use real butter

Recipe: roasted beet, chèvre, hazelnut salad with blood oranges

I’ve been horizontal for the past two days with a blasted flu (not H1N1 as everyone seems to assume). I came down with it during my trip to California last week when we were taking care of stuff for my grandma. Sigh. No good deed goes unpunished. Today, I can finally sit upright for more than a few minutes at a time without passing out.

So I think some of you might be wondering who won the CHEFS gift card? Jeremy and Kaweah had a lot of fun picking the winner yesterday. I was in and out of consciousness while Jeremy was hard at work in the kitchen. He finally presented me with a handful of dog treats etched with a number 0-9 on each one… in binary. Somehow this was more exciting to Jeremy. As long as he’s happy… Kaweah followed him around like a little black shadow, anxious to do her part (that is, to eat the treats).

your nibbly kibbly chances of winning

our dedicated employee

Per the usual routine, we set out all ten digits and recorded the first number she ate. Jeremy is quite practiced at preventing Kaweah from mowing through all ten at once (she’s a quick one, that dog). We replaced the devoured digit with a new one and reshuffled the biscuits. Binary, hexidecimal – they’re all delicious to Kaweah. 3… 0…

there goes the 5

Congratulations to Wend! You were comment #305 and you win the $100 CHEFS gift card! I’ll be emailing you to get your snail mail address so CHEFS can ship it to you right away.

But wait, there’s more! I have a $25 CHEFS gift card from the BlogHer Food conference back in September that I never used. A $25 card means only one thing – I’m going to spend way more than $25… I’d rather give that card to one of you. So Jeremy took the winning number 305 as a seed for a random number selection (Kaweah had eaten plenty for the day) and we have #33 – Paula! Congratulations to Paula! I’ll contact you shortly to get your mailing address too.

So this here flu has played havoc with my holiday schedule and I’m left digging around in the archives for something to share. I can only handle thinking about holiday fare for a day or two and then my brain revolts. The cookies, the sweets, the large cooked animals, the cream, the starches, the fat – they make me so sleepy. I find greens and citrus to be light and refreshing. Salads leave me feeling recharged and ready to spring to action!

some golden beets

a few blood oranges

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Recipe: chopped greek salad

I’m feeling so much better now! Thank you for all of your kind wishes. I have to say, when I have a cold the foods that comfort and heal me most are: 1) Mom’s congee made with homemade broth, chicken, ginger, and green onions 2) Mom’s ginger-brown sugar tea and 3) Mom’s sweet fermented rice soup (jou nian – I call it boozy sweet rice). I always forget about these goto “feel better when sick” foods until I talk to my mom. So there I was, croaky voice sitting on the couch telling my mom that I’m slowly improving when she rattled off the foods I should be eating. I think just hearing her say it in Chinese made me feel that much more improved. When I was little, the only thing that made me feel better was having my mom or Grandma (boy, I was *spoiled*) pick me up and hold me. I was notorious for standing with my outstretched arms and saying, “bao bao?”

I haven’t taken a photo in a week, which feels like a lifetime to me! Trust me – that’s my one week this year without photos because from here on out it is going to be busy. *straps on helmet, tightens laces*

The recipe today is one I made before our trip to southwestern Colorado. I was in a salad state of mind because the heat makes me want to eat things like a cold giant hunk of watermelon or a bowl of grapes or ten popsicles for dinner. After I had made the chopped shrimp waldorf salad my eyes wandered to the previous page in my Fine Cooking issue… chopped Greek salad. Can do. Can do.

Salads in summer make me happy because they usually involve chopping (I love my knives and I love to use them) and minimal cooking if any. In this case, the croutons require a bit of stove and oven time. I highly recommend making your own croutons if you’ve never tried. I can think of very few foods in this world that are better store-bought than made (properly) at home.

[Crouton tangent] We made tons of homemade croutons when I was in Chile for field work as a graduate student. The bread we bought was barely passable right from the store – forget about 5 days out in the bleeping desert! All we needed was oil, garlic, salt, and stale bread cubes. Those were both good and bad times for me (particularly the time when I said, “I’m sure that ham is still good – give it here.”) The one person who really made my entire field season tolerable was my “field assistant”, friend, and fellow grad student, Greg. I put field assistant in quotes because HE taught ME about geomorphology and we worked really well together in the field. Greg saved me from going batshit as we dealt with all manner of interesting obstacles like land mines, equipment issues, logistics, rethinking the science, 8.0 earthquakes, navigating over roadless terrain in thick fog on top of a cliff that plunged 3000 feet to the ocean, and so much more.

at salar del huasco, chile

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Recipe: chopped shrimp waldorf salad

Frenzied. I’m feeling frenzied here. There is much going on at use real butter headquarters because summer is when everything except sleep gets turned up to maximum intensity: travel, visits, socializing, entertaining, outdoor pursuits, house maintenance. Like a nearly empty tube of toothpaste, we’re trying to squeeze every last bit of summer out of August before Jeremy resumes teaching. [Even though my summer runs through September, his does not.] You know the drill. Or maybe you don’t? You might be one of those types who likes to relax. My idea of relaxing is doing something, so in essence, I can’t relax. It’s okay, I am happier functioning that way. From the still photographs, you’d never be the wiser for the flurry of activity going on behind the scenes.

can’t resist fruity cocktails: piña coladas

brilliant mammata clouds after sunset

dinner at sushi den in denver with my parents and friends

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