use real butter

Recipe: tzatziki

I’m talking about calcium! Minds out of the gutter, please…

But before we get to the recipe, there is the business of the giveaway. Today is the last day to leave a comment on this post to enter the $100 giftcard giveaway. If you have not yet entered… what is wrong with you!?

Oh! I’d also like to share some images from Thursday morning with you. Continental Divide, snow storm, white out conditions, high winds, and early season alpine flowers – all in a typical June day in Colorado.

our destination – up and into the white

snowing the whole time

snowing across the valley

snowing harder

what a blast!

glacier lily

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pasta with summer squash, sausage, and goat cheese

There has been quite a bit of instability in that part of the atmosphere sitting over my house. It makes for interesting weather: sun, rain, hail, winds, cold, warm, frost and one of my favorites:

lightning

But today we are back to sunshine, although our afternoon thunderstorms are pretty much here to stay for the summer – and I welcome the rain and cooling off they bring each day. Kaweah has a knack for finding the very edge of the shade and then parking her furry self just outside of it.

too bad she isn’t a solar panel

School is out. I can tell this from the tent that my neighbor’s kids have pitched on their deck and the happy screams zooming past our windows, Doppler effect and all, every evening. It gets dark around 8:30 and we don’t eat until 9 or later. Kaweah petitions for dinner when the sun goes down, so Mother Nature fools her big time in summer (it’s a pain in the ass come winter when she starts begging around 3:30). The pine tree pollen orgy has not peaked yet, but my itchy eyes indicate the party is getting started. The foxes and the coyotes will be facing off and staking out their territory in our front yard, soon.

green gentian

We’ve lived here long enough that the trails we hike are recognizable even under 8 feet of snow. I know where the columbines will bloom. I know which scree fields the pika live in. I know when the stream flow will peak. I know what the light looks like in July versus October versus March. I know what the air smells like as the snowpack thaws from under the pine forest canopy. I know which cornices remain into late summer. I never thought I would treasure this sense of the familiar, but I do. I relish it and it feels like home. It may be a sign of getting older… I don’t really care. I rather think of it as a sign of happiness.

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: strudel

This month’s Daring Bakers challenge didn’t so much as creep up on me as stalk me all month. I finally settled on a savory version less out of inspiration and more out of necessity, as I only had two days before the reveal!

i am a daring baker and we bleeping knead to bleeping bake!

Here is the official line: The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers. Of course, we must pay homage to our beloved, revered, and oh so beeeyootiful founders: Lis of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice.

simple dough: flour, salt, water, oil, and vinegar

the lumpy wad

**Jump for more butter**