use real butter

Recipe: extra-flaky southern buttermilk biscuits

…that use real butter was a little glitchy on Saturday. That was because Mr. Awesome and I were moving my entire online existence to a new commercial server, to better serve you, my beloved readers. There are apparently a lot more of you than we had originally anticipated and the old server was buckling under the weight of the traffic. The old blog address should have an automatic redirect to the new and improved and rightly proper domain: userealbutter.com. Permalinks and the like have been fixed on this end. Feeds have been updated, although it will probably take Bloglines a little while to update their feed… Google Reader has done so already. If you link to use real butter, you may want to update to the new address (userealbutter.com). Otherwise, I hope all changes on urb are relatively transparent for you.

rime ice from this morning

there is snow, and then there is magical snow

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Recipe: french yule log

It’s that time again… time for another Daring Bakers Challenge! This month’s challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

daring bakers: we knead to bake!

I very much have a love-hate relationship with the Daring Bakers these days. I love learning new techniques and skills that I would otherwise never think to try on my own and there are some really fantastic bakers in the community who inspire me to keep coming back each month for more punishment. I’m almost always glad to have completed a challenge no matter how many disastrous steps along the way, I just don’t know how long I will continue to keep it up.

At first blush, I rolled my eyes when I read that our challenge was a yule log. We did that last December. However, after reading up on the difference between this month’s French yule log and its jellyroll cousin, I was game. It’s a more complex assembly and required some fast thinking when various components didn’t work out. I felt the instructions were overly simplified in many places and just plain vague in others. In the end, it came together nicely, but I won’t lie to you and say I didn’t do a fair bit of cussing along the way.

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Recipe: grilled prosciutto-wrapped asparagus

menu for hope OR get off your arse!
I just want to remind you all that Menu for Hope is still going on for a couple more days. You can find all of the fantastic prizes being offered here and then go and buy raffle tickets here. Oh, and yes, I’m offering a prize as well! Take your pick from these four photos.

how many people get an email from…
…the crater rim of Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on Earth (in Antarctica)? I did! My pal is imaging the surface of the lava lake in the crater. How f’ing cool is that? VERY.

i like winter in colorado
Well, it looks like winter is taking the nation by storm *snort*, except possibly at Tartelette’s house. I’ll have to bag up some Colorado snow in a ziploc and mail it to her, poor thing. We went to Breckenridge today to enjoy some express lifts on the big mountains. While we love our local hill (and especially the ten minute drive from house to ski hill), the big resorts are really something else, despite the longer drive (anywhere from 1-2 hours). As we walked to the gondola from the parking lot, Jeremy said to me, “If I lived someplace else, I’d probably wish I were skiing all the time. Since we live here, I wake up and think, ‘Should I go skiing today?'” The answer is: hell yes, go skiing!

the view across the valley – snow capped gorgeousness

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