use real butter

Recipe: passion fruit ice cream

I was commenting (read: whining) about the heat to my girlfriend the other day when she replied, “I want to kick the sun in the nuts.” That about sums it up. It was the hottest day of the year thus far. But then a lovely cool-down (literally) blew into town and we woke up to misty mountains and that chill on the morning air. Sunny days are beautiful and plentiful in Colorado, which is why I cherish those cool and cloudy moments when we can get them. Perfect hiking weather for a black dog.

clouds descend on the valley

happy dog

high runoff means parts of the trail were flooded

what is normally a lovely cascade is currently a torrent

June is the month of major upgrades here at urb. Oh wait, you thought I meant the blog? Ha! I’ll get around to editing that code in about 6 months. No, I’ve been making upgrades for my work (this blog is not my work, people). Upgrades like:

my second shooting body

and my desktop

There are more upgrades, but these are the biggest offenders. And by offenders I really mean these are my babies… my workhorses. So expect the next 3000 recipes to be some variation on how to eat dirt.

I’m kidding.

I have a really fabulous recipe for you today. It’s fabulous because I have been obsessing over it for a few years now. I’ve been obsessing over passion fruit which is prohibitively expensive here in Colorado. I was on a mission to find them in order to flavor buttercreams for passion fruit macarons. I started with a passion fruit syrup/nectar/concentrate from an Asian grocer in California’s bay area. It was decent. Then last year I received a package of goodies from my dear friends, Todd and Diane.

remember these beauties?

the passion fruits were more precious than gold

I scooped the guts of the passion fruits into a little container and popped it into the freezer. On my most recent trip to California, Jeremy and I were returning from Yosemite to the bay area when I sent my pal Lisa a text asking where she found the passion fruit concentrate for her passion fruit macarons (I had one of those macs, by the way, and they were out of this world). Whenever you ask Lisa for information, you are going to get ALL of it. That’s one of the reasons I love her. We’re both just a little OCD. Just a little.

i managed to snag the last container (and i defrosted the pulp i had in the freezer)

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: cherry-almond clafoutis

[Thanks to 5280 Magazine for the shout out! I’m honored, even if you called my tone irreverent – which it is. When I first moved to Colorado, I thought 5280 was a truncated zipcode and it really puzzled the hell out of me. Congratulations to fellow blogger Rebecca Caro for making the list too.]

Strawberry who? I’m just joshin’ around. This house is still loving the strawberries, but now those shiny, luscious cherries are making their appearance in the markets. Consider me enamored. I associate summer with small fruits that stain your hands deep reds and purples. Messy and sweet. Summer equals berries. But wait – cherries are drupes.

a bowl of cherries sounds better than a bowl of drupes

We buy a lot of fruit on a regular basis – a rainbow of fruits. From our groceries, you’d think we are healthy eaters. That’s only a half-truth. Half of the fruit is for Jeremy because he’s fruitist. He discriminates against drupes… doesn’t like drupes. I married a guy who won’t eat plums, peaches, nectarines, mangoes (seriously?!), or cherries. I know I’m not the only food blogger who married a picky-picky. What is up with that? Okay, this was going somewhere… We don’t own a cherry pitter because I’m the only one who eats cherries. I recently made a Fine Cooking recipe that called for pitted cherries. In the back of the issue, they had some nice tips on how to pit them without a pitter, including one method which uses a straw.

i happen to have a nice metal straw

pierce the bottom with the straw, then push from the top

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: strawberry sorbet

I haven’t called. I haven’t emailed. I haven’t blogged. Summer is my busiest time of year. We’re still a month out before true summer, but as soon as the snow has cleared from the ground around our house, we call it summer. This is a painful time for me because I can’t sleep in summer what with all of this amazing daylight. You want to do everything like hike, bike, backpack, travel, cook, entertain, and meet up with all of your people. And work. I wake up with that “not enough sleep” headache and then recall all of the great things I have lined up for the day and I snap right out of sleep-deprivation into happy anticipation. The problem is that there is just too much happy going on, which as you know isn’t really a problem…

andrew at atlas

this is what happens when the curious get their hands on your unattended camera

oh i love me some salad (mod market in boulder)

At a recent stitch-n-bitch, it came to my attention that some of my friends cringe at the sight of their photographs appearing on urb. We are, of course, our own worst critics. While my friends are beyond beautiful to me, I’ll just stick to the food and the crafts. This time we had a special SNB for one of the lot who will be wedded in less than three weeks. We made the favors for her wedding and they are oh so adorable – honey from her own bees. Manisha and I will be shooting the wedding, so I guess she knows to expect 95% food shots – KIDDING!

nichole’s fabulous grilled vegetable salad

rose lemonade

the favors are all done

It was a lovely weekend here with sunshine and oodles of bird activity. I have yet to get myself down to the Boulder Farmer’s Market because I really prefer to remain up in the mountains on the weekends. Jeremy and I spent most of the weekend working, but we did manage to get out for a survey of our local woods. The snow is almost completely melted and the aspens have yet to sprout their shiny green leaves. However, I spied many many arnica leaves emerging from the forest floor and to my delight – the pasque flowers are in full bloom. Yay for summer!

kaweah settles into her brutal summer routine

our pasque flowers are in bloom

I’m fairly certain in one month I’ll be moaning and groaning about the “heat” and wishing for fall to bitch-slap us back into reality. For now though, we are very much enjoying those fruits that usher in the summer months. Strawberries do exactly that. When I see those luscious deep red berries appear in the stores it makes me want to jump up and down and clap my hands.

i love me organic strawberries something fierce

hulling the berries

**Jump for more butter**