Photos | Liberty on the Rocks™ Denver

Sunrise

One of my favorite people in the world once said “You should either wake up ealy enough, or stay up late enough, to watch the sunrise”. I think these pictures I took from my apartment window of the sunrise prove their point.

It’s so dramatic. Almost violent. Normally when I think of a sunrise, it’s all pretty, the calm silent part of the day before the storm. This sunrise is the storm.

Stir fry and friends

Ah, the stir fry. Sometimes the simplest things truely are the best.

Recently I’ve been getting together with a small group of friends on weekends to cook dinner together. It’s a nice, relaxing, thing to do. Great for those Sunday nights when we’re feeling lazy.

In fact we’re thinking of forming our own underground food society!

This time, we picked up a bunch of wonderful fresh veggies from Whole Foods (i.e. best store in the whole world), took them home, diced and sauted them in tamari sauce.

We had onion, red bell pepper, snow peas, mushrooms, and broccoli. Then we warmed some pita bread and stuffed them with the veggies. Delicious!

Chard and Cheese Pie

Last night I made a delicious recipe from Laurel’s Kitchen. Chard and cheese pie, and it was oh so good. Really, though, every recipe I’ve made from Laurel’s Kitchen has been great. I HIGHLY recommend that book!

Chard and Cheese Pie

Laurel’s Kitchen

1 and 1/2 bunches swiss chard (I used 2 full bunches, totaling 2.5lbs)
2 c. low-fat cottage cheese
2 eggs beaten
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 t. salt
1/2 c. whole grain breadcrumbs
paprika
(Optional) chopped chives

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat together cottage cheese, eggs, lemon, and salt.
Wash chard and remove stems, then chop into bite sized pieces. Next cook chard quickly in a heavy pan with no added water, stirring constantly until wilted.
Stir in 1 cup of cottage cheese mixture.
Put chard in a greased (I forgot to grease the pan, and it didn’t stick even a bit) 8 x 8 pan and press down firmly with fork.
Spread remaining cottage cheese mixture evenly over top.
Sprinkle with bread crumbs and paprika.
Bake 30 min/until set
Let stand several minutes before cutting into squares and serving.

Laurel’s Kitchen also says ” for a refreshing summertime supper, chill and serve with garnish of crumbled bleu cheese, sliced tomatoes, and minced parsley.”

When I made my pie, I didn’t have paprika, so instead I lightly sprinkled on some red pepper flakes and (if I remember correctly) basil. For the breadcrumbs, I made my own by tosting a single slice of ezekiel sprouted grain sesame bread and then ripping/crumbling it over top.

14,000 ft. (part 2)

First off I’d like to acknowledge that blogger has updated the editing tools it offers. This is great! Now I can easily do this, and erm…well it really is a step forward. They’ve made several of things (uploading pictures, editing them once they’re ON blogger, etc) much easier. Thanks guys!

The walk up the mountain was shockingly beautiful. It’s one of those things where you can see a billion beautiful photos but when you actually see it you’re still in awe.

The rest of these photos I can’t take credit for, my camera which always runs out of battery at the least opportune moments died. Luckily my friends all brought cameras, so disaster was averted.

…

Up and up we went. The altitude was seriously affecting me. There was a point when I, deathly pale, stopped walking and simply stood. Upon being asked if I was okay, I started mumbling to myself about how I “had to finish it” and then continued trudging up the mountain. And I wasn’t the only one, several of my friends were dealing with varying levels of elevation sickness.

And then we reached the final peak.

No path on that thing; just a big pile of boulders. It was actually pretty scary at times. A few of those rocks were loose, and it would have been more than easy to simply fall off the side of the mountain!

right at the base of this was a miniature glacier.

Snow in summer, what fun!

But the view from the top of the glacier was my favorite, even better than from the summit

and then…and then…

…we made it to the top!

14,000 ft. (Part 1)

Last weekend, my friend had a birthday. I honor of this, she decided we should climb a “14er”, a mountain that’s peak is greater than 14,000 ft. above sea level.

It was still dark when we set out.

But as we drove into the mountains it bega

n to lighten

We saw lots of horses and cows! Exciting to us city folk.

Finally we reached the 14er we were to climb, and got our first glimpse of what lay ahead for us.

This picture was taken toward the beginning of our hike, and the peak we climbed is the tallest one on the right hand side.

…To be continued

The Sky

Is Glowing!

Excuses

I haven’t written on here in entirely too long…
Though I have been, horribly, stranded without internet until very recently.
Stranded, perhaps being a bit melodramatic. A more apt word, or rather description, is that I’ve gone off to annother city for a summer dance workshop, and am staying in dorms. Since I have only a bit of time right now, and no new pictures, so here’s annother adorable picture of my puppy for the time being

Crepes! The Inside Scoop

So, as I mentioned the the previous blog post, I made a number of crepe fillings on Saturday; Sweet poato-fennel, egg, asparagus-tomato, creamed spinach, and a mushroom sauce. mmmm! I got both the creamed spinach and mushroom sauce recipes from “The New Laurel’s Kitchen”, which is, by now, not new at all. It is, however, an updated and all together snazzier version of the orignial. I have, however revised the recipes to make them gluten and dairy free.

Creamed Spinach:

3/4 cup rice milk
5. T brown rice flour
1/2 small onion
1 t. olive oil
3 quarts fresh spinach (3 small bunches), washed, dried, and chopped
1/4 T salt

This makes a total of about 3 cups. At four servings per entire batch, this equals 72 calories/serving.

The spinach turned out nicely, a little watery for the crepes, but nice. I would probably add a bit of basil, or rosemary, if I were to make it again. It was also super easy to make!

Edgar Allen Poe with a side dish of crepes

On Saturday, a couple of friends and I held a “Gothic Literature Party”, in honor of one of our favorite authors, the wonderful Edgar Allen Poe. And in his honor, we had to, of course, not only produce a feast, read selected favorites of his works, but also dress the part.As for food, I had significant difficulty thinking of what would be appropriate for an American Gothic themed party. Most American foods are distinctly un-romantic (Cornbread, some will be relieved to hear, was quickly ruled out). Eventually, I settled for something entirely foreign, but definitely enjoyable – crepes. Now as I had never made crepes before, and I decided to do this at about 11:00pm the night before, I resignedly decided that there was no way I’d be able to learn how to make crepes so quickly. However, I had recently noticed that our local Whole Foods was selling pre-made “authentic” French crepes. So as lazy as it felt, I decided to go ahead with these, and make only the fillings myself. And luckily, they turned out, for the most part, quite well!I made several filling options: creamed spinach, creamed mushroom sauce, asparagus and tomato, and sweet potato. Details on these to come soon!