use real butter

Chapter 2: After our weekend of wining and dining, Jeremy and I drove to Yosemite National Park for a quick 3-day backpack to Cloud’s Rest – the best 360° view of the park I have ever seen. I’ll be back with a proper post shortly.

nevada fall in the distance

half dome

cloud’s rest benchmark

summit

resident marmot of cloud’s rest

in camp

on nevada fall

lupine (grape soda?)

drive-by shooting of el capitan

half dome silhouette pre-dawn

Recipe: chocolate gingerbread cookies

This post is coming to you from sunny (and hot) California. More specifically, you could call it sunny, hot, gorgeous, delightful, mouth-watering, seductive Sonoma County (and a little Napa too). It’s been looking like this:

vineyards

wine tastings

gardens

dinner at redd (those are scallops – bloody awesome scallops)

lovely grounds at wineries

the most brilliant lunch EVER

otoro sushi

Before I head into the sticks for a few days, I wanted to wish all of the wonderful moms out there a very happy Mother’s Day! The world would come to a halt without your love and dedication, so thank you for all you do. Of course, I have to give special shout outs to my two favorite moms: Mom (my mother-in-law) and Mom (my mom).

It seems fitting that today’s recipe should be something sweet, like those magical hugs that only moms can give. I recently tested a batch of these chocolate gingerbread cookies and I think they may be the new crack – but LEGAL!

butter, molasses, flour, dark brown sugar, ginger, chocolate, candied ginger, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda, spices, fresh grated ginger, sugar

sift the flour, cocoa, salt, and spices together

beat the butter and fresh ginger together

add the brown sugar

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: roast pork belly on pea purée

The ground is greening up with grasses and the leaves of familiar wildflowers around my house. I spy new bright green tips dotting the conifers on my trail runs and dog walks. It smells good – mountain spring. From my office window, I can see a not-too-distant ridge, white with snow thanks to that recent storm. Neighbors covered their planted flowers with buckets because pretty domesticated plants can’t take the abuse of mountain spring. Our native plants (read: weeds) are tough. They can survive the harsh and fickle changes in weather. Yay for natural (read: lazy) landscaping!

always a welcome sight

some elk noodling around

By the time we melted out last spring, it was summer. I live in the mountains, but shop for groceries down on the flats. So when I though it was finally springtime, most of the spring produce had come and gone and I had missed out. Not so this year, and I was quick to pounce on English peas when I found them. They are so green, so spring.

plump

round food is really appealing to me

I’ve never been a huge fan of peas. Snow peas and sugar snap peas, sure, but not English peas unless they were cooked to death in soup. Over the past few years they’ve grown on me as I’ve had them prepared in ways that emphasize the freshness and the sweetness. Also, I like shelling them more than anything else – something mindless to do while lost in thought. My intent was to make a pea purée that I had bookmarked on my friend, Chris Cina‘s blog. But I wanted to pair it with something different.

pork belleh(!!!), kosher salt, and sugar

trimming the skin off

Pork belly is the starting point for precious bacon, but pork belly itself is pretty wonderful noshing. You (we) see it on restaurant menus all the time around here, so I wanted to roast some pork belly at home, to gauge if it was something worth putting on our menu for dinner guests. I had a straightforward recipe bookmarked (it’s been on my mind for a while) and stripped it down to just a salt and sugar curing mostly because I didn’t have the other ingredients on hand.

cover the pork belly in the salt and sugar

place in a small dish, cover, and refrigerate overnight

**Jump for more butter**