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Recipe: california hand roll (temaki)

Despite being the summer high season in Crested Butte, our time here has been pleasantly quiet and peaceful. Colorado mountain towns have long winters and short summers, but boy are those summers exploding with color, activity, beauty at every turn – both in the backcountry and in town proper.

the town of crested butte is simply charming

Our neighborhood is filled with the sounds of people greeting one another in the street while walking or heading out for a bike ride, children laughing and playing, and the jingle of dog tags as pups get their walkies in the fresh mountain air. Several of our wonderful neighbors have told us how sorry they were to hear of Kaweah’s passing. This is – as many mountain communities are – a dog-loving community.

our dear next-door neighbor even sent flowers

Jeremy and I took a few days to visit his folks in Pagosa Springs – a lovely mountain town in the-middle-of-nowhere, southwest Colorado. We got up early one morning for a trail run before everyone else had risen and greeted the sunrise as we paced through scrub oak and sticky mud from the previous day’s thunderstorms. Afterward, we sat on the porch with his parents watching throngs of hummingbirds spar over the hummingbird feeders. The Rufous hummingbirds are especially territorial and aggressive which made the bird watching all the more entertaining. It’s really quite spectacular.

sunrise on the trail

a lone rufous monitors the bird feeder from a nearby branch

then thwarts the attempts of an aggressor

and shows the other guy what’s what

We returned to Crested Butte in time to meet my friend Irvin and his partner who were road tripping through Utah and Colorado this summer. We spent 48 hours giving them a quick sampling of Crested Butte: checking out Mount Crested Butte, dining in Mountaineer Square, coffee and pastries at Camp 4, hiking to a great 360° view in the high country, pizza at Secret Stash, mountain biking, dinner at our place, browsing the farmers market.

a.j. and irvin on our hike

irvin grabs a slice of “the woodward” pizza at secret stash

Our multi-day non-stop schedule kept us rather busy and preoccupied such that we weren’t dwelling too much on the little black dog that was missing from our lives. Of course, we miss her terribly. But when people tell us they are sorry, I thank them and point out that Kaweah lived a very good and happy dog life. On our drive from Pagosa Springs to Crested Butte, I was finally able to verbalize how I felt about my time with Kaweah. She was a gift to us, both literally and figuratively. It was our responsibility to provide the absolute best life to her that we could and we took that task to heart. We were with her to the very end so that she was never alone, afraid, or unloved. Only now do I understand just how much of a gift she really was and will always be until my dying day. This is me finding closure.

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I know that some people consider sushi a summer food because of the raw aspect, but I maintain a year-round love affair with sushi. I crave it after skiing just as much as I crave it after (and during) summer backpacking, and we’re fortunate that Boulder has a lot of decent sushi on offer and Crested Butte has one sushi bar (they used to have two, but my favorite one closed its doors last year). We also make sushi at home. One of my favorites is the California roll – something I never order in restaurants, but often make in my own kitchen. It is a good gateway sushi roll because the crab is cooked. When we prepare California rolls at home, we tend to go for the hand rolls or temaki because they’re quick and easy to make and consume.

wasabi powder, sesame seeds, sriracha, nori (seaweed), sushi rice, masago (capelin roe), cucumber, avocado, mayonnaise, king crab legs

slice the cucumber into strips

stir wasabi powder into mayonnaise to make…

wasabi mayonnaise

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: shiso spicy tuna tempura (dragon scales)

It was getting a little ridiculous. My friends had moved into their new house in Boulder several months ago and I still hadn’t been by to pay them a visit. Summer was pretty cray cray and fall is even more so. If not now, then when? It’s not like I’m the only person who is busy – they are busy too. Everyone is busy. I guess what makes friends so special is that an hour spent together in the midst of all the busy recharges you and leaves you with a warm fuzzy glow for several days.

beautiful family in their wonderful new home

Their adorable baby is no longer a baby but an adorable little boy. Nichole and Luke have put so much work into their house on their own (like laying new plumbing to rearrange their kitchen – whoa!). It was really exciting for me, a DIY-wannabe, to see what two resourceful and creative DIY people can do! Then Nichole said, “Wanna see the garden?” How she finds the time to work, raise Mr. Cutiepie (my nickname for him), remodel the house, AND garden, I just do not know. All that while remaining her hysterically funny and sassy self to boot.

nichole picks red shiso for me

When Nichole said she had red shiso, I did a blink-blink and then a double take. Shiso? Ever since Jeremy and I went to The Lobar in Crested Butte for my birthday, I’ve been wanting to recreate the dragon scales appetizer we enjoyed. It was made with shiso leaves, and the only place I knew of to purchase shiso leaves is on the far side of Denver in Aurora (H-Mart). That’s a drive in sucky traffic that I didn’t want to make. And here was my friend asking me if I would like some red shiso from her garden! Love that girl.

lovely shiso without driving to denver

I’ve only ever had shiso in or with sushi. My favorite sushi chef, Fumito, in South Pasadena would tell us that it is good for your health. When I’ve purchased shiso leaves at H-Mart in the past, they were labeled as sesame leaves or Perilla and they were huge, like as big as my extended hand. These shiso leaves were smaller and a gorgeous purple color, and talk about local sourcing. Now we’re cooking with gas! Here’s what you’ll need to make dragon scales:

shiso leaves, maguro (sashimi grade tuna), mayonnaise, sriracha (not pictured: masago and togarashi)

tempura batter: flour, egg, ice water, baking soda

tempura dipping sauce: mirin, soy sauce, dashi, sugar

The reason the masago (capelin roe) and togarashi (Japanese chili seasoning) aren’t in the picture is because I forgot to buy them. I wasn’t expecting to make this and scrambled at the last minute to get what I needed based on memory. But I do recommend including those in your recipe should you decide to make this (and really, you should).

mixing the tempura batter

make the spicy tuna

stir in the sriracha

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: porcini mushroom tempura sushi handroll

To summarize my weekend: my feet hurt. But it’s the good kind of hurt! We hiked three fourteeners (it’s what Coloradoans do for fun – summit 14,000+ ft. mountains): Mounts Democrat, Cameron, and Lincoln. It started out well enough, but as the morning progressed the winds got crazy insane and wildfire smoke from I-don’t-know-where hung in the air like a bad smog day in Southern California.

hello pika, you’re so cute you are

first summit of the morning: mount democrat

third summit of the morning: mount lincoln

mounts cameron (far left) and democrat (left of center) in hazy conditions

On the way home from the trailhead, we swung by the store to get more green chiles for roasting. MOAR!!! It used to be that we relied on the kindness of my in-laws who live in Southern Colorado or my aunt who lives in New Mexico to grace us with a few bags of frozen roasted green chiles at the end of summer. But fresh Hatch green chiles began to arrive in our local markets a couple of years ago every August and I’ve been hoarding them ever since. The Boulder Whole Foods has in-house roasted chiles ready to go, but I rather like the idea of roasting my own. It’s fun and it smells like the end of summer. Those of you who know that smell of roasting green chiles – you know what I mean…

covet thy green chiles

roasting on the grill – our neighborhood smelled fantastic

the ever hopeful kaweah is just hanging out because she associates the grill with steak

On Sunday morning, the air seemed to finally be clearing of that nasty, smokey haze. So we went for a trail run. I am not a runner. I don’t really enjoy running. The longest run I’ve ever done is 10 miles and that was in graduate school because we were always looking to diversify our suffering. Trail runs are different. I don’t love them, but I do enjoy them. I managed just over 10 miles, which I haven’t done in twelve years! It seemed like a good end-of-summer thing to do for, you know… getting ready for ski season. This, this is why my feet hurt.

Something else that has come to an end for me is my porcini foraging for the year. I think there are still some out there, but I unwittingly booked up my schedule and that’s that. Last Thursday, Wendy and I set off in the dark at 5:30 am for our final day of foraging together this season (she will, no doubt, continue to scour the mountains until the end of August). In the car, we tossed ideas back and forth on different ways to enjoy fresh porcinis. I had a small bag of bouchons to finish up before leaving town, so I welcomed this brainstorm session.

let’s make sushi: anago sauce, sushi rice, avocado, masago (flying fish roe), porcinis, nori

mixing ice water and egg for tempura batter

**Jump for more butter**