use real butter

Recipe: bourbon bacon cacao nib brittle

It’s taken me well over a week to try and get this post together and I’m still not certain it will publish in a timely manner. All the while, Neva continues to grow and improve and discover more ways to get into trouble. But at last, as of two nights ago she is now sleeping through the night for just over 7 hours. We are ecstatic, elated, and emerging from our zombie state. If you want more than a weekly update on the pup, your best bet is to follow my instagram feed (@jenyuphoto) which typically has daily pupdates.

We spent the last week in Crested Butte, as it is a much easier environment for Neva to train and learn and have some doggy fun. It’s also important for her to get used to the long car rides. So far so good. She tends to sleep in her crate or chew on her toys when she’s awake. And she only cries when she really needs to get out and potty. Bumpy dirt roads or windy mountain roads don’t seem to bother her much. The plan is to have her graduate from her crate to a dog bed in the car – maybe in a few months.

on the way, we spotted a mama bear and her two cubs

enjoying the snow on a pit stop

sunset in crested butte

Neva has been over a week without accidents, mostly because we have learned to read her behaviors better and schedule her activities when her energy is high. We’ve been able to get her on several trails multiple times and even started playing fetch. She has also met many of the neighborhood dogs who are mostly much larger than her, but incredibly sweet and patient. Neva is growing quickly – mostly legs and body – her head is still hilariously little. Kaweah was the same way as a puppy.

she loves her hikes

neva with wyatt, the giant walking carpet (she loooooves wyatt)

We had a string of cool, rainy days before we finally got a sunny and warm one. Personally, I could enjoy cool and rainy for a long, long time, but we wanted a sunny day so Neva could learn to swim. And she did! At first she ran into the water after her toy and then the bottom dropped from under her feet. Like a trooper, she went from running to swimming. It definitely surprised her (and the water was pretty cold), but she swam a lap and came back to shore. She went in a few more times before we toweled her down and let her warm up in the sun. The second time, she didn’t want to go in on her own, so we stood in the water coaxing her over to us. Luckily, Neva is pretty attached to her humans, so despite not wanting to get cold again, she dove in and paddled out to us. She’s earning her Colorado Mountain Dog stripes!

swimming in the shadow of crested butte mountain

swimming neva!

day 2 of swimming – it wasn’t a fluke

Only after we brought the sleeping, damp puppy back into the house did I realize that it was a year ago when we took Kaweah out for her last swim in Crested Butte. Looking at the photos, I marveled at how big she looked compared to little Neva. Of course, Kaweah is never far from our thoughts and hearts. Half the time when we scold Neva it comes out as “Ka-puppy!” And there are the inevitable comparisons. Neva is better about some things and worse about others. All I can think is how lucky we are to be able to love both of these sweet girls in our lifetime.

When evening runs into night and Neva succumbs to the inevitable drowse that comes from being a puppy, she steps into the nest of my crossed-legged position and curls up affectionately in my lap. Stroking her soft downy head, I notice that her fur is coarser along her back – those signature Labrador guard hairs coming in to protect her fine undercoat. I cannot wait for her to become a dog, and yet there are moments when her puppiness is the best thing ever.

covered in dew from her morning hike

Father’s Day is coming up and my parents arrive in Boulder this week. Between preparing for their arrival and dealing with the puppy, this is my only shot at getting a recipe to you before the weekend. It’s a good one and I even messed it up the first time to be able to bring you the best version. I’ve field tested it with various friends in order to fine tune certain elements. We are talking about brittle, but not just any brittle… I figure anything with bacon, bourbon, and cacao nibs can’t really go wrong.

bourbon, corn syrup, water, bacon, cacao nibs, sugar, butter, flake sea salt, baking soda

crumble the bacon

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: grand marnier soufflé

Several weeks before Neva came home with us, we began getting the whole house in order, reading our puppy and dog training books (different methods than when we trained Kaweah), and trying to get a jump on our workloads. Let me tell you – since she came home: the entire house looks like a giant puppy playpen, we feel as if we’ve forgotten everything we read in the training books, and it seems that we are already falling well behind in work. It’s no doubt that part of the existence of Puppy Vortex is because I’m still sick – with bronchitis and no voice. Clearly, recovery is but a pipe dream on four hours of sleep a night.

Neva was getting plenty of sleep and plenty of playtime. However, Wednesday morning she had an episode of trembling and lethargy that was sudden and extremely uncharacteristic. Even worse? She refused food. My stomach dropped. There was only one time ever that Kaweah refused food, and that was the morning we said good-bye to her. I fought back tears and asked Jeremy to call the vet for an appointment. Neva was running a low fever and our vet prescribed some meds and asked us to call him in the morning for a status report. Almost as quickly as she had gone downhill, she bounced back within hours to her normal puppy self – biting everything in sight, romping around clumsily, and wanting to explore the whole world.

Despite the setback, we’ve been introducing Neva to new things. She loves the vet’s office as well as my neighbor’s daughter. She completely goes bananas for plain yogurt and peanut butter. And she loves snow. Since we still have lots of snow in the high country, we took her for her first introduction this week.

sitting for her treat from jeremy

happily munching on said treat

fearless bounding across the slushy slopes

having a blast digging pits in the snow

my sweet baby girl

Despite feeling truly crappy right now, I don’t want to get into the habit of punting each post by tossing up a bunch of puppy pics and calling it good. You good people deserve a recipe, and this one is awesome. It comes from my friend, John of Food Wishes, and I was inspired to make it after ordering a Grand Marnier soufflé at a French restaurant in Williamsburg, Virginia. I served mine with a Grand Marnier crème anglaise (also from John’s site). I just don’t see how it can get any better! If you decide to serve the soufflés with a side of crème anglaise sauce, you should start the sauce a few hours earlier than the soufflés to give it time to cool.

the crème anglaise: cream, vanilla extract, grand marnier, sugar, salt, eggs (yolks)

heat the cream, sugar, and salt

whisk some of the hot cream into the egg yolks

cook and then strain the custard

stir in the grand marnier and vanilla extract

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chocolate budino

I am routinely guilty of tackling my “spring cleaning” in October – after the fall shoot is done, but before ski season kicks into high gear. And well, if ski season gets an early start, then we boot spring cleaning until next fall. Except this year we undertook a spring purge. Call it the decadal cleaning, because it’s time to puppy proof our house. We never had to do this for Kaweah because she was already 6 years old when we moved in and so good about leaving things alone like trash, compost, food that wasn’t hers, plants – everything.

But puppy… puppy will have to learn. And while we’re puppy proofing, why not go through all of our closets, cabinets, drawers, files, and basement? Oh, and let’s rearrange the furniture, too. It snowballed into a multi-day project in which most of the house was sorted for reorganization, recycling, donation, or trash. I’m happy to report that the smallest category was trash. Our car is loaded with old retired electronics and generations of computing equipment to be recycled responsibly at CHaRM in Boulder.

jeremy replaced our uv decals on the windows so birds won’t crash into our house

I’m glad to finally get this cleaning out of the way. For the past several days the weather has toggled between rain, snow, graupel, and hail. We’ve also had some mighty fine thunderstorms roll through in the afternoons and at night. The high country is getting snow – and that is a truly marvelous thing. Perhaps if the stars align, I’ll get to ski one more time before puppy comes home. The best part about this winter holdout is that she won’t have to wait until autumn to get her first taste of proper Rocky Mountain snow.

mist and snow up valley

storm front approaching

graupel falling on our deck

Even though I don’t do requests on this blog, when I last posted about Bacchanale, people had asked me if I’d recreate the recipe for their chocolate budino. I must admit that the thought had crossed my mind, but I didn’t put it into action until we had our neighbors over for dinner last month. I spent some time recipe testing (and I loathe recipe testing) to get it right, and I think we have a winner. I started the crust with a cookie crumb base because it is just the right crumbly, sandy texture to go with a super rich, thick, creamy pudding.

vanilla, sugar, butter, salt, chocolate sandwich cookies

melted butter, cookie crumbs, sugar, salt, vanilla

mix it all together

**Jump for more butter**