Cold Weather Curry

It’s the time of year that I dream about cooking. Telluride's morning temperatures hover around 10 ºF, yet there's not enough snow to ski. If you asked me, I'd probably lie and tell you that I love off-season in Telluride. The truth, however, hovers somewhere in between that and late night searches for cheap flights to someplace tropical. What exactly I’d do with my job or my family if I found a $400 flight to Fiji isn’t really important; the thrill is in the hunt.

Barring the discovery of cheap travel to someplace warm, I’ll continue to dream about and actually make curries. Curries allow me to remember. I smell the salt and the spice and the heat of Thailand, and I remember a favorite day I spent with Andy years ago.

In the memory, the day begins as all of the best mornings do: at the market. There are baskets of chilies, mangoes, and coconuts everywhere we turn. The smell is somewhat smoky—grilled squid, somewhat sweet like tamarind, and somewhat stinky—call it durian meets dried fish. The essence of Thailand.

This dish is a variation of a curry I learned in a Chiang Mai cooking class over a decade ago. Make it while you wait for the snow to fall and the skiing to begin. May it carry you away to a warmer place.

Chicken Green Curry

serves 4

Ingredients

12 oz boneless chicken thighs, thinly sliced
2 cans of coconut milk (keep 2 tablespoons to use as a garnish, don’t shake the cans)
3 tablespoons green curry paste ( we like Mae Ploy, but Thai Kitchen is fine)
1/2 cup of Thai eggplants sliced in half (if you can find them)
1 small can of bamboo shoots
2 tablespoons palm sugar (or brown sugar)
2 tablespoons fish sauce
4 kaffir lime leaves (or 1 tablespoon of lime juice)
1 handful of sweet basil leaves, chopped
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1 jalapeño pepper, sliced (optional)

Scoop 3 tablespoons of the thick coconut milk into a hot wok. Stir continuously until the milk separates and forms an oil. It’s very important to smile as you do this, or the oil won’t separate. Add curry paste and fry for 1-2 minutes. Add chicken and fry until the outside of the chicken turns white. Then add the rest of the coconut milk (minus the 2 T for the final garnish), the fish sauce, sugar, lime leaves, red peppers, and eggplants. Simmer until the eggplants and peppers are thoroughly cooked. Add half of the basil leaves and simmer for another minute.

Serve with steamed rice. Garnish with a few basil leaves, sliced jalapenos, and the reserved coconut milk. 

Picking Apples in Telluride

Today the snow finally cleared, and Andy, Siri, Quincy, and I got out and picked apples. We had to wade through the snow but the effort was worth it: we filled our bags with apples from a neighbor's tree.

We discovered this tree years ago by accident. On a grey day, we wandered out to the eastern edge of town and there it was, a tree we'd wandered by a thousand times before and never noticed. We'd filled our bag that day and continue to every fall about this time of year.

We eat them as is and make apple sauce. When we're lucky, Andy uses some of those apples to make one of my favorite dishes: baked apples with sausage, cheddar cheese, and maple syrup. I’ve included the recipe below. Happy Fall.


Andy’s Favorite Fall Breakfast

1/2 lb bulk breakfast sausage
Mess of apples (about 4 cups) cored and cut into bite sized chunks
1/4 cup maple syrup
6 oz. white cheddar, grated
1/4 t. cinnamon, allspice, ginger (optional, to taste)

Sauté the sausage until the it begins to brown.  Add the apples and continue until the apples are golden.  Add maple syrup and spices, cover, turn down and simmer until the apples have fully softened (about 10 mins.).
Just before serving, stir in the grated cheddar

Serve as a topping for pancakes and waffles or enjoy by itself.

No Money? Get Outside.

Richard Louv’s recent article on the value of getting outside during tough economic times is important on many levels. So often when we’re stressed about money, we focus only on how to fix that problem. I will work more, spend less, cook more, etc.

All are fine goals but when we focus solely on them, we become unhappy and lose sight of what matters. Kicking through autumn leaves at the bus stop, sitting outside with a glass of wine, packing a picnic and heading to the local park can help us to reset and feel more like ourselves.

In doing so, we’re happier. In turn, we’re better parents and better at tackling the economic goals before us.

Camping above all else

All week I’d been trying to unpack from our trip back East. This should have been easy: unzip suitcase, remove clothes, wash them and put them away. Yet, this simple act had been pushed aside. As had a trip to the post office to pick up what was probably a small truck full of mail. I could claim work as an excuse—there had been a bit of that. I could say my children had been busy— but then when are they not?

In reality, the weather had been too good, and I felt I had more important things to do. Things like cookouts with friends. And camping trips with my family.

This reasoning is, of course, perfectly logical to most Telluride residents. Summer is fleeting, and rain is anxious to fall again and again.

Still, I was feeling a bit guilty about this camping trip. Hadn’t I just come back from a vacation? Wasn’t this play followed by play? One trip right after another?

I checked the weather, my tactic for stalling when I can’t make up my mind. Clear tonight. Sunny tomorrow. Clouding up the following night. The time to go was now.

As soon as we arrived and started setting up the tent, it seemed crazy that I’d ever doubted the necessity of this trip. We played in the meadow with the girls for a while. Then Andy gathered up the fishing gear and took Siri down to the lake to fish, while I hiked around the same lake with Q on my back. Looking up at the jagged peaks as they settled into the amber light of late afternoon, I felt like I could breathe for the first time in a few days. The world was quiet and for the moment, it seemed like this spot in the mountains was ours.

Yes, we had just had a vacation and didn’t necessarily need another one. But as anyone with young children can testify, traveling with the little ones is not exactly vacation. Or not in the same way we might use that term if we were say surfing and drinking margaritas in Costa Rica.

And visiting family, what can we say—we love them, we can’t stand them, often in the same instant. We’d had a great time, but Andy had been in school for most of the summer, and we’d had very little space with just the four of us.

That night, we watched stars shoot across the night sky. Q slept in her car seat. Andy, Siri, and I linked arms and lay flat on our backs. Andy and I tried to pretend we knew what we were talking about as Siri fired off one question after another.

“Where does the sky end? When do astronauts stop floating? Why is their ice cream dry?”

Eventually, our pretense wore out, and we fell silent. We were exhausted. Traveling was exhausting. Raising children was exhausting. It felt so good to stop moving, look up at the night sky, and let our thoughts stretch out like the sky above us. After a few minutes, Siri asked if it was time to go to bed yet.

“Yes,” Andy and I said, leaping up, amazed that our 4-year old had actually requested this.

As we walked back to the tent, Siri looked up once more. “Mom, isn’t it weird that outer space is everywhere? Space is in Maine, space is in Hawaii, space is here. Weird huh?”

“Yes,” I said, and held her up to look at the sky once more before crawling into the tent to sleep. How good it was to have a 4-year old around to remind you that often the most amazing things are right in front of us.

Space was all around us. We just needed to take a moment, with those we love, to see it.

Why Telluride Wildflower

Wildflower season in Telluride is short. But its effect is felt all year. Those of us who call the high country home or who love to visit here dream about wildflower season all year long.

Just like wildflowers, life is short. In my family, getting outside is a remedy for the mania of modern life. My husband, Andy, and I take our children, Siri and Quincy, outside whenever we can. Sometimes our adventures are big—climbing a local peak or camping in Utah. More often, our adventures are small—a bike ride, a slow walk to the river, gathering leaves in our back yard.

Sometimes, we’re bad parents, and we leave our children to do adventures on our own. We climb mountains, we run trails, we ski. Call us evil. I’d rather climb a mountain with my husband than go out to dinner. We don’t think our children are too angry about being abandoned from time to time. And if they are, we hope that somewhere down the line, that they’ll be inspired to love the outdoors like we do.

We’re lucky, I know, we get to live in Telluride. But that really isn’t the point of this blog. Rather it’s about getting your kids outside and getting outside yourself. What do you like to do outdoors? What do your kids like? I invite you to share your stories here.