use real butter

Recipe: passion fruit bars

Happy new year, everyone! Did you make any new year’s resolutions?

As some of you know, I don’t do new year’s resolutions. I was wondering about this the other day. I realized that it’s not because I don’t do resolutions, it’s just that I am too impatient to wait until the first of the year to start one if I think of it on any other day of the year. That’s how I roll. In the past few months I’ve readjusted my goals a smidge. It’s always ultimately been about passion – the things I’m passionate about – but a little course correction was warranted. I think I’m on the right track.

This morning, Kaweah is happily romping about and disemboweling her plush toys with great gusto. Jeremy and I have eaten something sweet first thing in the morning to ensure that “sweet words” come out of our mouths all year long! I think it’s going to be a very good year. In fact, let’s all agree to make it so, okay?

geese at sunrise

And speaking of passion… this past week I got a small package in the mail from Todd and Diane – those two hilarious green thumb, photographer, videographer, practical joker extraordinaires. It was a box of precious passion fruits from their garden. I know, right?! Those two are freaking awesome!

a box of california sunshine in colorado

I began looking for passion fruit recipes to put these gems to good use when I ran across a blog entry for passion fruit bars. Passion fruit bars! That’s like lemon bars without the lemon, but with passion fruit. I’m a huge fan of lemon bars as it is, so I was all over the passion fruit bars.

cutting butter into the flour and powdered sugar

pressing the coarse crumbs into the bottom of the baking pan

In hindsight, I should have lined the baking pan with parchment because the bars didn’t release nicely. So if you don’t care about a clean release, then do whatever you want. If you want the bars to look presentable without mangling them, then line the pan.

six eggs to be beaten

add the sugar gradually

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: salted caramel ice cream

Remember my plan to keep things low key and unbusy this month? Well, that hasn’t happened so far and I think it’s mainly because I am not a low key kind of person. But whatever. As long as things get done and we’re all having fun, then it’s cool, right? And it’s time for those end-of-the-year type of activities like squaring away annual financial records, shipping presents to the niece and nephew, and our new year’s photo card to share with everyone. That includes you, dear reader. Go on and click over – the post will still be here.

happy holidays and let’s rawk the new year!

Then there is the business of the winners for Michael Frye’s book(s) giveaway. You know that a random number generator is just too pedestrian in the House of Butter (and it’s not truly random according to the resident astrophysicist, “It will produce a nice and uniform distribution of numbers that will pass most tests for randomness, but it’s a repeatable process given the same seed.” Thanks, Jeremy.) We are all about introducing as much randomness as possible. Jeremy started with ten three-digit numbers taken from the least significant bits of independent channels of a gravitational lens spectrum about half-way back to the Big Bang. All you need to know is that it is RANDOM. I then took the NUMBER mod NUMBER OF ENTRIES (=127) to determine ten semi-finalists from the comments. Then Jeremy assigned ten of Kaweah’s toys to a number 1-10, which I assigned to the corresponding semi-finalists in random order. Then the final act of pure randomness…

kaweah just wants a treat

the dumbbell!

the dog! (with an inadvertent paw at the fish)

jaws of death in action

ninja!

and finally the bone

Are you lost yet? The winners of the three Light and Land ebooks are: dumbbell = Michelle (mountains, Cascades), dog = Audra (Colorado/Hawai’i), and ninja = Emily (Ireland). The winner of the signed copy of Digital Landscape Photography is bone = Jason (Pripyat, Ukraine). Congratulations to our winners and I will email everyone about their prizes shortly! Thanks to everyone for sharing the places they want to photograph and big thanks to Michael for generously providing the prizes and his incredible knowledge.

here’s the paperwork

And now it’s time for something sweet… and salty. I made this back in August, but salted caramel ice cream has no season as far as I’m concerned. Caramel is timeless and salted caramel is sexy timelessness. Salted caramel ice cream? Um – sexy, timeless and indulgent!

place the sugar in a pan (preferably a wide one)

the edges turning brown and melting

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pistachio sandies

I’ve had every intention to post here on Fridays, but I kept getting blindsided by a myriad of more pressing things I needed to get done. What with all of the work, projects, holiday baking, entertaining, and well… ski whoring.

this is vail, bitches

nothing like a little combat skiing (glades) to get the morning started (at eldora)

Plus, there was Ignite Boulder 13 last week – one of the few evening events Jeremy and I are willing to attend on a weeknight. I really love going to Ignite Boulder because I get to see heaps of local friends in attendance, volunteering, or presenting. I gave out 90 snickerdoodles, even more hugs, and heckled the bejeezus out of my shooting partner and good friend, Jason.

fearless mc, ef

sold out crowd of over 850

talking about mental “o”

two highlights of my evening: the fabulous lady janelle (that’s jason, who presented) and smokey bear!

The thing that has really been the big time suck of late is this holiday baking schedule. Sure I love to just whip up a batch or even a double batch of cookies to share… However, because it is the holidays, I – like so many of my baking friends – am making a dozen kinds of cookies or confections to give out to those individuals we want to thank for their service and general competence. My kitchen has been insanity of late, cranking out hundreds of cookies. But, I’m always on the lookout for a relatively easy, yet appealing new cookie recipe and I happened upon one of Aran’s recently.

pistachios about to get toasted (in the oven, not on booze)

pulse in the food processor

**Jump for more butter**