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Recipe: rose water lemonade

When it’s hot in the mountains, I tend to get a little nervous. Hot, dry, and windy conditions are what we fear most in the southwestern US. We’ve been keeping an eye on the wildfires along Colorado’s Front Range, but wherever we are the red flag warnings for high fire danger are going up. To avoid the heat, Jeremy and I have been getting out in the mornings and evenings for runs, rides, and hikes around Crested Butte and holing up in the office during midday where it remains comfortably cool (no air conditioning, it’s just an incredibly well-designed house). Every trail or path or dirt road is lined with wildflowers. They are coming along nicely pretty much everywhere.

northern fairy candelabra – i absolutely love these tiny little flowers

prairie smoke

sunset over mount crested butte

lupine on an evening hike

my favorites are the deep purple lupine

western wallflower

As some of you know, I am obsessed with keeping cool in summer (or any time) because I really dislike the heat. That’s why I like the mountains – because it’s cooler. But even the mountains can get those handful of days when the heat feels unbearable. Typically, I’ll cool down by drinking plenty of ice water, but occasionally I love me a fruity and refreshing drink. Last October, Ellen hosted a girls’ weekend down in Colorado Springs and took us to Uchenna for wonderful Ethiopian fare. I sampled the rose water lemonade and it had a remarkable cooling effect on me. My mind has wandered back to that lovely meal several times since, but I’ve been craving the rose water lemonade with the hotter weather.

rose water and lemons

to make rose water lemonade: sugar, rose water, lemons, pinch of salt

My rose water was in the spice section of my local Whole Foods store. If you can’t source rose water where you are, I’m sure you can order it online. I like to start with a simple syrup because it dissolves all of the sugar and mixes the sweetness more evenly in the lemonade. Do this step ahead of time enough so that it can cool to room temperature (or at least lukewarm) when you mix it with the lemon juice. Also, I juiced four large lemons to get a 1 cup yield of juice. That’s just a guideline, it will vary with lemon size, juiciness, and the efficiency of your juicer.

combine sugar and water to make the simple syrup

fresh-squozen lemon juice

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Recipe: blueberry jam

We’re just a couple weeks away from summer and everyone I know is busy doing stuff. I can’t keep track of who is where and doing what and when anymore (forget about keeping track on Facebook, the only thing in my feed the past few days has been the Red Wedding). We have been working on so many things around here that the local flora has been popping up like a surprise party.

suprise! gold banner

Last year, when I started on my canning kick, I felt like I was in a frenzy to grab up the local peaches and ripe strawberries and ripe local luscious wonderful tomatoes. But when I said (in my head) that I would like to make some blueberry jam, I found that organic blueberries were prohibitively expensive. At $6 a pint, one batch of jam would cost me $36 for the blueberries alone. Screw that, I said to myself. Besides, I had a hundred pounds of tomatoes to can. No blueberry jam.

My friend, Laura, gave me a heads up on a one-day special at Whole Foods Boulder last Friday: $1.99 per pint of organic blueberries. Hello?! I was in town that day. I bought a case. Weekend project: blueberry jam.

you are mine

six pints of blueberries

all you need: sugar, lemon, cinnamon, nutmeg, pectin, and blueberries

The first thing to do is squish the blueberries. I tried mashing them with a heavy meat tenderizer and they sort of went zipping out of the bowl. I set the meat tenderizer down and decided to squash them by hand, one by one. The point is to break the skin so the juices release and come into contact with the sugar otherwise the sugar will be too dry and may burn during the jamming process. It’s a good activity for non-skilled associates (children, spouses, other relations, friends, even strangers), but I don’t recommend asking the dog to help. I found it to be rather therapeutic. Also, my fingers didn’t stain (much) because blueberry guts are almost colorless and the skins didn’t seem to release much of their deep color on my hands.

i’m crushing your head (who remembers that skit?!)

mix the sugar with the crushed berries

zest and juice the lemon while the berries boil

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Recipe: crème de cassis (black currant liqueur)

I have been waiting nearly a year to post this recipe. Why so long? It’s because I foraged a seasonal item and then spent a month macerating it such that when it was ready, no one anywhere was going to find it. So let’s rewind to early July of last year when I went foraging with my gal pals. I can get single-minded at times which can be a good and a bad thing. In this instance, my eyes were on black currants, because I had it in my head that I would make crème de cassis.

we found golden currants

and black currants

i love the fatties

Even though currants may be past the flowering stage now (they’re flowering in the mountains, but done on the plains), Wendy has a nice and informative little post on currants and how to identify them. These suckers are everywhere. Even my shooting partner has one in his yard, but the crows always eat the berries before I can get over there. Imagine my delight when I scored about 1.5 lbs. last year! [Pro tip: wear dark colored clothing when processing the currants.]

the loot

i plucked off all of the stems and non-berry bits

labor intensive

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