use real butter

Recipe: alice’s chocolate chip cookies

Coming home feels good. There are many aspects of southern California that I miss and love: friends, food, cultural diversity (OMG, something other than WHITE!), and it’s familiar. But I can do without the heat, the smog, the traffic… the stress. For us, living in Colorado has fewer stressors – it’s simpler and we like it that way. That is why visiting California is so great. I caught up with more friends during the week over lunches and dinners and election results. Todd and Diane were so incredibly sweet to take an entire day off to meet with me and take me around Little Saigon.

a knock-off hello kitty seal on my milk tea boba

banh mi to kick off the food fest

These guys are like family to me – so generous, loving, open, honest, sincere. They are also ridiculously funny, protective of my interests, silly, and just plain fun to be around. Family. To walk through Little Saigon with the two of them is quite the experience. Todd speaks in Vietnamese with the little ladies in the stores asking about various produce and they LOVE him (who doesn’t?) while Diane explains what the popular snacks are or the difference between a Viet baguette and a French baguette. I noticed that she beams with pride and love when she shares this with me. It’s such a part of who she is and I really love that. I love those two.

diane smiles at a jar of her favorite pickled mango (i am addicted to it)

pâté chaud (puff pastry filled with chicken and vegetables)

But I was on a mission to find passion fruits. Most of the passion fruits on Todd and Diane’s vines were still green (and I don’t want to be picking their bounty clean anyway) and some were supposedly arriving in the markets and getting bought up quite early. We decided to try our luck and just see what was around. Lo and behold, there were passion fruits. BAGS of them! Let me just point out that the bougie bougie grocery stores like Whole Foods and Bristol Farms carry passion fruits. They carry about 12 small ones in some neglected corner of the produce department and they want $3.69 FOR EACH ONE. Diane asks the little lady in Vietnamese how much a bag is. The lady replies and Diane turns to me and softly says, “$10 a bag” and turns right back to the lady to haggle. There were 20 passion fruits in each bag. Diane is haggling, speaking softly in her beautiful native language and I whisper loudly to her, “Tell her I’ll pay $20 a bag! I’ll buy them all!” Without turning around, Diane waves her hand at me – the sign language for “SHUT UP!” She laughs and says, “If you buy three bags, she’ll sell them to you for $9 a bag.” I bought four bags. I hoard shop. It’s a Chinese thing.

score – big time

Next they brought me to their studio in LA for a tour and then to relax and start prep for dinner. We took a stroll around the ‘hood, visited with one of my oldest college friends back at the studio for a short while, and then guests began arriving.

this is willie

diane made passion fruit juice from some of our loot!

totally addictive sweet onion dip and the last candy-sweet tomatoes from their garden

We had a lovely evening with Allison, Son, Melissa, and Rene. [Brooke had to cancel at the last minute because of work and we were so sad to miss her.] The food was exceptional. I think that is a given with food bloggers – we know how to throw a dinner party! We began with that sweet onion dip (aka crack) and the tomatoes, then a lovely green salad with fresh picked fuji apples and homegrown pomegranate seeds. I believe Todd mixed some homemade apple cider sidecars for folks (a drink would have had me under the table). He also made his sinfully magical potatoes au gratin to accompany a one-pot chicken dish they learned from Three Many Cooks’ latest book. Allison brought her light-as-a-feather vanilla cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting for dessert. The conversation was a roller coaster of laughs, revelations, “tweetable” moments, stories, and musings.

who knew a small group could be so boisterous?

diane dishing up some amazingness

thankfully it cooled down enough to open the windows

By the end of my trip, I was feeling drunk on all of that quality time spent with people who are important to me. Several of these friends I’ve known longer than I’ve known Jeremy. It’s good to catch up in person even if you are in touch via email or other social media fairly regularly. In the morning, I watched the sun’s approach over the mountains in the East and began to pack my things, including the haul of 60+ passion fruits. It was time to go home. Home was calling to me.

sunrise through our filthy window

You know what I like to do at sea level? I like to run. I ran and hiked during our trip to southern California because I feel like I’m on jet fuel with all of that extra oxygen in the air. There are things that are more difficult to do at elevation, like run… or bake. Some of my food blog pals like recipe testing and do it for a living. I have to wonder if they would love recipe testing if they had to bake at high altitudes. Because I *hate* recipe testing high altitude baking recipes. So one night I’m looking online for a good chocolate chip cookie recipe. I found Alice‘s recipe and it sounded like the perfect cookie. I gave it a try.

beat the butter and sugars until super light and fluffy

add eggs and vanilla

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: snickerdoodles

What a weekend that was (and yeah, I realize it’s already mid-week now – I’m writing from wine country)! BlogHer Food 2010. In San Francisco. With hundreds of my people. Oh, I didn’t mean people as in Chinese people… I meant “my peeps” as in food bloggers. Looking back, I don’t actually recall how I got from shooting golden aspens in the San Juans of Colorado to having a head-spinning wonderful time in this gorgeous city. A blur (because of the head-spinning… and everything else).

The theme of my weekend was to maximize quality time with the good people I love. Done and done! Chuck and Hungry Bear swept me off the airport curb and drove me into the city for drinks and catch up. My bee-yoo-tee-ful Seattleites, Tea and Lara met me for dinner at Contigo (a blogger must, no?). Simple, elegant, wholesome fare served up by Brett and Elan – two genuinely warm and fascinating people. The food… the food was brilliant and delicious. There, I used the word delicious – so the “delicious” police can just stick it. At the hotel, I was reunited with my friend and roommate Jennie. We both stayed up later than we should have, talking and laughing and gossiping. That Jennie is good people – heart of gold.

yes, let’s eat here

wood oven-roasted sardines on avocado toasts with pickled onions

summer corn and chantarelles

brett, lara, and tea

The start of the first day was filled with screams and squeals as friends reconnected, met for the first time in real life, and generally freaked out. That’s how these things go. I, myself, was guilty of dispensing many, many hugs. I wondered if I would be burned out on conferences having attended IFBC just a little over a month earlier. It requires a lot of energy to be “on” all the time. And by “on”, I am not referring to a public persona per se. I’m talking about a heightened state of interaction and enthusiasm that leaves you barely able to see straight after 12+ nonstop hours. It’s akin to how your face starts hurting because you’ve been smiling so much and so hard.

opening address

brooke listens on while looking fabulous

diane recording video

So there will be inevitable comparisons between IFBC and BlogHer Food because I’m not sure I want to attend both next year and because it’s natural to contemplate an experience in reference to other similar experiences. Unlike IFBC’s big group agenda, BlogHer Food offered four session tracks: values, visuals, vocation, and voice.

todd and diane kick off the visuals track with a great preso

helen and i led a session on professionalizing your photography

These ran in parallel so that you had to choose or session-hop. I see pros and cons of both ways, but the biggest con was missing out on a lot of great sessions. The biggest pro was having a more intimate interaction between speakers and attendees. I liked that it was a proper conference venue because we could leave our junk and all of our friends’ junk (because they weren’t staying at the hotel) in our rooms rather than schlepping everything around. That, and the area outside of the sessions was a great place to connect with friends and regroup.

aran sings to lucy as miren looks on

Let’s get to brass tacks here. The food. It’s a food blogger’s conference after all. The BlogHer Food 2010 food was worse than IFBC and better than BlogHer Food 2009 (i.e. it was edible, but not especially impressive) and the sponsorship was heavily corporate which… I didn’t like. I found myself skipping out on most of the food offerings. Breakfast was meh, because I’m Asian and I want SAVORY food for breakfast, like bacon. Where was the damn bacon? IFBC kicked BlogHer Food in the ‘nads with all of their local chefs and artisan or locally sourced foods and the food trucks (oh, the food trucks…). BlogHer Food food felt and tasted (for the most part) like it was pulled out of a box and laid on a platter. People would say (as if to excuse BlogHer Food), “But Seattle is a great food town.” Um, HELLO?!? We were in San Francisco!

As soon as I heard pasta was on the lunch menu for the conference, I got the hell out of there. It’s not that I can’t make myself sit through a meal that is less than perfect. It’s that I’m in SAN FRANCISCO and I look at my schedule as a series of meals – opportunities to discover fan-freaking-tastic food. Chuck, Broderick, and I hoofed it over to Spice Kit for lunch. Those who stayed for the conference lunch said it wasn’t bad. That’s great. Again, I’m not here for food that “isn’t bad”. I can get “isn’t bad” back in Colorado, m’kay?

at the spice kit: viet, korean, chinese

banh mi

pork belly buns

I blew off the late afternoon session and product demos (can you tell I’m not too keen on the whole product thing?) to get a little quality time with some wonderful people: Shauna and Danny, Aran, and the KIDS! We all told folks that the kids needed some air, needed to get outside, needed to move around, but really – we ALL needed that. The adults enjoyed the peace and quiet of 50+ children running around on a giant playground (Yerba Buena Gardens – kid’s dream come true).

miren resting after she and lu ate crackers and jumped on my bed

lucy wants us to get going

food fête welcome party after conference day 1

Ditching the welcome party early, I had a dinner date! This dinner date was set up long ago – among friends and between very busy schedules. It was originally going to be a smallish group, but over the course of one day it blossomed into a much larger group of 16 (+2 kids): Shauna, Danny, Lu, Aran, Miren, Penny, Molly, Tea, Marisa, Lara, Dianne, Allison, Son, Justin, Jen, Todd, and Diane. Large group dynamics.

finally seated! aran texts penny where we are

molly, shauna, and little lu

I have strong feelings about large group dynamics and large groups in general because I am all about the QT and I feel large groups really diminish that experience. Plus, I hate coordinating large groups because it’s an exercise in trying not to gnash your teeth. That’s the OCD in me. But you know, considering the fabulous awesomeness of the lovely friends – all of the wrangling was worth it to spend an evening together at Amber India. I dare say, their butter chicken was *almost* as good as Manisha’s. Almost. We all wound up sharing dishes around which was even more fantastic. I think the winner was Dianne’s okra dish. Sooooo good!

my butter chicken

tara’s eggplant dish

Day 2 of the conference had me up bright and early. It’s amazing how early I woke each morning with the intention of getting work done and how little progress I seemed to make for the amount of sleep I didn’t get. And several friends brought up one very good point – why do high end hotels charge for wireless when the Best Westerns and Holiday Inns offer wifi for free? The answer: assholery.

golden sunrise over the city

I pretty much stuck with the visuals track for the duration of the conference. Todd and Diane rocked their session on food photography the first day. I think those two are excellent teachers. They are knowledgeable, incredibly generous with their information, and so much fun to boot. Of course, I attended my own session, because I was in it. Helen and I shared our experiences going professional in photography with attendees. Tami, Adam, and Delores delivered a really informative and fascinating panel discussion on food styling. Before I met Tami, I didn’t know there were such people as food stylists. They also tend to be far more fashionable than me… then again, I guess everyone is more fashionable than me, so nevermind that. And then there was Penny. Penny’s talk. I saw her bring the house down at IFBC. But just like I could with Todd and Diane, I could listen to her wisdom over and over again. I was not disappointed. Although I had seen Penny’s slides before, the content was different from her talk at IFBC and it was even more special and inspirational.

the only food that really did anything for me at the conference

skipping the ferry building for some dim sum (shauna and anita)

lunch with food bloggers

BlogHer Food closed out with a panel on something about the heart and soul of a chef (well, they said chef, but really, it was about the heart and soul of these three very talented food writers). I didn’t pay attention to the title because the three members of the panel were a draw for anyone with a food blog. Last year’s keynote panel was about blogging, but this year’s panel was about writing from the heart and writing as a vehicle for introspection, for examination of one’s life. The speakers resonated with the attendees and they shared some of their personal journeys. In closing, Michael gave a great and impassioned speech on how cooking sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom – how cooking has brought about our evolution as a social species. I loved it. The entire session was outstanding.

keynote panel: shauna, michael, molly

I was only at the BlogHer Food After Party (thrown by the hostesses with the mostest(es): Ree, Elise, and Jaden and organized by Jen) for a little while before I had to skidaddle off to dinner, but it was a hoppin’ by the time I left. Also, I can tell you that I found the bacon… at the party. Heaps of good food, great bacon, better people. You will have no doubt seen countless photobooth photos circulating the interwebs at this point. Huge thanks to our hostesses and organizers for another bang up job.

afterparty photobooth: son, allison, chuck, myself, and anita

In a nutshell BlogHer Food 2010 was an improvement over the previous year’s conference. San Francisco is a terrific location. I liked that my hotel room was in the same venue as the conference as opposed to a 20-minute bus ride away. The sessions were wonderful and full of good content. The schedules were not ridiculously jam-packed which gave people the flexibility to do more outside of the conference… like mingle. Unfortunately, the food was surprisingly underwhelming considering that the conference was for food bloggers. I just wish the organizers would get a few food bloggers on board to help with menu planning next time. The sponsorships irked me. I understand the need for sponsors, but I would have preferred local artisanal sponsors over… Pepperidge Farm. It felt like I was being marketed to rather heavily. Also, the twitter stream was a limp fish, dead compared to IFBC’s raucous, insightful, hilarious and (at times) racy hashtag. In the end, what mattered most to me was the people – and they had that in spades. Good job, BlogHer Food.

While everyone else has been trickling back home, filling the twitter stream with “I miss you!”s and “So great meeting you”s, I’m still hanging around the bay area. More on that later, I promise! What I want to share after all of that hubbub over the conference and rockstar status bloggers and great food is a simple recipe. In fact, this is one of the first cookie recipes I learned to bake back in the day.

butter, flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, more sugar & cinnamon – not pictured: eggs

mix the sugar and the butter

Snickerdoodles. I was inspired to make them because I like how the name name rolls off the tongue. Snickerdoodles. Snicker + doodles. I snicker all the time in my head. I don’t doodle so much, but doodle is a funny sounding word. Doodle. *snicker* I’m a snickerdoodle kind of girl. I like butter, cream, vanilla, cinnamon flavors. Chocolate? Not so much. I told Chuck the other day how I tend to eat around chocolate chips in chocolate chip cookies and give all of the chocolate parts to Jeremy. “There are all these *bleeping* chocolate chips! I just like the matrix, not the large-grain suspension!”

adding flour

rolling dough into balls

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: mexican wedding cookies

Yeah, I’ll pick u up! 1:15?

I looked at the text message on my iphone and then put it away. If Beth says 1:15, then she’ll more likely arrive around 1:30. That’s fine. We’d have plenty of time to get to the wedding. Plus it would be good to see Beth. I joked on Facebook that I was flying out to Seattle to see Beth, who lives 30 minutes away from me in Boulder. I hardly saw her all summer – we’ve both been so busy – but now she was going to be my date to the wedding since both of our fellas couldn’t make the trip.

By 1:45 I was starting to worry, but there she appeared and we hopped into the car!

“So do you know where the wedding is?” Beth asked as she began to drive in a general northwest direction. I navigated from my phone map and we were doing fine until the draw bridge began to… draw… up.

“Was 2:00 when we were supposed to get there or when the ceremony starts?” I asked. Eventually the boat passed under the bridge. Eventually we began moving again. When we made it to the park, Beth changed into her dress while I blocked the view between passersby and the driver’s seat. Just as she changed her shoes, I noticed a stream of people file out of the bathhouse toward the beach.

“Beth! Let’s go!!”

We hustled after the line and stood among familiar smiling faces. I dropped my pack in the sand and loaded my cameras, grateful for the moment that I wasn’t the hired photographer for this wedding. My dear friends, Andrew and Nicole, entered the grove of trees.

loved ones look on

listening to the welcome

exchanging vows

sealing the deal

As most of my friends know, I am not a fan of weddings. Perhaps I’m mellowing with age (doubtful) or maybe it’s because the people I’m closest to seem to throw the weddings that are the least offensive to my sensibilities – but it was a beautiful ceremony and I found myself suddenly overcome with happiness for my friends. I learned something that day. I can’t manual focus to save my life when my vision is blurred by tears.

amazing pizzas

andrea is diggin’ the ice cream

the bride gets her dessert

Back in the bathhouse, there were appetizers, wine, and beer. Andrew and Nicole are quite the beer aficionados. Instead of champagne flutes, they had crystal beer flutes. Dinner was catered by some terrific portable wood-fired oven pizza folks Veraci Pizza (thanks for the link, Nicole!) and the Molly Moon ice cream truck (same dude who served us at IFBC 2010!). Honestly, some of the better food I’ve enjoyed at a wedding. I ate five pieces of pizza… hey, they were super thin crust!

the bride is allowed some help while slack-lining

beth partakes in throwing disc

cute little baby gets in on the beach fun too

After slurping down their ice creams (in my case: watermelon sorbet), people wandered over to the slack line, grabbed frisbees from the box, took out the bocce ball set (a game you can play with a beer in your hand), and generally expanded out onto the beach. The National Weather Service said it would rain and then Sunday morning “PSYCHE!” – they changed the forecast to partly cloudy with a little glowing sun peeking through the clouds as their icon.

dahlias as the sun dropped toward the ocean

congratulations, you two! xo

So when I made these cookies last week, I had not made the connection between the name Mexican wedding cookies and the fact that I was about to attend a wedding. It’s curious because I don’t make cookies all that much any more and because I generally don’t attend weddings unless I’m shooting them. Actually, these are also known as Russian tea cakes or pecan sandies rolled in powdered sugar. I informed Nicole and several others that this would be the next recipe on the blog and everyone sort of moaned “I love those cookies!”

the nut: pecans

buttah, flour, powdered sugar

I always think that I don’t love these cookies because they are shortbready which makes me think “dry”. But then I make a batch and eat one for quality control and I’m surprised at how good they are. Well, it is probably in my best interest that I keep thinking they aren’t a lovely little morsel to pop in your mouth. However, I implore you to make these if you haven’t tried them yet. They’re super easy to make too.

some homemade vanilla

the chopped pecans

**Jump for more butter**