Passion. Ambition. Butter.

I'm so excited to see this movie! I love Amy Adams and Meryl Streep, but I also love the storyline, which is based on a book written by the "Julie" of the title. Here's the publisher's summary:

Julie & Julia, the bestselling memoir that's "irresistible....A kind of Bridget Jones meets The French Chef" (Philadelphia Inquirer), is now a major motion picture. Julie Powell, nearing thirty and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, resolves to reclaim her life by cooking in the span of a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her unexpected reward: not just a newfound respect for calves' livers and aspic, but a new life-lived with gusto. The film version is written and directed by Nora Ephron and stars Amy Adams as Julie and Meryl Streep as Julia.

I have to admit, I've never read one of Julia Childs' cookbooks, but I'm thinking after I see this movie I'll be checking one out at the library! Plus any chef who says "you can never have enough butter" is right up my alley. :-) The movie comes out Friday, August 7.

Vive le Tour!

And Happy 4th of July! The Tour de France started today with an individual time trial in the beautiful seaside principality of Monaco. This is the event we look forward to all year long and it's finally underway! Lance Armstrong came out of retirement and is racing again this year on a very strong team. For anyone unfamiliar with "the Tour", it is basically a race around the country of France, sometimes crossing borders with neighboring countries like Spain, Italy and Belgium. Each year's route is different but it always ends on the spectacular Champs-Elysees in Paris. Heinous mountain climbs, fast flat sprint stages and tense time trials (both individual and team this year) all combine to make up this amazing event which takes 3 weeks(!) to complete. It's considered by many to be the hardest sporting event in the world; Lance Armstrong holds the record for the most wins, winning it 7 times in a row from 1999-2005. You have to be a very capable, strong and adaptable cyclist to even finish the Tour, much less win it! This year has many strong riders and teams and it's exciting to see who will prevail and be on the podium in Paris. If you're interested in following it we recommend the sites Versus, Cycling News or VeloNews. On Versus you can read and hear the expert and entertaining commentary of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, longtime commentators of the Tour, as well as create a fantasy cycling team. You'll also see amazing photos of the beautiful and historic countryside and cities that the route follows.

This month is my and Steven's 10th anniversary and last year we had decided that as a present to ourselves we would finally go to Europe and watch some stages of the Tour. Unfortunately that plan had to be postponed once we got the bad news of my layoff this past December. But we get to watch it this year in High Definition on Versus and we'll definitely be going to see it in person, hopefully in the next few years!

Three Hits and a Miss

The Hits:




Herb Butter--This is so easy to do and now that I have an abundant amount of herbs in the garden I finally tried it for myself. I made one batch with a mix of oregano, lemon thyme and parsley; one with just rosemary and one with sweet basil and lemon basil.



Southern-style Greens with Bacon--Being raised in the South it's a given that at some point you're going to eat greens cooked with bacon. Sometimes these can be tender and delicious but sometimes the results are just a soggy, bitter, tasteless mess. This recipe is definitely in the tender and delicious category. I used turnip greens which I got at the farmer's market earlier in the week (so glad to have it back again!) and left just a little bit of the stems on for added texture and crunch, plus I'm told that's where all the vitamins are. They were very fragrant and sweet when I cut them. I cooked mine for about 45 minutes, a little longer than the recipe time, since I wanted to make sure they were as tender as possible. I'm hoping to find some mustard greens to try next time. I loved the results with the turnip greens and Steven was brave enough to try them, although he didn't rave about them as much as me. :-)





Rosemary Peasant Bread--Finally, a recipe that was created for those at high altitude! (Low altitude instructions are given at the end of the recipe.) This was by far my proudest moment in the kitchen. I conquered my fear of making bread with this incredibly easy recipe and got spectacular results! The inside is fluffy and the outside is chewy--mmm, mmm, good. This will be wonderful with my herb butters; I also love dipping into a mix of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and minced garlic. This bread is a new staple in the Colorado Hammons household! (I'm not going to lie to you, last night Steven and I ate most of one loaf.) I'm going to try different herbs and maybe even just plain with no herbs. Today I toasted a piece and then topped it with goat cheese, sliced roasted red peppers, basil and a little fresh cracked black pepper. Divine.


The Miss:

Chocolate Cinnamon Bread--This sounded so promising and the batter tasted fabulous, but the end result didn't look so great. The bread still tasted good, although less cinnamon-y than the batter. Maybe it's because I'm at high altitude? Try it for yourself and let me know how it turned out for you.

Before and After

When I was younger I always wanted a house with a red door, so when we bought this house and put the screen door on I "painted" it red (applying red paint with a rag and then wiping it off to allow a little of the grain to show through). But tastes change over the years and the red door didn't really match the new paint job we got on the house a few years ago. So I finally got ambitious, took advantage of my current free time and decided to refinish it! Thank goodness for power sanders; I would have lost the motivation to finish this project very quickly if I'd had to sand it by hand. An orbital sander did most of the work and a little corner sander got the narrow areas. It didn't cost anything except time and labor because we have the tools and we had some stain and polyurethane left from a different project a long time ago. You can still see a little bit of red in some of the corners but I think the results are fabulous and it looks much better with the current colors of the house. What do you think?

Great Sand Dunes National Monument

Recently we were able to take a quick weekend getaway to a place we've wanted to visit for a long time, the Great Sand Dunes National Monument. It's amazing to think there is a whole field of dunes in the mountainous state of Colorado so we had to check it out for ourselves! We drove down on Saturday and decided to take the 4-wheel-drive road over Medano Pass and spend the night at the top. Steven was able to get a fun 4WD fix and we had a fantastic camping spot that night with breathtaking views. No sight of the dunes yet but worth the drive on its own. Steven rigged up a great tarp system over the truck bed so we were able to sleep in the back of the truck and be protected from the thunderstorms that came through several times during the night. There were signs everywhere warning about bear encounters so we were a little skittish about being so far out in the wilderness; it didn't help that we heard a suspicious, wild animal sound in the dark that freaked us out for a while. Eventually, though, we calmed down and enjoyed a good night's sleep listening to the rain. :)

Sunday we woke up early to beautiful, sunny weather and happily, unmolested by any bears. Roxy was thrilled to have so much open space to run around off the leash. Steven was able to use his new favorite toy, the Jetboil, to make us coffee (we also used it the night before to heat up our soup). We first learned of this amazing product when we were camping with our two friends during the Kokopelli Bike Trip and knew we had to get one for ourselves. It makes heating water the easiest and fastest thing on the planet, and it's very compact.

When we started driving down the other side of the Pass, we found out there was a huge mudhole that a big Ford truck had gotten stuck in the night before (we heard from another camper that the truck owner had to pay $900 to have his truck towed out of the hole--ouch!). So we had to figure out if we could get around it or if we'd have to drive back the other way and take the main road to the dunes. Thankfully Steven is a very confident and able driver and easily made his way around the hole. Further down, Roxy decided she wanted to ride in the truck bed and found a new vantage point, looking over the top of the cab. Super cute! After many creek crossings, some as high as the top of the tires, we suddenly came out onto a sandy road. It felt like we had suddenly landed on a beach road somewhere, and around the next bend was our first glimpse of a huge sand dune. It was so surreal to have been on a mountaintop, surrounded by many more mountains, and then all of a sudden be looking at an enormous dune. As we got further along, you could see that the dunes are surrounded on 3 sides by huge mountain ranges. It's amazing to think of how and when these dunes were formed and I have to wonder why it hasn't happened in any other areas in the state, or in any other mountainous states?

Steven wanted to climb one of the dunes but I wasn't sure I'd make it the whole way. So we parked the truck and all of us made it to a point about halfway up, then Steven continued over the top while I took Roxy and went back down. The sand was starting to get really hot and Roxy was glad to get down to the stream that runs along the edge of the dunes. Even just getting to the point that I did, you could see sand for a long ways, and Steven got some great photos of endless dunes seen from the top. Because of the rain the night before there were some hardpacked areas of sand that were easier to walk on, but for the most part it was as difficult to get up there as you would think. It was worth it, though, to say we had climbed up one of the dunes (at least part of the way, in my case). There was a wonderful dead tree in the field below the dune we climbed; up against the blue sky and white clouds it just looked magnificent.

At the bottom of the dunes is a wide, flat area almost like a beach, where water flows from under the dunes. It's very warm and moves pretty quickly, even producing some small waves; one person told us it's called "antidunes". Roxy had so much fun running around chasing other dogs and getting wet all over. The huge expanse of dunes is right in front of you as you're playing in the water, and on all other sides you can see the high mountains full of trees and rocks, just adding to the surreal effect. Beautiful!

Our last stop was at a waterfall Steven had read about. You get a really great view of the entire sand dunes area from the parking lot; it made us realize just how little of them we actually saw from the bottom, or even from the dune that Steven climbed on the edge of the park. The water at the falls was absolutely freezing but you had to climb through it to get to the "real" waterfall. Steven braved the frigid temps and got some pictures so I could see it, too. His feet were red and ice cold when he got down! Just as we were coming back to the truck it started to rain. I'm so glad we got to see and do all that we did and have nice weather when it counted!

A Rainy Day in May

The recent abundance of rain has done wonders for the garden. I've gone a little crazy taking all kinds of pictures so I had to share some here. A few days ago we went to Home Depot in the rain (have I mentioned the rain is always cold here, even in the summer?) and hit the jackpot, finally finding a rosemary plant--the most elusive herb so far this year--as well as some Lena Broom, a bush that I've been seeking for several years now for its beautiful red and yellow flowers against a brilliant green stem. I was so excited when Steven spotted them; we ended up getting three and I hope, hope, hope they all survive the winter. Steven also got the other side of the brick walkway done and some stepping stones in front of the raised bed. I've gotten some onions, arugula and mesclun added and everything is looking great!