use real butter

Hey, how was your weekend? Did you do anything fun? Get work done? Sleep in? Enjoy the weather? Learn something new?

I did all of that and more except for the sleeping in part (of course). A few weeks ago, Jason invited me and others along for a photo road trip down to the San Luis Valley to catch the Sandhill Crane migration. As an extra (and boy do I mean extra) bonus, we brought lenses provided by Pro Photo Rental (one of our sponsors for the food photography workshop in June!) like the Nikon 200-400mm f4 and the Nikon 500mm f4. We had similarly intimidating and amazing lenses for the Canon shooters (Stepan and his dad Oleg). So none – NONE – of my fellow photog pals were able to come! That’s really too bad because they missed out on stuff like this:

sunset over the sangre de cristo mountains and the great sand dunes (at base of mountains)

a pair of sandhill cranes squaring off

The trip wasn’t all rainbows and lollipops. It’s work. We woke up at 4:30 am (the guys got up at 5am) to scope out and shoot before morning twilight. We stood in 4°F temperatures for hours waiting for the sun, waiting for the birds, waiting… There is no running around to warm yourself up – you’ll scare all the birds away! I probably sent about 2 dozen flying off prematurely as I took 10 minutes to slowly walk 20 feet in the snow toward my setup point. Did I mention that I can’t operate my camera with gloved fingers and that the bodies and lenses are all metal – in 4°F weather? And then there was the bland Mexican food. Seriously, we weren’t that far from the border with New Mexico, but yeah – something is fundamentally flawed with the Mexican food in Colorado.

jason looks on as the sun lights up the distant mountains

flying to feed in the rye fields at sunrise

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Recipe: big bob gibson’s barbecue ribs

**Warning** It’s a long post, but there IS a recipe at the end.

The road to knowledge has never been so fun. My teaser from a few weeks ago was a quick glimpse into the Rigorous Studies that I and several food bloggers/writers endured in California. Kingsford University’s 3-day program took us from Oakland to Healdsburg for a thorough study in buttermilk fried chicken, charcoal, slow cooked pork insanity ecstasy, Zinfandel, spice rubs, and grilled pizza. As with any university experience, the journey with your classmates and what you learn from them is just as important as the knowledge gained. So let me hit upon the highlights or else we’ll be here all day and all night!

Orientation: Everyone boarded the bus outside The Claremont Hotel and rode to Picán for an evening that started with a cocktail and hors d’oeuvres mixer on the patio. I was quite delighted in the parade of pecan and hickory smoked pork ribs, country ham and cheddar hushpuppies, chicken liver pâté and chow chow herbed biscuits, and Louisiana crab toasts because I had eaten one crunchy taco all day in my rush to the Denver Airport. [And thus my dirty little secret was revealed to my fellow food buffs: Jen ate Taco Bell Hell.]

i had never dined in oakland before

these biscuits were morsels of tender, melty wonderment

Eventually we were encouraged to mosey into the private dining room where Diane and I immediately scoped out the best seats for shooting – toward the back and against the wall. Priorities, kids. There was much conversation, much shooting of food porn, and of course heaps of phenomenal food. We were welcomed by Drew McGowan of The Clorox Company (parent company of Kingsford), Chef Dean Dupuis, and pitmaster Chris Lilly.

drew and dean introduce themselves and oakland to the group

first course: famous buttermilk fried chicken

first course: choice of shrimp and grits or southern caesar (this was diane’s shrimp and grits)

entrées: choice of grilled berkshire pork shoulder (that’s what i chose)

or grilled loch duarte salmon (what jen selected)

dessert: pear upside down cake

chris talks with picán’s fabulous event manager, miriam

On the bus ride back to the hotel, Chris Lilly sat next to me. I love Chris Lilly. He immediately struck me as a warm, friendly, and down-to-Earth kinda guy. Pitmaster. Wait a second, make that ten time world champion pitmaster and executive chef of Big Bob Gibson’s Bar-B-Q. What does that title say to you? It says “badass” to me. He is the Yoda of barbecue, but he didn’t make us do handstands while sitting on our feet as we tried to levitate the X-wing fighter out of the swamp. Chris was a far kinder master and had Luke been hanging out with Chris instead of Yoda, he wouldn’t have complained about the food… not a peep.

Charcoal 101: The next morning, I managed to wake up early enough to squeak in a workout (after wandering about the grounds of the Claremont in search of the fitness facilities) before we had to load up onto the bus and head over to The Clorox Tech Center where we were greeted with breakfast before sitting down for presentations given by the Kingsford research and development team and an unveiling of their latest product. Our group wasn’t shy at all and many of us piped up with questions, engaged in good discussion with the Kingsford folks as well as with Chris (he’s not a pitmaster for nothing, kids). I’m a gas griller for many reasons the main one being fear of burning down the state of Colorado. My fear has always been rooted in ignorance – my ignorance of how to grill using charcoal properly. Every minute I learned about charcoal at a more fundamental level (think engineering and physics) and in terms of what cooks are looking for, the more comfortable I was with the idea of charcoal grilling.

i dig the lectures

chris discusses what he looks for in charcoal performance

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Recipe: house dressing

I hope everyone had a good weekend. We went for a little road trip to New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment. I used to half-snort at New Mexico whenever we visited because I didn’t think much of Albuquerque. I mean, it’s a fine place, but it didn’t stir any deep emotions within me other than the fact that my dear Jeremy is a native son of the town. I always called it Dirt City because I grew up in verdant, lush Virginia. I have now lived in the American West for a total of 13+ years and I love it here.

Perhaps my time in the West has helped me to appreciate New Mexico more? Let’s face it, Colorado is *easy* to fall in love with (at least the western half of the state…), I think New Mexico had to grow on me. Or maybe I just like northern New Mexico and still don’t care much for Albuquerque. Yes, I think it is the latter.

We drove our two cars across the state border, heading south down the San Luis Valley (a high alpine valley atop the Rio Grande Rift) and from the lonely two-lane road, I watched the sun set to my right over the Colorado Plateau. As it dropped behind the mountains, the clouds and sky exploded in a palette of colors that changed and deepened over the next two hours. To my left, I witnessed equally dramatic colors splashed across sky, the Sangre de Cristos, and the valleys and plains. This was New Mexico as I had never witnessed her before – big sky, endless landscapes, achingly beautiful colors. I understood at last what they meant by Land of Enchantment as stars and Venus began to sparkle at me from a velvety purple-blue dusk.

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