use real butter

Recipe: pandan ice cream

[Today is the last day to get the early bird registration discount of $50 for the Food and Light food photography and styling workshop in Boulder, Colorado this summer. We are so looking forward to working with you!]

P is for party! In my case, a dosa party hosted by my favorite little blogger down the road, Manisha. She has ruined me, ruined me. I dare not set foot into an Indian restaurant lest I be disappointed that it’s not as good as Manisha’s cooking. [I’m sorry, I don’t have good photos of the dosas because I was too busy EATING them… Priorities, man.]

manisha tops the little papads (which i kept sneaking)

mango panna cotta with cardamom and pistachios

Did I mention that I love having friends who cook? It seems to be a problem that plagues many of my food blog friends who happen to be phenomenal cooks – none of their friends cook. Sure, people eat, but few people actually know and prepare their food at a fundamental level these days. I’m guessing this readership is in the minority when we consider our society of convenience and junk and corporate-mystery-crap-peddled-as-nourishment. But back to friends who cook… Just the other day I was having a pleasant catch-up with Lisa over breakfast and she bemoaned that all too familiar plight of the avid cook: no one invites you over for dinner. Foodies (I know some people hate that word – so call them food enthusiasts or whatever, I really don’t care) are always told “I can’t cook like you.” That’s not really the point. Both Lisa and I agreed that being invited over for take out pizza would be terrific because it’s about spending the time together, not going head to head to outdo or impress. At least, that’s not what my friendships are based on.

(from left to right) great cooks: kitt, manisha, birthday girl dana, and teri (not pictured: kathya)

I was lucky in grad school because I had two girlfriends who were great cooks and we took turns inviting each other (and partners) over for big bash meals – something to take your mind off the grind of research for an evening. I bond with people over food. My dad had a rule in our house: we all sat down to dinner together as a family and the television was turned OFF. And you know what? It was nice (except when the topic turned to SAT scores, college admissions, and why the heck I insisted on playing field hockey). It took a while, but after a couple of years in Colorado I have found a great gaggle of gal pals who love to cook and love to feed one another. We go to ethnic grocery stores together like fifth graders on a field trip. So it was a few weeks ago that Kathya and I were cruising around H-Mart in Denver.

p is also for pandan

defrosted

Truth be told, I didn’t know what pandan leaves were. I just knew that southeast Asian bloggers loved the stuff and made pretty green desserts with it. I held the bag in my hand… a mere two dollars or such. “What is it?” I asked Kathya. Her face melted into a big smile and she told me she loves the stuff and it’s a little nutty, a little floral. I put the packet in my cart thinking I would enlist the help of the interwebs later to figure out what to do with the leaves.

tie into a knot for ease of retrieval

milk, sugar, cream, and a pinch of salt

steep the leaves in the hot cream

Pandan is screwpine leaf and the flavor is nutty, floral, and a tad piny, if that makes sense. It’s subtle and lovely. I was always drawn to it because it’s green and I’m a sucker for green foods. What I learned was that the green color comes from pandan extract, which I didn’t have. So I chanced a visit to my local Asian grocer and found it. I picked up a bottle for myself and another for Kathya.

pandan extract

**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: single-ingredient ice cream

Administrative news: The amount of spam accumulating in my filter is increasing and the amount of time I have to glance through and fish out the occasional legitimate comment is all but nil at this point. From now on, I’m deleting the hundreds of spam caught each day without a second glance. If you leave a comment and it does not show up immediately, you probably went the way of spam. Please feel free to email me and let me know so I can rescue you and keep you off the blacklist. Thanks!

I’ve been doing a massive purge of my second office, recycling old notes and literature that I no longer need. While doing so earlier this week I discovered a diagram that my favorite geomorphologist, Dr. Arthur Bloom, gave me in graduate school. Mineralogists will recognize this kind of diagram – except it doesn’t involve minerals. I thought this readership might get a kick out of it (at least I know Bridget will).

Needless to say, I kept that little gem.

Summer for some of my friends (those with school-age children) is coming to an end. They’ve been scrambling to squeeze the most out of the final days before school starts next week. But you know, learning does not have to be (and should not be) limited to the school year. The Perseids meteor shower is tonight and it’s a great opportunity to see Nature’s little light show if you can get yourselves to dark skies, away from city lights. I love me a meteor shower and the Perseids are my favorite – a solid and consistent performer if you get clear skies! Tonight and tomorrow night (Aug 12/13) should be at peak activity with approximately 50 meteors per hour. Start looking after dark (after the crescent moon sets) up until dawn. It’s fun to settle down in a lawn chair where you can find some good sky view (open sky with few obstructions), relax, and enjoy the show.

please please please clouds, take a break?

So what’s this ice cream for breakfast ridiculousness? Well, it’s true. I had ice cream for breakfast today. Actually, I had “ice cream”. I read about this one-ingredient ice cream on Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn months ago and was intrigued. That single ingredient would be:

bananas

i prefer them just spotted

I try, I really try to love bananas. It’s not them, it’s me. I like fruit that is juicy and bananas are not juicy. But bananas are so very very good for you and that is why I buy them, in the hopes that I’ll guilt myself into eating them. What usually happens is they start to turn brown, I chuck them into the freezer, and wind up making chocolate chip banana bread to give away to my friends. Or I’ll peel one open and split it with Kaweah. That’s why any time, any one, any where peels a banana, she suddenly appears at your elbow.

and there she is

slice into 1/4 to 1/2-inch disks

**Jump for more butter**