use real butter

Recipe: rice pudding

You know what this is? This is fakeout winter. Fakeout winter is just enough snow to string you along into thinking you’re getting a real ski season interspersed with days so warm as to induce flowering plant confusion. During fakeout winter, you pretty much have to take advantage of whatever you can get.

like taking dogs on romps in the snow before it melts or blows away

or skiing breckenridge in what feels like spring conditions

Then when the weather just isn’t cooperating or there isn’t enough snow, you catch up with friends who are about to ship off for the other side of the world. Boulder has a plethora of lunch options, but you will never go wrong with Pizzeria Locale. Safe travels, Andrew!

super psyched for the butterscotch pudding

I think most of you know that I’m not a huge sweets fan. Like the butterscotch pudding above? I tasted it. It was very well done, but I didn’t want any more than a taste. There are only a handful of desserts that I really love and most of them are either fruity or creamy (I am also crazy for caramels). Creamy, as in, dairy based. I actually think it is a good thing that I’m lactose intolerant so I don’t indulge in these pants-size-altering treats often. I think custards rank near the top of my list for creamy desserts. Eggy, custardy, silky, slightly sweet – I love it. And that’s probably why I am so fond of this custardy rice pudding.

arborio rice

Having attempted numerous rice pudding recipes over the last couple of decades, I was never really satisfied with any of them. That is, until I came across this one in Fine Cooking last summer. It calls for the addition of egg yolks, which is what you do to make custard. SCORE!

eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla bean, cinnamon

pour in a quart of whole milk

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: butternut squash pasta sauce

We received some snow.

And the Big Bad Wolf stopped trying to blow our house down.

Paradise can be a harsh mistress, but when she smiles favorably upon us there is nothing for it. Time to get outside!

glorious bluebird day with no winds to speak of

I was getting tired of the indoor workouts – continuous motion while going nowhere and still feeling stir crazy. All exercise is not created equal, you know. Kaweah won’t go near the treadmill (she’s scared of it), but she loves to go for a ski. We are both ardent champions of outdoor activity.

let’s go let’s go let’s go!

Jeremy and I finally grabbed a day at Vail too. No lines, no crowds, fresh falling snow, great conditions, and overpriced burgers. We skied the bumps, steeps, and trees. At the end of the day, my entire body was hurting, but in the best way possible.

overlooking vail valley

i biffed in the glades, but it was so pretty i had to take a picture

still on the ground, the view of the lovely snow and blue sucker holes in the sky

By the time we get home from a day on the big ski hills, we are pretty much ready to eat the kitchen counter. Being the planner that I am, I try to have something in the refrigerator that is easy to heat up and consume. Lately, this butternut squash pasta sauce has been a delightful change of pace from cream-based or tomato-based sauces.

butternut squash, butter, greek yogurt, parmesan, sage, shallots, salt, nutmeg, pepper, olive oil

I’ve been crushing on butternut squash for years, but only in the past couple of years have I started to prepare it at home. I find butternut squash ravioli irresistable, but I didn’t want to go to the trouble of making ravioli. I wondered if there might be a way to invert the dish, that is to make the filling the sauce? Sure enough, when I looked around on the interwebs, Elise and Garrett had done just that. I followed their lead with a few changes.

peeled, cored, and diced

toss with salt, pepper, olive oil

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Recipe: chinese egg dumplings (dan jiao)

I’ve spent the better part of the past week getting ready for Chinese New Year, so much so that I nearly forgot about my mammogram and ultrasound from mid-week. I’m not traumatized by these appointments. The medical center I go to has really wonderful staff and technicians. I sandwiched the medical imaging into my busy errands schedule that day. At the end, the techs always walk me to the front desk, shake my hand, give me a card explaining to expect my results in 10-14 days, and wish me good health. For that split moment I wonder about those results. It’s the difference between nothing and everything. And then I strode briskly out the doors, my brain in grocery-hunting mode.

making dumplings

Most of the food is prepped or cooked for the big feast on New Year’s Eve. The house is nearly clean because once the new year arrives, you can’t clean for 2 weeks lest you sweep the luck out. Speaking of luck, it’s tradition to hang the Chinese character for luck (fu) on your front door, upside down (dao). Dao is also a homonym for the verb “to arrive” – so you definitely want luck arriving at your door, at your house.

here’s what fu looks like right-side up

Jeremy and I reached a stopping point in the housework Saturday afternoon and took Kaweah for a walk before the snow storm arrived in the evening. It was ridiculously warm out – 45°F! It felt like spring except for the sun low in the sky. There were patches of bare ground dotting the snow… sad, but not uncommon. What horrified me were the puddles. Liquid water shouldn’t be making an appearance around here until May!

splashy splash!

kaweah is an all-terrain kinda girl

Kaweah had a blast sniffing every.darn.thing.on.the.ground. Back home, a message waited in my in-box from my health care provider. Strange. I wasn’t expecting anything. It was a note from my oncologist that my scans were clean. I grinned. That was only four days ago. And my oncologist is working on a weekend AGAIN (of course – he is amazing). It’s been over four years since my first mammogram did NOT detect my cancer, so I take these negative scans for what they’re worth. I trust my yearly MRIs more. Even so, it’s a really nice way to start the new year.

Every Chinese New Year’s Eve we enjoy a big pot of cellophane noodle soup, a type of hot pot (huo guo) that is different from the more common Chinese hot pot. I make the cellophane noodle soup several times a year, but Chinese New Year’s Eve is the only time I go to the effort of making egg dumplings (dan jiao) to add to the soup. They represent wealth (any dumpling represents wealth).

the filling: ground pork, green onions, black mushrooms, bamboo shoots, ginger, napa cabbage

mincing the ginger

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