use real butter

Recipe: machaca (mexican shredded beef)

It feels like spring. It was so hot while I was shooting Wednesday afternoon, that I opened the deck door to let some cool air in. COOL air, not cold air. The mercury read 45°F on our deck with nary a cloud in the sky, the wind abating for a day. It felt really nice. I called to Jeremy in the office and asked him to help me carry Kaweah out to the deck. Kaweah spends a good deal of time in her doggy bed because she gets so tuckered out from standing or walking these days.

Her legs are getting to the point where sometimes she doesn’t have the strength to crawl into her bed on her own and we’ll find her with the front half in the bed and the back half hanging out on the rug or the back legs in some tangled spaghetti-like mess. She always greets us with an expression, “Oh hey, how’s it going?” We rearrange her legs into a comfortable position several times a day (and night). She can’t really feel pain when her legs are splayed or twisted in odd directions, we just don’t want her to cut off circulation and do further damage to them.

Because it can be quite an ordeal for her to get out of bed and move elsewhere (like out of the sun or into the office), sometimes we pick the bed up with Kaweah in it. The first time we did that a few weeks ago, she was all, “Whoa… what the what?” But now she’s used to it and she rather likes it. Kaweah takes the opportunity to look around (it’s a new and exciting vantage for her) and almost has an air of “Bring me thither!” We set her down on the deck in the sun with a good view of the neighborhood. She was comfortable and distracted by all of the activity around her: dogs, birds, cars, neighbors. As long as she’s happy.

my mom’s orchid (in my “care”) is blooming

Of course, we all know that this warm spell is temporary. Colorado gets her best storms in March and I welcome our powder overlords! Yet spring and even summer have beckoned to me in flashes: spring backcountry skiing, foraging, travel, backpacking, and my summer rituals of jamming, canning, and roasting green chiles to freeze for winter. I always hoard green chiles in August because I fear running out mid-winter. The Hatch Chile Store in Hatch, New Mexico recently shipped me some of their frozen roasted green chiles to try. Normally product offers go straight to my spam folder, because I hate shills and I respect my readership. But I have blogged several green chile recipes in the past and the real deal can be hard to source. I thought it was a good opportunity to find a green chile shipper that I could recommend to others since so many have asked.

5 pounds of medium heat big jims

I requested medium heat whole green chiles. They offer mild, medium, hot, extra-hot, whole, diced, frozen, and fresh (seasonal). The chiles are farmed in Hatch, harvested, shipped fresh or roasted, peeled, diced or left whole, and shipped frozen. Having roasted and peeled my own chiles as well as purchased many pounds of roasted chiles in New Mexico and in southern Colorado, these are by far the most beautiful and best quality specimens I have ever enjoyed. Big Jims (the variety I received) are large, meaty, sweet, and perfect for chile rellenos. After our fix of chile rellenos, I saved two chiles for another recipe I’ve been meaning to try: machaca.

chiles, garlic, lime, tomatoes, salt, onion, bouillon, beef chuck, pepper, oil

season the beef with salt and pepper

sear the beef on all sides

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: individual beef wellingtons

Well, we pulled Kaweah out of retirement one last time to choose two winners for the Helliemae’s Caramel giveaway. We let her choose the numbers earlier in the week. When I set up the treats and numbers, she seemed very interested and so we figured it would be familiar to her.

waiting to pick the first number

Because Kaweah is mostly deaf, we shout at her like she doesn’t understand English. Her release word has always been “raspberry” which meant “look for anything edible in your doggie vicinity and put.it.in.your.mouth!” But when we shouted “raspberry”, she looked confused. Kaweah walked up to the coffee table and regarded all ten of the treats. Her typical modus operandi was to make a beeline for a random treat, suck it down, and proceed to the next three before we could stop her. Instead, she considered the five closest to her nose going back and forth and back and forth.

then she looked at me and wagged her tail because she didn’t know what to do

She’s not a good girl, but she is a sweet girl. One thing Kaweah never did was take food off a table without permission. Except she couldn’t hear permission anymore. And she’s never been the sharpest tack in the box. So we shouted encouragement like “treat!” or “go get it!” and pointed at the treats. It took a long time before she finally ate one… reluctantly. We think she thought she was being a bad girl taking food off the table.

there’s a number 8

and then it was back to confusion

Eventually, we wrangled 6 numbers out of her (two 3-digit numbers). For trying her darndest, we gave her the remaining nine treats (she liked that). Thanks to all of you who not only entered, but shared such touching or funny stories and recollections of loved ones and the food associated with those special people. You all are great! Now on to the winners…

The numbers are: 883 and 148. 883 mod 282 (the number of entries) = 37.

Comment #37 is Twila and comment #148 is Ruthann!

Congratulations Twila and Ruthann! I shall email you shortly for mailing addresses. ***Ruthann, your email bounced. Please contact me via email (see the “about” section for my contact info).*** Thanks again to everyone and especially to Ellen (love you, girlfriend!) for making this giveaway possible. If you can’t bear the thought of forging ahead without tasting Helliemae’s Caramels (or gifting them to someone you love or even just like), you can order them directly from Helliemae’s online.

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I didn’t used to visit the butcher’s counter at Whole Foods regularly until a few months ago. Each week I swing by and see what cut of lean beef is on sale and buy a little bit – for Kaweah. If we’re heading to Crested Butte, I’ll buy extra and freeze it to take with us. One day when I was getting Kaweah’s beef fix, I decided to also pick some up for Jeremy. Well, really for both of us. And when I say both of us, I mean all of us because I wanted to try (and blog) individual Beef Wellingtons.

parsley, eggs, olive oil, pepper, salt, pâté, shallots, garlic, mushrooms, puff pastry, beef tenderloin (not pictured: butter)

My only prior attempt at Beef Wellington was in graduate school. Jeremy was out of town observing at a telescope and I had a bunch of my geology grad pals over for dinner. Back in the day, whenever we hosted friends for dinner, we always asked them to bring a chair – because we didn’t have enough. I honestly don’t remember how the food turned out because it was so nice to just unwind with friends. Everyone loved it, but we were all poor starving graduate students, so of course we loved it. I have a feeling my culinary skills have improved since those days.

season the steaks with salt

and pepper

sear the steaks 1-2 minutes each side

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: miso-roasted cauliflower

Winter storms are marching across (or around) Colorado this week. We had a short 1-day window between storms to zip over to Crested Butte. There’s so much powder being dumped that it’s enough to make a girl’s head spin. So she might be forgiven for suggesting getting a handful of first tracks in the morning before packing everything up to drive 5+ hours. And now we’re about to celebrate our first Chinese New Year in the new place! I guess it isn’t so new anymore, but it still feels new. The important thing is that we all love it here, including Kaweah. Of course, she sleeps most of the time and it tugs at my heart that she can’t enjoy the high country, trails, town, or even the neighborhood with us the way she could just a few years ago.

old pups need lots of naps

i brought “fu” (luck) to hang upside down on our front door

Chinese New Year will be just a tad simpler in Crested Butte than normal, because the kitchen is smaller and the groceries around here aren’t so great for traditional Chinese cooking. I prepped several dishes in Nederland and will make the rest here on Thursday (Chinese New Year’s Eve) after we ski the powder. Yes, there is powder and a lot of it in the forecast for CB! We took a break from work on Wednesday afternoon to squeeze in a nordic ski and the snow was already falling. Getting outside is the very best medicine for me.

me, my sweetie, and large fluffy flakes!

along the slate river

I can tell that the Crested Butte kitchen is slowly coming up to snuff because the types of meals I prepare here are converging with the types of meals I prepare at home. We ate a lot of simple dishes when we first moved in – boiled things, grilled things, roasted things. We still do a lot of roasted vegetables because it’s a lovely way to enjoy Brussels sprouts, broccoli, butternut squash, asparagus, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, and cauliflower. I have always loved cauliflower and all vegetables thanks in no small part to my mom’s great cooking. Most of the time she would stir-fry or braise the vegetables, but now I’ve added roasting to that list of favorite techniques. It concentrates the sweetness and flavor so nicely, and it’s pretty easy to do. Roasted cauliflower is a real winner of a dish, but the other day I thought to add miso to the mix… because how could it be bad?!

pretty purple and orange cauliflowers

so pretty

**Jump for more butter**