Personal Projects

04/07/2009 - Current Creative Projects

My big project currently is the building of my smokehouse and my study of charcuterie, the art of  curing and smoking meats and fish. The smokehouse is well under way and will be complete by next fall, when the cold smoking season begins here in Wyoming. I have been working on a number of cold smoked salmon recipes which I will be posting to Chilefire once I have them mastered - including a Spanish style saffron and paprika salmon, and a dill and maple cured salmon which is wonderful. I am preparing to leap into my first spanish style cured ham.

I am working on a new website  The Rogue Apron, a cooking site as a companion to Chilefire that will be focus more on a my local cooking (and eating) group here in Laramie. I have installed the basic CMS for the site and I am working on the design when I have the time. I am also, slowly, working on a cookbook of the same name (The Rogue Apron), which contains recipes from Chilefire, and a few new ones which I haven't posted as of yet. The book will be available via Blurb at some point in the future, but I am only adding a couple of pages a week at this point, so it will be a while before it is available.

I have also been working on a series of prints based on botanical themes. Really these are creative exercises but I have been enjoying the process. The first is a large print that runs at about 7 by 3 feet (pictured below) titled Saffron4. I went into the creation of the piece with it in mind to depict a flavor in 2 colors. I like the resulting direction, but want to keep working with the series. The print itself however is a bit large for us to hang, so its in the studio for now. Next one will be smaller.