When I was in the kitchen with Alison and Michael of Butter + Love, I watched the entire process of jam cookie creation. I wasn’t able to stay long enough to see their quirky mustache cookies come to life, so a few weekends ago when my mother-in-law was in town, we made a special trip to Stinky Bklyn to buy both jam sandwich cookies and these playful mustache cookies.

If you look closely, you’ll notice that each mustache cookie is a different kind of mustache: handlebar, fat, and traditional.

It’s a foregone conclusion that I made Justin pose with the gingerbread mustaches before he could eat them. I know it was torture for him to hold one of these gingery cookies that close to his face without immediately eating it!

We took a day trip this weekend with our end destination determined, but no other parts of the day fleshed out. A gorgeous drive to Grazin’ in Hudson, New York, offered more offshoots for little adventures than our meager Zipcar allowance could allow.

Why Grazin’, you ask? Many New Yorkers frequent Grazin’ Angus Acres farm stand at various Greenmarkets throughout the city. Grazin’ Angus is known as the only Animal Welfare Approved farm currently selling at the Greenmarket, and the farm has justifiably built a loyal customer base who clamor for their beef, eggs, and pork.

Grazin’ Angus raises 100% grass-fed steers on 450 acres of farmland in pristine Ghent, New York. After purchasing the land in 2003, Dan and Susan Gibson devoted their lives to full-time farming in 2007. Along with pastured chickens, the cows graze on what nature intended them to graze on (hint: grass) and spend their time outdoors, rotated among different fields.

Two years ago the Gibsons’ daughter, Christine, and son-in-law Chip Chiappinelli moved from Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood back to Ghent. Chip was working as an IT manager in Midtown and both were seeking a change of pace, as well as a healthier place to raise a family. As he said in person when we chatted with him at Grazin’, Chip moved back with the immediate goal of starting a restaurant. This was his goal for over two years. Unfortunately, timing wasn’t ideal, as he moved to Ghent when the economic recession was at its worst. Money was tight and it didn’t make economical sense to open a restaurant.

After securing and refabbing a 1946 diner in downtown Hudson, a Grazin’ restaurant finally became reality when it opened its doors in October of 2011. Grazin’ holds the singular title of being the only Animal Welfare Approved Restaurant in the country. This means that all of their food comes from Animal Welfare Approved Farms. AWA is a prestigious, rare label: farms need to be independent, family-owned, and meet a variety of humane and ethical requirements for animal care and diet.

The restaurant serves their own pastured beef, dairy products from the (now shuttered) Milk Thistle, and bread and vegetables from neighboring Hawthorne Valley Farm. As an infrequent meat eater, I’ve mentioned before that when I eat meat, it must be ‘worth it’. This was. Cooked medium-rare and topped with red onions and Consider Bardwell cheese, each bite of burger was packed with juicy flavor.

I was way too busy enjoying myself to take any pictures of Grazin’, so the images that accompany this post are from the rest of our day: what we did to fill in the blanks! After exiting the city and making a quick visit to Stone Barns, Justin and I continued to Olana, home to Hudson River School artist Frederic Church. Church built Olana on seemingly the most beautiful vantage point in all of the Hudson Valley. From the home, one can see miles down the Hudson, including the interesting paths the river takes as it makes its way to Manhattan. Looking above the river lends you a view of the Catskills, and in the other direction, the Berkshires.

Built in a Persian style over the course of many years and ultimately completed in 1889, the home itself is colorful and ornate. Between the colors and view, Olana is a photographer’s dream setting. We also arrived at that golden hour before dusk, magnifying the oranges and reds to an almost unreal hue. After spending some time on Olana’s hill, we drove a few miles to downtown Hudson and wandered the town’s long, picturesque shopping street. Warren Street is lined with various incarnations of Victorian architecture, from Queen Anne to Federal style. The homes’ placards indicated that the majority were built in the last decade of the 19th century.

As usual with our trips to the Hudson Valley, we thoroughly enjoyed our time out of the city, and not just for the (delectable) Grazin’ burger! For a fascinating look at the changing nature of Hudson, New York, be sure to read this New York Times article on the Brooklynization of the Hudson River Valley.

When thinking about how to prepare beets, roasting them is a given. It’s not only the best way to bring out this root vegetable’s sweet flavor, it’s also the easiest way to avoid splattering magenta and purple-hued juices everywhere. We had a white linoleum counter in our last apartment, forcing me to prep beets on our stovetop, as it was the only surface that wouldn’t become irrecoverably stained.

Instead of discussing how to prepare beets, the more interesting question is: what do you do with the beets after they’re roasted? Inspired by a recipe from Bill Taibe, I’ve taken to roasting the beets with thyme before tossing them with honey and balsamic vinegar and sprinkling them with mint sprigs.

I first tried this concoction last Winter and I haven’t deviated since. The honey is a fitting companion to the earthy, sweet beets and the mint adds a breath of freshness to the salad. You can eat this hot or cold, making this preparation easy and versatile.

Because I spent three hours with Alison and Michael of Butter + Love, I came home with more pictures than I was able to share in the original article.

I stayed for the entire process, from breaking eggs and mixing dough, to stamping out the shapes and baking the cookies, to the final stages of jam application and packaging.

Here are a few favorites that I didn’t get to share in the article.

Click on this link or on one of the pictures to view many more pictures.

The images are in chronological order in the gallery. As a note, you can cycle through the images one-by-one or by clicking ‘More’ to go to the next 10 images (or ‘Prev’ to go back by 10 images at a time).

A girl from a large, close-knit Kansas family graduates high school and moves East. After a year at Boston University, she packs her bags and moves to New York City to pursue a life on the stage. Thirteen years, multiple apartments, and numerous plays later, you find her in Brooklyn, juggling a wholesale bakery while continuing to act in plays.

This isn’t next summer’s break-out movie. (Though, I’d buy a ticket!) Rather, it’s the briefest synopsis of Alison Walla’s last thirteen years in New York. Alison is an accomplished musical theater actress, whose Broadway credits include A Tale of Two Cities, Fiddler on the Roof, and Into the Woods. Seven months ago, while continuing to act, Alison officially launched Butter + Love, adding small business owner and baker to her resume.

A Broadway actress AND a baker? The personalities associated with these two professions initially seem to be polar opposites. A Broadway actress must be ‘on’ each night, ready to perform in front of eager audiences, unable to slip into the background or take a night off. A baker spends much of her time by herself, developing recipes through trial and error, working well into the wee hours of the morning.

But there are more similarities than what you see on the surface. With both professions, the only product a consumer sees is the finished product. Theater audiences don’t attend rehearsals or casting calls. Those of us with a sweet-tooth don’t sit in the kitchen each night as bakers develop recipes. And while an actress must be ‘on’ and peforming, she is playing a role and can disappear into that role, much like a baker can be alone for hours, focused only on her creation. Both actors and bakers understand the importance of repetition and small gains. Finally hitting a pivotal F sharp correctly in practice means nothing to a theater-goer, but everything to an actress. Likewise, realizing that 1/8th additional teaspoon of baking powder is what will make your cookies rise to the exact height you want them, will mean little to an eater as he munches his cookie. But the baker knows.

Of course, in reality, Alison Walla isn’t equal parts Sarah Brightman and Jacques Torres. Mathematically, the result of an equation is a sum of its parts, but with things like baking and people, the math isn’t as straightforward. And just as Butter + Love is much more than butter and good-intentions, combining a musical theater and homesteading background yields unexpected results. Butter + Love merges Alison’s eye for presentation and creativity with her knowledge of time-honored baking techniques, resulting in cookies that you can’t put down.

As a veteran actress, including a six month national tour of Fiddler on the Roof, Alison has always found a cathartic release in baking. It’s evident when talking with her that every aspect of baking fascinates her, from recipe development, to creating new flavor combinations, to the more scientific problem solving.

Alison grew up in, to use her words, an old-fashioned home. From an early age, she baked, cooked, sewed, and embroidered, under her mother’s and grandmother’s watchful guidance. Her new life of both acting and professional baking developed after years of baking on tour and greeting new neighbors with homemade baked goods.

When we first met, Alison shared that she devours cookbooks, baking books, and food blogs. Even when she was on the road, she says that she’d “vie for a hotel room with a kitchen, so I could bake a pie for the company”. And when she was in a particular city for a longer amount of time, she’d scope out the bakeries that might allow her to actually bake something.

Alison comes from a large family, but she’s the only one who has left Kansas. As the youngest child, her other siblings now have children of their own. It’s apparent that despite the distance, family life is imporant to Alison. She commented that while she didn’t go home for Christmas–taking only Christmas Day off from Butter + Love–she made sure to Skype with her entire family as they passed the computer around.

Alison’s strong ties to family, whether they’re physically present or not, shine through in Butter + Love’s concoctions. Her shortbread and butter cookie recipes come from her grandmother, Alison’s namesake. And the raspberry lemon jam sandwich cookie (pictured here) is nearly identical to the lemon butter cookie she grew up with.

When Alison first moved to Fort Greene, she was instantly charmed by the neighborhood feel. The name Butter + Love stems from the way her business initially started. She used her baked goods as a way to reach out to her new neighbors, one of whom is the small Brooklyn grocer The Greene Grape. After tasting her cookies, The Greene Grape encouraged her to make bigger batches that they could sell in their store.

Using managers Michael Hayes’ and Sabrina Meinhardt’s guidance, Alison expanded from selling her cookies to the Greene Grape to selling at four other small Brooklyn specialty food stores (see the complete list here). After several months of baking wholesale orders, Alison began selling at the Brooklyn Flea’s Smorgasburg. Between now and Valentine’s day, she plans to sell her cookies at the Brooklyn Flea three weekends. For non-New Yorkers, in a matter of days, Butter + Love’s cookies will be available on Etsy.

From talking with Alison in November, to photographing her in the kitchen last week, and eating quite a few Butter + Love cookies in between, her background of both theater actress and Kansas family girl is charmingly apparent. Alison describes Butter + Love’s cookies as “very simple, with humble ingredients and a touch of whimsy.” In her cookies, Alison has managed to blend her family-focused, grounded upbringing with a touch of Broadway flair and spark. Humble hardwork with dynamic, surprising flavors–that’s exactly what you get when you take a Kansas girl and drop her in the Big Apple to pursue a life in musical theater. Her cookies demonstrate her past and current lives.

Alison pointed out that she loves the combination of vintage and modern and that understanding the interplay of the two helps her curb the daintiness of her cookies by giving them a clean, modern look. This look is further enhanced by the eye-catching label designed by her friend, LA-based graphic designer, Janet Kim.

Thirteen years of line memorizing and playing the same role day-in and day-out, as well as a lifetime of baking, has turned Alison into a calming, self-contained presence in the kitchen. In the three hours I conversed and photographed Alison and her boyfriend Michael, I never once detected an edge of stress or sharpness, despite the sheer quantity of cookies they were preparing. Everything progressed in an orderly fashion, with Michael and she switching roles when needed. Admittedly, if I had visited the kitchen seven months ago, I’d have witnessed a steep learning curve:

The challenge has been adjusting from being an at-home baker to baking multiple batches of recipes. It’s been translating this at-home passion I’ve always had into something that’s a workable business.

As an example, Alison had always mixed everything by hand and had to learn to use an industrial mixer and sheeter–or to make back up plans when the sheeter unexpectedly broke! She also learned how to adapt recipes to respond to differences in humidity.

Seven months later, I didn’t see any struggle or tension-I just saw the calm and satisfying end result, much like being in the audience of a successful Broadway show.

I’m eager to elaborate about Butter + Love and share my photographs of Alison and Michael prepping and baking their jam sandwich cookies. Please visit next week for the complete article and pictures. For now, I hope this shot of Butter + Love’s blackberry lime cookie gets your mouth watering.

This is a punchy winter salad destined to bump you out of any winter doldrums, for a brief moment at least. After a long morning, it was impossible not to feel cheered up by peeling and smelling a perfectly ripe blood orange before compiling a beautiful plate.

Inspired by a recipe from the BiRite Market cookbook, I tossed a thinly sliced fennel bulb with vinegar and honey, before layering the fennel on top of a peeled blood orange and surrounding that with a sliced avocado that had been lightly specked with sea salt.

Unless you’re a light lunch eater, this salad shouldn’t serve as a complete lunch (though you could always double your serving). Instead, pair it with a piece of crusty bread and olive oil or with a bowl of soup–I was lucky enough to have leftover parsnip soup from the night before.

As I ate this, my outlook on the afternoon felt instantly improved. Now if only ripe blood oranges could take away the constant racket of construction outside my office window.

By the numbers

Total bags ground and prepared: 57

Most caffeinated month: July, with 7 bags

Top Roasters:

• Stumptown: 15 bags
• Cafe Grumpy: 14 bags
• Joe: 7 bags

Roasters’ Locations: Brooklyn, San Jose, Chicago, Portland, Copenhagen, Durham, Grand Rapids, Upland, San Francisco

Repetitive February: Of the five bags we drank, four of them were Ethiopian.

In fact: Coffee from Ethiopia was our favorite throughout the year–we had a total of 8 Ethiopian coffees, with Guatemalan coffee closely behind with 7 bags. We tended to shy away from coffee from Indonesia.

Best name: Kenya’s Gethumbwini (we had this coffee 3 times)

A quick search for “Super Natural Everyday Bran Muffins” yields multiple results. As someone who never thought I’d be promoting a bran muffin recipe, after eating these muffins, I’m not surprised by their positive internet reception.

Last weekend I wrote down a number of goals for 2012. It was the first time in awhile that I felt like I was brainstorming without second guessing myself or being hindered by notions like realism or pragmatism. I jotted down goals and ideas as they popped in my head, without rationally thinking about the steps needed to achieve the goal. After 20 minutes, I had 50 flashcards filled out.

One of my easier goals involves breakfast. Justin and I are both big breakfast people and tend to cook large brunches on the weekends–frittatas, pancakes, waffles, french toast. But during the weekdays, our breakfast menu turns staid. Cereal and toast; yogurt and granola. Both are fine, but are they really worth getting up for in the morning?

One of my goals this year is to make our weekday breakfasts as interesting as our weekend breakfasts. I’m not planning on waking up an hour early to get brioche french toast in the oven (though, because we bought brioche this weekend, I think that’s exactly what I’m doing tomorrow morning!). Rather, I’m talking about breaking free of my cereal routine and planning breakfasts like we plan dinners.

Heidi Swanson’s bran muffins seemed like a fitting place to start. Muffins can be baked the night before, stay moist for 4-5 days, and if paired with fruit (or, yes, cereal) can make a filling weekday breakfast. For an added incentive, bran muffins are a nutritional powerhouse, comprised of whole wheat flour, oat bran, and bran cereal.

This all might sound a little dull, but Heidi’s version is surprisingly sweet–especially for people whose brain flashes ‘avoid’ when they hear the word bran. Heidi’s recipe includes 1/4 cup of cane sugar and 1/4 cup of maple syrup, which is just enough to sweeten the muffins without dominating their oaty taste. These are simple muffins, and with the exception of oat bran, I bet that your kitchen already houses most of the necessary ingredients. Don’t just take my word for it–try these for yourself and become a bran muffin convert.

My dad is a therapist to troubled adolescent boys, and a good one at that. He’s worked at Timber Ridge School for the past 22 years–the only job he’s had since our family moved from South Carolina to Virginia. I can see how impactful his work is when I’m flipping through images on his camera. When a boy is ready to graduate and move away from the confined, structured environment of Timber Ridge and return to the real world, my dad makes sure to take a picture with him before he leaves. Both faces are glowing: my dad’s with pride and the boy’s with hope and gratitude.

This is all to say that I know my dad is an excellent counselor and has positively impacted many troubled boys’ lives. But–if given the opportunity for a parallel life, he’d be a woodworker, a craftsman. When my parents lived in South Carolina, they lovingly restored our family home, transforming it from a scary drug-den to a beautiful southern gem. (I just re-watched a home video house tour while I was home. The house was stunning!). Along with our own home, my parents were landlords of a number of smaller properties. In my rental years, I’ve often wished I had a landlord like Mom and Dad. I vaguely remember hanging out in various yards and climbing trees, while my parents fixed shutters, helped with yard-work, painted, and put in new cabinets.

And to top it all off, some of my favorite furniture in my parents’ house was made by none other than my dad. As a woodworker, he’s able to to see an image in a catalogue or in person and then say “I can recreate that”. And he does. Because he doesn’t have much free time, his creations can take months. But he’s a perfectionist–and even if he has to spend 15 minute intervals for 5 months on a piece of furniture, he creates a beautiful final product.

I’d love for my dad to build something for our future home–I do have a desk waiting at their house when I’m ready for it. While we were visiting over Christmas, my dad helped me with a very basic task. I wanted new shooting surfaces for various tabletop photography and had asked my parents if we could work on that during my visit. I envisioned going to Home Depot, buying some cheap boards, glueing them together, and then painting them. My dad more than one-upped me by pulling out various pieces of wood he had saved. He then sanded, varnished, and smoothed the boards. For my father, this was as easy a task as possible, but it’s one that I couldn’t have replicated–and it was fun to watch him in his [other] element.