use real butter

Tartelette told me she couldn’t keep up with my posting! It’s true, I have been posting daily since the calendar flipped to July because there is just so much going on that if I don’t write them up - posts will get buried! Not to mention, I’m on my steroid regimen again and I am running with the overflow of energy. I’ll probably crash and burn in 24 hours, but I’m okay with that. After feeling like complete crap for several months, it’s hard to take for granted the improvements I now feel. I can finally get out to see the mountains I love, find energy to cook wonderful food (and even taste and digest them!), and have the patience to capture the beauty of our summer season with my camera. These are happy times. I’m also wired and exhausted, but I relish it - I really do.

This morning we took another hike up to a lovely lake nestled in an alpine basin at roughly 11,300 feet. Invigorating! There was still plenty of snow, which is a good thing because it has been so hot here lately. Several more varieties of wildflowers were beginning to bloom, but the lake is still under a lot of ice and snow. I’m crazy for the mountains.

marmots out and basking in the sun

marianne captures some delicate wildflowers

above the lake from our snack stop

kaweah cools off on the snow

It has been a hot holiday weekend, but this afternoon we finally got a nice thunderstorm to deliver much needed rain. The temperature plummeted from 85 to 55 degrees in an hour. Lovely! Good thing I barbecued yesterday :)

all-purpose red rub

Even though I love barbecue, I am no barbecue expert. I’m a faker to some degree because we use a gas grill and oven instead of charcoal grill (fear of burning down state of Colorado). Most of what I’ve cobbled together in the past few years has been from reading/researching all sorts of recipes from various regions and sources. I lived in central New York for more years than I care to recall, but I still never got around to dining at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Syracuse - a place many of my friends swear by (one even had them cater her wedding!) I did manage to pick up a copy of the book before we moved back West.

mix the rub with olive oil

The one thing I cannot stand about barbecue chicken is when someone takes a boneless, skinless chicken breast and wipes barbecue sauce on the thing while it turns to rubber on the grill. That is disgusting. People who cook chicken like that should be smacked about the head with that piece of rubber. I know people who do this. I have to squint my eyes and keep my hands by my side when I witness this atrocity being perpetrated on chicken in this manner. The best barbecue chicken has the bone and skin still on it. You don’t have to eat the skin, but you need to cook with it on the meat. The recipe I quite enjoy for barbecue chicken comes straight from my Dinosaur Bar-B-Que cookbook. Good stuff.

rub the rub on the chickie

I am partial to chicken leg quarters. It’s a nice honking piece of chicken and it doubles as a weapon to boot. Little pieces get dried out too quickly. I find the leg quarters remain juicy and full of flavor during grilling - far better than their breast counterparts. Dark meat is where it’s at. When applying the oil and rub mixture to the chicken, I like to get a little of that under the skin for some extra seasoning and flavor. Just be careful that you don’t tear through the skin. I let my chicken sit for at least 8 hours, covered in the refrigerator, after the rub is put on.

brushing mutha sauce on the chicken at the end

The chicken is grilled and then in the last ten minutes, a nice brushing of barbecue sauce ensures a decent glaze. I personally like to serve extra sauce on the side with the finished chicken. We had this for our fourth of July dinner. This is a great recipe to make that doesn’t require much preparation - just a little planning ahead of time and lots of napkins when you eat it!

hot off the grill and ready for the party

Barbecue Chicken
modified from Dinosaur Bar-B-Que by John Stage and Nancy Radke

8 chicken quarters
2/3 cup olive oil
7 tbsps all-purpose red rub
2 cups mutha sauce

all-purpose red rub
1/2 cup paprika
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated garlic
6 tbsps granulated onion
1/4 cup chili powder
1 tbsp black pepper
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

All-purpose red rub: Mix all ingredients into a bowl and rub them together with your hands. Store in plastic or glass container until ready for use. Makes 2 3/4 cups.

mutha sauce
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 onion, puréed
2 tbsp garlic, minced
salt to taste
pepper to taste
28 oz. tomato sauce
2 cups ketchup
1 cup water
3/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup cayenne pepper sauce
1/4 cup spicy brown mustard
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp chili powder
2 tsp ground pepper
1/2 tsp allspice, ground

Mutha sauce: Sauté onions and garlic in oil. Season with salt and pepper. Add remaining ingredients and bring to boil. Reduce to simmer for ten minutes and let the sauce cool. This makes a ridiculous amount of sauce - something like 10-12 cups.

Chicken: Mix the oil and the rub together in a bowl and massage it into the chicken pieces. Cover and refrigerate the chicken until you are ready to grill it (I gave it 8 hours). Over a 325° to 350°F temperature grill (when lid is down), position the rack as high above the coals as possible. Arrange chicken, skin-side up, directly over the coals. Close and cook for 25 to 30 minutes then flip the chicken over and cook covered, for another 20 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 160°-165°F. Flip all pieces skin-side up and slather on the Mutha Sauce. Close the lid of the grill and cook for 10 more minutes to glaze the chicken. Serve with extra sauce. Feeds 4-6.

Plenty of good things to bandy about on the blog today. For one: sushi, which is always a plus for me. More on that in a moment.

I spied some incredible looking mammata as I left the cancer center this afternoon. I had my camera with me (it goes just about everywhere I go) and was able to take a few shots from the parking lot before it dissipated. We get a lot of these in the summertime down on the flats - all of that atmospheric instability makes for gorgeous cloud formations. It made me recall something Tom told me recently, “the best camera is the one you have with you.” So true (what I would have given to have had my camera in my lap instead of in the backseat of the car when a bobcat crossed our path a few weeks ago driving home).

ominous

After that neat sighting, I went and sat in my car and opened a package that had ridden down the canyon with me to my radiation appointment. I had been running late, so no time to open the package. It was from Bee and Jai of Jugalbandi!

so beautiful… whatever could it be?

wonderful wonderful things

A care package is like a hug from far away. I only “met” Bee recently, but what a sweetheart she is. Just look at all of the goodies! Of course, I can’t possibly let this go without a retaliation package. Just you wait, Bee and Jai. Just you guys wait… Thank you so much. xxoo

Jeremy and I resumed our sushi tour after a one week hiatus (just too much shit going down last week). This time we tried Kasa, a relative new-comer to the Boulder scene. It has been in business for a year and we happened across it one day after walking from the post office to Pearl Street pedestrian mall.

kasa means umbrella

The restaurant sits on a prime corner location and the interior is very bright because all external walls are windows onto Pearl and 15th. The restaurant has a hip and artsy black and white theme wrapped all around the sushi bar, sake bar, and table seating.

great natural lighting

We found the service to be a complete mishmash because it seemed that whoever was nearby would take our order, serve us food, refill drinks, give us our bill… Inconsistent in a strange way. There didn’t seem to be a clearcut sushi chef in the traditional sense either. But that was okay because the quality of the fish was superb. On par with the best of them. Here, have a looksee.

start with some light seaweed salad

sashimi deshoku (chef’s choice)

red dragon roll: spicy tuna with avocado and anago

#9 roll: shrimp tempura, crab, cucumber, salmon and avocado

nigiri: tobiko with quail egg, scallop

The seaweed salad was a little less seasoned than I prefer, but it was still enjoyable. Everything else was terrific, awesome, delicious, fresh. The presentation was gorgeous, as you can see. The rolls were quite good, but they didn’t have that magic combination of flavor, texture, shazaam-in-your-mouth experience that we got with other sushi joints.

Here is my beef with Kasa: it is ass expensive. Okay, all sushi in Boulder is expensive, but for some reason Kasa’s sushi and sashimi run a few bucks more per item than other places on the tour. Add to that the fact that their selection isn’t as extensive as any of the other sushi bars (they were out of toro today). Jeremy noted that they must pay an arm and a leg for their rent. Perhaps, but Tora is also on Pearl Street, their chefs are the real deal, and their selection is unsurpassed.

I like Kasa. I mean, I didn’t even need my tripod to shoot because it’s so well lit! We both loved what we ate for dinner, but considering the financial damage I would rather walk the extra 5 blocks to Sushi Tora.

New rankings:
1) Sushi Tora
2) Amu Sake Bar and Restaurant
3) Ai Sushi and Steak
4) Kasa Sushi

Anyhoo, that’s another sushi bar under our belt. After getting home and feeding the pup her dry kibbles (oh shut up, she LOVES that stuff, she loves *anything* - she’s a lab for crying out loud), we went to survey the state of our local columbines. Ramping up and looking good. These are for you, Diane! See the rest on the photoblog.

blue columbines - the colorado state flower

I was going to poll you guys about what lens I should get next, but then I started researching online and basically found the lens that *I need to have* and ordered it just now. And I thought Kasa was expensive… We’ll see what kind of pretty I can wrangle with the new glass once it gets here.

It was too hot to eat dinner while the sun was still up this evening. Wait a sec… *we* felt it was too hot to eat dinner while the sun was still up this evening. We didn’t sit down to our meal until 9 pm and it was still light out (love that, actually). While I waited for the house to cool down a little, I stepped out onto the deck to admire the skies to the west and enjoy the cooling mountain air. I love clouds because they can form some incredible patterns, but I especially love clouds at sunset because the light can play some beautiful colors.

like a magic show

it almost looks organic

3000 feet lower in Boulder, the daytime temperatures are standing solidly in the 80s (F) and flirting with the 90s (F). What better timing then to continue our sushi tour? On Wednesday, we dined at Amu for dinner. Amu is situated next to and operated by Sushi Zanmai. Zanmai is a darling of Boulder and probably one of the venerated favorites. My experiences at Zanmai have always left me feeling that 1) I spent a lot of money 2) I got mediocre sushi for the price 3) the service suuuuuucks and 4) every damn YUH (Young Urban Hipster) and aging hippie flocks to the place making the wait all the more annoying considering what you get at the end of it all. However, my chemo nurse assured me that Amu was different and very good.

the sign is easily missed

The interior of the restaurant is small and narrow. There was a table for 6, ten seats at the bar, and maybe a private room or two in the back. We were asked to remove our shoes before sitting at the bar.

enter the bar through a giant noren

seats soon to be filled

For those in search of California rolls or the generic assortment of sushi - that dog don’t hunt. Not here anyway. This bar serves traditional Japanese fare and the menu has specials from the kitchen and sashimi from the bar. No sushi. If you want sushi, go next door and suffer the crappy wait staff at Zanmai (yeah, I really detest those blokes).

to start

Our little dish of complimentary starter was a delightful cold “salad” of broccoli in a miso dressing with some kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) and what Jin tells me is konnyaku (part of the voodoo lily family - thanks, Jin!). I decided on an order of marinated seaweed because I thought I was ordering a seaweed salad.

mozuku

That wasn’t quite the salad I was expecting. In fact, it was nothing like what I was expecting. However, mixed with the minced ginger, it was a tangy and savory almost noodle-like dish. I was lukewarm about it. Jeremy was not loving this one at all (the man frightens easily when it comes to certain foods), so I finished it. I mean, seaweed is supposed to be good for your hair… that is what Grandma tells me. It’s about time my hair started to grow back, yeah?

sashimi assortment

Enough screwing around though… it was time to get down to business, and that business would be gorgeous, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth sashimi. Why fill up on rice when you can enjoy protein in its loveliest form? If sashimi were a man, it would be a metrosexual because it is so pretty - and I would date the hell out of him. Oh yes… I would… All of the sashimi (sake, maguro, bonito, hamachi, tako) was fresh and tasted like a rich kiss in the mouth. Excellent quality.

binnaga tataki

Next up: the seared albacore tuna. This delicate fish was dressed in a citrusy ponzu under a mound of shiso chiffonade, green onions, fennel, and garlic. The combination of vegetation was terrific and had a wonderful perfume (the shiso is so refreshing), but overpowered the subtle flavor of the albacore somewhat. I enjoyed the plate, although Jeremy was suspiciously generous about letting me finish it off.

halibut sashimi special

I watched with fascination while our sushi chef, Yuki, prepared a long fillet of halibut. That’s right, folks - we had a female sushi chef. My first ever! And she was AWESOME. Yuki trained in Japan for 5 years and in Boulder for 13 years. Although she doesn’t tele, she does ride at Vail, her resort of choice. *Sweet* Because if you live in a state blessed with powder, what the hell are you doing if you aren’t skiing or riding?

Okay, back to the halibut. The sashimi was served with ponzu for dipping. It was fresh with a good, firm texture. Yuki also advised that we dip the little omelette rolls in soy sauce. Those little omelette rolls were amazing. She wrapped a thin egg sheet around slices of halibut with shiso and thinly sliced cucumber. The combination of the flavors and textures was *brilliant*.

ahhhhh, hamachi

We ended the meal with a final order of hamachi sashimi. The hamachi was sublime and the pieces substantial. Our server asked if we wanted to order any dessert and I informed her that hamachi is essentially dessert to us. The service at Amu was the best of the sushi tour thus far. It’s a little hard to compare with the others because it is so much more authentic (Japanese) and the style of the food is quite different. We certainly felt Amu was a good experience and it comes close to dethroning Tora, but… Sushi Tora is still #1 for us, by a hair. What we are discovering is that Boulder - in the middle of a landlocked state and over 1000 miles from the nearest coast - has a lot of great sushi to offer.

1) Sushi Tora
2) Amu Sake Bar and Restaurant
3) Ai Sushi and Steak

I’m just so thrilled to be eating sushi again, and sushi this good. Yip!