use real butter

Recipe: arepas with guasacaca

It has been snowing horizontally in my ‘hood for the past couple of days. I rather like the vertical snow more – you know, the kind that falls gently and accumulates so you can ski it? But I’ll take any snow we can get at the moment because we haven’t had our usual Big Dump Snow Day yet and it’s nearly November. Meanwhile, we’ve been taking care of business at home – like choosing who won the Doughnuts cookbook giveaway! Jeremy gathered Kaweah’s ragtag crew of toys, assigning each one a number and randomly distributing them in a line (that is, they are not laid out in numerical order). Then we recorded the number of the first toy she touched. We did this three times.

kaweah picked the number 557

Our number is 557. We had 274 qualifying entrants (I basically accepted entrants up until Kaweah had a number) and 557 MOD 274 is 9. Congratulations Emily Vigue! You’ve won a free copy of Lara Ferroni’s Doughnuts! I’ll send you an email to get your shipping address right away!

In case you’re wondering just how random my selection process is, my resident astrophysicist came up with the method and we had it verified for pure idiotic randomness by my friend and resident economist (also statistician), Erin. Not to mention – it’s Kaweah – does ANYONE know what goes on in that little brain of hers?

well, right now you know what kaweah is thinking

Erin and Ali came up yesterday so Erin could teach us to make arepas. Erin has been wanting to share arepas with us forever and ever. She learned how to make them the proper way in Venezuela. While I don’t particularly enjoy spending time in tropical climates, I am more than willing to partake of the cuisine. I’ve been wanting to try and blog about arepas ever since Erin mentioned them, so it all worked out. And if you see henna tattoos on the hands of our models, yes – they were at the party too!

start with harina pan

Erin told me there are two brands of harina that she is aware of and harina PAN is the one you want to use. You probably won’t find it in your neighborhood grocery store unless you are lucky enough to have a good Latin American market nearby (if so, color me jealous). So burn that image above into your brain because it is soooo worth it to make these delectable little pockets of savory amazingness.

pour the harina pan into a large bowl

add warm water

and some oil (and salt)

mix it together with your hand and let it rest

While you let the harina sit (Erin says ten minutes minimum, but the longer the better), you can make the guasacaca, a Venezuelan avocado salsa. Sounds like huasakaka – no hard G, okay? The ingredients are relatively easy to come by.

onion, jalapeño, parsley, cilantro, garlic, and avocado

blender it

You’ll also need a little salt, some white vinegar or rice wine vinegar, and oil (which you add last – always last). This might have come together easier had we used the food processor or if we hadn’t packed the leafy herbs in first. If you go the blender route and your blender sucks as much as mine does, then please blender the onion, vinegar, and avocado first. That will produce enough liquid to get the rest of the ingredients blendered properly, otherwise you’ll spend a lot of time pushing ingredients down toward the blade over and over and over again (with the blender OFF, of course).

erin finally gets the guasacaca to blend up

brilliant green color

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: mashed potatoes

***Don’t forget to enter to win a copy of Doughnuts by Lara Ferroni! You have until midnight (24 hours from time of this posting, yo!).***

The weather turned rainy, cold, and windy over the weekend. Occasionally, when the clouds lift, I spy snow in the distance. I’m anxious for the snow. To be honest, I’m anxious to finish out my travels this season and be in one place for more than a week or two at a time. I was reminded of that this past Friday when I attended a get together that was looong overdue. Our stitch-n-bitch crew has been so ridiculously busy that it’s the first time we assembled in one place in several months. (I’m totally one of the guilty parties.) It was a very special SNB and we didn’t even think to bring any knitting or crafts projects.

whenever manisha hosts, she makes exquisite food

and we devour it

After the initial feast, we all settled into Manisha’s living room where our hostess explained an Indian ritual for the expectant mother. In this case, we were celebrating our dear Nichole and her baby bump! We each took turns, administering tumeric, a red powder (I don’t recall what it was or if it was edible), and rice to Nichole’s forehead. We offered a coconut and a little nut in a cloth, sprinkled rice on her head, and fed her something sweet. I was running on fumes by Friday afternoon – the week had been insanely hectic – so I wasn’t able to catch the significance of each act while I was shooting. But it was fun as well as incredibly touching as the gals, one by one, offered their heartfelt blessings to Nichole and her baby.

manisha explains the coconut to all of the noobs

erin places tumeric on nichole’s forehead

ali sprinkles rice

she glows

But the party didn’t end there. No no, it was just getting started! Manisha hired two of her girlfriends to come and do henna tattoos. There was a lot of gossiping and bonding and laughing and snacking and admiring of one another’s tattoos as we migrated from the guest room floor (where we were getting tattooed) to the living room to the kitchen and back again. It was a beautiful time and the smell of eucalyptus oil permeated the guest room. Despite my exhaustion as the evening wore on, I felt that I was in a good place. I was with beloved friends celebrating a soon-to-be significant moment in Nichole’s life. We watched smiling, joking, giggling, admiring as Nichole’s belly tattoo blossomed into a work of art. She was beaming.

it started in the center

so lovely

erin’s cool design

end of the night: all in (missing 3 of our gals who had to leave early)

This was my first tattoo if you don’t count the four blue dots I have on my chest from my radiation treatments. This one is far prettier and definitely more special. It isn’t permanent, but I think I’d like it to last as long as possible – maybe 2-3 weeks depending on how well I take care of it. At first I would see my hand out of the corner of my eye and it would startle me, but I’m getting used to it. So don’t be startled if you see a tattooed hand in some of the recipes in the coming months!

my favorite potato in the world: yukon golds

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pumpkin soup

I have 36 hours, but I need about 72. It’s times like these that sleep takes a back seat. Oh well… I plowed through the photos from this last shoot in record time knowing full well if I didn’t get them processed now, it would be 2011 before I’d look at them again. So here ya go:

this hillside was ablaze (in the good way)

mixed bag: reds, greens, yellows, stripped

sunset

aspens lean

You can see the rest of this fall shoot set on my photo blog.

I have many fond associations with autumn. Besides the fall colors and our (mine and Jeremy’s) birthdays, it’s also that time of year for BlogHer Food in San Francisco. BlogHer Food ’09 is where I met Shauna and Danny and little Lu. I don’t go to these conferences intent on meeting (or stalking) specific people unless they are already my friends. So when I met Shauna, I was vaguely aware that she was Gluten-Free Girl. I just knew she was incredibly sweet and that her baby girl kinda ran off with my heart. It was only on our second meeting together at Kingsford University that I became aware of her rock star status (so I’m slow on the uptake, cut me some slack!). But that rock star status is nothing compared to the lovely woman she is. I got to talk with her and Danny on the bus ride into wine country and by our final dinner of the trip they told me about The Beatles, their first date, tattoos, and why Danny was sharing his bottle of lemonade with me.

and now they share this act of love

When I was at IFBC in Seattle, I got to flip through Shauna’s only copy of the book. It made me hungry. I don’t go out of my way to be gluten-free since I like gluten and I can eat it. I can eat the hell out of gluten. So a gluten-free cookbook has to appeal to me at the cooking level, not at the gluten-free level. And this is what I find so special about the book: if you were to erase all mention of gluten-free in the book, it would stand on its own merit as a damn fine cookbook. That’s the magic in the book. That’s the magic in how Danny and Shauna cook and live their lives.

i couldn’t wait to try their pumpkin soup

little pie pumpkin

By the way, this isn’t a proper review – it is merely my heavily biased opinion. I haven’t read the book cover to cover yet as autumn is my busiest time of year. But when I began flipping through the book to tag the recipes I wanted to try, I found myself reading. Shauna has a beautiful writing style and writing voice. A couple of paragraphs into the introduction, her words made me catch my breath and I had to blink back a few tears… because Shauna and Danny are two people I care about very much and their hopes and happiness bring me great joy. It’s about the journeys of discovery, growth, love, happiness, learning, and really incredible food.

oiled and seasoned, ready to roast

scrape out the flesh after the pumpkin has cooled

**Jump for more butter**