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: puffy hearts and rings

When I was a little kid growing up in Virginia, snow storms would catch me by surprise. The only way I knew anything was in the works was when Kris would stay up late tuning the radio to find out if school would be closed the next day. On those very rare snow days we would stay home playing games, running around the house like maniacs jumping off the stairs, building forts, watching television, lip syncing Shaun Cassidy while standing on top of the coffee table, and sledding down our steep driveway. I have a lot of good memories of Kris.

Living in Colorado, we can get snow as early as September and as late as May. It snows in our mountains in June and July too. Even though it is a common occurrence I still get excited – I just don’t lip sync Shaun Cassidy from the coffee table anymore (I have that very coffee table in our great room). These days I suit up and head out.

hit the lifts early to beat the late morning rush

that’s jeremy freezing his bum off on the lift

After we return from a ski – be it at a resort or in the backcountry – it’s Kaweah’s turn to play in the snow. When she was a wee pup in Ithaca, New York, we’d take her out into the snow and find the deepest drift to drop her in. She’d expend an enormous amount of energy bounding about in the snow and would sleep all night long at home. Yay! Now in her golden years, Kaweah doesn’t wander as far into the snow nor does she handle the cold as well as she did in her crazy years (years 0-10). She sleeps much of the day and all of the night.

she’ll always be a puppy to me

sun setting on a quiet, snowy day

when the storm moves out, we get blue skies once again

As a kid, I never remembered being cold when I played in the snow. Maybe that’s because as kids, we’re crazy people? I would barely recognize myself today, grabbing a warm hat, gloves, boots, jacket, sunnies, chapstick, sunblock… While thinking back on those snow days of my youth, I grew nostalgic for my mom’s baking projects. She wasn’t much of a baker, but she did have a handful of sweets she could make for potlucks and parties. What I loved most were these things called puffy hearts and rings.

stick of butter

stir in flour

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: potato leek soup

My friend sent me the coolest package in the mail the other day. We both shoot Nikon and since he got one for himself, he decided to get one for me too. It was so generous of him, but I think it might be hard to distinguish between the 24-70mm 2.8 Nikkor that he sent me and the one that I already own.

practically identical

It’s disconcerting how similar they are, because one is a lens and the other is…

a mug

But I love it, because I’m a Nikon fangirl and ’tis the season for hot drinks. I only drink hot beverages from December to March because it’s too warm for me the rest of the year. I have nothing against hot beverages. They are especially appropriate after a day spent outside in the snow.

like a day at vail

the view west from one of the back bowls

When we get home from the slopes or the backcountry, the first thing we do after greeting Kaweah and putting away our gear is heat up some soup. We have four different kinds of soup in our refrigerator right now. It’s the best kind of food to warm you up and rehydrate your body. One of my favorites is potato leek soup.

leeks, potatoes, parsley, salt, pepper, and butter

slice the leeks in half

**Jump for more butter**