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Recipe: key lime pie ice cream

It’s snowing outside the house right now! In fact, there are a few storm tracks marching through to see the month of February out. I’ve been busting ass to get work done these past several non-snowy days so I can be ready if Ullr should bless our mountains with the pow pow. The weather dictates my work schedule (well, the weather and paying clients). Kaweah has been by my side the whole time. If I’m in the kitchen, she is a low and furry center island in the middle of the kitchen. If I’m shooting in the studio, she’s under the table, nearby, or walking in and out of the room onto the deck. If I’m in the office, she likes to curl up on a stack of her three dog beds. Don’t ask how we figured that one out.

she loves it

Tuesday morning, we spent a little time cuddling with Kaweah on our bed. She likes to be squashed between the two of us and lately we’ve been exchanging a few minutes of extra sleep for a few minutes of QT with the pup before we start our day. It was that Tuesday morning when we realized that she is going deaf. We did a lot of tests like calling “treat!” from around the corner only to have her come when it reached a certain volume. I had a good cry over that, but Kaweah has been spunky, happy, affectionate, and sweet. It doesn’t seem to faze her at all and her vision and especially her sense of smell are excellent. Most of our voice commands have been accompanied by hand signals, so the communication is fine as long as she can see us and as long as she feels like obeying.

pork adobado wet burrito at pica’s

So I had a business lunch meeting with Helliemae’s at Pica’s in Boulder earlier this week. There was a natural pause in the conversation after discussing business plans, business solutions, and flavors. My mind wandered to the next kitchen project I had in the queue. “You wanna know what I’m blogging next?” I asked Ellen. Her eyes got that Texan sparkle and the edges of her mouth curled up. “Yes,” she said leaning in, “tell me.” “Key lime pie ice cream.”

here’s what a bag of key limes looks like sans bag

Oh yes I did. I walked past the bagged Key limes in the grocery store a few weeks ago and all I could think about was key lime pie. Key lime pie. I’ve always made Key lime pie with regular limes – hence it was regular lime pie. When I finally got my grubby paws on Key limes, I didn’t feel like making a pie. I felt like making ice cream. Pie-ce cream?

key limes, sugar, eggs, salt, cream, milk, graham crackers

zest some limes

juice a dozen or so to get a half cup

mix the sugar, salt, juice, and zest together

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Recipe: roasted cauliflower salad

Happy Year of the Snake, everyone! Gong xi fa tsai! I hope you had a good weekend, if not a festive one. Up until dinner Saturday night, it was non-stop cooking and cleaning over here. Even Kaweah got her nails trimmed and filed, ears cleaned, and coat brushed. Boy, was she happy when her “spa day” was over as she kept trying to slink away. It snowed on and off all weekend. It was nothing like what the East Coast got (color me a little jeals), but enough to paint our world white. Once Jeremy and I sat down to dinner and all of the special foods for the New Year’s Eve feast, we could finally relax. Sunday is merely a continuation of the feast, but thankfully, we don’t celebrate for the full two weeks. Two days are plenty for me! I’m ready for quick and simple fare again.

I have every intention of revisiting a wonderful recipe that my friend, Denise, served at a gathering she hosted last month. I had three helpings. It was a roasted cauliflower salad. Per my request, she emailed me the recipe (which she modified from Whole Living’s January 2013 issue) and I immediately made it and proceeded to consume most of it.

cauliflower, parsley, oranges, kalamata olives, white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, olive oil

Cauliflower and I go way back. Waaaay back. I grew up loving vegetables because my family prepared them well. Cauliflower and broccoli were two of my favorites because they looked like trees. They’re beautiful as well as earthy with a hint of bitter. When roasted, cauliflower takes on a delightful nuttiness that I can’t get enough of.

cut the head into 1/2-inch thick slices

arrange on a baking sheet and brush with olive oil

season with salt and pepper

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Recipe: chinese eight treasure rice pudding

I really loved reading about your valentines. There were lots of husbands, some wives, partners, lots of moms, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, children, pets, friends. It’s incredibly gratifying to see all of this love and appreciation for the special people in our lives. So thank you for sharing with me and with everyone else. Now on to the winners! Jeremy picked our winners at random, but his method was a little more cerebral than Kaweah’s selection style. I’ll let him describe it for you:

Two winners were selected using the least significant digits of the coordinates of water discovered in the Antennae Galaxies (Brogan, Johnson, & Darling 2010). The water seems to mark the birthplace of massive clusters of new stars created by the collision of two galaxies. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, and our nearest large neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, will likely experience a similar fate in several billion years.

the antennae galaxies (image by the hubble space telescope)

The winners are commenters #97 (Sheryl) and #335 (Megan F.)! Congratulations ladies! I’ll be in touch with you via email to get the shipping addresses of your intended recipients. And a huge thank you for all of your enthusiastic entries. I love you guys! Even if you didn’t win, I highly recommend these chocolate truffles – they are beyond exquisite.

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Sunday, February 10th is the new moon and the Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year. I can close my eyes and recall vividly the sounds, sights, feelings, and smells of the kitchen where my parents and grandmother sat together to make dumplings on Chinese New Year’s Eve. Other special dishes were cooking on the stove, plastering steam on the windows and filling the house with aromas of the feast to come. I especially enjoyed running around the next morning and wishing everyone gong xi fa tsai (wish happiness and make money) or just gong xi gong xi (congratulations). Very few of my friends celebrated or were aware of Chinese New Year and so in many ways, I felt it was my family’s personal holiday.

When I went away to college, I was surprised to see Chinese New Year is indeed a big deal to A LOT of people in Southern California as well as some of the student body at Caltech. In my junior year, I called Grandma and asked her how to make Chinese dumplings and potstickers. The new year was approaching and I was feeling a little homesick. I began to pay more attention to our family traditions (mostly food) and fed them to Jeremy and friends throughout the years.

My sister didn’t share my interest in the lunar new year traditions until she had her son. After he was born, Kris suddenly became quite proficient at spoken Mandarin, began to read a little Chinese, and spoke Chinese with my nephew. It delighted my parents, my aunts, my grandma, family friends… And it melted my heart every time he called me A-yi (auntie). Without fail, my workaholic sister would call me up on Chinese New Year’s Eve every year to consult on what she needed to purchase or prepare for dinner. Dumplings? Noodles? How about a stir-fry? Don’t forget something sweet for the next morning. You see, you don’t eat just any Chinese food for Chinese New Year because everything has meaning for luck, prosperity, a promotion, good health, happiness, abundance, family, wealth.

The last time I saw Kris was over Chinese New Year. I had guilted her into flying out to California to meet me at Grandma’s place for a quick weekend trip. She was pregnant with her little girl and I almost felt bad about making her travel, but I knew the chances of seeing her and Grandma together decreased with every day she became more pregnant. Grandma made us sweet soup, took us to a New Year’s party (it’s not what you think – everyone there was Chinese, over 70, hard of hearing, and tone-deaf, but it was very entertaining), ordered our favorite dishes, and laughed at our dumb jokes.

I look back on that Chinese New Year with deep longing because both my sister and grandma have since passed on.

Chinese New Year is a time of celebration, but it is also a time of remembrance. I was only familiar with the celebratory side of things as a child. Now, I understand that we honor our ancestors and loved ones who are no longer with us and we embrace the loved ones we still have. For all of the rushing around to gather ingredients and make the right dishes to ensure good things in the new year, there can be a pang of sadness, sometimes a flood of unexpected tears, and a quiet heartache. Sure, we focus on the foods during this holiday, but really – the food is about family. Chinese New Year is all about family.

And food.

Food, family – they are inextricable.

A popular traditional dessert served at Chinese New Year dinners or other special occasions is Chinese eight treasure rice pudding. Now before you get excited about rice pudding, it’s not THAT kind of rice pudding. It’s a combination of sweet rice, also called sticky rice or glutinous rice (it contains no gluten), sweet red bean paste, dried fruits, and a sweet syrup. And there should be eight kinds of fruit because eight is a lucky number. You don’t HAVE to have eight, but if you choose to make a lucky dessert versus regular dessert, why not go for the lucky dessert?

sticky rice, sweet red bean paste, sugar, cornstarch, shortening or lard, lemon juice, dried or candied fruits

glutinous, sticky, or sweet rice – (glutinous rice has no gluten)

mango, dates, lotus seeds, maraschino cherries, goosberries, buddha’s hand citron, kumquats, apricots

Typical fruits include dried dates, candied cherries, lotus seeds, dried raisins… but you just use what you like or what you have available. I went to the big Asian market to hunt down candied lotus seeds, candied gooseberries, and candied kumquats. The rest of the items I got at the western supermarket or had made (like the candied Buddha’s hand citron). You can also use candied ginger, dried papaya, dried pineapple, winter melon candy (it’s a Chinese thing – it’s green and typically comes in strips), candied orange peel, dried cranberries, raisins. Endless possibilities.

slice up the fruits

arrange the fruit in a nice pattern

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