use real butter

Recipe: chocolate pots de crème

This was supposed to be a rip-roaring weekend at the House of Butter (or rather, outside of the House of Butter, but you know what I mean). Unfortunately I dashed those plans on the Rocky Shores of Disappointment because I got an infection. Nothing that antibiotics won’t take care of, but it’s a bummer nonetheless. Since I am not supposed to be exposed to direct sunlight during the course of my meds, I worked through the weekend as best I could and managed to discover the surface of my desk. Whoa! That’s a good feeling, especially when I had resigned myself to living with Mount Disaster until mid-November. Jeremy kept me company and worked on his research (and even did some massive internal maintenance on this blog). Kaweah was bored out of her gourd.

le sigh

We have had a few spates of fall-like bordering on wintry weather around here. New snowfall in the high country has painted the high peaks with a light coat of white. Per Colorado’s typical cycle, the next day was sunshine and blue skies – you know, to make the snowy peaks even prettier. Fall around here is less of fall and more of a tug-of-war between the last vestiges of summer and the raucous arrival of winter with some beautiful golden aspen littered throughout the mountains. Fall is also when I can tolerate chocolate again. I can’t deal with chocolate in summer. Don’t want to work with it, don’t want to eat it. But as soon as the weather cools down, my thoughts around chocolate become less hostile… more friendly like.

chocolate, milk, eggs, vanilla bean, sugar, cocoa powder

split the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds out

pouring milk into a saucepan with the vanilla bean and seeds

When I was making these chocolate pots de crème, Jeremy asked what it was. I replied they are chocolate custards.

jeremy: Like crème brûlée?
me: No, there is no burnt sugar on top.
jeremy: Like flan?
me: There is no burnt sugar on the bottom.
jeremy: So it’s like crème brûlée without the burnt sugar?
me: Uh, sure.

two eggs, one yolk

whisk sugar into the eggs and egg yolk

temper the hot, steeped milk into the eggs

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: heirloom tomato salad

I’m wearing fleece right now, because September flipped the switch on summer and we’ve been relishing this glorious cool down! The neighbor was firing up their hot tub (because the pipes can burst when we get down to freezing overnight), we saw morning frost in the high country, and snow is predicted on the high peaks this week. Just in time too, because we upgraded our tele gear this weekend. Now we’re poor and happy!

i chose the rossi s3s over the k2 kung fujas

soon all this will be covered in snow… precious precious snow

Labor Day marks the end of the vacation season. Kids are back in school, people go back to work. It is the start of when I like to spend time outside the most. The weather is cool enough to my liking and the backcountry isn’t filled with a bunch of yahoos from the city. Kaweah can happily trundle along on her walks without overheating. That smell of crispness on the air means autumn fast approaches. We’ve already seen early bird sprigs of aspen turning yellow around our local trails. The sun journeys across the sky a little lower each day and the remaining late season wildflowers dot the landscape with their humble whites, yellows, and purples. I love the transition from summer to autumn.

colorful sunsets

weekend hiking

plants turning yellow

fireweed

k-dawg pooped out after her hike

I don’t hate summer. It’s really the heat that gets me more than anything else. And while I’m gleefully anticipating ski season, I have to say that it is with great sadness that the love affair with the summer bounty must come to an end. Corn, tomatoes, peaches (oh my goodness, those Colorado Palisade Peaches), melons, baseball bat zucchini, cherries, plums, berries, peppers, beans… I enjoy most all of these prepared in the simplest of ways. It’s too hot to futz with stuff over the stove or in the oven. Minimalist preparation means that the foods are allowed to shine and that you have more time to go out and play. One of my favorite fruits of summer? Heirloom tomatoes.

i buy the hell out of them at the farmers’ market

a little olive oil, some fresh basil, and smoked mexican sea salt

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: lava flow

Everything seems to be converging on August: visitors, good-byes, workshops (!!), travel, work. Instead of freaking out, I’m in that state of quiet panic while I watch everything fly past me in this surreal slow motion. Maybe it’s my allergy meds? But my allergy medications are good to me because I could stand in a field of hip-deep weeds without sneezing my brains out to get a shot of this the other day:

double rainbow in stormy weather, baby

the primary was super bright

After a spate of several hot and cloudless days, that storm and the cool air it brought was more than welcome. It’s my favorite way to escape the heat in mountain summer since we don’t have air conditioning and we can’t really work in the basement. I find it helps tremendously to drink a glass of ice water. It is my favorite beverage in summer and keeps me on an even keel. But once or twice each summer I will make lava flows to cool down.

i’m really all about the ice

…and fruit

What is a lava flow? It’s just piña colada and strawberry dacquiri, but I love it because it’s fruity and cold. I also dig anything that refers to a geologic phenomenon that is totally amazing to witness. Here’s some lava from 2005 (the Big Island of Hawai’i)…

ocean entry

cream of coconut and pineapple for the piña colada part

the ice is critical

**Jump for more butter**