use real butter

Recipe: broccoli salad

Lately, I’m feeling torn between winter and spring. I love to get my tele (skiing) on, feel the delicate cold kisses of snow blowing at my face, see Orion at night in the sky, watch Kaweah move through the drifts like a shadow, curl up with Jeremy between flannel and down each night. But with our longer daylight hours and a few assignments I have to highlight spring’s bounty, I can taste the tender greens and first berries of the season in my mental palate. My thoughts have already turned to spring mountaineering more than once this past week. We have had a few warm spells interspersed with snow storms and I feel like a puppy delighting in each new turn of the weather. Invigorating any way you look at it.

We skied mogul fields at Vail on Friday until my legs were too wobbly to stand. Sweetness… then I took the big ride down the last black run (which I discovered was a sheet of ice) as everyone standing at the top watched me slide all the way down – unable to stop or get my skis under me – and moaned a collective, “oooooooh!” Such a shame to waste that last run. In the evening we met my ILs for dinner at L’Atelier because they were visiting for the weekend. Dinner was so fresh and faboo (L’Atelier NEVER disappoints)! Saturday morning we went back to Boulder for class.

Recipe: pistachio ice cream

The groundhog has spoken, so to speak. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and according to lore, we shall have six more weeks of winter! Just six?! I’m calling it a reprieve because I have blown (literally, figuratively) the past week of potential skiing due to my cold. Six more weeks merely takes us into mid-March, and March is when we in the beautiful state of Colorado (at least the western half – I know, I’m a mountain snob) get some of the best big dump snowfalls. Where I live, winter can start as early as September and ends sometime in May. All of the other seasons get crammed into the remaining months.

Recipe: almond blancmange

Just a few observations and tidbits tonight and then I’m going to send you all off to Tartelette’s place, okay?

So Bridget had asked me about the difference between tempered chocolate and untempered chocolate and if I could show a picture. Why yes indeedy, I can – because I had a lot of out-of-temper chocolates from yesterday’s post.