use real butter

Recipe: custard apple pie

It seems like yesterday when we would have to wake up a few hours before sunrise to hit the trailhead and beat the sun and the heat and the afternoon thundershowers. The thing about hiking in autumn, before the snows come, is that we hike any time of day without the typical summer concerns. The bigger issue is running out of daylight if you start too late in the afternoon, or bringing enough layers should temperatures drop or rains fall. There are fewer people on the trails. The same applies to trail runs where I used to have a short window each morning as I couldn’t tolerate the heat of the day, but now it’s cool enough to run any time. Most of the aspens that were once an impenetrable wall of green or gold now stand bare and reveal views of valleys and mountains in the distance.

an almost glass-like surface on an alpine lake

passing through a slot between boulders

Soon it will be time to change to flannel sheets. I hold out as long as possible, because I know when it is cold enough for flannel sheets that it becomes a little harder to get out of bed in the morning. We have already begun placing Kaweah’s little flannel quilt over her at night – making a sort of puppy pie as she curls up in her bagel bed, the quilt as the top pie crust. I even say, “Puppy pie!” as I tuck her in and I know she likes it because the tip of her tail wags in anticipation.

And speaking of pies, I couldn’t resist the idea of making an apple pie the other day with all of those apples I bought from YA YA Farms. I like pie. I mean, I really like pie, which is why I don’t make a lot of pies. I like them too much.

they picked most of their apples before the hard frost

in the farm store

Traditional apple pie is great, but I’m also a lazy bum. If I can get away with making one pie crust instead of two pie crusts, I’ll do it. I have a recipe in a 20-year old notebook that I had jotted down from I don’t know where. Most likely the interwebs, which weren’t web pages back then, but forums like rec.food.cooking or rec.food.recipes – all text-based. Anyone remember those? It was an apple pie… a custard apple pie.

pie crust dough, apples, vanilla, sugar, flour, sour cream, cinnamon, eggs, butter

roll out the pie crust dough

crimp the edges

I used the Jonathan apples from the farm because they have a nice tartness to them while still maintaining their sugar. For me, sweet on its own is really boring. I like sweet with salty, or tart, or bitter, or spicy. It’s just more interesting that way. The recipe originally calls for three apples, but apples vary in size. I used four. Leftover apples are never a bad thing. Also, I used my deepest pie dish because shallow fruit pies… what’s the point?!

peel, core, and slice

layer the apple slices in the pie crust

extras for my assistant

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pumpkin cake with chocolate ganache and salted caramel cream cheese frosting

Last Friday, I cleared everything off the calendar to spend the day with my good friend, Kat. We don’t get to see one another very often, but when we do, it’s always special. Special, not because we have a lot in common (which we do and we don’t), but because we cherish many of the same things in life. And when I say things, I mean non-things like time, relationships, qualities, experiences, moments. Whenever I spend time with Kat, I learn something about her which in turn makes me learn about myself. Sometimes it’s an “ah-ha!” moment and other times it’s an idea that has been simmering in my head when she comes along and moves it to the front burner.

obligatory shoe shot at ya ya farm & orchard

two very sweet donkeys

and there was lunch at pizzeria locale

nom nom pizzas

It was a lovely start to the weekend, which was spent mostly working rather than going out to a number of social events. Social is fine. Social can be good. But sometimes I need to shut all of that down and have a weekend with no obligations to anyone but Jeremy and Kaweah. We are catching up with fall and preparing for winter in the mountains.

kaweah under freshly laundered dog towels just out of the dryer

Jeremy trimmed dead and mistletoe-infested branches around the property while I dragged them away to the slash pile. Kaweah watched us work from the front porch until I took the last bunch of dead branches down. She came bounding after me, gently closing her teeth on a nice branch. She wanted to play. It’s been a while since Kaweah has been frisky enough to play, so I let her have the branch. She followed me to the slash pile, parading with her branch in her mouth. I said “drop” and she put the stick down. I chucked it into the pile. She dove in after it. Repeat. Kaweah will be 14 years old in two months, so I tend to let her do whatever she wants these days. I let her keep the stick. But she wanted more than that. So I took the stick and threw it a short distance into the yard. And she ran after it, her stiff hind legs stumbling a little, but she didn’t seem to mind at all she was having so much fun. She brought it back to me. We did this a dozen times – more than she has EVER fetched (usually she would run to the object, pick it up and continue running away) until the sun went down behind the Continental Divide.

I guess I too am feeling recharged and energized. Energized and enthusiastic enough to attempt a cake. There are cakes and then there are cakes. I personally prefer easy cakes which you serve immediately after turning it out of a pan with minimal futzing. That is a level 1 cake in my book. This is not that kind of cake. This is considered a level 2 cake which involves layers of cake and other components and some sort of decoration. [Level 3 cakes are works of art with multiple tiers and I refuse to even think about them.]

yes, now we can do pumpkin (eggs, milk, spices, brown sugar, vegetable oil, pumpkin purée, flour, leavenings)

butter and flour the pans

mix the dry ingredients

The idea of a pumpkin layer cake has floated every autumn, but it wasn’t until this weekend that I finally implemented it. Making any new cake recipe always runs the risk of a major failure around here because I never know how stable the cake will be at my altitude. This pumpkin cake turned out well for me with a slight reduction in the leavenings (baking soda and baking powder).

mixing the wet ingredients

alternate adding dry ingredients with the milk

pour the batter into your prepared pans

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: apple fritters

Home never felt so good and happy. When I walked up the stairs to the baby gate and peered around for Kaweah, she was lying in her dog bed probably thinking, “It’s that Jeremy guy… ho hum.” But when she saw it was me and I called her name, she jumped up and wagged furiously, pawing at the gate before I could even open it. Then she lunged at her stuffed toy hedgehog and shook it around violently (this is what she does when she’s excited) until I was able to put my bags down and give her a belly rub hello. I’ve got heaps of photos to sort through and will share them eventually, but there is other more urgent business at hand. Like the business of choosing two winners of the Colorado care packages!

meet the executor of selection

We took Kaweah outside into the front yard with the intention of hiding a treat, timing how long it took her to find the treat (in milliseconds), and then calculating the number of the winner based on the number of milliseconds modulo the number of comments (407). A little review of math here… modulo is the remainder after division. Kaweah had a hard time figuring out the rules, so we had a few test runs first to explain the game to her (mostly because she just stood in front of Jeremy wondering why he wasn’t giving her a treat). Eventually, she did get it…

45 seconds (she’s even pointing, if you can believe that)

1 minute and 56.91 seconds (it’s hidden in the wild roses)

So our winners are #23 Cathy and #295 Deb in Indiana!! Congratulations, ladies! I will be in touch with you to get your mailing addresses and your t-shirt choices and sizes. Also, a huge thanks to all of the commenters who entered the giveaway. Your interesting facts about you are not just interesting, but entertaining and touching and awesome. Thanks for sharing a part of you with me (and everyone else – no small feat there!) and thanks, as always, for being the best readers ever.

Summer is over. September is done (in an hour). I think to myself that I will miss summer, until I remember that there is snow on the high peaks. This weekend while I unpacked and put my gear away, I made a note to myself to start transitioning our bins. Soon, the bike and hiking gear bins will be replaced with winter and ski gear bins. Now, when daylight fades, I marvel that I have more than a couple of hours before I should be getting to bed! And the sweet fruits of autumn are making their way into the markets next to the big fat orange pumpkins that signal the arrival of my favorite holiday, Halloween!

colorado organic jonagolds

How thrilled was I this weekend when I went to get groceries and wasn’t limited to things that fit in my cooler, or could be prepared by adding hot water? To really cook again in my own kitchen is a beautiful and happy feeling. I grabbed three varieties of apples and decided we’d have a little treat at the House of Butter. Apple fritters.

apples, beer, sugar, butter, spices (ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice), salt, flour, and eggs

separate the eggs, melt the butter, measure the beer

If you walk into a doughnut shop and find apple fritters, they are usually a conglomerate of apple bits and dough and cinnamon and sugar. That’s not the kind of apple fritter I have in mind when I want apple fritters. I like mine to be heavy on the apple with a light batter. The recipe that caught my fancy was the one that called for beer in the batter, because even though I don’t drink beer, I love it in food – especially battered and fried food.

mix the batter ingredients together (except for the flour)

now whisk in the flour until just combined

You can slice your apples up however you like, but I wanted apple rings – thick, juicy, sweet apple rings that you can sink your teeth into. Just peel the apples and core them. I don’t have an apple corer, so I sliced my peeled apples into 1/2-inch thick rings first, then I cut the core out with a cannoli dough ring. If the hole is too small, then the batter will fill it up when you fry it. You may or may not care, but I wanted rings, not disks.

peel

slice

core

**Jump for more butter**