use real butter

Recipe: shredded kale salad

Over the holidays when I was recovering from my cold, but still essentially useless, I rifled through my sizable yarn stash and decided to put a dent in it. I wanted to make something for my friend, Kat, who is moving away this very week. Knowing how sorely out of practice I was, I made a trial run which ultimately had some inconsistent tension and resulted in a scarf that I’d be willing to wear, but was too flawed (in my opinion) to gift to someone.

the trial run scarf

I made the test scarf blue because I prefer cooler hues and because I needed to save my green yarns for Kat’s scarf. Green is her favorite color and I happened to have a lot of different funky novelty yarns in greens. It’s a remnant scarf which means you use up the remnants of various skeins of yarn. When I was done with the tassels, it reminded me of a rainforest. And she loved it, which is what really mattered.

kat’s scarf

Even though I’m pretty much recuperated, I am finishing up one last remnant scarf for another friend. It makes me realize how impatient I am to sit down and work on these things when I’m back to normal, because I much prefer being on my feet. So I am forcing myself to hurry up and get it done lest it be forgotten in my yarn bin for another two years.

kaweah likes to keep me company and doze on the couch

But you know, there are days when it is just too nice to pass up getting out under those bluebird skies. Our winter blues are the best kind, really. Erin agrees with me.

i kid you not

After our hike, Erin and I met two other girlfriends in Boulder for a late lunch at Oak. I really like their food, so much so that I reproduced their shredded kale salad at home. I have been loving on winter greens salads for the heartier texture, the slight bitterness, and most of all – because I can make a big batch and enjoy the salad over the course of a few days instead of preparing a salad fresh each time!

olive oil, orange, apple, red wine vinegar, salt, almonds, kale, togarashi

Oak’s version of this salad uses Parmesan cheese, but I omitted that because I wanted to keep this light. They also put candied almonds in their salad (which tastes great) as opposed to the seasoned almonds I had on hand. I think next time I’m going to use baby kale. It’s so tender that I could skip the step of stripping the leaves from the ribs.

strip the leaves from the ribs

roll the leaves up and slice thin (chiffonade)

If memory serves me well, Oak uses a simple oil and vinegar dressing. I wanted mine to have an orange juice base. But you know what? It’s a salad. That means you do whatever you want to it. Of course, I have to say the orange juice dressing is lovely… unless you have a thing against oranges in which case, I am sad for you.

place the vinegar, orange juice, and salt in a bowl

whisk in a steady thin drizzle of olive oil

pour over the kale

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: cream of mushroom soup

Happy new year, my butterlings! I hope you all rang in 2013 in various fabulous ways. We kept it low-key partly because we were tired from a day of ski touring and mostly because we are boring. I like it that way.

snow on new year’s eve

lovely wondrous sparkling flakes of snow

It snowed here on New Year’s Eve and not just any snow, but the kind that falls as giant fluffy flakes and doesn’t stick to anything because it’s so dry and cold. They sparkled in the sunlight like diamonds falling from the sky and when you looked at the ground you could see perfectly preserved crystals glistening back at you, winking. Piles of delicate snowflakes slid over my skis as I glided along the trail through the woods. Jeremy and I would seek out pockets of deep snow and whoop and holler diving into the sugary stashes.

skiing out: a great way to see 2012 off

skiing into 2013 on new year’s day

I don’t typically make resolutions on the new year, but over the holidays I spent a little more time away from the interwebz and it was fantastic. It’s a good thing to assess where and more importantly how your time is invested. So that may be one of the things I change up… stepping away more often from the whole navel-gazing vortex of social media and taking that time to concentrate on other things, like my well-being. Who knows. I’m still feeling 2013 out, but I think I’m headed in the right direction. That direction also includes soup, because it’s winter and soup is good food – particularly when you make it yourself.

criminis, dried porcinis, shitakes, onion, butter, garlic, white pepper, salt, herbs, cashews, chicken broth

thyme and sage

I foraged a good deal of porcinis this past summer with my friend, Wendy. I told her to keep most of those mushrooms because I just didn’t have the time to deal with them and the worst possible thing you could do after acquiring such precious forage is to let them go bad, go to waste. Wendy is a real champ and she immediately processed untold quantities of the summer porcini harvest and presented me with a couple of jars of dried porcinis this fall… our porcinis! Sure you can purchase dried porcinis in the store, but can you hold a jar of your summer spent clambering along the wooded slopes of the mountains, popping huckleberries into your mouth as you scour the ground for porcinis?

dried porcinis

rehydrate with boiling water

I waited until winter to use my porcinis, when I knew the aroma would be most welcome after a day of backcountry ski touring. If you’ve never used dried porcini mushrooms, you should know that the soaking liquid is not to be discarded, ever. That soaking liquid is also known as liquid gold. It’s a heady broth with the concentrated essence of porcinis, this lovely umami. So make sure you keep that.

sliced garlic and onion

garlic, onion, porcini broth, porcinis, sliced fresh shitakes, sliced fresh criminis

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: peanut butter truffles

You know when you get sick and you feel awful and then when you’re well again it’s completely amazeballs awesome? That’s me times a million. I get that same feeling of elation as I would every time I came out of a chemo round. It makes me want to burst through the front door and go running into the mountains. Because I was sick for most of last week, I decided to lay low over the holiday, listen to my body and rest. I do get a little stir crazy after a few days indoors, but managed to find several projects to keep me occupied. And it helped to just stay off the computer.

cardboard tube light saber fight: the light saber lost

nothing beats a hot bowl of chinese noodle soup when you’re sick

We had received a club shipment of sparkling wine the week prior – four magnums. I was on the mend, so we decided to have some folks over to help us put a dent in the bubbles over the weekend. I mean, magnums are so festive, no? I was psyched to be able to cook for friends or do anything for that matter! We were treated to a blazing sunset off the deck and an evening spent with wonderful people. I’m feeling good and ready to plunge into January!

bubbles

i had to stop folding dumplings to run out and catch this one

Jeremy and I walked off the party food Sunday afternoon. It had been a week since I’d been outside in the woods or even remotely active and I missed it. It’s my battery charger to get out and breathe that clean air, to walk through the pristine snow. And now that I’m nearly back to normal, I can look at the computer monitor without getting a headache. In the baking madness of mid December, I dug up an old recipe my elementary school teacher had made for my class back in the 70s. They’re called peanut butter truffles, but I always thought of them as peanut butter balls. It called for margarine in the filling and paraffin wax in the coating, so I made the appropriate adjustments.

butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, peanut butter, confectioners sugar, butter

That’s right, I subbed butter for the margarine (we don’t use margarine on this blog, EVER) and omitted the paraffin wax altogether. It’s a simple treat to make, which is probably why my teacher thought it would be a good project for her class of second graders. I just remember bringing home a small canister filled with cupcake papers that had three peanut butter balls in each paper and wanting to show my grandma what we had made that day in school.

beat the butter and peanut butter together

add the confectioner’s sugar

it should be fluffy when mixed

I haven’t made these in a long long time. I used organic ingredients where possible and mixed the filling in no time with my stand mixer. I considered skipping the butterscotch chips and just tempering dark chocolate for the coating, but there was that whole nostalgia thing going on in my head. So the butterscotch chips stayed. But if you are interested in tempering chocolate for a coating, I describe the seed method in this post.

grab a pinch of peanut butter filling

roll into balls

now melt the chips

**Jump for more butter**