use real butter

Recipe: passion fruit mochi

Before I forget, I wanted to share my composite of the eclipse so you could get a feel for the whole progression. It’s kinda cool and especially great to show and explain to kids, big and small.

starting at 6:31 pm (MDT) and ending 8:13pm (MDT)

Last month, I got a super sweet email from Viva Singer, a reader who told me that her office in Montreal loves to check out the recipes on use real butter and that everyone at work thinks Kaweah is adorable. As a thanks for sharing recipes, she wanted to send me a dog collar for Kaweah, because that’s what her business, Hot Dogs All Dressed, makes – beautiful, hand-crafted collars for dogs and cats. I said it wasn’t necessary to send Kaweah anything because she’s such a hillbilly dog, but that I’d love to donate one to a dog at my local shelter and perhaps arrange for a giveaway on the blog.

what viva sent me: the waterproof hydro (red with daisies) and the leather (black with hearts)

Viva mailed two durable, quality collars for Kaweah to model and said if she really liked one, she could keep one and give the other to a shelter pup. Kaweah is as fashion-ignorant as I am. She would only want a collar if it were made of meat, cheese, apples, peanut butter, well… food. But we took her for a walk wearing the nice black leather collar studded with shiny red hearts. She looked so hip!

love

i… i… i wanna go swimming

Once we arrived at the lake, it was obvious that Kaweah intended to go for a dip. I had anticipated this (she’s a lab, of course she’s going to want to go swimming) and brought the hydro collar along.

jeremy fastens the hydro collar while kaweah patiently waits

so pretty!

she fetched sticks

and she kept going back

These are lovely collars that can be custom-made to order and Viva was kind enough to offer me five dog or cat collars to give away to five of my readers. I, in turn, will ask each winner to name a local animal shelter to which I shall donate $20. Hot Dogs All Dressed works a good bit with their local rescues, so they thought this was a terrific idea. Kaweah agrees.

The Rules:
1) To enter, please leave a comment sharing why you love your pet by 11:59pm (MDT), Friday, June 1, 2012.
2) One entry per person (multiple entries will be disqualified).
3) Anyone can enter, but the animal shelter selected to receive a donation must be in the US or Canada.
4) Winners will be selected at random (by Kaweah) and announced next week.
5) Good luck!

Full disclosure: Hot Dogs All Dressed donated seven collars to me to donate and give away with no obligation and no compensation. All opinions expressed here are my own.

not too shabby!

I had blogged a chocolate mochi cake in April, but during my search for a recipe, I came across another recipe that caught my fancy. It was for a guava mochi and the recipe was even more simple than the chocolate mochi cake! A footnote at the bottom stated you could substitute passion fruit juice for the guava juice to make passion fruit or liliko’i mochi. So, you know where this is going…

four cups of passion fruit pulp, glutinous rice flour, and sugar

the cause of much unnecessary controversy

Now, this needs to be said, because some gluten-free people completely freak out when they see glutinous rice flour and assume it has gluten in it: GLUTINOUS RICE FLOUR CONTAINS NO GLUTEN. It’s an unfortunate naming convention to describe how damn sticky this stuff gets. Glutinous rice is sticky rice.

The passion fruit juice isn’t something that I come by easily around here. Most of the time I have to make it from frozen passion fruit concentrate that I find in California and hoard in my freezer. But I happened to have four cups of real passion fruit pulp in my freezer which I ran through my food mill to end up with about 2.5 cups of precious liquid gold.

keep at it and squeeze every drop out

the power of the sun in a pyrex glass

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: almond jello dessert

There is snow out there. Oh yes, there is. I can find snow any time of year if I’m willing to climb high enough to get to it. Right now, you don’t have to go very far, but it helps to hop on a bike as some (not all) of the roads leading to the backcountry are clear (but not open to cars yet or ever). It’s the season for the bike-ski or bike-hike or bike-bike and I’m getting better at not crashing into things which is always a desirable skill.

lock (the bikes) and go (hiking)

marsh marigolds coming up streamside

plenty of snow and lots of windfall

I’m spending considerably more time on my bikes of late – both my mountain bike and my indoor trainer (also mountain bike – my engagement mountain bike). With local trails clearing up, we’re trail running in the mornings or evenings when it is a comfortable 45°F. It’s a matter of weeks before the high country trails clear out for hiking and backpacking. It must be spring! Of course it is. The Ass Reduction Plan (ARP) is in full speed. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been consuming fruit like nobody’s business. Well, that and the fact that I just got a Vitamix blender a few weeks ago. While I love my daily smoothie (strawberries, mango, orange, apple, blueberries, grapes, kale, and a little Good Belly and almond milk) I still thoroughly enjoy chewing actual fruit.

lychees, raspberries, oranges, kiwis, pears, grapes

When I was a kid, my dad would make the occasional Chinese dessert. I think my favorite was almond jello, which everyone served cubed with canned fruit cocktail and canned mandarin oranges. I’ve made almond jello from the packets you can purchase at Asian grocery stores, but like almost everything else you can buy in a convenient package, it’s pretty straightforward to make your own from scratch.

almond extract, sugar, agar agar, almond milk

stir agar agar into boiling water until dissolved

stir in sugar until dissolved

You can make almond jello with gelatin or agar agar (particularly if you are vegan). Gelatin gives an elastic result – like the jello with which most people are familiar. I found powdered agar agar at my local Whole Foods in the bulk section and the resulting jello was more brittle in that it yields more easily to the teeth and breaks apart with less effort. Agar agar is derived from red algae and commonly used in Asian desserts. My first introduction to it was a refreshing lemony version chilled on ice that my aunt served to me on a sweltering summer day in Pennsylvania.

add almond milk or regular milk

pour in the almond extract

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pumpkin peanut butter dog treats

Dogs have such great attitudes. They’re always happy, always hopeful, always up for anything. Maybe not ALL dogs, but most dogs – especially the ones I meet on the trail or at the beach or basically anyplace outside. We have one of those happy, hopeful pups. I swear she makes every day that much better with her wagging tail, sweet disposition, and general goofiness.

rejoicing in the snow (just like her people)

People often ask what we feed Kaweah, because she has a shiny, healthy coat. Iams. We used to feed her regular Iams, but now she’s on Iams for “mature” dogs. However, her dog food doesn’t make her coat shiny. Genetics makes her coat shiny. Kaweah comes from good stock and we see that more and more as she ages. She’s been a healthy dog for her 13+ years. It helps that she’s got great muscle tone and isn’t overweight. Of course, given her druthers, Kaweah would eat 24/7. The act of eating a treat (or anything for that matter) is probably Kaweah’s favorite activity. So we try to maximize the joy by giving her little treats. She’s not smart enough to realize that five little treats are less than five giant treats.

ready for a treat after an icy, cold swim

Store-bought dog treats are not inexpensive, so I started making treats for Kaweah at home. The good news is that they are way cheaper than store-bought treats and really easy to make. The better news is that she loves loves loves these treats.

whole wheat flour, eggs, pumpkin purée, peanut butter

mix it all together

**Jump for more butter**