My Autumn Food List

A few years ago I brainstormed the idea of a seasonal food list for the side of the fridge. The idea is to "keep in mind" visually all the cozy, traditional foods that we keep dreaming of when we long for Autumn. I also really love the fact that it does a tiny bit of keeping me on track with local/seasonal eating. No better way to check off "apple dumplings"  than to turn it into a trip to the Farmer's Market or the local orchard! Compiling the list is also a fun exercise in self-examination. What speaks Autumn to me personally? What traditional Fall foods are not compelling for me but seem culturally obligatory? Ha! Mental purging! Sometimes I have a particular food that I crave and love but I don't know what time of year it "fits" in so researching its seasonality (mussels in white wine sauce was one for me) ends up being a bite-sized education. I now know that mussels are in season in Autumn. 

The first year I drew up my lists it took up a little bit of my time....but now I just have all the lists saved on my computer and I just review the appropriate list, add or remove whatever seems right and hit PRINT. The list lives on the side of the fridge and I use it when planning menus for the week or dreaming up special dishes for company. Then I keep a pen handy for scratching things off as they show up on our table. So fun! Here's my Autumnal version....

Autumnal Food

Pear Tart

Apple Pie

Pumpkin Pie

Stuffed Figs

Cinnamon Pork Chops

Cheese with Apples

Mussels and Crusty French Bread

Oyster Mushrooms Fried with Bacon

Sausages w/ Caramelized Onions

Slow Roasted Ribs

Roast Quail

Apple Dumplings

Fresh Plums

Plum Tart

Apple Turnovers

Raspberry Jam

Mulled Cider

Roast Beets

Venison Tenderloin

Braised Rabbit

Black Bean Soup

Roasted Garlic

Cranberry Bar Cookies

Buckwheat Pancakes

Scrambled Eggs W/Mushrooms

Apple Galette

Fresh Apple Cider @ The Mill

Spicy Muffins

Carrot Cake

Swedish Meatballs

Chili w/Cornbread

Pumpkin Bread

Honeybaked Ham

Chai Tea

Apple Cider Donuts

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Pot Roast

Butternut Squash Soup

Braised Pork Belly

Pumpkin Waffles

Apple Crisp

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Acorn Squash w/ Cinnamon and Maple Syrup

 Bouf Bourguignon

Cranberry Coffee Cake

Concord Grapes

Goat Cheese Cheesecake

Pumpkin Fudge

What would make your list?

 

Strawberry Mama

The strawberries are ripe. We're eating them at every meal now after our big trip the u-pick farm. We always mean to look further afield and one year we went to our CSA's organic field for them but we usually end up at Jones Farm like we did this year. The taste of a field-ripe strawberry is cliche but it still has to be remembered every single year that they are so, so, so much better than the ones we buy in the grocery store all winter to tide ourselves over.

Yesterday I finished putting the last of the jars of freezer jam into the freezer. A joined us around the dining room table this year and helped mash berries and boil pectin with the boys and I. Said he truly had no idea there was exactly that much sugar in jam. Heh. Now you know why I substitute that low-sugar pectin stuff that I buy at Whole Foods, eh buddy?

It does make me feel good to have him start noticing how much sugar is in a given food, not just have me be the food-nazi around the house, always on everyone's case about "feeding the children good things." Nobody likes to be the lone policeman. To be fair though, despite my very wholesome nutritional training there was a time when I was in his shoes, not paying much attention to what went into the jam.

Once as a teen I made jam(one of my favorite summer activities) with one of my best chums whose mom was a devoted naturist hippie type, committed to real foods and the avoidance of processed goods. We'd been out picking wild strawberries together which was all very idyllic and then ended the day in my parents kitchen, with everything we'd picked, intent on making them into jam. My friend balked at the amount of sugar in the recipe and told me that her mom would never go for that....and asked me if we could possibly substitute a smaller amount of honey or fruit juice or even skip the sweetener all together. At the time I didn't exactly get it but here I am, mama of my own domain and retroactively impressed by my friend's scruples and I kinda wish we'd just eaten those little berries raw and fresh instead of boiling the daylights out of them with a wagon load of sugar on top. I hope my own little boys learn the same standards my friend espoused, even when her mom wasn't watching. That's what Pamona's Universal Pectin is all about I guess....at least as far as jam is concerned.

So, there is jam, and there are plenty of "leftover" fresh berries and last night there was even a pie. And for breakfast tomorrow, I'm going to have some strawberries in cream...just a little maple syrup drizzled on top to keep it on the straight and narrow. You haven't lived until you've eaten fresh berries in cream.

Related articles

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• Day 112 - A Strawberry Workday and Strawberry Fruit Leather

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• Berry Resource: Uses for Strawberries

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• Homemade Strawberry Freezer Jam

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Maine Shrimp Are Divine

It's Maine shrimp season!!!! Sound the bells!

I am very lucky sometimes to live in New England. Every single time I eat or buy astounding, fresh seafood is one of those times. I am a seafood fanatic from the cradle, raised to believe that those who eat lobster and shrimp, and milky, tender scallops are having a better time.

This is my third season eating Maine shrimp. I first found out about them on Chowhound, source of so many good edible pearls of wisdom. Someone was raving about them and mentioned off-hand that many of the Whole Foods Markets up and down the coast carry them in season. I have been on the prowl ever since. The season is erratic as are most things dependent on weather and the whims of God but they usually show up at the seafood counter somewhere in the time from December to April or so.

Maine shrimp aren't actually shrimp at all, they're tiny little prawns that are beautiful and extremely delicious. The flesh is tender to the extreme, bright coral pink when raw, unlike the thick gray bodied shrimp from The Gulf. The are often sold head on, with their long whiskers needling through the pile. The skins are very delicate and thin, super easy to peel, and they cook extremely fast. They really require little more than a gentle toss in a hot pan of butter and garlic. I try to go light on the seasonings with Maine shrimp because they are a unique flavor all on their own. The meat is sweet and just a touch briny, almost like very tender, sugared lobster. These little creatures are also wild, not farmed and sustainably harvested by local fishermen during a specific window of time which means they are a much better eco-option than the big meaty shrimp coming in from Vietnam. They are also handily only about 2-6 dollars a pound.

These babies get eaten in quantity in season, ala sweet corn in August. These fleeting food treasures get no better than the now. We have heaping plates of them with just a drizzle of butter or a sprinkle of garlic to set them off. Mostly, its just shells and shells and shells and hands on munching with a few restrained bundles socked away in the back of the freezer. I bet they'd make amazing ceviche, and I also need to try cooking the shells down for stock (bisque anyone?) w/ some roasted onions and carrots. Mmmmm......plotting my next trip to the seafood counter.

New CSA

We're a good bit of the way through the harvesting season with our new CSA and I have to say that I like it. It is just as handy as I imagined to have our pick-up location down the street, instead of 45 minutes away, and kind of fun to meet neighbors there who also happen to have a share. I didn't count on the community interaction bit, kind of a fun bonus.

I do miss going up to an actual farm. It was a great built-in break that we had going and I feel like we've removed ourselves a little bit from the food-land connection. There was one scheduled members day when our new CSA invited everyone to come up for a picnic and help pull garlic and then go for a dip in the creek. Have to make sure to plan on going next year. I am an organization klutz and through a lot of fumbling we managed to miss it this time around. Am still kicking myself  although this morning I found out there is a special autumn farm festival scheduled for September when we can maybe make up the difference! Hooray!

Since there's such a small actual farm connection to speak of via our CSA this year, I find that I'm seeking out chances to go to drive out to the country for other things: caterpillar hunting, listening to the frogs sing, rural estate sales, buying farm milk, picking up local meat...etc. Kind of fun to mix it up anyhow.

So, the time savings is great, the produce is great, the community connection is fun and over-all I think we made a fine trade. You never quite know when you make this kind of a gamble and switch everything up, but this time it worked out.

Culinary Windfall

So, you've all heard of White Elephant parties, right? The kind of holiday occasion where everyone brings a "gift" something you have lying around the house that you don't want anymore (all wrapped up for the sake of disguise) and then numbers are drawn and gifts are summarily selected, opened, swapped and stolen back and forth at high speed. That s a vague description but you get the idea.

Last night I took this beauty as my cleverly disguised gift.

That's a seven inch, folding knife with 007 inscribed along the side of the plastic handle. Quality, right there. Believe it or not, we found it in the master bedroom of closet of our house. So fabulous. You couldn't invent treasures like that.

And here I am fawning over what I got in exchange. (And getting fabulous insider cooking tips from our priest's wife about where to find the best stuff in it.)

Such a beautiful, old, hardcover gold copy of Fannie Farmer...complete with satin ribbon marker. I do feel just a little badly for the woman from whom I nabbed this fabulous tome. It really is a lovely prize. There is some small consolation in the fact that the publishing date is 1965 which means that (theoretically at least) the book was already fading beyond its peak. A mere shadow of its former greatness. So, I have heard but, I'm not complaining any.

Its so pretty. Such pristine pages inside, not a crease or a drop anywhere except for a few curious, stray pen marks in the pages about sorbet. It's just asking to be written all over and dripped upon and I'm sure I will be able to oblige. I always write notes about the recipes I try so that I can remember when I made and what I thought afterwards and any little adjustments or additions I make. Yeah, and I'm messy. If it was any other kind of book I'd feel bad but cookbooks are meant to be used and dribbled over and loved to pieces.

One of the things I like most about the book is the wonderful line drawing illustrations. Truly, they are frame-able. Excellent little drawings of how to peel a carrot, how to fold in egg whites or and entire one page spread full of visuals of the varieties of lettuces that seemed significant. Love a little handmade beauty in the pages of a manual.

I heard somewhere that Fanny Farmer (also previously known as The Boston Cooking School Cookbook) is the prime instructive cooking source for New Englander's and Joy of Cooking was the home base for the Midwest. Being a good Midwestern girl I cut my teeth on Joy of Cooking, but now that I am on the East Coast I feel like I ought to learn the ways of the natives so I feel like I'm truly joining the locals and learning their ways to be thumbing through my own copy of this book and reading recipes like Maine Peanut Brittle and Boston Cupcakes. The fabulosity knows no bounds! And just in time for Christmas cookie season! Score!

Freeze The Good Stuff

 The nights are getting pretty chilly now, we're breaking out the footie pajamas on a regular basis. Ru asks every single morning now, "And Mommy, is it going to be cold today?" because he is hopeful that we will have a warm day which means that he can wear short sleeves and sandals, and that there will be snow, which is his fondest dream at the moment. I kinda think this cold weather business is here to stay for a while.

And we have a new family dessert, ice cream is passe, cocoa is in. A has been pioneering a new family tradition of after dinner homemade cocoa...and we're drinking them topped with whipped cream and sprinkles, in little espresso mugs. So much fun! I am hoping the trend continues long enough to extend beyond the classic rendition to: warm eggnoggy white cocoa, minty cocoa, nutmeg dusted mugs, and maybe a white chocolate variation? Its a great way to get a little, warm shot of dairy in at the end of the day. What flavor dreams am I missing?

 The boys are enjoying the leaf fall and the fact that at the moment there are giant piles to jump in, on every single curb. There are detours to be made between the car and any door....wander this direction to kick leaves....wander that direction to jump in a heap....wander over there to throw some in the air like confetti....  Such fun. Strange to see the naked trees reaching up over the horizon now though...

 Been having lots of fun in the kitchen lately. Made the first batch of Christmas cookies and packed them away in the frozen zone. I baked up some simple, no fuss chocolate spice cookies, Midnight Cracklers from Dorie Greenspan's classic baking tome. Pretty dead easy and dark, rich, chocolatey flavor...mmm...I'm not even that wild a fan of the whole chocolate chocolate chocolate thing but, yeah...these are good. They remind me of Mexican hot chocolate with the rich chocolate, hint of spice business. We're off to a good start.

 Oh...and warning. The dough is almost better than the finished cookies. So delicious. Like moist grown-up brownies in a chewy, wad-able, hold-a-chunk-in-your-hand form. Dangerous stuff folks. I bagged those suckers up for the freezer at lightening speed!

 I also baked up this pound cake a while ago and remembered, (per the recipe's instruction) that I'd frozen one for later and we broke one out to celebrate an autumn picnic in our yard after church on Sunday. This pound cake rocks and it freezes astoundingly. Its almost better out of the freezer...I'm not sure how that's possible, but there it is.

 See, aren't the colors an amazing whirl of light? Most of these leaves are down already. That's why we're glad we are lucky enough to own a camera. Nice to freeze more than just cake and cookies for later.

Happy last moments of Autumn everyone!

Virtual Cooking Lessons: Potato Soup

Virtual cooking lessons? You bet!

A month or two ago, a friend contacted me long-distance and said that she was thinking fondly about how I'd been cooking mentor to a young pal, but sighing over our geographic separation.  So, she thought she'd broach a crazy idea with me...what about doing basic cooking lessons long distance together?

I thought it it was genius. So, there she and I are on our second month together and A said, "Why not take this live and let others join in?" And here we are. In email form I'll be covering two recipes a month, things I feel should be part of any cook's canon. I've decided to share only one recipe a month here as I don't want to end up with an unwieldy post that leaves you scrolling down for years.

Feel free to observe, cook along, report on your cooking experience, pipe up with your own tips on the topic or just enjoy the photos and salivate. Dig in!

Its soup season so, we're going to make a good creamy potato version part of our canon! This is my own hurried jotting down of my mom's standard potato soup. Its fairly quick to make, has no strong flavors and so suits all palates and its wonderfully thrifty to make! I hope you like it as well as I do. I have a very soft spot for it in my soul.

When I was a naughty little tyke and said I didn't like soup...I meant that I didn't like any other soups...just this one. We always ate it with a sleeve of Saltine crackers for dipping into our bowls. I still serve it that way to my own boys but for grownups a few dinner rolls, biscuits or a nice loaf of bread with butter would be a warm accompaniment.

Classic Potato Soup

5 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1 carrot, diced
1 onion, peeled and diced
1/3 c. of heavy cream
1 T of butter or bacon fat
2 1/2 t. salt
4 c. water
1 t. dried parsley

First, melt the butter or bacon fat in a saucepan over medium heat. When it is nice and melted but not smoking or snapping yet, add the onion and the carrot, no need to peel the carrot...just chop it up and throw it in. Stir to make sure that the mixture doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan and wait to move on until the onion is translucent.

Next you add the 4 cups of water...which will cool the whole mixture down a bit so I sometimes turn up the heat to medium high...although you have to watch to make sure that it doesn't boil raucously. Once you have the water in the pot...add the diced potatoes. You can cut up your potatoes in generous, hearty hunks to fill your spoon robustly or you can cut them into dainty little cubes just because you like to see them marching in diminutive evenness down the cutting board. Whatever you like. It really is about how you like it best.

Once the potatoes are in, give it a good stir and then cover the pot and let the mixture heat up. Once you can tell its starting to simmer and steam nicely, uncover it and begin to stir occasionally and watch for the potatoes to be done. You're ready for the next stop when the potatoes are tender. You can use a fork to poke them, a knife to spear them or you can scoop a cube out of the pot and burn your tongue testing its mettle with your own teeth.

After your potatoes feel tender, take a potato masher (like you use to make mashed potatoes) and squish the soup, right in the pot. Again, there's no real rule for how much squishing would be enough, its about how smooth versus how lumpy you like potato soup. Some people like a velvet broth, and some (like me!) want a portion of chewable little bits in there for interest. Do whatever you like. Make sure to stir after mashing so that you can see how the texture of the soup is feeling as a whole, and mix the water with the potatoes and thus avoid any burning. This is a good time to make sure that the burner is back on medium...no more.

Once you have the texture you like then I often stir it over the heat and let it cook for another 2-3 minutes to be sure its nice and thick. After the consistency is where you want it, add the heavy cream, the salt and stir to mix. Taste it to be sure that the flavor is right...you may want more salt. Then add the dried parsley...mix it in and serve it up. We always have ours with a pat of butter melting on top of every bowlful.

If potato soup is old hat or you just feel like something different I sometimes add:

• grated cheese (Gruyere, sharp cheddar or smoked cheeses are lovely)
• some cooked salmon chunks and dill
• freshly chopped chives
• chicken
• sausage
• ham 
• bacon

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Just popping back on to add that I've now received a few other brilliant suggestions for additions:

• sweet corn
• fresh green beans
• crab
• lobster
• clams
• kielbasa
• and my grandmother and mama both did a budget variation with hot dog slices (which sounds totally horrible and my husband A recoils over, but it was totally deluxe to me as a kid)