use real butter

Recipe: spicy tuna stuffed squid tempura

**Note**: Daring Bakers, it came down to the wire and I chose sanity over the DBs yesterday. Forge ahead and hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving had a great one. xoxo

I expect most everyone is in a complete state of food coma at this point. Am I right? We are actually quite happily not in food coma over here just because I’ve sort of had it with food lately (the making, the eating, the documenting). December is less than a week away and that entire month is about FOOD, so we gave ourselves a little break. Plus there was work to be done this morning. We had to pick a winner for the scarf giveaway.

your mission, should you choose to accept it…

Kaweah loves to participate in picking random numbers as long as the motivator is food. Try throwing a ball and she’ll run after the ball, then run right past it, then keep on running, until you wave a dog biscuit in the air and holler, “TREAT!” So the set up was to place ten pieces of paper numbered zero through nine around our great room with a bit of carrot on it. Then we let Kaweah into the room and recorded the first number she ate. Jeremy had to police her because the last time we tried this, Kaweah ate one number and then mowed through four more before we could stop her. Then we repeated this twice more. I’m sure some of you are thinking if she hits the first number, she’ll just return to the same place each time. Nope. Our good pup isn’t that bright. Seriously. She is totally in the moment.

jeremy chases after kaweah to make sure she doesn’t eat the rest of the numbers

our crazy random number generator gave us 983

We took 983 mod 221 (I know a few people said they weren’t entering, but anyone leaving a comment is considered entered because it’s too much work for me to remove them) and got #99. Congratulations to Dani of Dani Dishes! You win the scarf and you get to pick the colorway of your choice! I’ll be sending an email shortly. Thank you to everyone who shared what Thanksgiving was about to you. Food was probably the biggest along with family, and some of you really tugged at my heartstrings especially remembering those who aren’t with us anymore. It was so nice of you to share with me.

Our Thanksgiving was very low key foodwise because we are both swamped with work. I kept our “meal” simple, but special. Mostly, we just wanted to have a quiet day including a nice walk before sunset. I’m thankful for the little things as much as the big things in life.

this snow will likely last through the spring

someone was particularly happy and well-behaved today

definitely thankful for these two

What we ate for our Thanksgiving meal (it’s too early to be called dinner, too late for lunch) is known as Tiger’s Eye at our favorite sushi restaurant in South Pasadena. It is spicy tuna stuffed calamari that is tempura fried, sliced, and served with ponzu sauce. I didn’t have ponzu sauce on hand, so I had to make my own. The recipe I use calls for bonito flakes. I never have bonito flakes on hand either (although you can buy them in Asian markets and I recommend this – or better yet, just buy ponzu sauce). However, I did have a giant piece of dried bonito.

it looks like driftwood

pouring lemon juice and rice wine vinegar into the soy sauce and bonito flakes

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: prosciutto-wrapped figs

Day four of NaBloWriMo and I haven’t flubbed it up yet!

I’m home at last, and while I love love love exploring the natural beauty of Colorado, I love even more how good it feels to be home. This was an excellent scouting trip – not much of a shooting trip. Jeremy kept telling me that he was sorry this road trip didn’t have much in the way of colors (or even leaves for that matter), but I kept replying, “It’s okay, I got a lot of good opportunities earlier in the week.” I suppose it’s hard to imagine how good it was just four days ago when all of the stands are gray and devoid of color now. Now I can finally sit down to do some serious processing. Beth sent me some of her pics from the shoot. We had such a good time.

hard not to smile when you catch the aspens at the right time (courtesy beth bartel)

We shot from sun up to sun down, in the heat and in the freezing cold, we clambered up steep forested slopes and ate a lot of dust on dirt backroads. I’ve learned a great deal about getting the shot over the past several years and I continue to learn with each season, with each time I press the shutter release. The process is becoming more and more rewarding. I hope you are enjoying some of these captures as well.

aspens seem to make their own light

caught just before the storms

waves of color

Before September became officially INSANE, I shot several recipes to tide urb over until my schedule eased up a little. I’m looking at these pictures and realizing that figs are most likely on their way out for most of us if not completely gone. That’s too bad, but just keep this in mind for whenever you can get your greedy little paws on some fresh figs again.

fresh figs are a gazillion times better than dried figs (i eat those too)

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: drunken spicy shameless shrimp with brazen cocktail sauce

I like to think that I’m not a shallow person… and then a recipe like this comes along. I read the title and immediately knew I wanted to try it – just because of the name. Perhaps from now on we should indulge in creative recipe names? Beyond the name, after skimming over the recipe I realized it was a fast and simple dish that makes traditional shrimp cocktail look like a wallflower. This take on shrimp cocktail is like the *hussy* of the shrimp cocktail world – spiked heels, overly tight jeans, bad lipstick, and cleavage. I love it.

a kilo of lovely, raw shell-on shrimp

mixing up creole seasoning

The recipe comes from the Dinosaur Bar B Que cookbook, which I always seem to rediscover each summer. I can’t recall if I bought it for myself or if my friend, Carrie, gave it to me. Even if I bought it for myself, I wouldn’t have known about Dinosaur BBQ had it not been for Carrie’s love affair with the place. So thanks either way, sweetie.

BRAZEN sauce! she’s got a bite

the boil requires beer

**Jump for more butter**