use real butter

Recipe: lava flow

Everything seems to be converging on August: visitors, good-byes, workshops (!!), travel, work. Instead of freaking out, I’m in that state of quiet panic while I watch everything fly past me in this surreal slow motion. Maybe it’s my allergy meds? But my allergy medications are good to me because I could stand in a field of hip-deep weeds without sneezing my brains out to get a shot of this the other day:

double rainbow in stormy weather, baby

the primary was super bright

After a spate of several hot and cloudless days, that storm and the cool air it brought was more than welcome. It’s my favorite way to escape the heat in mountain summer since we don’t have air conditioning and we can’t really work in the basement. I find it helps tremendously to drink a glass of ice water. It is my favorite beverage in summer and keeps me on an even keel. But once or twice each summer I will make lava flows to cool down.

i’m really all about the ice

…and fruit

What is a lava flow? It’s just piña colada and strawberry dacquiri, but I love it because it’s fruity and cold. I also dig anything that refers to a geologic phenomenon that is totally amazing to witness. Here’s some lava from 2005 (the Big Island of Hawai’i)…

ocean entry

cream of coconut and pineapple for the piña colada part

the ice is critical

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: mee krob

It’s taken me a few years to figure this out, but I think I have finally turned a photo roadtrip into a nice mini vacation for Jeremy as well. This basically means I’m learning to chill out a little. Just a little. And that’s hard to do in a place like Crested Butte when hillsides are bursting with colorful wildflowers while snow still lingers on the high peaks. I’m getting a lot better at knowing when to call it good, put the camera gear away and grab the bike to go exploring with Jeremy. We helped a fellow who broke his shoulder (he went over the handlebars on the trail) down the trail to get help. We even hit the bike park!

not a bad place to live – at the base of mount crested butte

and the town serves up some creative martinis (red raspberry)

cruising the lupines

it’s mind-blowingly beautiful

All of the snaps from the trip are on the photo blog.

Everywhere we went, there was a constant buzzing – that high-pitched whistle of hummingbirds zipping from flower to tree to chasing off another hummingbird and back to the flowers. They are territorial little guys. I spied two kinds.

the broad-tailed hummingbird

and the rufous

More hummingbirds here.

There aren’t a lot of places that make me question how much I love living where I live, but Crested Butte is certainly one of them. I’m not the wistful type and yet that place makes me point to random plots of land and ask Jeremy, “Is there any way you could be a freelance astrophysicist?”

wild iris and yellow paintbrush

delphinium, golden eye, and mule’s ears

lupine, scarlet gilia, and golden eye

sticky geranium

See the whole set on the photo blog.

Realistically, I’m doubting I could make the move to Crested Butte because I need to get my Asian on. We’re not just talking about Asian restaurants, I’m referring to Asian groceries. I need to feed my addiction for all things Chinese, Thai, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Malaysian so I can make favorite dishes like mee krob. I had no idea what preserved garlic was (it’s really pickled garlic), but found it at my local Asian grocer, much to my delight!

rice vermicelli, fish sauce, vinegar, pickled garlic, tamarind, shrimp, sprouts, paprika, sugar

pickled/preserved garlic

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Recipe: french toast

Greetings from Crested Butte, Colorado! It’s one of my favorite places to be, especially right now at the height of the wildflower bloom. We chucked our bikes on top of the car and packed our hiking shoes in case the flowers were a bust. Turns out the flowers are great – but we’re still hiking and biking because it’s just too good not to. So it’s a lot of shooting, hiking, biking, eating, and not getting much sleep. Totally worth it. I’ve been taking some snappies with my backup camera because I realized a few trips back that I don’t do enough of that on my photoshoots.

lupine in bloom

the beautiful elk mountains

aspens in the rain

The town of Crested Butte is as charming as its surrounding wilderness is spectacular. We made sure to swing by our favorite place for dinner the first night – Secret Stash.

a soaking rain enveloped the town

there are t-shirts to be had

the interior decor is mountain hippie

but the pizza is 100% nomsilicious

This is where I’m happiest. Not Crested Butte specifically (although it is definitely in my top 5 favorite places ever), but outside, in and around the mountains. As offices go, I have to say it’s not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.

stalking hummingbirds

we are talking carpets of wildflowers

mount crested butte

mix and match

I’ve often said that breakfast is my least favorite meal of the day. I am just not a brekkie kind of girl. And if I *do* eat breakfast, I prefer something of the savory persuasion like bacon, sausage, or hash browned potatoes. Because we are waking up so early to shoot sunrise on this trip, we start to feel hungry by 9 am because we’ve been up for several hours by then. For simplicity’s sake, I just stuff a bunch of fresh fruit into my mouth and keep on shooting. But the one thing I love with fresh fruit is French toast.

cinnamon, vanilla, challah, eggs, and milk

thick slices of bread

**Jump for more butter**