p.s. My love - The key to my heart is a cup of homemade hot chocolate. Hot whole milk with a bit of froth, real chocolate, a sliver of hot pepper for just a touch of heat, maybe a little cinnamon or nutmeg or fresh bayleaf. Little homemade marshmallows on top please! (If you want to make them pink add a little beetroot juice.)
Happy Valentine's Day!
Oh, how fickle I am. A post ago I was talking up the joys of fall. Then I realized its been raining six out of the last seven days. And yesterday, it was so windy no amount of protective rain gear kept me from getting soaked. So my mind wandered, as it often does, to some place sunny and hot. Mint chip ice cream essential in my fantasy to cool me down.
MINT CHIP ICE CREAM
METHOD
Heat cream, milk, sugar and salt. Just as the edges simmer take off the heat and add all the mint leaves. Stir in and cover with plastic wrap to steep. Set aside for one hour. Strain and add remaining one cup cream. Heat the mixture again (just to a scald). Meanwhile whisk egg yolks. Temper the eggs with the hot mixture. Thicken the mixture over low heat just enough to coat the back of a spoon. Strain a second time. Chill mixture. Spin the ice cream following your ice cream machine's instructions. Fold in chocolate chips and put in freezer. Makes about 2 pints of ice cream. Let harden a bit and eat!
This ice cream is absolutely fabulous. I love the minty-ness with the dark chocolate. A match made in heaven. Unless you use artificial coloring its hard to get the "mint green" color. I opt out of food coloring - the mint flavor is absolutely unmistakable if you follow this recipe.
After a long nine hour flight to Denver from London we were blessed with gorgeous Colorado sun as we raced home to Boulder.
Our nephew in his new Chelsea soccer jersey, working up an appetite for burgers on the grill. With a backyard like this we wondered, um, why did we move away from the States?!
The purpose of the visit back to Colorado was to celebrate the marriage of Nate's college friend. The wedding was at the top of a chairlift in Crested Butte, so we had to get on the road early to make the late afternoon wedding. The five hour drive through Colorado country was amazing. We've done numerous roadtrips all over the UK and continental Europe and every square inch seems to be marked and manicured. Colorado and its huge expanses of unsettled space made it easy to imagine covered wagons and frontier life. We had to go through the Cottonwood Pass over the continental divide to get to Crested Butte. The continental divide is a hydraulic divide where to the west the river systems empty into the Pacific and to the east the river systems empty in to Atlantic.
With barely a half hour to spare we made it to Crested Butte Mountain. There, along with a wild coyote, we witnessed this!
After they kissed and made it official we went back down the mountain where Shana + Brian had a wedding reception dinner with BBQ chicken, pulled pork, and mashed potatoes. Best wedding spread ever.
The next morning we headed back to Nate's parents home in Boulder, taking a different route. After Mexican breakfast burritos and a quick walk through the Crested Butte Farmer's Market to collect Rocky Mountain honey and local sweet cherries we drove through a gorgeous aspen forest.
Recent summer thundershowers meant everything was green and in bloom.
After multiple stops for small hikes and waterfall viewings we made it back to Boulder. The next day Nate took me up a series of dirt roads to a special hike. We would be missing my favorite holiday, the 4th of July, as we were returning to Europe, so Nate took me here:
The hike included the crossing of this waterfall...
these gorgeous Columbines...
and, no Colorado hike is complete without the grunting of bears and their shaking of trees as they scratch their backs. Yikes! I was freaked. Sorry, no pictures of bears - If I stuck around to capture them on film I'm certain I wouldn't be posting right now. Especially when packing these Colorado Cowboy Cookies. Bears love cookies.
COLORADO COWBOY COOKIES
Combine drys. Beat butter and brown sugar till light and fluffy. Add egg and extract. Combine. Fold in drys. Fold in oats, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, and walnuts. Refrigerate dough for at least 3 hours and no more than 24 hours. If your not a fan of butterscotch chips (gasp!), leave them out and double the amount of chocolate chips. I didn't realize my husband was not a fan of 'scotch chips until I found little piles of cookie covered 'scotch chips all around the kitchen.
Serve with milk or coffee. Cowboy coffee if possible.
Cowboy coffee uses no special devices (filters, etc.) and with all the ranch land in Colorado, cowboys still very much exist!
Over the last few years, especially in America, cakes and cupcakes, have gone through some revolutionary times. Go to a birthday party today and the host has made an amazing cake or gotten one from a bakery that always seems like the best cake ever. Times have changed because there once was a time when I hated Birthday Cake. I dreaded the cake portion of any birthday party, especially because the frosting made me sick to my stomach, and I immediately wanted to call my mom to come pick me up. Thinking back I think it was because when I was growing up cakes were most likely bought from the local Safeway's and produced en mass with ingredients more suited for making plastics or cleaning solutions. I always requested cheesecakes and ice cream cakes for my birthday to avoid consumption of frosting.
