EVERYDAY DORIE, The Way I Cook, by Dorie Greenspan With apologies to Dorie Greenspan, I re-titled this week’s CooktheBookFridays recipe choice. It’s called Potato Chowder Lots of Ways. I’ve chosen to re-name it A Chowder for All Seasons. This soup is worthy of the name. Here’s Why? A chowder is a rich, chunky soup traditionally made with onions,…
LET’S WELCOME TOO-OH-WON-NINE*
It’s a new year, a fresh beginning and it’s going to be noisy. With 7.5 billion people hanging out on Planet Earth, why are we surprised? Here’s a thought. Let’s bring joy and wonder into each day, making it sparkle. Let’s laugh louder and more often. Let’s try on Happiness until it fits. What we…
BOWLED OVER by TABBOULEH
Let’s be clear. Blogs are blogs. Power Point Presentations are not. According to my more seriously-minded techie pals, PPP are something else entirely. They are more, well, seriously minded. Humph! After watching a PPP listing ten potential benefits of them, we seemed almost on the same page. I especially honed in on (1) Broadening…
LAST STOP: GRAND RAPIDS
Everyone has a brussels sprouts story. This is mine. When we moved to Aspen from Des Moines in 1988, we bought a house that wasn’t grand but situated on lovely property abutting Red Butte Mountain and surrounded by 40-some evergreen trees. Along with moving too many belongings, we also packed up our shovels, pitchforks…
HERE WE GO AGAIN, with DORIE
Who doesn’t keep some kernels of wisdom tucked into their hip pocket to pull out when needed. For me, my pocket runneth over with pithy tips. Here are just two: 1. PEOPLE LIKE TO BE THANKED. (My mother) While growing up, I knew whenever someone gave me a gift, a thank you note was…
THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT to MARKET
Not long ago, when walking to a music concert with my friend Wendy, she asked, “Do you miss your garden?” That question, out of the blue, had nothing to do with our ongoing chatter and was rather innocuous. “Yes,” I answered. “Yes I do.” Although we quickly moved on to more important topics – her…
FIRE!
In my last post I discussed my summer responsibilities as a volunteer USFS wilderness ranger in Colorado’s White River National Forest. “With full-on fire restrictions already in place,” I wrote, “we’ll be on the lookout [for fire].” Of major concern were lightening strikes, tossed cigarette butts or campground mishaps caused by uninformed tourists. We never…
A GRATITUDE ATTITUDE in EVERY FLAVOR
Memorial Day is now a memory. Hopefully, a joyful one. Now it’s time to get serious about summer. That’s why I just made my first batch of ice cream. This past winter I treated myself to more scoops at Berthillon’s (Paris most famous glacier) than necessary and regretted not one lick. Missing that occasional flavor…
BEETS, BAGELS & BIRDS
“May, more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel most alive.” Fennel Huston Today’s post is a full-on Happy Meal. I need that, don’t you? This week Mother Nature shot Springtime out of a cannon into the High Country. We went to bed in Winter and miraculously woke up to this…
LIGHTS on BRIGHT in ASPEN
For the previous four winters I’ve emptied my Aspen condo of personal belongings, parking them in my down valley storage unit, and handed my keys to The Gant’s front office personnel. There’s no way to make this easy. Physically, it’s double-duty difficult, packing for a 51/2-month journey while converting my home into rental space. Mentally,…
SEVEN YEARS of BLOGGING & SAN MIGUEL
SEVEN YEARS OF BRIGHT LIGHTS Can we agree that seven years of blogging about food is worth 250 calories? Thus, the cake. Lately I’ve been reflecting on this lifetime of growing, cooking, eating and sharing food, realizing it’s the frame work I’ve used to build and re-build my life. Most of my happy memories are…
A COMFORT LIST for THE ROAD
During the Thanksgiving holiday my friend Meredith explored Patagonia, a meandering territory in the southern tip of South America. This rugged area of spectacular national parks in the Andes mountain range is shared by Chile and Argentina. Forty years ago English author Bruce Chatwin wrote IN PATAGONIA, ‘a masterpiece of travel writing that revolutionized the…
