Too much time on your hands + engineering degree + Star Wars fetish = one hell of a halloween costume.

Say it with me…NERDS!

My friend Brandon Smith is putting together a show at Podium in Manchester VT next weekend and Im in it. I’ve been in the studio a lot lately getting a new, relatively cohesive, body of work together.

One Up Show Poster

Here is a peek at what I’ve been working on.  The background consists of multiple layers of found paper and random material all collaged together, then it is given a thick coat of bar top.  The bar top gives me a smooth surface to which I can apply multiple screen hits.

On a completely unrelated note, my friend Jess Graham just sent me this picture of these masks she has been making for Halloween, I liked them so much I thought I would share.

Jess Graham masks

So, today was my first day snowboarding.  I’m not going to post stuff on how riding was everyday, or this blog would soon be a, “what was Stowe like today?” page.

I have sort of sensitive teeth I guess, not like oooh, I cant drink coffee, or eat ice-cream, but if packed my mouth full of snow, I’d get irritated in a few minutes.

Anyhow, point being that the whole drive back from the mountain my teeth hurt becasue I had a huge smile the whole way down.  Snowboarding is so awesome.

Note to self: Check the stance on your board before you hike the mountain. Apparently I lent my board to somebody at World Quarters and it still had a 2 ” wider stance than I normally ride. October hiking riding is not for a ball’r centered stance

Note to self: Get a digi cam that has a flash that accurately reflects how light it is and that the batteries don’t die after 3 poorly lit pictures

Note to self: Make sure you do that again.

I spent another Saturday in my studio with the Alt Art crew from Peoples Academy.  As usual it was amazing, everyone’s posters are coming along nicely.

We where supposed to be done this week but we will have to extend the class for one more week as everyone did not get to print their posters.  We lost an image when we took a screen to the car wash to blow it out. I think we had to much emulsion in one area of the screen. Its a lesson we have learned many times, oh well.

all and all it was super fun and I think it was successful, Im stoked on how the posters are coming out.

Over the past couple weeks, i’ve been cooking a lot, and i wanted to share a giant personal triumph with you. This adventure starts back in February, when i received the French Laundry cookbook for my 30th birthday from good friend and traitor ( HA! ) Joel.

For those that don’t know, the French Laundry is a restaurant in the Napa valley town of Yountville, CA. Headed by award winning chef Thomas Keller, this place makes food that is in a class by it’s self, and the recipes found in this book are no joke. Although based in simple french style cooking, Keller’s contemporary approach to the basic french methods requires an insane attention to detail, a lot of time, and patience. I’m not afraid of a challenge, but the fact that it took me 8 months to attempt one of his dishes should give you an idea of how intense the process is.

When i went to the grocery store last week and saw that lobster was on sale ($6 a pound!) i knew it was time to suck it up and dive into the book head first. I decided to make his interpretation of macaroni and cheese, and while this may seem simple in concept, it was as far removed from the blue Kraft box as possible. I first checked out Carol Blymire’s blog French Laundry at Home for some insight on this dish. This woman has cooked every recipe in the book over the past couple years, and i have the utmost respect for her because of it.  

I started by getting the lobsters ready for their quick bath. It sounds much nicer that way.

Once the water came to a boil, i ’steeped’ the lobster for a quick two minutes, just enough to kill the buggers and make the meat easier to remove from the shells.

After they stopped doing their version of kicking and screaming (Note: they don’t actually scream when boiled, at least they didn’t for me) i pulled out all the meat, let it rest on a plate and them put it in the fridge for a few hours.

After that, it was time to make the Creamy Lobster Broth part of the recipe. It begins by searing the bodies the lobster for a bit, then adding various aromatics and water, and then boiling for about 4 hours to reduce everything. Yup, 4 HOURS!

While that was happening, i made some parmesan cheese crisps in the oven. Basically just grate some cheese and place them in 2-3 inch circles on a baking sheet:

Then bake for a few minutes till golden brown and smelling awesome. This was the easiest part of the whole recipe.

OK, so now that the lobster broth has been reduced, cream added and reduced some more, you get the most amazing smelling/tasting Creamy Lobster Broth. This gets added to the partially cooked Orzo pasta and reduced even more. The more you reduce sauces and soups, the stronger the flavor gets. This is the point that the Marscapone cheese gets added, and thus the name of the dish, ‘Mac and Cheese’

The final step is to finish the lobster off. The initial steeping process just makes the meat easier to remove from the shells, but doesnt cook it all the way. You finish cooking it by poaching it in butter. You heard that right - POACHING IT IN BUTTER. This guy Keller figured out how to make something that is already delicious - lobster - and make it unreal amazing by cooking it this way. Drool.

Now that that’s finished, it’s time to plate the food, and i did my best here, but i’m sure that this part gets easier with practice. First you place some coral oil down (made from the lobster roe and oil mixed in a blender for 20 minutes earlier in the day). Next is a scoop of the Orzo and cheese in creamy broth, followed by a parmesan crisp, layer of lobster, another crisp and a couple more pieces of lobster. Basically, you build a tower of awesome, and then eat it.

As much work as this was (about 8 hours of cooking time start to finish) it was totally worth it. I will definitely be making this again, especially if the Dandy Lord pays a visit back to VT (how’s that for a reason to come back and hang?)

I’m also going to put up a couple photos of a dinner i made the other night. It was supposed to be for Zimmerman and Cavan, but Zim’s truck stopped working the day before and he couldnt make it from Rutland for dinner. Cavan just straight up blew it and missed another meal that was quite delicious. 

Cornish Game Hens stuffed with Cornbread-Apple stuffing (recipe here). Gratin potatoes (from the Les Halles cookbook) and Brocolini. Enjoy

We’re neck-deep in the design of the Dealer Catalog right now - bouncing all over the place to get some nice photos for everyone to get stoked by. The nice ladies a the Rehab Gym, Williston were willing to let us use their small 1-person pool for a photo shoot last night just before closing. So we crammed into this tiny room with a tiny pool and shut the doors and went to town. All I can say about the photo is that it involves Ron in nothing but his boxers and a 390…

Things are going… well… swimmingly, we’re getting shots. We’re all pretty much in SWASS-town (if you know what I mean) but things are going good and it’s time to kick this photo up a notch - FOG MACHINE! We’re already pushing the Rehab Gym people past their normal working hours but we’re just about through and I’m spraying the hell out of this room when - 

Fire alarm…

3 Huge fire trucks…

2 fire SUV’s…

2 gas-powered fans…

about 6 (surprisingly not-so-pissed) Rehab Gym workers staying up late…

All though we were cut short, we definitely got the shot. Pretty sweet.

Photo cred: Lil' Mike MacDonald

- evh

At 4:45 my alarm went off…  four hours of sleep had never felt so bad.    I lay in bed trying to commit to whether I was going to do it.  I had spent last night getting my shit together pulling things out that had been stored for the summer.

Last night was promising…It was like a misty fog here in Waterbury at like 7 pm.  Temp was like 44 down here so I was hoping that the altitude change meant it had already started.

I have had a long week and a seven hour drive to do tomorrow so I was totally okay with not getting up as  the snooze button was pressed for the second time.

Possibilities….as I lay in bed that’s what started running through my head.  The possibility of making those first turns.  The possibility that Jerry would send that email with pictures showing that it was ridable.  The possibility that I would have had all my shit together and just not gotten out of bed.

So after a few more presses of the snooze button I was dressed and out of the house at 5:15.  See the problem is there is no weather reporting right at Stowe.  The airport is at lower elevation, so checking the web is no better than looking out the window here in Waterbury.    Also, you need to start hiking in the dark, because you need to drop on the first snow right at the break of day.  Once the warmth of the day hits the snow at the bottom then you’re walking out; the moisture count just is so high that the snow starts clumping…the last two sentences mean you can’t look at webcams to help make your decision.  Basically, you can’t wait, you need to commit, you need to believe in the possibility.

It was snowing pretty good as I crossed from Waterbury into Stowe. This was a good sign.

Then the bad signs started setting in.  The snow didn’t increase at the high school.  Again…it didn’t increase at the touring center.    The other bad sign at the touring center was that it was calm.  For it to be it’s shreddable best, you need the wind to be blowing and swirling at the mountain.  This will deposit more snow on certain trails which makes those trails rideable when others aren’t.  Generally with a weather change like this, you can count on the wind.

Finally i got up to the mountain and I could still see some green in the lawn near the lodge.  If you don’t have full coverage there then you know your returns have diminished significantly. So maybe 1-2 inches at the Midway.   (So probably the same amount as in the pics from October 3rd that Dumont posted, except those were at the top and the Midway is at the gondola base.)

Watching the radar last night it does look like there were shredable amounts over in the Adirondacks, but obviously it wasn’t quite cold enough at altitude here.

Sometimes I think that if I hadn’t taken the chance…that it would have been there (a kind of Murphy’s law).

Then again, better to try and not succeed, then lie in bed and wonder about the possibilities.

(Sorry for the lack of pics, but as I said, it was still dark; I’ll link to or add some pics for Stowe’s site later today)

Sox lost to the Rays (who’s fair weather fans have to be the WORST in baseball - cowbells AND blue mohawks? give me a break) last night in game seven, so October baseball in New England is over, i’ve developed a pretty sweet cold, and i have to drive back to Burlington today after a weekend in New York. A triple decker shit-sandwich.

It was a cold and frosty one this morning, and it’s got my shred-legs yearning for some turning.  And, if there’s one thing my mind wanders to when I’m suffering from a snow fever - it’s this place:

PHOTO CRED: ME

It’s always a stoke-fest to start hearing about everyone’s early-season shenanigans, so go write about your hiking/branch clipping/hockey rink ice riding/gully scouting adventures and post them under the Perspectives page for all to get inspired.

- evh