use real butter

Recipe: homemade cherry pie lärabar

Rather than being dismayed at how quickly February has disappeared, I’m actually excited for March. March is when the big storm tracks blow into Colorado. March is the transition to spring skiing. March is when I start hitting the road to shoot. March is longer daylight hours. It’s a month chock full of goodness.

That’s not to say February wasn’t good. I mean, February is…

sushi with my sweetie

splashes of color after sunset

sleeping in the sun after a much-needed bath

jupiter, venus, mercury, and the moon having a little party in the night sky

I made that last one extra big so you could actually see Mercury. Neat, huh? SCIENCE!! February has also been some good skiing around these parts with a foot of fresh snow last Thursday at our local hill. More snow also makes for more enjoyable backcountry ski tours. Whenever I hit a trail, I always pack something to eat – even if I don’t plan to eat it. It’s one of those items you should always have with you in case of an emergency. But barring an emergency, when you are suddenly low on energy, a snack is a great way to put yourself back in the driver’s seat. I’ve tried all manner of those energy bars and have found that most of them make me want to puke. Or they just sit in my stomach like a rock. Or they dry me out. My issue with trail mix is that 1) there are too many pieces and 2) the guy I usually hike with likes chocolate (which I don’t like). I want something easily digestible, natural, and good for me. Luckily, such a thing exists.

lärabar – cherry pie

My girlfriend, Marianne, introduced us to LÄRABAR a few years ago on a summer hike. I was reluctant, but she gave me a piece and… I really liked it. Just dried fruits and nuts. It tasted a million times better than all of those other complicated and barely palatable bars on the market. We were sold. They aren’t just for outdoor activities, but make a great snack to tide you over or to avert a meltdown when your blood sugar is running low. There is no sugar high and no sugar crash. We tried several of the flavors and then one day I looked at the ingredients on my favorite flavor (cherry pie) and said aloud, “I could totally make this.”

dried cherries, dried medjool dates, almonds

pit the dates

roast the almonds

At nearly $1.50 each LÄRABAR, I had a lot of incentive to attempt making my own version at home. It’s not hard to do, you can customize it, and I can make mine organic. I recommend using Medjool dates over Deglet dates. In my experience, Medjools tend to be more gooey than Deglets and you really need that as the dates are the main binding ingredient. I also roasted my almonds because I love that added depth of flavor. The one thing that makes this whole project super easy is a food processor.

process the dates and cherries into a semi-paste

chop the almonds

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: parmesan gremolata smashed potatoes

What I think I know is inversely proportional to what I actually know.

When I met my mentor, Michael Frye, I had come to a point in photography where I felt I had hit a wall. I had been self-taught to that point. I thought I needed some technical guidance to get me past that wall and specifically asked Michael to address those issues. But we also spent nearly twelve hours shooting together. I was perfectly happy standing in the cold rain or driving in circles around Yosemite Valley trying to second guess the weather, although I wasn’t sure what I was necessarily “learning”. It wasn’t until days, weeks, even months later that I began to process and understand. Michael wasn’t just teaching me the zone system or giving compositional pointers – he was teaching me to see both in time and in space, to feel moods and interpret light in ways that were orthogonal to my previous way of thinking. He challenged me and I think he made me a better photographer.

Michael has released his second ebook Exposure for Outdoor Photography. I received a free copy (under no obligation), because Michael is nice like that. I’m sure many people think “I know about exposure, there probably isn’t anything new in there for me.” Well, I know about exposure and I still read it front to back. Even if Michael didn’t have a sentence of new information for me, his book would inspire, reinforce, and get me thinking.

Michael offers a proper treatment of exposure in terms of the fundamentals of outdoor photography, essentially making this a great basic guide for photography. Michael’s stunning works illustrate key teaching points and case studies. His sage advice is liberally sprinkled throughout the pages along with exercises to drive home important concepts. Even though the book seems to target “beginners”, Michael also touches on some intermediate and advanced techniques. What makes it so appealing to me is how Michael shares his thought process before, during, and after the shoot. So if you are wanting to up your game, this book might be a great place to start. Read Michael’s description on his blog. Unfortunately the discount has expired (sorry, I’ve been super busy!), but $5 is a steal for instruction from this master of nature and landscape photography.

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The other day when I was shooting this recipe, we got a phone call from our neighbor. He said there was a black fox hanging out in another neighbor’s yard. We had seen that fox for the first time just a few days earlier. It was indeed black which made it special because ALL of the foxes around here are red. It’s actually a silver fox, but at that moment no one cared, we were all reaching for our cameras before it slipped away into the woods. My preference would have been to photograph the fox someplace other than the junk show that is my neighbor’s yard, but… you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.

And then it was back to dinner because our tummies were grumbling after ski touring that afternoon. I was more excited about the side dish than the main, because it was potatoes. And I freaking love me some potatoes.

fingerling potatoes, olive oil, parsley, lemon, parmesan, garlic

boil the potatoes until cooked through

I’ve seen smashed, hot crash, smasher, etc. potatoes all over the interwebs, in magazines, and at restaurants. I really had no excuse for not having made them myself at home. What finally pushed me over the edge was a side of garlic smashers at The Kitchen Next Door. I think those bad boys are deep fried, but I decided to oven roast mine.

place on an oiled baking sheet

squash

squashed

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Recipe: blood orange curd-filled beet doughnuts

There is chocolate for the chocoholics and then there is fruity for the fruit lovers. It isn’t just that I love fruity flavors, but they tend to come in a nice array of colors too. Remember me? I’m a parrot and I love bright colors.

sometimes even pink

Today’s recipe is indeed intended for Valentine’s day, mainly because it is pink and cute. But it’s more than that because it is both fruity AND vegetable-y. I’ve been looking around for something sweet to do with beets. So, let’s get our vegetable on, people.

flour, milk, butter, powdered sugar, cardamom, oranges, beet, salt, yeast, egg, grand marnier, beet juice

peel and dice and don’t wear white

I found an interesting recipe for beet doughnuts on Almond Corner. Most recipes call for roasting beets, but I liked this one because it cooks the beets on the stove top, simmering them in orange juice. By the time the beets are tender (it takes a while) the orange juice has reduced considerably so there isn’t a whole lot of liquid left. I puréed the beets with the juice, which meant I added a little more flour to the dough later.

diced beets, cardamom pods, and orange juice

tender

puréed

Meanwhile, heat the milk and beet juice together. Now, beet juice isn’t something I commonly see. I worried that I would have to make my own beet juice, somehow, but thankfully I found an obscure bottle of organic beet juice at Whole Foods… from Switzerland. Because my beets had enough liquid from the orange juice for the purée, I just added all of the milk-juice mix to the yeast and let it foam up.

add beet juice to the milk

foamy yeast

**Jump for more butter**