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Recipe: honeydew granita

In summer I hear the constant zoom of hummingbirds all around the house. The “yard” is dotted with wildflower colors that we can take absolutely no credit for. After the sun has set and our second wave of pink clouds has faded to the west, shouts and laughter of the neighborhood kids continue to ride the trickle of cool night air climbing in through our open windows. On a few summer nights each year, a mysterious fleshy pod lies in wait for nightfall. Over the course of a few hours, this almost alien bud opens 6-8 inches across and releases a beautiful fragrance. By early morning, the Queen of the Night (aka night-blooming cereus or Epiphyllum oxypetalum) blossom will close and wilt. It is a One Night Only! kind of deal.

My grandmother gave me the cuttings to start this plant when we moved into this, our first house and I’ve been enjoying the flowers since 2007. Each year, the plant produces more buds. So far this summer, we have five (it’s still a youngish plant, so five is pretty good). One is opening in our great room right now as I type. It is considered good luck when a blossom opens, but more than that – it is extraordinary. I’ve documented the blooms before, but it’s something else to experience it in person. The timing worked out such that we made a little party of it Friday night.

i guess it was a sizable party

at 1:30am (the bud is just one day behind)

flowers that jason and heather’s kids picked for me (so sweet)

Compared to the last two blossoms from the previous week, this one sure took its time opening up. Maybe it was shy with all of those people around? After a dessert of chocolate espresso pecan pie, lime cheesecake with blackberry sauce, a lovely apricot frangipane tart that Marianne brought, coffee and tea – we piled back inside for some Wii Sports smackdown! As most of my friends know, I like to serve multiple desserts. Sometimes I’ll forget one. When I opened the freezer to grab some ice I realized I hadn’t broken out the granita.

honeydew, to be exact

cut into chunks

The timing was perfect though. We passed tiny glasses stuffed with light green crystals of fruity granita around – just enough to refresh without making anyone feel too heavy. I love granitas in summer. Nichole asked if the recipe was on my blog and I replied, “I’m going to blog it soon.” Erin’s eyes sparkled as she smiled at me – how many times has she heard me say that at dinner?

juice a lime

a little tartness to bring out the sweet

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chinese sweet red bean soup

Before I forget, several of you had asked for a picture of the Thai tea I had purchased when I made Thai tea ice cream. Twist my arm! I went back to the store and bought a second bag just for you guys… ahem. Hee hee. But seriously, I get it because I can’t read Chinese (or Korean or Japanese or Vietnamese or Thai or…). The picture is always helpful. I’ll add this to the other post too, but here it is for those of you who were wondering. I’m sure there are other brands that are equally good.

oh darn, another bag of wonderful thai tea

It’s getting a little toasty around here which means it is downright hot in Boulder and the surrounding flats. I’ve been avoiding the stove and oven for a good month now, but had to break down today in my quest to clean out my freezer. More on that (a little) later. Just three days ago we had cold, wind, rain and overnight we dipped quite close to freezing. I kinda loved it. I kinda had a craving for soup. Now, in the heat of late afternoon, I can’t think of anything other than a cold glass of ice water. Come evening, because of our (blessed) low humidity, our temperatures drop into the low 50s, sometimes 40s. It’s delicious and my brain lulls back into cool weather mode and thoughts turn to soup. I know – soup? In this heat?!

red beans

Make that red adzuki beans. I’m talking about a sweet soup. Most westerners are pretty underwhelmed by Chinese desserts. They don’t tend to be very sweet, but I rather like that. However, the marriage of Asian flavors with western style desserts is like the ultimate in awesome for me. When I dine in authentic Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area or Southern California, our complimentary dessert is almost always a hot bowl of some kind of sweet soup. Taro root, corn and carrot, red bean, green bean, black sesame, peanut… soup.

soaking in water

you’ll want to add some tapioca pearls too

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: grilled vegetable salad

Whenever I return from an out-of-town shoot, my friends always ask how it went. That’s partly because most of my friends are outdoorsy types and partly because they genuinely want to know how the shoot was. I always have two parts to my answer: what I thought of the shoot and how I felt about the trip. In general, the shoots are getting consistently better even if the conditions are less than ideal. I consider that to be progress. How I feel about a trip has gone up and down and up and down as I try to strike a balance between pushing hard enough to get the shots and not pushing so hard that I end up hating what I do or worse yet – wearing myself out so that I miss an opportunity.

mount crested butte

elephant head and indian paintbrush

This shoot came closer to that balance for me. Sometimes you need to step back and remind yourself of those things you love about what you do. Jeremy observed me nodding to myself or muttering words of satisfaction on occasion when I felt I had a good capture. It’s a labor of love to lie in the dirt, stand in the pouring rain, suffer the bugs that bite and the plants that stab you. But I do love it and it is totally worth it. I’m settling into a groove now.

my favorite fern understory

jeremy for scale (he’s looking appropriately camo there too)

We saw a second bear at the end of the trip. The first one was out early in the morning. The moment I spotted it, the bear bolted up a hillslope and disappeared into the woods before I could get my camera out. This second bear was out past sunset. It also made haste up the nearest (steep) hillslope, but Jeremy was able to spot it up high as it quickly worked its way through the dense growth of grasses and wildflowers. They are so fast and so quiet!

like watching the fin of a shark crest the water

this bear just wanted to do its own thing

You can view a sampling of the photos from this trip on the photo blog.

I love going on trips and I love coming home. But there is something to be said for eating food that you prepared. No matter how good the food is (and the food in Crested Butte is quite good), I know what I’m putting into my dinner when I cook. Over a month ago several of my SNB gals gathered at Nichole’s house to make wedding favors for Kitt and to, of course, eat. Nichole made a wonderful grilled vegetable salad that some of you had commented on. It didn’t take long before I was craving that salad.

tomatoes

along with onions, garlic, eggplant, and zucchini

It’s a flexible salad so you can futz with the ingredients, the way you cook them, and the dressing you use. Of course, if you don’t grill any of the vegetables, it can’t technically be a grilled vegetable salad – but I will let you deal with that issue. I didn’t grill my tomatoes (even though I love grilled tomatoes) because tomatoes have a habit of shriveling up and slipping down through the grating on my grill and into oblivion. That can be quite upsetting if you wanted to let’s say… eat the tomatoes. Instead, I roasted mine. I also roasted a bulb of garlic while I was running the oven.

a dash of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt

nicely roasted and still juicy

**Jump for more butter**