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Recipe: savory chinese soybean milk soup

Hi hi hi hi! We up and left town a few days ago…

denver international

across the sierra nevada

I’m in California, spending a quiet evening with my mom, my aunt, and my grandmother. We’re having a really sweet visit together. Jeremy picks me up tomorrow morning to head into the sticks. Before he drove south to meet with colleagues at UC Santa Cruz, we had a lovely lunch with Lisa Is Bossy at Sushi O Sushi. I love sushi. I love Lisa. She gave us some of her special passion fruit French macarons. There are no pictures because they were THAT delicious (thank you, sweetheart).

sashimi for me me me (and lisa and jeremy)

the something something roll – exceptionally wonderful

You just can’t have a visit with family without some GOOD Chinese food (at least you can’t in my family). We’ve been enjoying the noms in between running errands for Grandma. I swear it blows me away that these three beautiful women each look several years younger than they really are. Mom just told me I couldn’t divulge her age on the blog, but I think it’s okay to say that Grandma is 88 and still kicking ass. In fact, all three of these ladies kick ass.

mom (left), my aunt (right), and grandma (bottom)

beef noodle soup

soup dumplings (tan bao)

I thought an appropriate recipe to share this time would be a Beijing-style Chinese breakfast. It’s my Daddy’s favorite. He used to make this on weekends when I was in high school. So I’m posting this in honor of Dad since we’re having a girls-only visit this time. It starts with Chinese doughnuts.

chinese doughnuts – not quite what you were thinking

soybean milk

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Recipe: creamy mushroom soup

I was going to get the workshop registration up and running this week before I left for a shoot. I came to the realization this morning that if I opened registration right before I was leaving, people who had questions or problems would be stuck out until I returned. So, in a move that will maintain my sanity and hopefully prevent some of you from hating me, I’m pushing it out a couple more weeks because I am going to be living in the dirt and incommunicado for a little while. However, I did put a logo together and my fellow cohorts gave it the thumbs up… I know it’s just a logo, but I am not a graphic artist, so this was a small victory for me in the Land of Crazy Busy.

just so you know i’m not slacking off on ya

Earlier in the week, I had a shoot in Boulder which involved a bowl of berries and a bunch of kids – a bunch of fun and sweet kids. When the shoot was done, the girls sat down with the berries and happily stuffed them into their mouths, one after another. It’s hard to imagine anything more springlike than hanging out with three giggling children eating fruit on a gorgeous, warm and sunny Colorado day. I love that I get to do this and call it work.

sisters being goofy

polishing off the props

i’ve never worked with happier people

But March is psycho-weather month here in Colorado, and while the sun and Daylight Saving has lulled those wishful people into a false sense of Spring, snow is right around the corner. I see it in my forecast – here it comes… I don’t mind snow and cooler temperatures. Right now it is either snow or mud in the mountains, and I really do prefer snow. It’s a great excuse to extend hot soup season.

portabellas, alba mushrooms, onions, thyme, garlic

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Recipe: navy bean soup

I hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend doing whatever it is that you do. As a rule, Jeremy and I do not participate in any form of Super Bowl anything. Typically, we spend that particular Sunday each year hiking or skiing and this year was no exception. Mother Nature can be a cruel prankster at times. While she dumped a few feet of snow on Virginians who don’t know what to do with said snow (other than to bitch and moan about it), we in Colorado got some scraps that amounted to a little fresh powder in the mountains. Naturally, we ski it.

snowing lightly in the glades

There are certain foods I crave after a day out in the snow. The most common would be the ubiquitous hamburger because you smell them as you ski past the mountain lodges and Breckenridge even has a picture of a juicy burger with all the fixings on some of the lift chairs (those bastard marketing geniuses)! Jeremy and I are pretty good about withstanding the lure of the $12 burger because we usually have some nice hearty soup or stew waiting for us at home.

loaded with nutritious vegetables

and remember that ham i brought home from virginia?

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