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Recipe: spanakopita

March has not forsaken us! Four inches of snow preserved by overnight lows to -10°F made for some solid spring skiing this weekend in Crested Butte. Aaaand there’s more to come – yippee!!! But the season is definitely on the move. Despite the appearance of winter on the ground here, the sun and skies tell a different story. Clouds and weather are more dynamic with the increased warming of the atmosphere thanks to our sun that wants to hang out more and more each day. In the backcountry, you can smell streams and plants even though you may not see them under all of that snow. And flying insects! We’ve seen several lazily buzzing through the air as if they were trying to recover from the drunken stupor that was winter. It’s all good. It really is.

skiing toward an approaching storm

tracking up the fresh stuff

sunset on mount whetstone

Spring cleaning applies to everything for me – from closets to pantries to hard-to-recycle items to gear to computer files… I’ve been in a slow motion spring cleaning mode since October and I finally got around to culling and sorting my gabillion computer files (mostly photos) last week. I am not even close to being done as it takes a while to sift through terabytes of data. But I did unearth a recipe for spanakopita (Greek spinach pie) I have been meaning to post since I shot it a few years ago. It seems rather fitting for this time of year. Or maybe I’m just really hungry after all that skiing.

feta, spinach, eggs, farina, butter, more butter, parsley, dill, green onions (not pictured: phyllo dough, salt)

The hardest part of making spanakopita is handling the phyllo dough, but it’s not that hard. I’ve been using it since fourth grade (we learned to make baklava in 4-H) and have dealt with a lot of store-bought phyllo dough. The tricks are to: 1) thaw the frozen dough in the refrigerator for 24 hours 2) keep a damp (not wet!) towel over the sheets of dough to prevent drying out and 3) buy a reliable brand. I tried using an organic phyllo dough from Whole Foods and it made me cuss like a sailor. It stuck together, tore, and was really difficult to work with, despite following all of the instructions to thaw it properly. I’ve had mixed results with some national brands like Athens. The main thing is that you don’t want the sheets to stick together. The best one I’ve dealt with? Safeway’s brand. The point is that you’ll need to determine what works best for you.

beat the eggs, chop the green onions, mince the herbs

adding sautéed green onions to the feta, spinach, herbs, and farina

pour in the beaten eggs

mix it all together

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Recipe: korean barbecue pork lettuce wraps

Spring is just around the corner. In fact, I can see it from where I stand. The R-word is even in the forecast… RAIN. That kinda kills the snowpack, but then it is supposed to turn to snow. Whatever form of water falls from the sky, we have promised ourselves to enjoy this time – the end of winter. It’s been such a lovely season that we thought it fitting to say farewell to winter from Crested Butte.

mount whetstone

paradise divide and the slate river

blowing snow on mount emmons at sunset

The last time I was about to leave the Front Range for Crested Butte, I had a grocery date with Wendy at the new HMart in Westminster. It’s a Korean/Asian grocery store that is closer to me than its Aurora branch in southeast Denver. We wandered around checking out all of the products on offer, catching up on all manner of gossip and cooking and life stuff. As we passed into the meat department, a little Korean woman was grilling marinated pork samples. We each tried it and smiled at one another. Good stuff. The woman placed her hand on a stack of packaged marinated pork and said, “For sale!” Since I was leaving town soon, I declined. Walking toward the fish tanks, Wendy and I leaned into one another and whispered, “I could totally make that at home!” And so I eventually did.

pork shoulder, black pepper, sesame oil, soy sauce, pear, onion, green onions, garlic, ginger, sugar (not pictured: gochuchang)

chopping the pear

pear, onion, garlic, ginger

puréed

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Recipe: beef porcini pot pies

Spring forward. Spring forward. I rather think of it as pouncing forward. It’s a bit jarring, the darkness in the morning and the extended daylight in the evening and whoa, when I sit down to work on the computer I have one less hour than I thought I did. Jeremy is a fan of Daylight Saving Time. He said he feels like he’s in fog all winter until the clocks jump forward. He loves the stacking of extra daylight on the other end of the day. Kaweah, we discovered, does not care for Daylight Saving. We tried to coax her awake Sunday morning, but she was having none of it. She’d open one eye, look at me, and then plop her head back onto her soft, warm bed. So we let her sleep until her little appetite clock said it was time to eat.

spring wha?

We had a nice wallop of snow Friday (great powder at our local resort) and then the snow clouds gave way to bluebird skies and the mercury soared into the 50s this weekend. Jeremy and I got out to ski tour Saturday, but the backcountry snow was already turning to mashed potatoes under the power of the sun and warm air temperatures. But it was gorgeous and my brain is already transitioning to spring skiing mode.

i never get tired of the colorado high country

It’s March, and I’m starting to poke about in the corners of my freezers and pantries to see which treasures I squirreled away last summer are still around. I have heaps of roasted green chiles, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, jams, summer corn, peaches, huckleberries, pickled things… and dried porcini. Those porcini are such a labor of love. Wendy and I slog many miles in the mountains searching for these gems of the forest. Then she cleans every single mushroom (and sometimes there are a lot of them) that very evening, breaks them down, and begins dehydrating them. No small feat. To let them spoil or go to waste is to beg the tree gods to animate and smack you upside the head for being such an ungrateful douchecanoe. When I flipped the calendar to March, I set about making some beef porcini pot pies.

olive oil, red wine, salt, pepper, dried porcini, onion, potatoes, flour, rosemary, thyme, garlic, tomato paste, boneless beef short ribs

rehydrate the porcini

strain (and reserve) the porcini liquid

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