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.

I need to get to bed asap, so this is going to be big on pics and short on words…

A jam-packed, fun-filled day today! We hiked to the Continental Divide (Arapaho Pass and almost Caribou Pass) out of the Fourth of July trailhead - appropriately enough. We couldn’t cross the last snowfield to Caribou because it was too steep for Kaweah to cross safely, while Jeremy and I were perfectly fine with our ice axes. I got a lot of wildflower shots as this hike has just about the greatest variety locally, but haven’t had a chance to process any. I do want to toss up a handful of nice pics from the hike including my two favorite housemates:

the cascading streams are lovely right now

jeremy looks across the divide

coming down the trail

having a blast

Once we were home, I began prepping dinner since Marianne was coming up for dinner, fireworks, and staying the night to go on an early morning hike with us tomorrow. I served up some barbecue chicken (recipe will come), grilled asparagus, coleslaw, roasted potato salad, bread… and for dessert, we had red, white, and blue mini pavlovas.

After dinner, we headed out to the reservoir to catch the local town fireworks. It’s supposed to be a pretty decent show and plenty of folks from the flats drive up to watch. This is the first year we’ve actually been in town to see them, so we were excited! I have never shot fireworks before, and had to give it a try. Here are some of what I captured:

Fun stuff, eh? I love how different fireworks look in photos compared to what we see with our own eyes. In any case, on to the recipe - which is for the red, white, and blue mini pavlovas.

whipping egg whites for the meringue

I like mini pavlovas because they take a little less time to bake. Since it was so frakking hot today (84 in my town, which is quite toasty for us mountain folk), I was hoping to minimize the oven time.

shaped nests ready for the oven

I used Donna Hay’s recipe for the meringue shells, altered a bit for our altitude. For some reason, her meringues look perfectly white in her photos and mine always come out beige. Whatever… as long as they taste good - that is what matters.

the red and blue: strawberries and blueberries

I toss the sliced strawberries and blueberries in a little bit of sugar because I don’t add much to my whipped cream. It’s just a nice and refreshing dessert to serve on a hot day. Pretty simple to whip up and a delicious end to a meal.

call it patriotic if you like - i call it delish

Red, White, and Blue Mini Pavlovas
based on Pavlova from Donna Hay’s Modern Classics 2

mini pavlovas (12-14)
whipped cream
2 cups strawberries, sliced
2 cups bluberries

pavlova
4 egg whites
1 cup superfine sugar
3 tsps cornstarch
1 tsp white vinegar

Preheat oven to 300°F. Place egg whites in bowl of electric mixer and beat until soft peaks. Gradually add sugar, beating well until mixture is glossy. Sift the cornstarch over the egg white mixture and fold through with the vinegar. Pile large dollops of meringue evenly spaced onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper (makes about 12-14). Round the shapes and form wells in the centers to create small meringue bowls. Place in oven and cook for 1 hour (45 minutes at elevation). Remove from oven and remove to a cooling rack.

whipping cream
2 cups heavy cream
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract

Whip cream and sugar to medium peaks. Add vanilla and almond extracts and whip until incorporated.

To Serve: Top each pavlova with whipped cream and fresh fruit. Serve immediately.

[*Note to Daring Bakers in search of June’s challenge - please scroll down one post*]

No recipe today. Just me blathering away…

ahhh, sangria

Is it July yet? Just yesterday I was freaking out because I realized we were nearing the end of June. My summer is almost booked solid and even though summer technically began less than 2 weeks ago, I can’t help but get this panicky feeling that summer is already over - gone! I psyche myself out like that though, because I cannot ever relax except under heavy sedation… If I wake up after 7 am I feel as if my whole day is done for. Hey, I never claimed to be free of mental issues!

strawberries and peachy

June has been a bit of frenzy for me, but with the tele betties barbecue we threw yesterday, I can breathe a sigh of calm today and smile at the spread of leftovers in our fridge! I had BARBECUE for brekkie this morning, and that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

bacon makes it (baked beans) good

My aunt was visiting this weekend ever so briefly - to crash at our place for a night before picking my cousin up from camp in Denver and driving the 7 hours back home to New Mexico. Older relatives in my family are always “elders”, but not so with Elena. She’s always been my friend ever since I was a wee tot, and she still is - even more so now that we are adults.

my favorite aunt and uncle by the globe fountain in boulder

The barbecue was great fun yesterday. I have this thing about the company I keep - specifically the female company I keep. They are almost exclusively what I call alpha chicks. What did you expect of me? I have LOADS of amazing women friends and each one is a superstar in her own right. I adore them all and yes, they kick ass. That’s actually a pre-requisite to be my friend… kick-assery. Nothing like cooking up a storm for a bunch of alphas and chilling out together well into the mountain night. And don’t feel sorry for Jeremy… he loves an evening with tele babes.

the menu
chips and salsa, crudités and spinach dip
blackberry-lime cordial cooler, sangria, iced tea
texas barbecue beef brisket
carolina-style pulled pork
mayonnaiseless coleslaw
baked beans
german potato salad
potato rolls
chocolate pistachio cake
mojito jello shots
watermelon sorbet


oh yeah, i made cake for the chicas

Now that my cooking/baking frenzy has abated, I am getting around to visiting blogs and taking care of some desperately-needed digital house keeping. I can tell that my health is improving because a number of things have begun to annoy me on my web travels… I’m just tossing some observations out there:

1) It pains me when blogs play music on their site. This is usually because I am playing iTunes or some public radio show feed on my computer and then I am suddenly accosted with cacophonous noises because frakking Céline Dion (them) just doesn’t jive with The White Stripes (me).

2) I hate sites that make my browser crash. Because I usually have a million tabs up and when the browser crashes I have to go and reload every page, swearing all the way. I usually never revisit those sites again.

3) Tastespotting is back. It is being run by Someone Else. The new Tastespotting is woefully short on technical prowess because it accepts the changes to my profile, but then it doesn’t. Bastards.

But this brings us to another issue, which was the void left by the old (and in my opinion, better, version of) Tastespotting. Everyone was sort of dumbstruck for the first day or so, and then a bunch of folks stepped up to the plate and implemented their own versions. There are quite a few out there. At first this was nice, but soon it became obvious that there was a lot of overlap. And while I believe that redundancy is good in many situations like climbing or emergency planning, I most definitely do not want it in my daily food porn. For what it’s worth (probably not much, but - this is my blog, so I can rattle on as I please), I’m getting behind Chuck’s Food Gawker because it is not only the best in design and functionality, but because Chuck is SO DAMN GOOD about feedback and improvements.

And while Food Gawker is my choice for the onslaught of all that is delicious and documented in the food blogosphere, I also visit Robin’s FP Daily for the beauty of food porn and because I enjoy her little commentaries. I like witty, and Robin is just that.

4) I understand that blogging is not a commercial production for most people, but… would it kill ya to spell check the damn entry before you post it? Or maybe read it over once to catch the misuse of your in place of you’re? [Just watch, I’m going to make this very mistake in my next post…]

5) I have great hatred for Blogger. Sure, call me elitist. I can’t help that I happen to prefer blogging platforms that actually work.

6) I don’t have a 10-foot wide monitor. How many columns can a blog possibly fit onto a standard page before the main text is relegated to two words per line? People put so much shit on their front pages now: ads, previous posts, blogrolls, photo thumbnails, archives, more ads, twitter… The overly-enthusiastic horizontalization of the blog is really annoying when I’m on my (precious) 12″ powerbook or better yet - on my iphone. It is also Bad Design Practice. And while I’m at it, who the hell wants to read hot pink text in 8 point font on a medium gray background? Pouring salt in my eyes would be a far more entertaining way to ruin my vision.

nosh on this

I haven’t been so good about replying to comments lately. I will definitely get to that tonight, folks. Right now, I’m going to enjoy a nice, long cardio workout before getting zapped by radiation oncology.