use real butter

Recipe: peach jam

Our local wildflowers are going gangbusters. Or they were. I think they may be over the hump by now, but it’s still wonderful to step into the mountains and see green slopes dotted with blues, pinks, reds, yellows, whites, oranges, purples… I’ve made a point of getting out to assess the flowers along my favorite trails… of course, those trails are my favorites primarily because they have stunning wildflowers.

elephant heads

rose paintbrush

rose crowns

asteraceae and bluebells

Over the weekend, a friend of mine from high school was in town with his family. We met up at the Boulder Farmers Market Saturday morning as it was the only free time they had. Jeremy and I arrived early so I could scope out various produce for myself and for another friend. It’s kinda dangerous going to the market without a set list, because what I usually wind up doing is impulse buying fruits or vegetables for canning and jamming projects only to realize on the way to the car that I will have to forgo sleep to get all of it done before the produce goes south.

who needs sleep when you have organic purple okra?!?

I forget which of my wonderful friends clued me in on “seconds” at the farmers market, but I am eternally grateful. Seconds are produce that may have bruises and blemishes and sometimes odd shapes or sizes. They are perfect for canning and jamming and come at a reduced price compared to their premium cousins that are typically on display at the stall. A few weeks ago, I went to the Boulder Farmers Market on a Wednesday to score some ripe Colorado peaches. There are a few vendors at the market who sell peaches, but there is only one vendor who consistently commands a line as much as 40 deep: Morton’s Orchards of Palisade, Colorado out on the western slope. I was planning to grab a ten pound box of seconds (they’re certified organic), but when I saw the “20 lbs. seconds for $10” scribbled on the bottom of their board, I got greedy and went for it!

half of my haul

even though they don’t look perfect, they sure taste perfect

So I have this canning addiction, see? That twenty pounds of peaches is history and when we arrived at the market Saturday morning, I got the itch again. We stood in line for peaches. Fascinatingly enough, people would walk past the line, look at it with great interest, then hop into line at the end without even knowing for what they were standing in line. This time, the price was $10 for 10 pounds of seconds. I don’t know if that markup was for the Saturday vs. the Wednesday market or if it was for a different variety of peach, but I was happy to have more of these sweet, juicy gems.

let’s jam: peaches, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemons, liquid pectin

I’m not a jam person, mainly because I’m not a breakfast person – and particularly not a sweet breakfast person. Jams don’t really move in this house unless you like jam and happen to be a house guest. That said, I am in love with the idea of making jam and got overly ambitious with the first attempt. I doubled the recipe and found out too late that you aren’t supposed to double the recipe. This resulted in a double batch of somewhat runny organic Colorado peach jam. It’s still good and people don’t seem to mind receiving it (what they do with the jars after they take them home, I don’t know). So, if you’re just starting out, the first rule of jamming is… don’t talk about jamming don’t double the recipe. Just make two batches. I’ve since made four more batches the correct way and the result is enough to convince me that homemade jam is a different animal. A different, delicious, tasty animal.

get that lemon zest

blanch your peaches

peel the skins off

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: ginger limeade

I’ll admit it. I’ve been spending a lot of time playing around with canning. That’s what happens when you have a boatload of fruit that is ripe right now. I went to bed dreaming of sterilizing jars and woke up thinking of lid wands. It’s a sickness, I tell you. So over the weekend I had to put an end to the madness and get myself into the backcountry. It’s my cure all, you know. Here are some snappies from my iphone.

rose crown

the keyhole above pawnee pass

from the summit of pawnee peak, jeremy points to another hike we had done

Once we are home, our typical post-hike ritual is to unpack our gear, scrub the sunblock and grime off of ourselves, and dump our stinky, sweaty clothes into the laundry basket. Kaweah likes to sniff down our hiking pants and trail runners because it makes her waggy and happy. I sometimes wonder if she knows where we went as she’s been on nearly every hike with us several times up until the last couple of years. She really loved her hikes, so it’s bittersweet for me to watch her get so excited about something she can’t do anymore.

When everything is put away, we sit down and have ourselves several glasses of water (ice water for me, please). But this time, after the second glass of water, I asked Jeremy if he’d like to have a ginger limeade. I had the ginger limeade at Café Aion in Boulder a couple of times. It was good, but not as gingery as I prefer. Why not make it the way *I* like it at home? There’s no reason not to.

ginger and limes

There was leftover ginger syrup from the candied ginger I made earlier. That is great in cocktails or with seltzer water or added to hot tea (especially if you have a sore throat). It’s more sweet than spicy, so I tried a different ginger syrup recipe that I found on Imbibe Magazine. They don’t peel the ginger in their recipe, but I peeled mine.

chop up the ginger

combine ginger with sugar and water

cook the syrup for an hour then strain

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: strawberry vodka

Our oppressive heat of the last several weeks seems to be abating so that Kaweah can resume her jolly evening walks without overheating. While we adjust to summer temperatures, it’s much harder on the pup. So 80°F might be tolerable for us, but it will have her gasping for air on the baby trails.

kaweah was so very happy to be out after a rain

trail markers in our town

This cooling trend was just in time for the Fourth of July holiday too. It was lovely getting our legs outside and back on the trails. The wildflowers are going nuts in the high country too. For our holiday, we went for an early morning local hike.

big views

little critters (can you spot the pika?)

final ascent

token summit shot on mount audubon (haze is smoke from wildfires in wyoming)

wonderful blue columbines (colorado state flower)

blessed rains on the descent

Fireworks were cancelled in our mountain town for obvious reasons (two words: Colorado wildfires). If you’re hankering for sparklies, you can see fireworks photos from 2011 and 2010. Instead of scoping out a location from which to shoot the fireworks like previous July 4ths, I got to chill out at home and make a simple, but elegant dinner.

pan-seared scallops on fresh vegetables

My beverage of choice is water. I love it. But when I want to offer something special to friends, it’s usually fruity and usually homemade. In summer, the quintessential beverage is lemonade. I like to play with fancy lemonade like lavender lemonade or in this case, a strawberry lemonade. Except this is an adult strawberry lemonade made with homemade strawberry vodka.

get yer hands on some proper strawberries

red to the core

**Jump for more butter**