use real butter

Recipe: chocolate espresso crème brûlée

I got up before sunrise and tip-toed around the house this morning. We dipped below freezing overnight. Sticking my nose to the open window, I took several shallow sniffs then one deep inhale. No smoke. Scanning to the east I saw clear skies. The absolute best news? Calm winds. This in contrast to yesterday morning’s hostile 60 mph gusts that slapped our aspens around like rag dolls, ripping leaves off the branches. We found some wood siding from our house had been torn off by the winds as well. At noon, Manisha emailed to ask if we were all right. There was a fire near Boulder Canyon.

It’s September. In parts of the American West, this is synonymous with fire season: the driest (we had 4% humidity yesterday) and sometimes hottest time of year. Toss strong winds and bone dry vegetation in, and you are primed for a fire. We are no strangers to fire season having lived at the boundary of the Angeles National Forest in Southern California. The price one pays to live in Awesome. I hopped on Twitter and the stream of information was flowing fast. Boulder is a good place to be on Twitter. Those crazy winds whipped the wildfire into a nightmare starting in Four-Mile Canyon. It quickly spread in almost all directions and we followed news of evacuations and road closures. Good citizens updated maps in real-time or tweeted updates from the police scanner. When the reverse 911 system failed, authorities asked people on Twitter spread the word that they were going door to door to evacuate.

Smaller fires popped up around the area, but were quickly put out. It was the big one, now called the Emerson Gulch Fire, that was consuming homes and whole neighborhoods. If you look at the satellite imagery of the area, the houses are not next door to each other – they are scattered about, in the woods and canyons/mountains. It’s rough and rugged terrain (people are not on municipal services there – they have giant propane tanks for heating… which explode in wildfires). If someone dropped you into that scenario where several fronts are threatened, how do you go about deciding what to save, what to defend? It’s heartbreaking. That firestorm was so bad, the only thing authorities could focus on was evacuation. Photographs, video, descriptions and links to more information poured in on the hashtag #boulderfire. We watched as the evacuation zone expanded, inching closer to our home.

smoke from the fire was the only cloud in all of colorado (taken at dusk looking east)

When the zone was within 6 miles of our house and authorities closed Boulder Canyon, we began to gather our things. Things are just things. As I packed up letters from and photos of my sister, I realized that the only “things” I could not do without are Jeremy and Kaweah. The rest – even those cherished items that I had of Kris – I could let go of. But while we had the time, we packed what we might need if we had to evacuate and if ultimately the house was lost. [For those of you with an invested digital existence, it’s a handy thing to have an external drive (updated daily) to unplug and grab.] Without a doubt, my mind turned to Ivory Hut who just last week lost all of her worldly possessions to a fire. Thankfully, the winds had calmed considerably since the morning and tankers were finally able to fly in the waning light before nightfall grounded them.

the plume of smoke rising into the evening sky

By last night, the evacuation zone had extended again – to within 2 miles of our home. Evac zone and fire are not the same things, mind you, but we were ready. Here is an incredible time-lapse shot from Flagstaff Mountain last night. Right now Boulder lies choking under a blanket of smoke from the fire. I’m trying to reconcile those images with the clear, sunny day we are experiencing just west of the fire. Our hope is for containment. Thank you for all of your concerned and caring tweets, FB messages and comments, and emails. We are sending good juju to the victims of the fire and the incredible rescue, firefighting, and relief personnel.

Life goes on. My dear friend, Andrew, is leaving today to travel the world for a year, or two, or six. Boulder will miss you, Andrew. We will miss you. Thanks for spending an evening with us on Sunday. Thanks for being such a Force of Good in the community. Safe and remarkable travels, friend. Come back to us any time.

andrew on the terrace at the flagstaff house

perusing the wine list (the guys got cocktails instead)

crab- and salmon-stuffed squash blossoms with caviar (zomgdelicious!)

Well now, there is a recipe after all. This one dates back to my pre-blog days when I had a static website. I have a little sticky note (the virtual kind, not a paper sticky) on my desktop telling me to transfer some of those old recipes over. I think it might be one of Jeremy’s favorites.

chocolate, of course

espresso powder and cream

Chocolate espresso crème brûlée. The chocolate and espresso are enough to win most folks over, but crème brûlée will surely round up the rest of the holdouts. Crème brûlée is one of the more annoying things to have to type out, so I’m glad the fabulosity of the dessert itself far outweighs any inconvenience experienced in writing about it.

add chopped chocolate to the hot cream

whisking egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: green chile cheeseburger

Have you heard about the Threadcakes contest? It’s a fascinating event where entrants select a favorite Threadless t-shirt design (really cool t-shirts, by the way) and make a cake based on that design. Wait a second – they don’t just make a cake, they create edible works of art. This year (the second Threadcakes) I was one of the judges for the competition and WOW! I always talk about how less is more to me, and with regard to cakes it’s because I suck at cake decorating. So to flip through and marvel at each of the entries was an exercise in shouting out to Jeremy, “Come look at THIS one!” again and again until he gave up and just sat down next to me to see all of the lovely interpretations. Please hop over and have a look at the Threadcakes winners – while you’re there, you can grab a discount code for a purchase at Threadless too. Nice. Congratulations to the winners!

soaking up that september sun

I’ve noticed the light is changing around here. The sun is dropping lower as it crosses the sky and my local mountains are starting to take on a faint hint of autumn. It is ever so faint and the shift is subtle. In a couple of weeks it will be that familiar and welcome golden light streaming through the glowing yellow aspen leaves against our deep blue, gorgeous skies. That is Colorado autumn and it is my favorite time of year.

Many years ago, Jeremy and I flew from Ithaca, New York to Albuquerque, New Mexico to attend his grandfather’s funeral. Grandpa was the kind of gentleman who quietly walked you out to his garden in March to show you his tomato seedling projects. When he spoke to me, he would lean forward, smiling sweetly as if sharing a joke. One Thanksgiving when the entire family (and I do mean the ENTIRE family) sat around the long dinner table as dessert wound down, Grandpa sat down next to me and opened his genealogy project notebook. He showed me how much progress he had made in his research by connecting with people on the internet. He eventually turned to the later pages and pointed to Mom and Dad, and then to Jeremy and his brother. His finger moved back to Jeremy’s name which had an empty space next to it. “I’d be honored to have your name there some day.”

The funeral was in October – not a time we typically visited New Mexico. Hot air balloons dotted the skies and you could find Hatch green chiles roasting on several street corners and markets. This is quintessential Albuquerque in October. But for me, there will always be the memory of the sleepy, warm light of fall filtering across the speeding landscape as we transported Grandpa to The Santa Fe National Cemetery. So it was last week when I spied a little chalkboard sign outside of Whole Foods advertising Hatch green chiles from New Mexico. Inside, an employee was loading bags of diced chiles into a small freezer – these were not what I was hoping for. He pointed me to the cauliflower and said there were fresh chiles right next to them. While I stood running my hands over the chiles, the mental associations came flooding into my head. I remembered Albuquerque, Jeremy’s parents’ old house, his old pups (black and chocolate labs) Smudge and Chaco, Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Bill’s awesome pies, looking in wonder at the dozens of colorful and odd shapes that drifted over the horizon during the Balloon Fiesta.

finally, i can show you fresh hatch chiles

for scale

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: prosciutto-wrapped grilled peaches

I get it. I do.

There are folks who want to make money and garner fame through their (food) blogs. And if food blogging is something they truly love, then good luck to them. It’s not terribly unlike people who want to make a living in let’s say, photography – although you can make a living as a photographer without heaps of cash or adulation. I think what bothers me is the overemphasis on (more) fame, (more) money. And you know there are those who will never be satisfied, they just want MORE. They’re easy to identify and in my case, avoid. I’m not a more kind of person. I see a lot of positives in LESS. Maybe if you slapped a pack on your back and hiked into the sticks for a week, you’d get a good sense of what is necessary and important. Maybe not.

I recognize that my priorities don’t always jive with the rest of the flock. I’m cool with that.

What’s funny (and by funny I don’t mean ha ha) is how some are pointing their fingers at those of us who frowned upon gearing blogs to maximize traffic and SEO. “I see your ads and your badges on your blog!” The implication being: having ads or badges on your blog means you have no right to criticize those who want money and fame. In essence, I’ve invalidated my rail against the SEO/traffic machine by hosting an ad and some badges.

Not true.

My blog is my space. I use my blog on a daily basis. Remember, I’m a little OCD and I love to archive. I look up old recipes. I use it to jog my memory (we DID go to so-and-so’s for dinner on such-and-such night four years ago). It tells me what time of year the columbines bloom in the high country. The fact that I can pull revenue to cover the costs of my hosting service (which became necessary when my home grown server could no longer handle the traffic), materials, and conferences is pretty damn sweet. This is not lost on me. The fact that urb is self-sufficient helps me to continue doing it without burdening our finances. That some publications I respect happen to like my mindless drivel is merely icing on the cake. But I’m not filling my posts with tag words (Angelina Jolie boobies chocolate cheesecake chili porn?) and altering content to drive more traffic to my site. Are you kidding? I can barely manage writing what I think in a coherent manner.

What I object to is the cookie-cutter mold for food blogging and the desire to blog just for money and fame. They all start to look the same when everyone is clamoring for and getting a recipe on how to get rich/famous off your food blog. I don’t think much of trend-chasers and disingenuous people. I prefer the blogs that are grown organically, with their own sense of style and voice. Be yourself.

There’s one last thing I wanted to address that some of my dear readers brought up in the comments. …it’s easy not to care about traffic when you have lots of it already! I understand that people want a response for their efforts. They want to know that someone is out there reading and connecting. I had a woman in all sincerity ask me on the Food Blog Forum why on Earth I would blog if I didn’t care about getting readers. As much as I love all of you wonderful people, I would be perfectly happy blogging to no one because (as I’ve said in the past) I blog for me.

My website started in 1994. It was well before the advent of blogs. I had pages dedicated to backcountry trip reports and some recipes. I knew that someone somewhere was going to find that information useful someday. I did this because I found other trip reports to be incredibly helpful. It was about sharing information and helping others. Feedback was unheard of then. I got an occasional email (like every 3 months) asking about weather and trail conditions. Traffic, comments, and SEO had no meaning. Fast forward 16 years (*gulp!*) and I have added urb, a photo blog, and a personal blog. My photo blog gets a few comments, but can go for months without a peep. That’s fine! I just keep dumping my pictures there so I can keep track of my noodlings. My personal blog has a few dozen readers and they rarely comment, but they read to keep tabs on what I’m doing and thinking.

So it’s about me, but it’s not about me. I need the outlet, but not the attention and I’m happiest that way. I learned long ago that placing my happiness and validation in the hands of others is a good way to get really pissed off (and screwed).

frost this morning on the deck

We had our first frost this morning. This means a couple of things. First off, it means SKI SEASON is coming. I hope it arrives before March this time. Second, it means fall colors will be making a (hopefully) grand entrance in a few weeks to Colorado. Third: this is my busiest time of year. Fourth: this is my favorite time of year! But before I get ahead of myself, I need to clear out the summer recipes so they don’t languish in the queue for 11 months. I’m enjoying local peaches like they are going out of fashion.

beautiful, cheeky things

a few slices of prosciutto

**Jump for more butter**