low key and unbusy this month? Well, that hasn’t happened so far and I think it’s mainly because I am not a low key kind of person. But whatever. As long as things get done and we’re all having fun, then it’s cool, right? And it’s time for those end-of-the-year type of activities like squaring away annual financial records, shipping presents to the niece and nephew, and our new year’s photo card to share with everyone. That includes you, dear reader. Go on and click over – the post will still be here.

happy holidays and let’s rawk the new year!

Then there is the business of the winners for Michael Frye’s book(s) giveaway. You know that a random number generator is just too pedestrian in the House of Butter (and it’s not truly random according to the resident astrophysicist, “It will produce a nice and uniform distribution of numbers that will pass most tests for randomness, but it’s a repeatable process given the same seed.” Thanks, Jeremy.) We are all about introducing as much randomness as possible. Jeremy started with ten three-digit numbers taken from the least significant bits of independent channels of a gravitational lens spectrum about half-way back to the Big Bang. All you need to know is that it is RANDOM. I then took the NUMBER mod NUMBER OF ENTRIES (=127) to determine ten semi-finalists from the comments. Then Jeremy assigned ten of Kaweah’s toys to a number 1-10, which I assigned to the corresponding semi-finalists in random order. Then the final act of pure randomness…

kaweah just wants a treat

the dumbbell!

the dog! (with an inadvertent paw at the fish)

jaws of death in action

ninja!

and finally the bone

Are you lost yet? The winners of the three Light and Land ebooks are: dumbbell = Michelle (mountains, Cascades), dog = Audra (Colorado/Hawai’i), and ninja = Emily (Ireland). The winner of the signed copy of Digital Landscape Photography is bone = Jason (Pripyat, Ukraine). Congratulations to our winners and I will email everyone about their prizes shortly! Thanks to everyone for sharing the places they want to photograph and big thanks to Michael for generously providing the prizes and his incredible knowledge.

here’s the paperwork

And now it’s time for something sweet… and salty. I made this back in August, but salted caramel ice cream has no season as far as I’m concerned. Caramel is timeless and salted caramel is sexy timelessness. Salted caramel ice cream? Um – sexy, timeless and indulgent!

place the sugar in a pan (preferably a wide one)

the edges turning brown and melting

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: single-ingredient ice cream

Administrative news: The amount of spam accumulating in my filter is increasing and the amount of time I have to glance through and fish out the occasional legitimate comment is all but nil at this point. From now on, I’m deleting the hundreds of spam caught each day without a second glance. If you leave a comment and it does not show up immediately, you probably went the way of spam. Please feel free to email me and let me know so I can rescue you and keep you off the blacklist. Thanks!

I’ve been doing a massive purge of my second office, recycling old notes and literature that I no longer need. While doing so earlier this week I discovered a diagram that my favorite geomorphologist, Dr. Arthur Bloom, gave me in graduate school. Mineralogists will recognize this kind of diagram – except it doesn’t involve minerals. I thought this readership might get a kick out of it (at least I know Bridget will).

Needless to say, I kept that little gem.

Summer for some of my friends (those with school-age children) is coming to an end. They’ve been scrambling to squeeze the most out of the final days before school starts next week. But you know, learning does not have to be (and should not be) limited to the school year. The Perseids meteor shower is tonight and it’s a great opportunity to see Nature’s little light show if you can get yourselves to dark skies, away from city lights. I love me a meteor shower and the Perseids are my favorite – a solid and consistent performer if you get clear skies! Tonight and tomorrow night (Aug 12/13) should be at peak activity with approximately 50 meteors per hour. Start looking after dark (after the crescent moon sets) up until dawn. It’s fun to settle down in a lawn chair where you can find some good sky view (open sky with few obstructions), relax, and enjoy the show.

please please please clouds, take a break?

So what’s this ice cream for breakfast ridiculousness? Well, it’s true. I had ice cream for breakfast today. Actually, I had “ice cream”. I read about this one-ingredient ice cream on Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn months ago and was intrigued. That single ingredient would be:

bananas

i prefer them just spotted

I try, I really try to love bananas. It’s not them, it’s me. I like fruit that is juicy and bananas are not juicy. But bananas are so very very good for you and that is why I buy them, in the hopes that I’ll guilt myself into eating them. What usually happens is they start to turn brown, I chuck them into the freezer, and wind up making chocolate chip banana bread to give away to my friends. Or I’ll peel one open and split it with Kaweah. That’s why any time, any one, any where peels a banana, she suddenly appears at your elbow.

and there she is

slice into 1/4 to 1/2-inch disks

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: white peach sorbet

Saturday afternoon and evening, Jeremy and I drove down to Boulder to meet up with several friends for TEDx Boulder. I was pretty excited because I love TED talks and my friend Andrew was putting on an independent TED (thus TEDx) for Boulder. That, and my very own Jeremy was giving one of the TED talks that night. How could I not go?

tedx boulder

1400 people

vienna teng

Just some quick thoughts from that evening. I really enjoyed both of our musical performers: Jonathan Spottiswoode and Vienna Teng. Actually, I had no idea who Vienna Teng was and now I am hooked. Plenty of excellent talks on education, community, energy, environment, and making the world a better place. Some talks were like glorified Ignite talks and I’m on the fence about how appropriate they are at a TED event. There were a handful I felt lukewarm about and then there were two in particular that I thought were just wrong: one guy who gave a sales pitch over and over again (great idea, but did you need 15 minutes to say it five times? snoozefest) and another from a crank spewing bunk for 18 minutes – and poorly at that. How these two were allotted more time (talks ranged from 3 minutes to 18 minutes) than anyone else is remarkable. I wish that time had been given to someone more deserving like…

my congressman, jared polis

Jared Polis, my House Representative, rocked it with his talk on investment returns on early education. He is a superstar and I’m glad the organizers were so accommodating of his insane schedule, because for me, his was the best talk. My favorite presenter was Jeremy, who I think had the most challenging task at hand – to explain his research to the lay person. What I love about my astrophysicist is that he is sincere, humble, honest, and a damn fine scientist and educator.

jeremy discusses water in the universe

Really, the biggest offender of the evening was the heat. Chautauqua Auditorium is an amazing venue, but it is a barn and when the event started at 4pm – the hottest time of day – they had to shut every possible door and window to keep the place dark for the presentations. They didn’t allow food or drink because they would get rodents in the auditorium, so we all sat there sweating together. Times like these you really wish you had something nice and cold like some seasonal white peach sorbet.

ripe white peaches

slice in half and the pit should come out easily enough

**Jump for more butter**