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Recipe: orange blossom iced tea

August 1 is my sister’s birthday and I usually buy flowers for her, or rather for me to remember her. I didn’t buy flowers this year as my night-blooming cereus was loaded with several large buds. Two of them bloomed tonight, which I thought was fitting and wonderful. These flowers tie me to my family. They are supposed to symbolize luck when they open – just for one night. The house is filled with this beautiful fragrance. By daybreak they will close up and wilt… something special. Doubly special.

the buds at 6:30 pm

blooming at 11:00 pm

I’ve been feeling tired lately, which in all likelihood is related to the fact that I haven’t been getting enough sleep. My to do list finally caught up to me and punched me in the face. My sister’s birthday kicked me in the gut. Sometimes the best thing I can do is to walk away from it – maybe mentally, maybe physically. So today’s recipe is a soothing one. It’s a nice escape from the heat and it smooths out the furrowing of the brow.

sugar, black tea, and orange blossom water

This was the other beverage offered at Uchenna, a delightful Ethiopian restaurant in Colorado Springs (the first beverage being the rose water lemonade). It’s the one that I ordered because I absolutely fell in love with the flavor of the orange blossom water. I used a loose assam tea and let it steep on the longer side (to make it stronger) because I like my glass filled to the brim with ice.

make the tea

let it steep

strain

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Recipe: piña colada sorbet

It was not my intention to make readers cry in my last post, but admittedly, I was crying when I wrote it. Of course, we’re all silly people for crying because Kaweah thinks everything is just grand. She kicks in her sleep and makes little howling barks and growls as she chases the squirrels and bunnies through Dreamland. I wake her each morning with a gentle belly rub and watch her eyes open and her nose suddenly activate. When she realizes it’s me, she rolls belly up, kicks her feet in the air with joy, and goes bonkers thrashing about. Kaweah enjoys a frozen pupsicle (bananas and peanut butter) every afternoon and a nice but short evening stroll in the neighborhood where she checks the doggy pee-mail center at the giant boulder. She’s happy and that is what ultimately matters. We should all be so content in our twilight years. Thank you for your love and kind words for our pup.

in the middle of the road, yeah

And that time of year has arrived – porcini season. Since this is only my second year foraging, I am having a blast comparing data with last year’s season: locations, size, weather, timing, dates, temperatures, moisture, elevations, trails, other species. It’s like an Easter egg hunt, but better! If you want to find the porcini, you have to become the porcini… [Please note: porcini have several look alike species that can make you very ill, do not forage porcini unless you are with an expert.]

buddies

what a beauty

We endured a bit of a scorcher the last few days, so I was especially thrilled to see heavy rain in the forecast and a drop of nearly 15°F in the daytime high temperature. I think the mushrooms will like it too (remember: be the mushroom). Hot weather is problematic for me right now for a few reasons: 1) I’m in the middle of a chocolate shoot for a client 2) I have to monitor Kaweah to make sure she doesn’t overheat (I put her downstairs on the basement floor to cool down if it gets really bad) and 3) it makes me really really cranky. While purchasing props the other day, I heard “Escape” playing in the craft store. You probably don’t know what that refers to. I didn’t. But you’ll know the song from the line, “If you like piña coladas…” I thought to myself, “I do, I DO like piña coladas!” And I became obsessed with having one.

coconut milk, pineapple, sugar, rum (optional, but good)

Personally, I prefer my piña coladas to be slushy, but I decided to take it a step further and make it into sorbet. It’s so easy to do it’s ridiculous and wonderful all at the same time. You could use canned pineapple, but it’s hard to beat a fresh pineapple that is ripe, naturally sweet, and far more flavorful. Oh, and when you open a can of coconut milk, be sure to stir it up as the fat solids separate and rise from the liquid.

chop the pineapple into chunks

measured out

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Recipe: grass jelly and ai-yu jelly

I love the idea of summer. It’s when everything is happening. It’s a visual overload in the mountains. The thing I have trouble with is the heat, and by trouble, I mean I hate the heat. I have sworn enemies in this world and the heat is one of them. It makes me cranky and sad and angry all at once. Jeremy and I both recognize this, so there are things we do to minimize the crankiness like hiking, biking, or trail running early in the morning when the air is cool, the sun is low, and the mosquitoes are still slow. It also means we have the trails mostly to ourselves, which is awesome.

wildflowers greet the mountains

flowers fill an alpine meadow

the view from the trail

If we are lucky, the monsoons bring moisture into Colorado from the south and we get a daily cycle of glorious and dramatic thunderstorms and rain every afternoon like clockwork. Our bluebird skies turn into menacing, roiling clouds over the mountains. Cool winds and heavy rains seem to wash away the dreaded heat, even if only for an evening. It’s wonderful.

storm building over crested butte

But sometimes the storms fizzle and there is no relief. Times like these require taking matters into your own hands. We don’t have the benefit of air conditioning because we rarely need it. I try cooling off with ice cold drinks, sorbets, frozen treats, and one of my childhood favorites: grass jelly. I know it sounds odd, but it is really wonderful stuff. It’s like an herbal tea gelatin. Another similar jelly that I preferred when I was younger (probably because it was sweeter) is ai-yu jelly, made from the gel of a seed of a variety of fig.

grass jelly and ai-yu jelly

you just need the jelly, lemons, and sugar

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