use real 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: chocolate espresso crème brûlée

I got up before sunrise and tip-toed around the house this morning. We dipped below freezing overnight. Sticking my nose to the open window, I took several shallow sniffs then one deep inhale. No smoke. Scanning to the east I saw clear skies. The absolute best news? Calm winds. This in contrast to yesterday morning’s hostile 60 mph gusts that slapped our aspens around like rag dolls, ripping leaves off the branches. We found some wood siding from our house had been torn off by the winds as well. At noon, Manisha emailed to ask if we were all right. There was a fire near Boulder Canyon.

It’s September. In parts of the American West, this is synonymous with fire season: the driest (we had 4% humidity yesterday) and sometimes hottest time of year. Toss strong winds and bone dry vegetation in, and you are primed for a fire. We are no strangers to fire season having lived at the boundary of the Angeles National Forest in Southern California. The price one pays to live in Awesome. I hopped on Twitter and the stream of information was flowing fast. Boulder is a good place to be on Twitter. Those crazy winds whipped the wildfire into a nightmare starting in Four-Mile Canyon. It quickly spread in almost all directions and we followed news of evacuations and road closures. Good citizens updated maps in real-time or tweeted updates from the police scanner. When the reverse 911 system failed, authorities asked people on Twitter spread the word that they were going door to door to evacuate.

Smaller fires popped up around the area, but were quickly put out. It was the big one, now called the Emerson Gulch Fire, that was consuming homes and whole neighborhoods. If you look at the satellite imagery of the area, the houses are not next door to each other – they are scattered about, in the woods and canyons/mountains. It’s rough and rugged terrain (people are not on municipal services there – they have giant propane tanks for heating… which explode in wildfires). If someone dropped you into that scenario where several fronts are threatened, how do you go about deciding what to save, what to defend? It’s heartbreaking. That firestorm was so bad, the only thing authorities could focus on was evacuation. Photographs, video, descriptions and links to more information poured in on the hashtag #boulderfire. We watched as the evacuation zone expanded, inching closer to our home.

smoke from the fire was the only cloud in all of colorado (taken at dusk looking east)

When the zone was within 6 miles of our house and authorities closed Boulder Canyon, we began to gather our things. Things are just things. As I packed up letters from and photos of my sister, I realized that the only “things” I could not do without are Jeremy and Kaweah. The rest – even those cherished items that I had of Kris – I could let go of. But while we had the time, we packed what we might need if we had to evacuate and if ultimately the house was lost. [For those of you with an invested digital existence, it’s a handy thing to have an external drive (updated daily) to unplug and grab.] Without a doubt, my mind turned to Ivory Hut who just last week lost all of her worldly possessions to a fire. Thankfully, the winds had calmed considerably since the morning and tankers were finally able to fly in the waning light before nightfall grounded them.

the plume of smoke rising into the evening sky

By last night, the evacuation zone had extended again – to within 2 miles of our home. Evac zone and fire are not the same things, mind you, but we were ready. Here is an incredible time-lapse shot from Flagstaff Mountain last night. Right now Boulder lies choking under a blanket of smoke from the fire. I’m trying to reconcile those images with the clear, sunny day we are experiencing just west of the fire. Our hope is for containment. Thank you for all of your concerned and caring tweets, FB messages and comments, and emails. We are sending good juju to the victims of the fire and the incredible rescue, firefighting, and relief personnel.

Life goes on. My dear friend, Andrew, is leaving today to travel the world for a year, or two, or six. Boulder will miss you, Andrew. We will miss you. Thanks for spending an evening with us on Sunday. Thanks for being such a Force of Good in the community. Safe and remarkable travels, friend. Come back to us any time.

andrew on the terrace at the flagstaff house

perusing the wine list (the guys got cocktails instead)

crab- and salmon-stuffed squash blossoms with caviar (zomgdelicious!)

Well now, there is a recipe after all. This one dates back to my pre-blog days when I had a static website. I have a little sticky note (the virtual kind, not a paper sticky) on my desktop telling me to transfer some of those old recipes over. I think it might be one of Jeremy’s favorites.

chocolate, of course

espresso powder and cream

Chocolate espresso crème brûlée. The chocolate and espresso are enough to win most folks over, but crème brûlée will surely round up the rest of the holdouts. Crème brûlée is one of the more annoying things to have to type out, so I’m glad the fabulosity of the dessert itself far outweighs any inconvenience experienced in writing about it.

add chopped chocolate to the hot cream

whisking egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: thai tea ice cream

Howdy from beautiful Crested Butte, Colorado! I am chasing wildflowers, hiking the high country, befriending local fauna, and getting zero sleep. Okay, that’s not true. We’re not befriending the local fauna, we’re just encountering a lot of local fauna, including a black bear early Thursday morning!

talk about local color

marmots are everywhere

While I’m wrapping up this shoot, I thought I’d leave you with something for the weekend. When we had our food-blogging friends over for dinner before the workshop, one of the ice cream flavors I served for dessert was Thai tea ice cream. If you’ve ever had Thai iced tea, then you know it’s a natural translation into ice cream.

thai tea

and the bag it came in for those who wanted to know what it looks like

The inspiration came about because I was making several Thai meals one week as the weather was warming up. I thought Thai iced tea would be a perfect accompaniment to the meals. Actually, I crave Thai iced tea and was delighted to discover that my local Asian grocer carries it in large bags.

mix the thai tea into the warmed milk

steeping the tea will turn the milk a bright orange color

**Jump for more butter**