use real butter

Recipe: porcini pizza

I’m back in Colorado. That was a quick less-than-48-hour trip in which we managed to get not a whole lot of sleep. But the reason we got so little sleep was because there is always plenty to cram into a day when we’re in California. I mean, not only are there just too many fun things to do (and great food to sample), but there are always some very wonderful friends to see. Our second day went like this:

visiting a little bakery in napa

enjoying the art while eating a strawberry croissant

pretty glass at a tasting room

client meeting and engagement shoot

a late dinner with elise and guy

Jeremy and I returned home Wednesday morning on a 6:20 am flight. Then we proceeded to gather our pup from Camp Crazy, give her a suds session, and prepare our place for house guests arriving that evening. You may know Chuck as the Chief Gawker (he runs foodgawker among many other sites), but I first became friends with him and Hungry Bear years ago when they blogged at Sunday Nite Dinner. They visited for less than 24 hours, but I managed to show them a little bit of my Colorado.

picking up our kaweah girl

chuck and hungry bear hiked up to a lovely alpine lake with me

appetizers at the kitchen (quintessential boulder)

he is still a food blogger at heart

Did I mention the freshman and their parents are in Boulder this week? Well, they so totally are. It takes twice as long to get anywhere in town right now. I had a lot to do between saying good-bye to Chuck and Hungry Bear and meeting up with my parents to celebrate my mom’s birthday. I suppose the upside to this is that dodging all of these out-of-town drivers helped raise my heart rate and keep me awake.

picked up some lilies for mom

of course, my folks decided on frasca

beautiful cured salmon starters

jeremy’s primi (rigatoni with tender veal cheek)

During dinner, one of the servers recognized me from a delivery I had made the previous week to Frasca. I promised Mr. Bobby Stuckey some fresh porcinis if I ever found enough nice bouchons to bring to him. Well, I did and so I was good for my word. I had handed the bag to this young woman and asked that she send it along to Bobby as he was busy in the kitchen and I was in a rush for a meeting. She told me that he gave it to the kitchen and they made him a nice dinner from the mushrooms. “He was very happy,” she smiled. So glad to hear it. I had my own bag of fresh porcinis at home to polish off before heading out of town earlier this week. There was no way I was going to waste these babies. Jeremy and I decided to make some pizza.

there is no such thing as enough porcinis

keep it simple: garlic butter, salt, pepper, mozzarella, porcinis, pizza dough

**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**

Recipe: cucumber spritzer

Did any of you stay up to watch the Perseids meteor shower over the weekend? It’s one of my favorite meteor showers each year because it isn’t freezing cold out, there is usually a good show, and the winds are typically gentle in summer. The first night we had clouds overhead that miraculously cleared out by 1 am, so Jeremy and I slept out on our deck while I had the camera running until astronomical twilight around 5 am. I saw several dozens of meteors streaking across the sky despite dozing off for ten minutes here and ten minutes there (Jeremy pretty much slept through the entire thing). The next night, we put two IKEA poang chairs outside on the deck and wrapped ourselves up in flannel quilts and fleece blankets. I’m less likely to fall asleep if I’m not horizontal, but there were considerably fewer meteors. I was still able to see a couple dozen, although the clouds really moved in by 2 am.

perseid and the milky way

another one

long exposure of my camera taking a 30-minute exposure

the milky way (red glow is my town’s center)

star trails (orange glow is clouds, white blur is milky way)

Ahh, sleep-deprivation in summer. It is de rigueur for our summers because of things like the Perseids meteor shower or more likely waking early to beat the sun or thunderstorms on the mountains. There aren’t that many hikes left in our local area that we haven’t done, but the High Lonesome loop was one of them. There were about 5 of the 16.5 miles we hadn’t done before, so it was time. We typically prefer to do the longer hikes in the fall when it cools down and the grasses of the high country turn brilliant golds, rusts, and reds. Except fall is a ridiculously busy time for me and the hike invariably gets shelved. I’m glad we did this one in summer, because it was just so beautiful.

jeremy at the high point

Hiking is always a great way to work up an appetite. What better excuse to meet up with friends for dinner in town? My pal, Ellen of the famed and addictive Helliemae’s Salt Caramels, and her mister joined me and Jeremy for a lovely evening at Frasca last week. It is hands-down my favorite spendy place in Boulder. The food was fantastic, the service impeccable, and the company – perfect.

chris and ellen get the low down on the menu

primi: lasagna (fried eggplant, smoked mozzarella, tomato passato)

So, I’m a bit of a teetotaler. It’s partly because I’m the designated driver and partly because I can’t hold my liquor for squat. I’m okay with that. I usually order an iced tea for the caffeine boost (remember, sleep-deprived all summer long). While Ellen and Chris were fighting traffic to get to the restaurant, Jeremy and I perused the wine list and happened to glance at the cocktails in the back. And there were non-alcoholic cocktails that were about as fancy as any cocktails! I ordered the cucumber-ish cocktail, because cucumber is the perfect quencher for me on a hot day (and it was a hot day spent foraging). Utterly delightful. And you know I had to make this at home.

cukes, lime, mint, sugar

Funny thing is, that morning I was foraging with my pal, Wendy, and we discussed cucumber simple syrup. So the seed was already planted. I had everything I needed at home. These are easy ingredients to get your hands on and I imagine there are many people getting crushed under the weight of their cucumber harvests. To those people I say, “I am jealous.”

make a simple syrup

shred or chop the cucumber

add the cucumber to the hot syrup and steep

**Jump for more butter**