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Recipe: cinnamon rhubarb mini loaves

Did you eat vegetables growing up? Did you like them? How about now that you’re (presumably) an adult? I love vegetables and I loved eating them as a kid. Vegetables in my youth were crunchy, bright green, delicious. My mom and grandmother are such brilliant cooks and they always made sure we ate fresh and healthy food. In contrast, it was rather puzzling to stand in the lunch line at school and wonder what the hell that puke green, tasteless mash was on the plate. It was broccoli – and no one was the wiser, but then again we were all like… seven years old.

We eat vegetables and fruits regularly here at urb. I take that for granted until we go on week-long backpacking trips or I have to fast before surgery or medical procedures and then I begin to crave fresh produce and salivate at the sight of… green grass on the side of the trail. I have yet to meet a vegetable or fruit I refuse to eat. Pushing the limits would be durian (I’ve tasted durian fruit paste – very interesting) and bitter melon (my mom makes a terrific bitter melon stir fry which I love, except for the bitter melon – but I eat it because my mom’s cooking rocks).

This may come as a surprise to some, but I’ve never cooked with rhubarb before, until last week. I just remember reading about something rhubarb being poisonous (it’s the leaves, not the stalks) and so I avoided it for many many years and left it to others to slay the red cousin of celery. I’ve tasted rhubarb and strawberry muffins and rhubarb and strawberry pie (my days in Ithaca) and it was always an exercise for me to figure out what the rhubarb tasted like because it was never separate from the strawberries. Kind of like couples who have to do everything together and you really want to hang out with the one but the other is always there? Yeah.

rhubarb is showing up at our markets

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Recipe: green chile mayonnaise

I hope everyone had a nice weekend observing or not observing various holidays. April can’t make up her mind (she is quite the fickle pickle when it comes to weather) and so we have had sun, rain, lightning, snow, and grauple over the weekend, but NO WINDS(!!) and so I am pleased as punch. Sunday morning we took Kaweah for a much needed hike and noted the snow conditions. I really don’t foresee anymore piste skiing unless we get a nice dump of powder. Our local hill closed this weekend and several of the big mountains close next weekend (good-bye Breckenridge, good-bye Vail, good-bye Mary Jane – see you next year), however there is always A-basin whose season runs phenomenally late into June – sometimes July. Get your rock skis out, kids. I wouldn’t want to take the East Wall on my powder skis in May. Well, my would-be rock skis were in really good shape and now belong to Diane.

dude, where’s my snow?

old flowers soon to be replaced by new flowers

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Recipe: macadamia nut and chocolate chip blondies

Before I began blogging, the only Crazy emails I received were from people I knew. And because I knew them, I could usually understand the Crazy in their emails (I don’t mean understanding why they were headcases, but just that it made sense to see Crazy in their correspondences). Now, with a public blog, I get lots of Crazy from people I don’t know. That makes it harder to determine if the sender is Crazy, Stupid, or just a Jackass. Thankfully, the majority of the emails that pop up in my in-box from strangers are really very nice. So thank you (you, as in the emotionally stable and well-mannered yous) for being so sweet and polite and funny and for not being a nutjob.

not so nutty: after the big dump, it was a bluebird day

april skiing – get it while it’s good

Sometimes I wish I didn’t have a local’s mentality. We skied up the powder on Saturday and then woke up Sunday morning debating whether or not to ski. There was only 1.5 inches of fresh (snow) overnight. Should we go? Is it worth our time? Won’t be as good as yesterday. Yesterday was soooo good. I’m sure it won’t be that bad… Well, it was freaking awesome. Not as awesome as 10 inches of pow, but pretty spanking. Add to that the calm winds (a rarity for our area) and you really cannot ask for much more. At home, we had a late lunch which I’ll have to blog about next week (the words New Magic Awesome Sauce should stir some curiosity). Spring skiing, I thought staring into the lovely flowers Nichole had brought me on Friday. Good stuff. Here we are straddling two seasons again and I love it.

daffodils inside, snow outside

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