use real butter

Recipe: friands

It’s rare that we get completely overcast days around here. The sun almost always makes an appearance. Even with clouds plastering the sky, the light is rather bright – especially when it is reflected off of all that snow in winter. We’ve had snow all weekend with only a couple of sucker holes (windows of blue sky) in an otherwise monochromatic landscape. Our snow is fluffy and squeaky – *squeak* *squeak* with each step. It offers no resistance when you kick through it and it sticks to Kaweah’s schnoz when she sniffs about for dead things.

that bright blob is the sun

on our walk this evening

she may be getting old, but she still loves to romp in the snow

A few weeks ago I was testing out a recipe I had been wanting to make for years. Friands. I had heard about them, seen them, even have several recipes for friands in various books, notes, and bookmarked blog posts. They are so cute that it’s hard to believe I didn’t get around to making them sooner. They are based in large part on almond meal and almond is one of my favorite flavors.

mix the almond meal with the powdered sugar and flour

stir in the egg whites

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: lemon tart

Some bloggers actually post what they make that very day. I stopped doing that a long time ago because if I posted recipes I made in the same day then you would see two or three posts all crammed together and then a few weeks of nada. Did you think all of this was spontaneous rambling (okay, that part is mostly spontaneous), cooking, shooting, and posting? I’m not that inspired or patient. There is a lot of planning and organization that goes into this food blog otherwise I’d have thrown my computer across the room by now… several times. I feel better when I have a stash of a couple dozen recipes ready to go instead of one recipe that languished about because I didn’t really like it or the photographs were half-assed. I spent the week catching up on archives and so much other work. It was rather productive thanks to a lack of good snow, because I would have been tempted to rip it up on the slopes, fo’ shiz. I’ve even begun crazy cleaning around the house which I suppose might be Spring Cleaning two months early?

and that’s about all we got

actually, it’s pretty spankin’ cool to see up close!

There are times when I have to be in a mood to cook and shoot. Shooting a recipe for me doubles or even triples the amount of time it would take me to make it otherwise. That is just insanity. I think pastries are probably the most profanity-inducing recipes to shoot because you use your hands, they get really messy, and there’s this camera… I wash my hands so much while I’m shooting process steps that the backs feel like sandpaper. So you can imagine how wonderful it is after all of that trouble when you take a bite of the final product and it is fan-freaking-tastic.

meyer lemons

yes, butter in the pastry dough

I’m a fruity person more than a chocolaty person which means I will choose fruit over chocolate most of the time. Fruit makes me feel refreshed and happy. Chocolate makes me feel tired and heavy. But most people I know would pick chocolate over fruit. Maybe they’d change their mind if they tried this lemon tart?

cutting the butter into the flour

ready to chill

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: aspen apple cake

If you ask anyone who knows me, they’ll tell you that I’m pretty social. I really look forward to spending time with the people I like. But, I tend to be ambivalent when it comes to plunging myself into an environment where I only know a few of the people or none at all. My emotions run the gamut from very excited when I RSVP to feeling like I would rather do anything else just before it starts. It has happened frequently enough that I know I will come away happier for having gone. My brain overrules my heart and I make myself attend. So it was with PodCamp Boulder 2 this weekend, run by the awesome Jeremy Tanner.

brainstorming discussion topics friday night

session on copyright and creative commons licenses

PodCamp is an unconference where people get together and talk tech about SEO, CMS, blogging, social media, podcasting, video, photography, storytelling, design – whatever the group wants to talk about. They break out into sessions and everyone participates as much or as little as they like. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s informal, it’s spontaneous. I learned quite a lot and was even able to share some knowledge and information of my own (who knew!?). I connected with more of this fine community and consulted with my go-to guys (Andrew and Jeremy) on holding and hosting workshops.

andrew joins us for some intersession banter

jeremy addresses how to host events

What’s that you say about hosting a workshop? Why yes, I’m hosting a workshop on food photography this summer in Boulder, Colorado! I’ve been hammering out the details and consulting with my fellow instructors on syllabus and logistics. You may have heard of them… Helen of Tartelette, and Todd and Diane of White On Rice Couple? You can just imagine how excited we are putting it all together. Be sure to stay tuned for the announcement in a few weeks!

amazing sunrise the other morning before we went skiing at breckenridge

Between all of the things I have going on, I did manage to squeeze in a recipe that I’ve had dog-eared for over a year. When Aran recently told me that tomato season is starting in Florida, I nearly choked on my breakfast. I can’t let myself start thinking about spring produce let alone summer produce right now. No, this cake is all about warm flavors and apples because it is very much winter here (with snow in the forecast – squeeeeeeeeee!).

whisk the dry ingredients together

peel them apples

**Jump for more butter**