use real butter

Nicole and Andrew came over for dinner tonight and it was a good excuse to play around with an appetizer idea I’d been tossing about in my head. I wanted it to be a little quiche-like in flavor, but without making mini quiches (remember, I am on a tiny foods or individual servings kick). So I deconstructed my standard quiche recipe: bacon, eggs, milk, gruyère, mushrooms, onions, broccoli, and picked out representative flavors and tossed them onto puff pastry.

the first test – uncooked

baked

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auggggggggggggg!

That’s me for the first minute of icing my ankle each time.

Drizzle and gray skies welcomed us this morning. It was one of those days when you are happy enough to snuggle with the pup for a few more minutes – especially since you can’t run out for a hike in the rain due to a bum ankle. Perfect timing to make a double batch of chocolate stout chili! The jalapeno peppers had some zing to them this time.

onions, peppers, and garlic are good for you

bowl of steaming hot goodness

The first bowl is always a little soupy, but when I ladled the whole batch into tupperwares this evening, the consistency was thicker. Yay for crock pots!

We had planned to go to Boulder for sushi tonight (MIL gave us a couple of gift certificates to some of our favorite restaurants in Boulder for our bdays), but a heavy fog rolled in this afternoon, or rather, the ceiling dropped below 8500 feet – same thing. I love the stillness of the air when that happens, and the way sounds are sucked into the damp. Even better than that is right after a fresh snowfall when all echoes are absorbed by the snow that is padding everything, and the clean feeling you get when you draw in a sharp, cold breath of air and exhale as if you are a tea kettle. Anyway, we ordered pizza, which we haven’t done in a while – but there are some days when I want to eat something I didn’t cook for dinner. The whole wheat crust was particularly well done today. Sleepy now…

Feels like fall and I welcome it! Evenings down near freezing and daytime highs around 60-70. I like making large pots of soup or stews that last for several days. Today I finally made myself cook up a batch of beef stew. What I love about beef stew is that you use the cheap cuts of meat and slow cook them until they are falling apart. Cheap cuts like chuck or rump are tough, but have the best flavor and are ideal for slow cooking. The tender cuts like tenderloin or ribeye are far better for dry heat – great texture, but not the best in flavor per se.

start with fresh ingredients

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