Merry Christmas

I'm sad. Christmas is over. I had been looking forward to my first Colorado Christmas for two years. I took a week of vacation and mom, Larry and Scott came to visit us for the week. It's weird looking forward to something for so long, only to have it pass in the blink of an eye. It's weird going back to my normal routine, only now having that thing I had long anticipated being a memory of the past rather than a fantasy of the future. It's weird to have it behind me rather than in front of me.

We had a really nice time. Mom was like a little kid playing in the snow for the first time in her life. She was running, throwing snowballs and kicking up snow like any eight year old would. She just kept saying how magical it was and laughing. I swear it took decades off her age. The image of her all bundled up and playing with a big grin on her face will stay with me forever.

After everyone left this afternoon I went back into my home, now still and quiet after a week of being filled with love and laughter. I looked back through the photos and I could still hear mom's voice laughing and I could see her eyes glowing with the light of discovery and joy. It filled me simultaneously with happiness that these moments existed, and such sadness that they had passed so quickly. But I suppose it's knowing that such moments are fleeting that make them so precious, and mourning their passing is futile.

Bear Lake holds a particularly special place in my heart now. Who knew such a short trail could hold so many memories. I love you mom, more than words can ever express.

'Tis the Season

Finally! We've got a real Colorado December in full swing. With the wind chill, it's -22 F tonight and we've easily had over a foot of snow in the past two weeks. It has really helped bring on the Christmas spirit. That, and knowing I only have four more days of work before I'm off for ten full days for a little Christmas vacation. I'm not really going anywhere. Instead I've got family and friends coming up here for a week of snowshoeing, Christmas shopping and other wintry activities. Of course, if the weather is like this throughout the week of Christmas, I have a feeling that my mom will ensure our primary activity is sitting by the fire with hot chocolate and admiring the snow through frosted window panes.

I love Colorado. Have I mentioned that before?

Good Night

A cold, snowy night. A crackling fire. A hot cup of really good coffee with Bailey's.

I love Colorado.

Bigger is Better

Today I played a role in a small but unlikely exchange. It was unlikely mostly because of where it happened, in the parking lot of Whole Foods in Boulder. If this had happened just about anywhere in Texas it wouldn't even be worth a mention.

I'm walking back to my truck parked near the street in the only parking spaces big enough to contain it. There is a hot blond woman loading her groceries into her mid-sized SUV a few spaces over from me. As I'm getting in, she yells out, "I love big trucks! You can't get too big for me!"

I yelled back, "Me too!"

Truck Man

Yes, I sold the Jeep.

I know it may be a bit of a surprise to my friends who knew my excitement after I bought the Jeep, so to be as brief as possible: I'm over it. Fun, yes, the Jeep was fun. At least in the summer which is relatively short in these parts. But when it's in the teens and twenties outside a layer of canvas kinda leaves you wanting more. The Jeep was also easy to park. But it was very loud, especially at highway speeds, with that rag top, and rough due to that short wheel base. And those plastic windows were getting really hard to see through after just two and a half years. And it really didn't have any get up 'n go. I was tired of being limited to 45 mph on any major road going uphill. There are a lot of hills in the Rockies. But the worst thing about the Jeep was that it can't carry much of anything. I'm sure my next set of visitors will be grateful for not having to squeeze into the back seat of a Wrangler when I take them to Rocky Mountain National Park. Seating room is no longer an issue. And hauling? Forget it! I've had to rent a truck no less than half a dozen times in the last year, and I could certainly have used a truck more often were it not for strapping things all over the top of the Jeep.

My first vehicle, a gift from my parents at the tender age of 16, was in fact a car, but every vehicle I purchased after that was a pickup. Until the Jeep. I always wanted a Jeep, so I don't at all regret it. I'm sure I'd still be longing for one had I not tried it. After months of deliberation I decided I missed a truck enough that it was time to go back. And how! I'm a little further along in my career these days so I decided it was time to get a serious truck. No more Rangers or two-seater Silverados for me. No sir, this time I got a Ford F-350 diesel crew cab 4x4 long bed. It's every cowboy-wannabe's wet dream.

I took it to the horse ranch (the photo above) and within the first ten minutes was asked by two different people in unrelated incidents what my truck's name was. There was plenty of oohing and aahing, tire kicking, hood raising and all the other stuff you might expect from rancher and cowboy types when admiring such a vehicle. Even the horses came over to see what was all the commotion.

Today I took it down the clerk and recorder to get the registration. The woman behind the counter was in her mid 50's, a bit manish, thick glasses. She recognized me and waved me over. We talked for a bit. She actually remembered me from when I transferred the Jeep registration from Texas to Colorado. I told her I traded the Jeep for a new vehicle. I didn't mention what it was. She looked at me with a straight face, head tilted forward, peering over her glasses which were balanced on the tip of her nose. She said, "It's a pick-up truck isn't it."

"Yes," I said.

"It's big isn't it."

"Yes." I think I blushed. "How did you know???"

She burst out laughing, "I knew it! You're not a Jeep man. You're a truck man."

Snow At Last

I was getting worried. It's been such a warm, dry autumn I was beginning to wonder if the snow would ever come. Boulder's record for the latest "first snow" was set on November 22, 2003. That's too close to be breaking the record already. Last year we had several good snowfalls in October, and a really fantastic one on Thanksgiving and again on Christmas. It was perfect. But so far this season has been a bust for snow-lovers.

Until this morning, when I awoke to a steady snow that dusted us with 1.1 inches! I was so excited. I put on my favorite flannels, cooked a nice big breakfast of biscuits, scrambled eggs, bacon, milk, butter and spiced preserves. Over a leisurely breakfast we watched the snow come down, and I was about 2 hours late getting to work. What a perfect way to start a Friday.

Hot Biscuits!

Tonight I nearly perfected my homemade biscuits. The outside is buttery and crisp, the inside soft and fluffy. They are truly outstanding.

How, you ask, did I do this? I stopped using baking powder for something better. Baking powder is only added to baked goods to make them rise. It does this because baking powder contains acid salts that react with the food to create carbon dioxide. I was never comfortable with adding something to my food just to make it rise and which contained no other nutrition whatever. It's like adding artificial food coloring. Really, is it worth the trade off?

So tonight I tried an experiment. I have two quarts of plain raw milk yogurt which I made this week, and the whey it contains is slightly acid. Using the yogurt instead of the baking powder as my acid made a world of difference. It's like a whole new recipe! I'm full from dinner and my mouth is still watering for these things.

Colorado Pizza

I know my blog entries tend to be heavily weighed toward food, but what can I say? For most people throughout almost the entirety of history, life revolved around food. Modern stone age people still living deep in the rainforests of South America still spend a huge amount of time acquiring and preparing food. All the great food cultures of the world evolved from this. We Americans are the first people, probably in all of history, to spend such a tiny proportion of our income on food and spend so little time making a big to-do of it. It's no secret that this plays a huge part in why we're the fattest people ever and yet are suffering malnutrition. I don't want to get into it too much here, but you should check out Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It's about her journey deep into food life and building a culture of food for her family and with her community. She's not a heavy writer and I often find myself chuckling or outright laughing when I read this book. Though it definitely has a serious undercurrent about the enormous tragedy that is the American food system. But enough of that.

Tonight I made Colorado Pizza! I'd never made a pizza purely from scratch until tonight, but boy you'd never know it. And it couldn't be easier! A quick dough from Colorado flour, covered with olive oil (the only non-Colorado ingredient), sauteed onions and peppers, the last of summer's fresh tomatoes, some truly free-range chicken, goat cheese from Haystack Mountain, and dried basil from our garden. Boom! In less than an hour you've got two large, exceptionally fantastic pizzas!

I also churned a fresh batch of butter tonight while the pizza was cooking. It is, by far, my best yet. In fact I don't think it could get any better. My technique is nearly perfected after a year and a half of practice. I got every last drop of buttermilk out of it, and it is the densest, creamiest, most buttery butter ever. I also ended up with a quart of buttermilk leftover which will make an awesome addition to my pancakes in the morning. I can't wait for breakfast!

Ready for Winter

This weekend was the last farmer's market of the season. Actually they're doing another day right before Thanksgiving and again right before Christmas, but the official market is over and only the vendors with crafts, meat and other things that don't require summer weather will be selling. So officially, it's over. I've been stocking up over the last few weeks. Longer if you count all the canning. I think I've got enough to get the two of us through the winter, plus feed the family at Christmas and accommodate any other occasional dinner guests along the way.

This weekend my favorite farm, Jay Hill Farm, sold me a 15 pound Cinderella pumpkin. What a beauty. It yielded at least 8 pies worth of rich pumpkin puree, most of which I froze for later. I put up a couple dozen jars of whole tomatoes, apple butter and pumpkin butter which, I must say, is probably the tastiest confection ever to dance on my taste buds. After stocking those things away along with a few other items, I stepped back for a quick inventory. In the sweets department we have crab apple jelly, peach butter, apple butter and pumpkin butter. In the freezer there are enough peaches, apple slices and pumpkin puree to make a dozen pies. In the realm of tomatoes we have whole tomatoes, pasta sauce, ketchup and salsa. In the pickled category we have dills and pickled hot peppers. I've also got at least a year's worth of honey and popcorn, and enough horseradish to get through to next summer. I've also got a stockpile of onions, potatoes, raw cheese still in the rind and winter squash, plus a freezer full of chickens, elk and bison. I'll have access to fresh eggs, milk and meat all winter long. I think I have enough sugar left to last two years, including next year's canning. (If I wanted Colorado sugar I had to buy it in a 50 pound bag!) And every bit of everything listed above, with the exception of a few spices, was grown in Colorado, most of it near Boulder.

I also made the first pumpkin pie of the season, pictured above, and found time to go to a "Dia de los Muertos Halloween After Party" at a fabulous house in Denver Saturday night. It was perfect. Laid back, casual, catered. Lots of really nice people and great conversation. They even had a Dia de los Muertos shrine set up where people could place photos of their deceased loved ones, make an offering and say a prayer. Other than Gerard I didn't see any hispanic genes in the place.

Now that the "harvest" is in, the garden is slumbering and our Indian Summer is going to be blown away by tomorrow's snow, I'm looking forward to kicking back and enjoying the holidays. Let the parties begin!

The Weekend

More perfect autumn weather I could not ask for. Seriously, this is amazing. Even people who have been here for decades are saying they cannot recall a more perfect fall. Day after day of sunshine, crisp air and fall foliage.

This weekend we picked up our new bedroom furniture and took the opportunity to do a little fall cleaning. We donated a box of clothing, scrubbed floors and beat the rugs. I really love the way the house feels right after a good cleaning. Plus we've got it all decked out in fall decor using almost nothing but local, natural materials. I've got a big centerpiece on the dining room table made of colorful squashes, indian corn and cut grain stalks. I've got the mantlepiece and the living room decked out much the same way, but with some beautiful lighted jack-o-lantern gourds thrown in the mix. We also collected and dried fallen leaves which made an excellent addition to the whole thing. After digging out my old Halloween stuff last month, I found myself turned off by bright orange plastic. There is so much natural beauty this time of year, and it was that natural beauty that inspired all those orange plastic substitutes. So this year I went back to the source. That was yesterday.

Today we took things a little easier. We collected about 50 pounds of walnuts from the tree by the garden, though we haven't started processing them yet. Tonight for dinner I made cast iron skillet bison meatloaf with gravy, roasted brussels sprouts and mashed purple potatoes. I followed that by making the first apple pie of the season! Hot apple pie on a chilly Sunday night. What a perfect way to end the weekend. I am so grateful for my life.

Taste of the Rockies

Mmmmmmmmmm! I've been cooking more since I moved to Colorado than I ever have in my life. I like to think I've gotten pretty good at it. Gerard hasn't complained. But isn't it funny how different cooks develop their own particular spin on food? Mom and Memaw were both excellent cooks, but if you were to set a plate of meatloaf with sides of mashed potatoes, green beans, black eyed peas, hot rolls, a glass of tea and a slice of lemon pie in front of me, but didn't tell me who made each item, I could tell you in an instant who made what. I know I'm developing my own "flavor" as well, though my cooking style is heavily influenced by both mom and Memaw. Sometimes I'll be cooking or baking something new and suddenly remember a technique, some advice or an ingredient that mom or Memaw impressed upon me years ago when I was just a helper sitting on their kitchen counter sticking my fingers in everything. And yet I still find my own way to do things or dig up something neat online that really works for me. For example, my chicken and dumplings tastes a lot like mom's, but I roll my dough into dumplings where she dropped them in by the spoonful. And I still make bite-sized cinnamon rolls with leftover pie crust just like Memaw taught me, but I've discovered an additional technique to make them a bit flakier.

And then there are things I never, ever learned as a kid. Things that are only in my life now because of my coming home to the Rockies and my culinary philosophy. Breading and frying chicken is pretty basic. It looks a lot like the picture above. But skinning and slicing full grown buffalo testicles is quite another task altogether. That ain't chicken frying in that picture up there.

Now in case you weren't aware, I like to stick to simple recipes made from scratch using local ingredients. As such, most modern cookbooks are useless to me and cookbooks that fit within my cooking philosophy are pretty darn hard to come by. So thank God for the internet. You can find anything in that series of tubes. And so I did when it came time to figure out what to do with my buffalo balls. That's right. Rocky mountain oysters. Bull fries. Buffalo fries. Prairie oysters. Montana tendergroin. Swingin' beef. Cowboy caviar. Huevos del toro.

So there they are sitting on a plate. Now what? How to get them from this less appetizing state to the mouth watering crunchables in the first photo? Here's everything you never wanted to know about the basic process:

1. Using a sharp knife or kitchen shears, slice the outer covering and peel it off.
   
2. Slice the orangish flesh into strips and dip in a flour, salt and pepper mix.
   
3. Drop in very hot, deep oil in a cast iron skillet.
   
4. Remove from skillet and drain on clean cloth.
   
5. Serve hot with roasted brussels sprouts from your garden.
   

Enjoy!

Joys of Autumn

We in Boulder did end up getting our first snowfall of the season last weekend.  It happened Sunday night.  It was very light and the ground is still so warm that it only stuck in the trees and on the mountains.  It was completely gone by mid morning but it sure made the work commute nice what with the mountains being dusted.

Since then we've had picture perfect fall weather.

Gerard and I started the weekend Saturday morning with a raid on the the farmer's market there are only two left this season), ran into some friends, loaded up for the week and on items to be canned, and then headed up the Peak to Peak Highway to Rocky Mountain National Park for our annual aspen and elk rut viewing.  We were a little late this year and missed peak season.  The elk weren't putting on much of a show so we headed to the shops in Estes Park.  We scored much better there.  We bought an amazing bedroom set all hand made from old barn wood by a craftsman in Wyoming.  I sold what little bedroom furniture I had when I moved to Colorado almost 2 years ago, so I was ready to get the mattress off the floor and my clothes in a real chest of drawers.  

This morning we got up early and tended our garden.  It was the beginning of the fall clean up.  We harvested most of what's left in the garden: purple potatoes, carrots and a whole lot of tomatillos.  That's me plucking tomatillos and pulling up spent plants.

I spent the afternoon canning the 25 pounds of tomatoes from yesterday's farmer's market and baking four loaves of bread.  This was a prelude to cooking dinner and preparing lunches for tomorrow.  It still strikes me as odd to think of this as "fun," but it is.  As many good times as I've had over the years partying, I can't say any of it ever felt as rewarding as my free time does now.  Not that I regret the past.  I don't.  I think I just got burnt out on urbania.  It started to feel so empty and pointless and unsustainable to me.  I guess it felt more like a distraction than my actual life.  I don't at all regret the past, but I wouldn't trade the present for anything.  There's nothing quite like direct provider of your own food, from seed to table, from season to season, and in resuming some role, even if only at the margins, in the cycle of life as nature designed it.  

As a special treat to end the weekend, just before sunset I spotted a hornet nest hidden away in a tree by the river.  Everywhere I am surrounded by the wonders of nature, big and small.

 

Winter's First Kiss

This weekend we lit up the fireplace for the first time this season.  We had some chilly, wet nights, though it wasn't quite cold enough for snow.  

Last night was the coldest yet, and Nederland did get a few inches.  We got up early this morning and headed up to Ned because I was eager for snow.  Driving up the  mountain, we entered the snow clouds, a cold and foggy world where golden aspens, dark green pines and massive boulders emerge silently from the mist.  At the top we again drove out of the snow clouds and into sunshine bathing a snow-kissed landscape.  Looking back down toward the Boulder Valley it looked like it had been filled a half mile deep with whipped cream. 

 

There's a little grocery store up there called Mountain People's Co-Op that bakes muffins fresh every morning.  It's kinda like going into grandma's kitchen, if grandma were a mountain woman.  We stopped in and I peeked my head into the kitchen to ask when the muffins would be up.  A cute 

young girl (definitely no grandma) opened the oven, poked a muffin with her finger and said, "Any minute!  You want me to bring you out a couple when they're done?" 

 

And so we had hot muffins, fresh coffee and our first walk in the snow.

Anticipation

When I was a kid, there was one morning every year that my mom would wake me up at some unbelievable hour in the morning so I could come to the back door and feel the cool night air.  It was the coming of fall and I don't think a year went by when we didn't do this.  I'd always go right back to bed, but it always excited me.  Fall always was my favorite time of year.

I still get up extra early this time of year just to peek outside into the darkness and test the coolness of the air.  But my ritual since moving to Colorado has taken a new form: I now check the weather report multiple times per day until that first report of possible snow appears.  Today was that day.

According to the forecast, we here in Boulder may get our first snowfall of the year Saturday night.  Am I stoked?  Oh yeah.

Comfort Food

One of the many things I love about Colorado are all the opportunities for comfort and small pleasures.  I think it's because this is a land of extremes: extreme beauty, extreme weather and extreme landscape to name a few.  It's often said that you can't know light without dark, or good without bad.  Maybe it's true of comfort, too.  I know from personal experience that the hard times make the easy times all the more wonderful.  I also know that too many easy times without enough hard times kinda makes you spoiled, and you quickly start to lose appreciation for just how good you have it if you don't have that reminder every now and then.

I remember one particular day as a kid working my butt in the ground tearing down an old building with my parents.  We slaved, because it had to be done that day.  It was so hot, and later in the day it started to rain.  We worked through the rain.  By day's end, I was exhausted.  I was filthy, soaked to the bone and every muscle was hurting.  But the project was done.  To this day I remember how awesome that hot shower felt and how luxurious my clean clothes felt.  Yet there was nothing special about the clothes or the shower.  I had them every day.  But on this day I had been given a reminder of just how wonderful they were.  But it wasn't just that.  I also felt a sense of power.  I felt strong for having accomplished so much.  I felt confident, yet peaceful.  I've never forgotten it, nor many of the other similar experiences I've had in life.  Sometimes you have to love the pain, because it brings good things.

My weekends at the horse rescue farm has given me a taste of that particular flavor of suffering and subsequent pleasure.  A day of throwing hay bales in the sun is not something I had ever done before the horse farm.  It's hard work.  If you don't wear gloves, your hands get a thousand tiny cuts and pokes, some will bleed, but they all burn like fire the first time you wash in hot water.  Your nasal passages turn black with dust.  You get itchy bits of hay all down your shirt, manure on your boots and jeans, straw in your hair, dust and sweat in your eyes, and at the end of the day your muscles are stiff from head to toe.  And yet, I love it.  The work is so honest.  So primal.  So real.  It makes me feel alive.  It makes the shower at the end of the day feel amazing.  It makes the softness of my bed indescribably wonderful.  It fills me with a great sense of accomplishment that I carry all week long.  I helped an old lady who can't do the work.  I helped a bunch of injured or unwanted horses who can't help themselves.  I helped myself in a way that no book or counsel or potion ever could. 

I was home from work by 5PM today.  It was a beautiful day, sunny, cool and dry, just the most perfect Autumn day.  Tonight it will be cold and clear.  We're supposed to get our first frost of the season, as it'll be the first night below 40 degrees.  I wanted something warm for dinner, so I put a chicken on to boil. When it was nice and tender I pulled it from the pot to cool, and boiled down the broth with some salt & pepper and oregano from the garden.  I mixed up a batch of dough with Colorado flour, butter, salt and water.  I kneaded it with my hands.  I rolled it out flat with my old wooden rolling pin and cut it into 1 inch squares.  I picked the meat off the chicken and tossed it back into the broth.  When the broth reached a rolling boil I tossed in the dough squares and boiled it for ten minutes.  I set the table and lit the handmade beeswax candles in the centerpiece which I created from fresh pumpkins, winter squash, dried sunflowers from the garden, broomcorn, sorghum and other harvest grain stalks I got from the farmer's market.  I served up two steaming bowls of the best chicken 'n dumplin's I've had since mom's.  For dessert, we savored the last of the plum cake I made over the weekend, which was made from the last of the summer's italian plums.  

I suppose I could have just gone out to eat or picked up something from the hot case at Whole Foods.  It would have saved a whole lot of time.  But I got something much more valuable by doing what I did.  Yes it was a lot of work, but the food was phenomenal.  No chef in this world could make my food taste better than when I pour my love and effort into it.  And maybe that's what my food obsession and my cowboy obsession are really all about.  "Easier" or "faster" doesn't equate to "better."  Spending two hours cooking up the freshest seasonal ingredients to produce a hot bowl of chicken & dumplin's gives me comfort food on a cold, starry night.  Toiling in the field gives me comfort food when I take a hot shower at the end of the day and put on my favorite snuggly pajama bottoms.  There are some things, some comforts or pleasures, that can only be earned.

Autumn

Autumn is definitely my favorite time of year.  The farmer's market is overflowing with pumpkins and winter squash, the leaves are changing, and the air is crisp.  The elk bulls are starting to bugle as they begin their mating rituals.  And the weather guys issued the first winter warning of the season.  The report says that this weekend the high country will get up to a foot of snow.  Boulder won't be getting any snow just yet, but Nederland, which is only 15 miles away but 3,000 feet higher, will get some.  I may get the Jeep and go up there for breakfast tomorrow.  I'm itchin' for snow.

A New Blog

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a decent blog address? Dern near everything decent is taken. That doesn't bother me so much as what HASN'T been done with all the good blog addresses. I probably tried two dozen blog addresses, and in 9 out of 10 the person who claimed the address hasn't done a thing with the blog since registering it. Some have been registered and sitting untouched for years. One gal managed to type, "How do I do this?" back in 2006 and hasn't touched it since. Fine, but in the mean time she's wasting a perfectly good blog address!

Anyway, this is my first blog on blogger.com. I'm migrating from iWeb. I'm a big fan of Apple, but their recent transformation of Dot Mac into (I shudder to say this generic, Microsoft-sounding name) "MobileMe" has had some issues. One of them is that I've been having trouble with a few features of the software, and some of my readers have been having trouble viewing photo albums. iWeb is also limited in that it takes some fancy footwork to be able to blog from more than one computer, and even still the computer you blog from has to have YOUR copy of iWeb on it. Several times I wanted to blog but couldn't because I didn't have one of my own computers handy. Also, iWeb pages aren't nearly as Google-friendly as Blogger and I wouldn't mind having more traffic just to see what the 'net can drag in.

I've considered copying old blogs from my iWeb site to this blog, but that seems like a lot of unnecessary work.