use real butter

Recipe: strawberry sorbet

I haven’t called. I haven’t emailed. I haven’t blogged. Summer is my busiest time of year. We’re still a month out before true summer, but as soon as the snow has cleared from the ground around our house, we call it summer. This is a painful time for me because I can’t sleep in summer what with all of this amazing daylight. You want to do everything like hike, bike, backpack, travel, cook, entertain, and meet up with all of your people. And work. I wake up with that “not enough sleep” headache and then recall all of the great things I have lined up for the day and I snap right out of sleep-deprivation into happy anticipation. The problem is that there is just too much happy going on, which as you know isn’t really a problem…

andrew at atlas

this is what happens when the curious get their hands on your unattended camera

oh i love me some salad (mod market in boulder)

At a recent stitch-n-bitch, it came to my attention that some of my friends cringe at the sight of their photographs appearing on urb. We are, of course, our own worst critics. While my friends are beyond beautiful to me, I’ll just stick to the food and the crafts. This time we had a special SNB for one of the lot who will be wedded in less than three weeks. We made the favors for her wedding and they are oh so adorable – honey from her own bees. Manisha and I will be shooting the wedding, so I guess she knows to expect 95% food shots – KIDDING!

nichole’s fabulous grilled vegetable salad

rose lemonade

the favors are all done

It was a lovely weekend here with sunshine and oodles of bird activity. I have yet to get myself down to the Boulder Farmer’s Market because I really prefer to remain up in the mountains on the weekends. Jeremy and I spent most of the weekend working, but we did manage to get out for a survey of our local woods. The snow is almost completely melted and the aspens have yet to sprout their shiny green leaves. However, I spied many many arnica leaves emerging from the forest floor and to my delight – the pasque flowers are in full bloom. Yay for summer!

kaweah settles into her brutal summer routine

our pasque flowers are in bloom

I’m fairly certain in one month I’ll be moaning and groaning about the “heat” and wishing for fall to bitch-slap us back into reality. For now though, we are very much enjoying those fruits that usher in the summer months. Strawberries do exactly that. When I see those luscious deep red berries appear in the stores it makes me want to jump up and down and clap my hands.

i love me organic strawberries something fierce

hulling the berries

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pineapple orange cake

It’s a nice thing to unplug every now and again – to forget about blogs, emails, phone calls, tweets, facebook status updates and just head for the sticks. I learned from our last marathon-road-trip-photo-shoot that all work and no play stresses the hell out of Jeremy. So on this trip, we’re mixing it up a little and I’m working very hard to take it easier. Driving north we popped through wine country with a stop in Healdsburg for a little wine tasting, wine purchasing, and scoping out of things to do for my dad’s birthday this year. Jeremy is in love with wine country. Our first day in the redwoods was spent on the coast. I startled not one, not two, but three snakes. We went in search of river otters but found seals playing in the water instead. The lagoons and beaches are a birder’s delight, full of activity and fishing (I like these birds, they eat sushi).

on the coast

I grew up on the water, but I’m not a beach person. What I really came for were the trees. I am a tree person. We spent the next two days hiking among the majestic redwood forests.

this guy had something to say

lots of ferns

all of that rain has got to go somewhere

oxalis

My timing seems to be sucking this year because so many of the blooms are “late”. Cold, wet spring weather has delayed the rhododendrons. Of course, all of the domestic rhodies in town are in full glorious bloom. I just prefer the wild ones.

the tallest trees in the world: redwoods

Finishing the shoot a little early, we decided to swing through San Jose en route to the next shoot. That was Sunday – Mother’s Day. I called my mom from the road (Jeremy was driving – as a rule, we do not engage in simultaneous phone yammer and driving) to see if she and Grandma wanted to have dinner together. Yes, yes of course! Jeremy and I stayed in town overnight and helped with a few errands in the morning. I have come to recognize that as people age, what they cherish more than anything is time spent with those they love. We had lunch together at Sushi O Sushi before Jeremy and I drove off for the mountains. As we walked out of the restaurant my mom squeezed my hand and said it was the best Mother’s Day she’s had in a long time. That makes it all worth it.

the sashimi was so fresh and wonderful i could have cried

Jeremy and I are working on our laptops, waiting for batteries to finish charging, and reading last minute weather reports tonight. Before I doze off into full banana sleep (a phrase I shouted as I drifted in and out of consciousness on the long car ride north), I have a recipe from my redneck past to share.

yeah, that’s a box mix and other scary ingredients

thankfully the pecans were not produced by a giant food corporation

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: lemon bacon goat cheese flatbread

You still have until Sunday to enter to win a Wii console and a Wii Fit Plus package! So if you haven’t entered yet… go do it!

I was all set to sit down and post Wednesday night when our power went out due to some awesome thunderstorms rolling through. And then I had surgery the next morning. I tried to log on from the surgery wing, but their wi-fi was really hosed. I was negotiating local anesthesia and sedation with the anesthesiologist, but he was a no go – he told me the pain levels would be too much for that and so I had to get general anesthesia. Then he asked me why and I replied, “Because I have stuff to do?” Hey, I tried. He promised it would wear off quickly. It was thankfully outpatient surgery, yet it left me feeling queasy and in a fog for the remainder of the day. I wasn’t sure if that was the pain or the drugs, but I don’t fight it so much anymore. I’ve learned my lesson after a lumpectomy, chemo, radiation, and that blasted emergency appendectomy (traditional, mind you, not that nice less invasive laparoscopic kind). I know by now when to push myself and when to let the body rest. And now it’s Friday. I have to remind myself that scheduling surgery is not like scheduling a haircut… But I’m feeling much better today! Thanks for all of the emails, FB comments, and tweets :)

A few months ago I was meeting up with my ladies for happy hour. As my dear Nichole sat down, she handed me a page torn from a magazine and said in her sweet tone, “Would you make that for me!? It looks sooooo good!” It was a picture of a pizza with lemon slices and greens and bacon – maybe some caramelized onions? It was lovely. “Sure!” I said, as I looked around for a description. Oops, that was on the other page, which was still connected to the magazine which was… not here. It was in my queue of recipes to try when Nichole posted on her FaceBook page that she and Luke had made the pizza. I was still determined to try it. Of course, my memory of the photo was further diminished after having recycled the page. You can tell this is going to be a winner.

i’m guessing bacon, onions, goat cheese, arugula, meyer lemon

slice the onions because we want to caramelize them

**Jump for more butter**