use real butter

Recipe: breakfast sausage

Last week during some long overdue maintenance on the innards of this blog, I had to go back – waaaaay back – to the earliest posts to close out comments (has to do with spam, not with any of you). It’s been a while since I’ve revisted my old posts. I skimmed several dozen and realized that there was a lot more of me in those posts even though I tore much of the personal stuff out. (Also, my writing was actually worse, if that’s possible). I feel as if there is less of me here lately on these virtual pages.

use real butter used to be a happy place for me. These days I am feeling an ambivalence creeping in that I’ve tried to follow to its source. I don’t hate it, but I’m not loving it like I used to. The world of food blogging has changed a lot. People assume if you write a food blog that you want more traffic, more readers, more links, more stumbles, more, more, more! There are formulaic instructions for writing your blog, shooting your photographs, building community – for “success”. Honestly, it used to feel like a community to me and now it feels like a strip mall surrounded by McMansions. That’s depressing.

Blarg.

The past couple of days have been really good for me. I’ve been working and planning with some exceptional people on several projects – some professional, some personal, but all of them what I want to be doing. I am energized. And I’m happy. Yet I can’t decide if the blog is helping me or hindering me at this point. Can you feel it? I can feel it.

I’m not sure if I just need a kick of motivation or inspiration here, or perhaps a change? Maybe a little change, maybe a great big change? Maybe time away? I don’t know. Don’t fret. I’m thinking aloud which I rarely allow myself to do here and after reading that last string of questions, it’s probably best to rein those loud thoughts back in. All options are on the table. If anything, I’d like to steer myself back to the original purpose of this blog, which was to document the recipes I like (Future Me is always thankful to Past or Present Me for doing it), record some of what I’m thinking and doing, and welcome those who drop by.

after last night’s sunset

I’ve been wanting to make homemade breakfast sausage since forever. I love that stuff. We rarely ate it at home, but I was obsessed with the spicy, salty, aromatic pork patties. These days, I will not touch the store-bought name brand sausage patties. You know why? The two times I ate it (in college, of course) resulted in two separate trips to the emergency room, doubled over in pain from severe cramps, only to be given some crazy awful codeine syrup that knocked me out for a few days. No, thank you!

ground pork

rosemary, sage, and thyme

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: baked eggs

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. I plopped my skis down on the snow and looked up at the sky: blue bird day. I could see clouds of my breath billlowing out in front of me, slowly expanding and gently swirling up into the frigid air, illuminated by shafts of sunlight. A calm, brilliant morning – Christmas morning and perfectly silent. Ice crystals plastered every surface, glistening. I flared my nostrils and took a deep breath letting the cold crackle through my nose down into my lungs. I love winter.

plenty of good skiing to be had in the national forests

the winter sun throws long shadows

Jeremy and I spent the morning and part of the afternoon skinning up into the local mountains and then skiing back down. The wilderness was entirely ours. I love hitting a stride and going into auto-pilot while my mind runs in seven different directions, pausing only to exclaim “gorgeous!” at every view of the snowy high peaks that opened before us. At the end of the year it’s natural to take stock of what has been and what is to come. To reflect on the influx of people in your life and those with whom you have parted ways. Thinking about what was good and what wasn’t so good and how to improve upon it before starting our next lap around the sun. My quads burned and my sunnies were fogging up from the heat and sweat off of my face. It felt great.

At home, I made a small batch of Chinese potstickers for dinner and we had oranges as dessert. Simple is good. There were no presents, just presence… presence of mind and heart and the occasional belly rub (for Kaweah). It works for us.

glowing halo of clouds over james peak (sunset)

I’ve completed a few of those rag quilt projects over the weekend. My friend just had a baby boy and I swore to myself that I would not go to see him until I finished his baby blanket (incentive to really get it done). Now I can finally visit with him and he’s not even in college yet! Flannel rag quilts are so soft and warm – perfect for a December Colorado baby, don’t you think?

i hope he’ll love it until it’s threadbare

Buried in my stash of fabrics was a small metric ton of dark flannel left over from other projects which I decided to turn into a flannel rag quilt for our own baby. Labor of love. All quilts are a labor of love.

kaweah is a sucker for soft and cushiony things

Lately, I haven’t been much for cooking elaborate dishes. I don’t know about you, but when I’m cooking and shooting for the blog, I feel as if we are always eating something new. That’s fine except for one problem – we love a lot of the old recipes. I actually like how quickly I can cook something when I’m not shooting every damn step and washing my hands over and over and over again. In an effort to move toward simplicity, I have been drawn to recipes like baked eggs.

a little kale, bacon, cheese, and herbs never hurt anyone

finely chopped herbs mixed with the cheese

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: eggplant fries

Someday I will sit down to post when I don’t have a million other things going on. I don’t know when that will be. I do know that this will be the last post in 2010 I write the night before I have to catch a flight. Let me tell you, I am quite happy about that. I’ve been home for three days frantically trying to get things done before I head off into the yonder including a thorough round of spring cleaning which is merely 6 months late (or early if you want to be generous). Colorado still hasn’t decided if it is summer or autumn. And now with the time change, the dog is petitioning for dinner at 5pm.

looking east as the clouds pass overhead

So I’ll dispense with any further chit chat and get to brass tacks. When I was in Seattle this past September, my good friends took me to Poppy for dinner. There I had the most delightful eggplant fries and made a mental note to try it at home.

eggplant, herbs, seasonings, and flour

put the seasonings in with the flour

It’s a relatively basic concept to chop up the vegetable in question and deep fry it. Everything tastes good this way, right? Knowing my deep frying prowess, the potential for screwing it up was high. I checked the interwebs for reference and found a lovely recipe at The Hungry Mouse which guided me through not having to think about what goes in the seasoned flour.

mixing the seasoned flour

peel the eggplants

**Jump for more butter**