use real butter

Recipe: fondue

One of the joys of my heathen ways is that Christmas and Easter are typically empty slope days for a ski whore like me. Jeremy and I had a nice morning of fast corduroy, sunny skies, and the mountain practically to ourselves. I would have posted a picture, except Jeremy’s POS point-and-shoot craps out when the temperature is below 20F. All you need to know is that it was good and I skied it.

The other day when I met Beth for happy hour in Boulder, Jeremy couldn’t join us because he had a meeting with one of his graduate students. When he saw the fondue on the blog, he made a barely audible whimper at having missed out. So while we were running through the grocery store on Friday to pick up some raspberries, I whipped out the iphone and looked up a quick recipe for gruyère fondue: gruyère (of course), a baguette, some sausage, apples, and then some white wine. This being Colorado with antiquated liquor laws, we had to find a liquor barn to purchase wine. This being Colorado with antiquated liquor laws, we had only to walk next door as every grocery store in the state literally has a liquor store within 200 feet of its doors.

let’s have fondue

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: crock pot roast beef

Whoa. It’s spring. Even here in the Land of Ephemeral Summer, it’s bleeping spring. Talk about a mind fuck what with Daylight saving, another round of chemo, and the warm spell this weekend – I have awoken to a world that is now a lot… hotter. Not that I mind spring. Despite my love for winter, I actually embrace the arrival of all seasons because it’s a refreshing change. To be honest, spring here is really a warmer version of winter with nice big snow dumps paired with longer sunny days. Makes for great mountaineering conditions and who doesn’t love to ski some of that corn snow in the backcountry? Tap tap tap – waiting for the snowpack to get just right. Oh, my tele days are not over yet – not by a long shot.

And let’s not forget the bounty of spring produce. I get all excited in anticipation, although I’ll have to figure out which foods I can and cannot partake of because of my treatment. Still, a creative cook can make her way around some of those obstacles. Even though we’re still days off from the official start of spring (and in my neck of the woods it doesn’t feel like spring until May) I got started on my spring cleaning of sorts: closets, cupboards, paperwork, projects… While I was at it, I remembered that I had several recipes squirreled away for posting and some of them are “wintry” dishes. Best to get on those soon, eh?

Oh but first, more goodies in the post – a surprise from dearest, sweetest Anita of Dessert First! I have to say that food bloggers are some of the nicest people in the world. Add to that the fact that they also have teh best taste in food stuffs and you will never be more pampered and showered with love by a better person or persons.

i nearly peed my pants when i saw where the yummies were from!

Isn’t she a dear? What a complete delight to have these to look forward to after my treatment. Anita, you are the best! xxoo

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Recipe: stacked enchiladas

looking from the other side
I lived in Southern California for a total of ten years. My friends in States With Real Winter used to send me hate email in January for posting pictures on my blog of things like barbecue parties on our patio with fat, juicy oranges dangling off of the verdant trees in the background. I love California winter. Winter in California is what I think summer should be. Of course, the moment March rolled around I wilted until November. But now I live where I get many good months of winter and the summers are tolerable (it can still get hot at 8500 feet). We mountain folk are smug little bastards. When I talk to Boulderites I refer to their town as “the flats” and I like to remind them that they don’t even know cold, snow, and especially wind. When I regard them from my home, I literally look down at them. Okay, but where the hell is this going?

Cindy posted about some beautiful baking she did this weekend, and it is indeed beautiful. Then I notice these flowers that adorn the cake and cupcakes and I’m thinking those are awfully pretty – I wonder where she got… And she writes that she traipsed outside to her yard and plucked these flowers and I’m imagining Bambi and friends gathered about and waving hi and little bluebirds singing while they do her hair. WTF? People think I’m joking when I say our growing season is on the order of a few weeks. California has two lettuce seasons. TWO. Let’s see here, if I go outside in my yard I find these:

d.e.d.: dead

**Jump for more butter**