use real butter

Recipe: porcini mushroom quiche

I’m running on fumes here, logging a handful of hours of sleep a night. I think summer is Crazy Time, because there is Just.Too.Much going on. Oh, it’s all good stuff, but it never lets up… until autumn. Early morning is our favorite time to get outside for hiking, biking, trail running. The sun is low and the air is nice and cool (or cold if we’re lucky) and very few people are out and about in the mountains. It’s a great time to see wildlife too, because they tend to be morning types.

cross a lovely mountain stream

visit a nice, cold alpine lake

spot some pretty rose crown (or queen’s crown) blooming in the high country

Afternoons of late have been solely dedicated to food. Some of it is shooting food and most of it is processing the gems of summer for Future Me to cook with and enjoy from October through June.

15 pounds of tomatoes: sauced and diced

You’d think I’d catch a break at night, but that’s the time to catch up on emails, photo processing, computer stuff and other work. But wait! We’ve had a string of awesome nighttime lightning storms marching overhead, dumping rain, and lighting up our skies. Jeremy and I were admiring one such storm Monday night from our deck door (because it’s fun to watch when danger of death is low). I had my camera running on timed, long exposures and caught a few nice strikes.

i just love the squigglies

As the strikes became more frequent and drew closer, I pointed the camera at our local ridge. A few more lightning bolts fired out of my field of view and I questioned my decision to move the camera. Then a giant column of blinding light struck repeatedly for several seconds on the ridge in front of us. It caused us to jump and we both involuntarily closed our eyes because it was so bloody bright! We heard cracking and popping in addition to multiple thunderous booms. I couldn’t see for several seconds, but when I blinked, I could see the negative image of the bolt across my field of view. It saturated my exposure, so I had to crank the processing to tease it out. It was really effing cool.

mother nature, you win

As tired as I am, I’m sad to report that my early mornings spent foraging in the mountains are coming to an end until next summer (I think). I’ll be grateful for the sleep, but will surely miss those treasure hunts with my pal Wendy.

especially when we find beauties like this

So let’s do one last fresh porcini mushroom recipe, shall we? I’ve been wanting to make a quiche with fresh porcinis ever since last summer. The delicate flavor of a fresh porcini profiles nicely with cheeses, dairy, eggs, butter – always with the butter. The majority of you probably don’t have access to fresh porcini and that’s okay. Feel free to substitute another fresh mushroom here. Personally, I’d go for something more exciting than a white button mushroom if you can find it. Just don’t be picking random mushrooms from the ground without knowing 100% for sure 1) what it is and 2) that it is edible and non-poisonous. I’m serious – don’t be stupid or I’ll have to come over and slap you.

the filling: milk, cream, onion, eggs, mushrooms, gruyère, butter, flour, salt, prosciutto

let’s make the crust first: butter, ice water, flour, sugar, salt

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: corn and prosciutto pizza

Every June when the backcountry snow begins to thin and our minds turn to hiking rather than skiing, I look forward to summer’s arrival. I am ready for it. I love the idea of summer. Summer sounds great to me. By the end of July, I’ve had my fill of summer. I know summer lovers outnumber winter lovers the way extroverts outnumber introverts, but kids… I’ll have my autumn now, thanks. Just the other day it was raining and 59°F outside. Delicious. Even though our summers are pretty short here in the Colorado high country, I would gladly give up a month of summer in exchange for a month of autumn. But that’s not happening in the foreseeable future. So while I wait for autumn’s (hopefully early) arrival, we continue on.

Kaweah had her summer stink going on something fierce, so we decided it was high time for her to get a bath. She hates baths. When we take her outside, she’s happy enough just standing around sniffing the news on the air, lazily wagging her tail. Then she catches sight of THE HOSE. She notices Jeremy carrying THE BOTTLES of shampoo and conditioner and she spies THE TOWELS in the driveway. Kaweah then starts to walk back toward the front door. No matter how you call her, entice her, try to give her a little push, she digs in with all her might and won’t go an inch in the direction of the hose.

so jeremy has to intervene and carry her

kaweah has a habit of not looking at things she really likes and things she really hates

thought bubble would be “blarg!!!”

We now have a clean puppy who smells like lavender Buddy Wash and the trauma of the bath is forgotten until the next time. Kaweah doesn’t get baths as often as she used to because she doesn’t get filthy going on hikes with us anymore. It breaks my heart every single time we leave her at home, because she knows what it means when we grab our packs and don our trail runners. She used to stand at the baby gate and wag her tail, hopeful to the last second that she too would come with us. Now that she knows the routine, she curls up comfortably in her doggy bed and rests her chin on the bumper, watching us go. This is great incentive for us to hike faster so we can get home to be with our pup.

trails like this beckon to me

some of the loot this time of year in the high country (more porcini!)

When it’s warm, I tend to get lazy with the whole cooking thing. The grill sees a lot more action than the stove or oven, and I obsess over local seasonal produce like corn, tomatoes, melons, peaches, and berries (because they are so damn good). The other day, my friend emailed me that she and a friend had a wonderful meal at Pizzeria Locale. Oh yes, I love that place. My favorite pizza to order there is the Mais – corn, prosciutto, garlic chives, and crème fraîche. And suddenly, I had a craving for pizza.

let’s make pizza: pizza dough, corn, butter, red pepper, parmesan, salt, pepper, prosciutto, mozzarella

slice the kernels off the cob

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: porcini mushroom gruyère burgers

My good friend, Erin, is a native of Colorado, and yet she had never been to Crested Butte before. So we invited her out to spend the weekend with us hiking, eating, and even meeting some of my entertaining nature photog pals (who were here for the wildflowers). It’s the height of the wildflower bloom, so the hikes were especially beautiful this time of year.

erin jumping for joy on beckwith pass

erin for scale next to a green gentian stalk

close up of the green gentian flowers

a windy evening at the mountain

On Sunday, we did a 13-mile hike up to the high country. The pattern of summer monsoon storms has started in the last week and we’ve been getting some really productive rainstorms in the last few days each afternoon. At a trail junction around 11,000 ft. we paused to let a trail runner pass us. She chatted with us briefly about the trails and continued on. Just then, I spotted something familiar at the base of a tree… It was a mushroom, but not any mushroom – it was a Boletus edulis or King bolete or porcini. Wendy and I have been discussing when our local porcinis would flush this season for the past two months. I had no idea I’d find one in the wilderness outside of Crested Butte! [Note: DO NOT forage for mushrooms unless you are with or ARE a trained expert. Eating the wrong mushrooms can make you very ill or even kill you.]

erin models the porcini on the trail

How timely to find my first porcini of the season because I have a recipe I’ve been waiting to post since last year’s porcini season ended. Most of the year, if you are eating porcini, it has been dried and rehydrated. But during this magical period in summer when the rains come and the mushrooms flush, you can enjoy fresh porcinis. I had them with burgers.

little bouchons

butter, white wine, gruyere, porcinis, ground beef, brioche buns

**Jump for more butter**