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Recipe: savory goat cheese parmesan galette

I have a horrible habit of feeling like the whole day has gone to hell in a hand basket if I wake up late. And by late, I am talking about 7 am on a weekend… because I want to be on the trail by 6 am, see? [I’m pretty sure that was my dad’s doing because every weekend morning if my sister and I were not up and ready to go sailing by 7, he would come in and boom, “Are you going to waste your whole life away?!”] It’s not limited to mornings though. I missed a certain wildflower bloom while I was busy working on a major deadline. I met that bloody deadline. And yet I couldn’t help but feel like the wildflower season was over. But it’s not over, as I discovered.

the flowers, they are still there

plenty of parry’s primroses up high

I felt like I needed to get outside and do my thing, and that hike helped to jolt me out of this ridiculous mindset that the flowers were done and summer nearly ended. No, we are in the thick of summer and it is a glorious summer at that. I’m feeling refreshed, recharged, invigorated. Sure, I missed the early bloomers, but now I get to enjoy the mid-season flowers – brilliant pink parry’s primroses and fireweed; little blue forget-me-nots just starting in the alpine basins; pink, red, magenta, cream, and yellow paintbrush; purple asters, yellow sunflowers. I felt so wiped out last week, but I think I was just decompressing and bouncing back.

this is my therapy

[You can see the rest of the photos on the photo blog.] And believe it or not, I got some baking mojo back. Cooler, rainy weather helps with that and there has been a recipe I had been mulling over in my head for a year now. I love galettes, because they are easy and beautiful in that rustic way. Most galettes are sweet and while I enjoy fruity galettes, I really really had my heart set on a savory galette. I’ll take savory over sweet any day.

yup, butter goes into the parmesan crust

pour cold water in

I found a nice recipe for a Parmesan galette pastry and tweaked it a little bit. It comes together quickly in a food processor and then sits in the refrigerator. For the filling, I chose a bunch of ingredients I had on hand. You could put any combination of wonderful flavors in this galette as long as they aren’t too soggy.

mmm bacon, garlic, thyme, zucchini, goat cheese

Roasted garlic has always appealed to me for its nutty and buttery texture. It plays beautifully with goat cheese. If you want a punch to the filling, then you could mince the raw garlic and mix it in the with goat cheese – letting it bake in the oven instead.

roasted garlic

roasted garlic, goat cheese, salt, pepper, thyme

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Recipe: homemade limoncello and limon sunrise cocktail

despite the rainy day, the flowers still say it’s summer

As I went around the house flipping all of our calendars (yes, I’m the type who requires calendars and clocks everywhere) my eyes settled on August 1st. It’s my sister’s birthday today (Sunday). How old would she have been? I had to first remember how old I am and add five and… It has been over six years since Kris passed away, but I still think of her every day. People who have lost siblings have told me that you never stop thinking of them. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Jeremy came home Saturday evening after a week in Oxford and it feels like life has returned to normal. Whatever normal is, I like it. Today was overcast, cool, and rainy. A nice respite from the heat.

my chinese chives are starting to flower (these buds are delicious in a stir-fry)

But I’m still prepared for the hot weather because I know it’s coming back soon enough. Oh yes. Back in May (which seems so far away now), I purchased two bags of Meyer lemons from Whole Foods as their season was quickly coming to an end. After depleting our supply of Buddha’s hand citron vodka rather quickly, I figured it was high time I tried my buddy Figs’ recipe for homemade limoncello.

scrubby dubby the lemons

harvest the peel

These are the types of projects that require patience, planning, and the ability to forget. You can’t make it and consume it the same day. While the Buddha’s hand citron vodka took 40 days, this took 80 days. I hid it away in my office closet where it could stay in the cool and dark. There were plenty of things to distract me from the limoncello, but when I remembered it, I’d get excited about the day it would be ready.

all of the peel

into the jar

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Recipe: red bell pepper honey vinaigrette

I’m out of the cave. ‘Tis a good thing.

Back when we were in Crested Butte for the wildflower shoot, Jeremy and I got chased off Daisy Pass by thunderstorms. I don’t mind shooting in rainy weather, but high winds are a deal breaker. This stormy weather lasted for a few hours each afternoon, so we’d take the opportunity to roll into the town of Crested Butte and grab a bite. As I’ve mentioned before, we know the backcountry around Crested Butte better than the town itself because we’ve always driven through it rather than walked around in it. It wasn’t until last summer when we met up with my aunt’s family for dinner one evening (we were shooting, they were on vacay) that we had a meal in town.

prayer flags

The first stop was Secret Stash for some pizza and salad. We get this way when we’re spending a lot of time hiking and shooting – we crave fresh vegetables. You know what I love about mountain towns? You can look like complete hell and smell worse and it’s okay. I nearly fell asleep in my salad, but we still had another 5 hours of shooting.

gringo greek salad

they are famous for their pizzas

The second day we moseyed down the main drag to grab a bite and chose a place at random – McGill’s. It’s a nice place for lunch. We both opted for salads. Jeremy ordered a seared ahi tuna salad and I had the blackened grilled skirt steak salad. The dressing was so good that I asked if they shared their recipe and was told that they don’t. Really? Okay… it’s not like they don’t give half of it away in the name of the dressing: red bell pepper honey vinaigrette. As Jeremy settled up the tab, I tasted the dregs and identified the flavors and jotted them down on my iphone. Guess what I did when we got home?

we’ll start with red bell peppers

and some honey

It’s not hard to deconstruct these things, so that’s what I did. I’m not much of a recipe developer. I don’t have that kind of patience. Salad dressings are relatively simple though. I could do this. I used some of the honey I had leftover from a client’s shoot. Have you heard of Grampa’s Gourmet Honey? They are local here in Colorado and the honey products are as gorgeous as they are delightful.

that blender is getting a lot of use this summer

red wine vinegar

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