use real butter

Recipe: chocolate espresso fudge cake

When we first moved in together, Jeremy used to complain about how much time was spent preparing meals. He really liked the idea of bachelor chow, sort of like Kaweah’s dry kibbles – same thing every meal. No hassle, no fuss, no mystery. He still talks about it like some concept that would free up a few hours a day, that is until I mention sushi, or pan-seared scallops, or crab, or chocolate or… I can see the appeal of chow, to get more hours in the day. But the problem for me is that I would miss the prep more than the eating. I didn’t used to think so, but after spending months cooking and baking things I couldn’t eat during chemo, I realized that for as much as I love to eat the food, I love the making of it even more. I wonder among foodies if they love the cooking or the eating more?

Case in point. Today I made Jeremy’s (belated) birthday cake. I’ve been wanting to make this for a while, but between the heat of summer, health issues, and getting stuff done in between health issues – I haven’t had a chance. Today we had rain (and snow in the high country!) with temps flirting with the 30s. Nice.

melting unsweetened chocolate

whipping eggs, butter, and sugar into the fluffiest of batters

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Recipe: flourless chocolate espresso truffle cake

Sometimes I’m bad at following instructions and other times I’m great at it. For instance, in the past several months, many wonderful bloggers have tagged me for various blogging awards. The gist of the blogging award is to display it in a post or on your blog, write whatever it is the award/meme wants you to write, pass it along to other recipients, and name the one who bestowed it upon you. I used to try and keep up with these, but after a while I just couldn’t. As they piled up, I was less and less inclined to get around to them. So I hope all of the nice people who passed awards on to me aren’t offended, but I don’t see these making it to post at all. Thanks for thinking of me, really. I just find the whole award business to be one of those “we’re all going to break our arms patting each other on the back” deals.

chopped valrhona semisweet chocolate

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Recipe: sigara boregi

We saw off our fifth visitor in the past two weeks today. Hey, we planned the visits a while ago – no one figured I’d be having an appendectomy right around the arrival of the first visitor. Well, now that we have the house back to ourselves, we’re relishing it. Actually I’m resting and Jeremy is catching up on work. My healing is slow going and I’m not caring a whole heck of a lot about blogging at the moment as there are other pressing things to worry about. Looks like September will be a slim month on Use Real Butter.

suzanne and kaweah on the deck

I’ve only picked the camera up again in the last couple of days. Our weather was rainy and cool over the weekend. And that meant I had one thing on the brain: snow in the mountains.

start my base, baby

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