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.

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.

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)

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.

I’ll always remember last year’s Christmas as that Christmas–the one I never want to repeat; the one where I felt ridiculously sick while tromping through an actual blizzard only to become snowed-in due to a Sanitation Workers’ strike.

I’ll remember this year’s Christmas as the year things got back on track. We spent time with both of our families, and after reflecting for a few days, I can’t recall a single mishap or misstep: the weather stayed good, spirits were high, and we celebrated Christmas for a full week! I hope your respective holidays offered everything you envisioned and that mother nature, and your own health, cooperated!

It’s a new year–and one with a much better sound to it (2011 never sounded completely smooth, no matter how many times I said it). Putting aside my pronunciation difficulties with 2011, in selecting photographs for my own ‘clips show’, I’m astonished at how quickly the year passed. I remember the impassible blizzards of last December and January with perhaps unnecessary detail. And when I picked out the pictures to share of our September trips to London and Copenhagen, I instantly felt transported back.

These photographs aren’t necessarily what I consider the ‘best’ shots I took each month, but rather they are pictures that capture the month as a whole. Below each photograph, I’ve shared a small explanation as to why I chose the image. Happy New Year to you and yours!

January

January was bitter. Between December and February, New York received a record amount of snowfall. I remember using January to practice indoor photography, read books on photographic theory, and begin researching canning and preserving.

February

We had a break in the cold in February, and I used the slightly warmer weather to resume my walks all over Manhattan. One of my walks led me to Will Ryman’s metal roses. Centered in the middle of Park Avenue, these manmade flowers were a bright spot on an otherwise flowerless walk.

March

Most people go to the Hamptons in August-we went in March! The towns were sleepy-quiet and serene. While neither of us were sold on the Hamptons, we did enjoy walking around neighboring Sag Harbor’s streets and driving out to Montauk, the very end of Long Island.

April

In April, Justin and I took a long-anticipated trip to Portland, Oregon. As you might have guessed from my various posts about Portland, we fell in love with the city’s food, culture, and people.

May

After returning from lush, colorful Portland, I resigned myself to a few more weeks of late-April dullness, both in weather and food. These flowers signify the burst of joy I felt when I first spotted asparagus, rhubarb, and of course, tulips at the farmers’ market.

June

We traveled to Washington, DC and Winchester, VA in June to visit with friends and my parents–and my parents’ wirehaired fox terrier, Bob. A visit to Winchester means at least a few afternoons of watching Bob play outside and run around the house. Here’s Bob playing with a new mustache toy.

July

In July, I interviewed Tom and Tess of Brooklyn Victory Garden, a carefully curated food store in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood. In 2011, I also had the pleasure of interviewing Nils Wessell of Brooklyn Butcher Blocks and Rachel Gladfelter of Rachel’s Pies. I’m continually inspired by Brooklyn’s food scene and its hardworking, passionate food artisans.

August

In August, my twin brother and his wife KT visited us in Brooklyn for the first time! Despite the soul-crushing heat, we enjoyed wandering the High Line, spending time in Central Park, and a quick jaunt to Governors’ Island.

September

I cheated and chose two pictures for September: one from Cambridge and one from Copenhagen. Though we spent the majority of our trip in Denmark, we trained from London to Cambridge one day to visit with my college roommate, Brittany. This trip and our Portland trip are the highlights of my year!

October

Justin and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary with a day-trip to the always inspiring Storm King Art Center. We didn’t have many crisp Fall days this year, but we woke up on October 3rd to sunny skies and 60 degree weather.

November

Our friends Evi and Sam traveled to New York on another beautiful fall weekend and served as amazing subjects for my first engagement shoot!

December

We just returned from an 8 day trip to Massachusetts and Virginia to celebrate the holidays with our families. I’m eager to share some pictures from our visit. First up: a collection of miniature ornaments decorating my brother and sister-in-laws’ table.

Justin and I spent last weekend in Baltimore visiting several of our friends. We had such a fun time seeing Baltimore through their eyes: wandering around Hampden, sampling some fantastic Madcap coffee at Spro, dining at Woodberry Kitchen (two tables down from hometown hero Cal Ripken), and enjoying beers at The Brewer’s Art.

For part of Saturday afternoon, Charlie and Catherine provided a car tour of a few of Baltimore’s neighborhoods before heading into Baltimore’s largest park, the 600 acre Druid Hill Park. We drove up to an enormous glass house and decided to stop the car, as neither of them had been inside.

The glass house is, according to the sign, the second oldest surviving all-glass house in the country, and home to the Rawlings Conservatory and botanic gardens. (The oldest is in San Francisco.) The house is truly a gem, breathtaking in its positioning in the park, looming over the rest of the land, sight lines uninhibited. The conservatory houses a number of rooms, including the Orchid room, which is part of the original structure from 1888.

We had fun taking a break from the brisk weather to wander around the poinsettia display, the Christmas model train, and the arid cactus room. I especially marveled at the natural beauty found in some of the rock flowers. I could easily picture myself plucking one of the rocks and wearing it as a necklace. If you’re curious about the history of the Glass House, Peggy Stansbury recently published The Glass House of Dreams, full of sweeping photos and a more detailed history.