use real butter

Recipe: piña colada sorbet

It was not my intention to make readers cry in my last post, but admittedly, I was crying when I wrote it. Of course, we’re all silly people for crying because Kaweah thinks everything is just grand. She kicks in her sleep and makes little howling barks and growls as she chases the squirrels and bunnies through Dreamland. I wake her each morning with a gentle belly rub and watch her eyes open and her nose suddenly activate. When she realizes it’s me, she rolls belly up, kicks her feet in the air with joy, and goes bonkers thrashing about. Kaweah enjoys a frozen pupsicle (bananas and peanut butter) every afternoon and a nice but short evening stroll in the neighborhood where she checks the doggy pee-mail center at the giant boulder. She’s happy and that is what ultimately matters. We should all be so content in our twilight years. Thank you for your love and kind words for our pup.

in the middle of the road, yeah

And that time of year has arrived – porcini season. Since this is only my second year foraging, I am having a blast comparing data with last year’s season: locations, size, weather, timing, dates, temperatures, moisture, elevations, trails, other species. It’s like an Easter egg hunt, but better! If you want to find the porcini, you have to become the porcini… [Please note: porcini have several look alike species that can make you very ill, do not forage porcini unless you are with an expert.]

buddies

what a beauty

We endured a bit of a scorcher the last few days, so I was especially thrilled to see heavy rain in the forecast and a drop of nearly 15°F in the daytime high temperature. I think the mushrooms will like it too (remember: be the mushroom). Hot weather is problematic for me right now for a few reasons: 1) I’m in the middle of a chocolate shoot for a client 2) I have to monitor Kaweah to make sure she doesn’t overheat (I put her downstairs on the basement floor to cool down if it gets really bad) and 3) it makes me really really cranky. While purchasing props the other day, I heard “Escape” playing in the craft store. You probably don’t know what that refers to. I didn’t. But you’ll know the song from the line, “If you like piña coladas…” I thought to myself, “I do, I DO like piña coladas!” And I became obsessed with having one.

coconut milk, pineapple, sugar, rum (optional, but good)

Personally, I prefer my piña coladas to be slushy, but I decided to take it a step further and make it into sorbet. It’s so easy to do it’s ridiculous and wonderful all at the same time. You could use canned pineapple, but it’s hard to beat a fresh pineapple that is ripe, naturally sweet, and far more flavorful. Oh, and when you open a can of coconut milk, be sure to stir it up as the fat solids separate and rise from the liquid.

chop the pineapple into chunks

measured out

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Recipe: grass jelly and ai-yu jelly

I love the idea of summer. It’s when everything is happening. It’s a visual overload in the mountains. The thing I have trouble with is the heat, and by trouble, I mean I hate the heat. I have sworn enemies in this world and the heat is one of them. It makes me cranky and sad and angry all at once. Jeremy and I both recognize this, so there are things we do to minimize the crankiness like hiking, biking, or trail running early in the morning when the air is cool, the sun is low, and the mosquitoes are still slow. It also means we have the trails mostly to ourselves, which is awesome.

wildflowers greet the mountains

flowers fill an alpine meadow

the view from the trail

If we are lucky, the monsoons bring moisture into Colorado from the south and we get a daily cycle of glorious and dramatic thunderstorms and rain every afternoon like clockwork. Our bluebird skies turn into menacing, roiling clouds over the mountains. Cool winds and heavy rains seem to wash away the dreaded heat, even if only for an evening. It’s wonderful.

storm building over crested butte

But sometimes the storms fizzle and there is no relief. Times like these require taking matters into your own hands. We don’t have the benefit of air conditioning because we rarely need it. I try cooling off with ice cold drinks, sorbets, frozen treats, and one of my childhood favorites: grass jelly. I know it sounds odd, but it is really wonderful stuff. It’s like an herbal tea gelatin. Another similar jelly that I preferred when I was younger (probably because it was sweeter) is ai-yu jelly, made from the gel of a seed of a variety of fig.

grass jelly and ai-yu jelly

you just need the jelly, lemons, and sugar

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Recipe: pistachio rose shortbread cookies

This year, our town of Nederland decided to have a giant picnic instead of the annual Fourth of July fireworks. So we decided to get to Crested Butte a week ahead of my wildflower shoot to catch their fireworks. My parents came along to visit us as they’ve never been to the town and they wanted to see our new place. They are terrible at hiding their emotions, so I was rather pleased when they kept exclaiming how much they love the house, how much they love Crested Butte, and how much they are enjoying themselves. Sadly, it looks like the fire bans across Colorado counties caught up to us here too. The usual fireworks at the base of the mountain were canceled. But it’s okay, because the flowers are quite good already.

arrowleaf balsamroot

lupine

scarlet gilia

Wild roses are also peaking in the mountains and several bushes were gracing our yard with an incredible fragrance last week. I happened to be researching a recipe for a rose shortbread when a light bulb went off in my head. Recipes that call for rose petals always instruct you to source organic unsprayed roses. That’s because you don’t really want all of those chemicals in your food. The wild roses in my yard are chemical free and the flavor is more intense than any commercial rose.

my wild roses

My pal, Wendy, told me that roses have cooling properties. That makes them particularly wonderful in summer. However, I also love the floral essence that roses impart to food. Ever since I bought that bottle of rosewater, I’ve been looking for other things to make with it. I found a lovely recipe on Julia Usher’s site. She offers an alternative to rosewater, which is to infuse the sugars and butter with rose petals. I met her halfway and infused the sugars, but still used the rosewater.

a cup of wild roses, granulated sugar, confectioner’s sugar

half cup of rose petals in each bowl of sugar

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