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Recipe: crock pot roast beef

Whoa. It’s spring. Even here in the Land of Ephemeral Summer, it’s bleeping spring. Talk about a mind fuck what with Daylight saving, another round of chemo, and the warm spell this weekend – I have awoken to a world that is now a lot… hotter. Not that I mind spring. Despite my love for winter, I actually embrace the arrival of all seasons because it’s a refreshing change. To be honest, spring here is really a warmer version of winter with nice big snow dumps paired with longer sunny days. Makes for great mountaineering conditions and who doesn’t love to ski some of that corn snow in the backcountry? Tap tap tap – waiting for the snowpack to get just right. Oh, my tele days are not over yet – not by a long shot.

And let’s not forget the bounty of spring produce. I get all excited in anticipation, although I’ll have to figure out which foods I can and cannot partake of because of my treatment. Still, a creative cook can make her way around some of those obstacles. Even though we’re still days off from the official start of spring (and in my neck of the woods it doesn’t feel like spring until May) I got started on my spring cleaning of sorts: closets, cupboards, paperwork, projects… While I was at it, I remembered that I had several recipes squirreled away for posting and some of them are “wintry” dishes. Best to get on those soon, eh?

Oh but first, more goodies in the post – a surprise from dearest, sweetest Anita of Dessert First! I have to say that food bloggers are some of the nicest people in the world. Add to that the fact that they also have teh best taste in food stuffs and you will never be more pampered and showered with love by a better person or persons.

i nearly peed my pants when i saw where the yummies were from!

Isn’t she a dear? What a complete delight to have these to look forward to after my treatment. Anita, you are the best! xxoo

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Recipe: grilled lobster

Remember the surf we had for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday?

it stirs the memories and some salivation

Tonight we continued the debauchery with a little bit o’ turf. I wanted to serve it with potatoes and sweet potatoes. I think it was a very good idea to postpone the beef until tonight otherwise I may have wound up in food coma or worse.

nice and standard tenderloin

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Recipe: pear ice cream and wine poached pears

It’s the right time for pears. I enjoy pears, but the fruit carries some baggage for me. In Chinese, the word for pear is a homophone of the word to split or to leave. My grandmother and mom never allowed splitting a pear between two people (for fear that you would be separated). However, splitting among three or more is okay. I never quite understood all of it, but they scared me so much with their superstitions that I follow it (and many others) to this day. I even consulted with my grandmother to find out if it was okay for us to share a pear with the dog. She gave it some consideration and concluded that yes, it was okay, since the dog is part of our family and that makes three.

About nine years ago, I was in Argentina for field work and the whole team was in camp together for one night. We usually paired off and only met up in town for supplies, downloading data, and meeting with local geologists. Ben and I dropped by a grocery store en route to camp and I picked up some ingredients for dessert to follow the asado. I made poached pears in red wine sauce and served it with vanilla ice cream (which I kept cool by tying the carton in a plastic bag and chucking it into a freezing cold stream on a leash). It was suprisingly good, but I think everything tastes better in the backcountry. Seeing pears on sale at the store stirred up those old memories.

First I made some ice cream – pear ice cream. Now with my copy of The Perfect Scoop in hand, I dabbled with DL’s pear and pecorino ice cream. Fruits like pear and lychee have such subtle and almost flowery flavors that they beg to be made as ice cream.

probably too much pear, now that i think of it

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