use real butter

Recipe: chicken salad puffs

Good people, you still have until Monday, August 29, 2011 noon MDT to enter the raffle for a fine art print of your choice. Thank you!!

Lately it seems everyone is asking the same question, “Where did summer go?” In the case of my Seattle friends, they’re asking, “Summer who?” The start of the academic year tends to be a major social signal that summer is over. If I step outside my house in the afternoons, I can hear the children at the elementary school screaming and laughing at recess. If I drive through Boulder, it takes me twice as long to get anywhere because of all the new (and disoriented) freshman at the university. While I am already daydreaming about 4 foot powder dumps in winter (okay, I’ve been daydreaming about that since the last time I skied on June 21), I know that will come with a little time and perhaps some patience on my part. Autumn is surely coming, but we’ve still got some weeks of summer left as is evidenced by our near 100°F temps, daily thunderstorm cycle, the height of color at the farmer’s market, and meetings in the park with friends on blankets.

kaweah basking in the sun, unaware of the approaching thunderhead

beets the color of candy at the boulder market

calliope eggplants

brilliant carrots

my little buddy getting a snuggle from his mama

I haven’t shot a recipe I’ve made in a couple of months and it feels like forever. It isn’t for lack of mojo as there are several scraps of paper (both carbon-based and silicon-based) strewn about reminding me of recipes I want to try making and blogging. The mojo is there, just not the time. So I’ve dug deep into the queue and found a recipe for the chicken salad puffs I served at the afternoon tea I hosted a while back. It really was a while back – it was in November of last year. I’m hanging my head in shame at my lameness. But I assure you these chicken salad puffs are far from lame!

chicken, grapes, celery, almonds, parsley, onion

prepped and chopped

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: vietnamese pickled vegetables

When Jeremy and I were a young couple, we would on rare occasion have dessert for dinner and giggle to one another that this was a perk of being an adult. I defined adult by age. I had no idea what adulthood really meant. I didn’t know loss. I didn’t know illness. I didn’t know that people would disappoint in times of crisis. I also didn’t know that there were those who would carry me through the toughest days with their love and support.

seek the rainbow in the storm

Today, I try to walk through life ever-present… to appreciate the beautiful moments be they the hug of a small child, an exquisite landscape, tucking my hand into Jeremy’s back pocket as we walk, hiking into the mountains, stroking Kaweah’s soft floppy ears, sharing a meal with a friend.

at dinner with jennie in sonoma valley (november 2009)

Sometimes beauty arises where you least expect it – like all of the peanut butter pies that the food blogging community posted per Jennie’s modest request after her husband tragically passed away two weeks ago. Or in this, my favorite tribute to Jennie and Mikey by my dear friends Todd and Diane.

a fund for jennie
Thanks to the efforts of Shauna and Maggy, we can offer some longer term support. Maggy, Erika, and Aimée have launched Bloggers without Borders and one of their first assistance projects is a fundraiser for Jennie and her girls. Many bloggers are participating by holding auctions and sharing the news. As part of this blogging community and as Jennie’s friend, I’m doing my small part to help and to get the word out.

I’m sort of raffling off two of my 12×18 inch photographs (matted to 18×24 inches, all archival materials) to two winners who will be drawn at random. I say sort of because it’s one ticket per person, but you are of course welcome to donate more than the cost of a ticket if you are so inclined. It’s about helping Jennie more than anything else.

Here are the rules:

1) To enter, donate a minimum of $10 to Bloggers without Borders (donate via the button below) AND leave a comment on this post sharing what you find beautiful in life.
2) This raffle is open to everyone.
3) One entry per person, please.
4) Deadline to leave a comment is 12:00 pm (noon) extended to midnight, Mountain Daylight Time on Monday, August 29, 2011.
5) Winners will be chosen at random from the comments and verified with Bloggers without Borders.
6) The winners are to select a photo of their choice.
7) The photos will ship anywhere (at my cost).

Or if you want to donate, but don’t want to enter the raffle – that’s perfectly fine too! Either way, thank you for your kindness and your generosity.

click this button to donate to a fund for jennie at bloggers without borders

a few of the photos the winners can choose from

There is a recipe too since these wonderful people and this incredible community are a part of my life because of food. In fact, I wouldn’t have known about nor made this recipe if Diane hadn’t introduced me to banh mi, the delectable sandwich of her people made with baguette, pâté, cilantro, a protein (pork, ham, etc.), pickled carrots and daikon, cucumber, and mayonnaise. I determined that I needed those pickles. So I made them myself a while back (as you can tell from the henna tattoos on my hand). [NOTE: I pickled cucumbers with the daikon and carrot, but I don’t add cucumbers anymore because their excess liquid dilutes the pickling power too much.]

typically daikon and carrots, but i added the cucumbers too

julienne

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: stromboli

You know how I have that terrible habit of sitting on the NOAA forecast website in winter in the hopes that my reloading of the page will somehow change “sunny” to “blizzard”? I do the same in summer except I am hoping to change “sunny” to “severe thunderstorm warning”. You might say I have a mild obsession with lightning. I love watching a thunderstorm, but I love photographing lightning even more. We had a pretty spectacular light show plow through the other night (I heard Breckenridge got hammered) and we’ve had a good strong run of monsoonal thunderstorms nearly every afternoon until a few days ago.

the crazy squigglies are so cool

double strike

right through the cloud

ribbon lightning (right is near 100% zoom)

I don’t actually know what our thunderstorm cycle was doing since Wednesday because I’ve been helping Jeremy host an astrophysics retreat in Boulder and at our home in the mountains. There was a good deal of wining, dining, a little hiking, and lots of science with some of the brightest (and nicest) young superstar ninjas in the field from around the country. I played hostess, caterer, event coordinator, photographer, and dog wrangler. It was exhausting, but it was great (and it’s why you didn’t hear from me all week).

a toast at the kitchen to kick things off the first night

fruit and pastries for a marathon day of science

a room with a view

marla addresses the group

jeremy wraps up the afternoon

winding down with happy hour at the kitchen upstairs

but they still have science on the brains

lisa brought her 2 month old daughter from hawai’i, by herself… lisa kicks ass

morning hike and discussion at 11,000 feet

final toast to a whirlwind of science and fun

dinner at our house

ending the retreat with dessert and laughter on the deck

From my perspective it seemed like it was a successful retreat. Jeremy agrees. It involved an enormous amount of effort and planning, but I think Jeremy and I make an effective and efficient team. We like working together. Now we get to trade places as I’ll be hosting and teaching the Food and Light workshop next week. After that, I think I’ll be happy to not host an event for a while (but just a little while).

There is something to be said for simplifying your menu in summer. I tend to gravitate toward the recipes that require little effort and time because we seem to have so much going on in the warm months. I blame the gobs of daylight hours. We like the recipes that produce plenty of leftovers too because there are days when you get back from a bike ride or a hike and want to eat right away. Stromboli has always been on my list of bread-based foods to make. I tried it out early this summer and we were hooked.

make some pizza dough

let it rise

flatten half of the dough on a floured surface

roll it into a rectangle

**Jump for more butter**