Sept. 25: Fall soups!

Yesterday I had my first cup of butternut squash soup (with coconut milk!) of the season. It was delightful. The night before, I made potato-white bean soup, with red potatoes from our garden, which is also quite lovely. The weather has turned so quickly, and the darkness at both ends of the day is creeping in without regard for my love of light and sunshine. But, it is fall, and my love for autumn weather is well noted, so I'll just zip it (my mouth!) and keep making soups.

Here are a couple more that I am looking to make very soon:

chili

minestrone

Don't those soups just shout out, "Fall!"? I think so.

Besides soups, I am also looking forward to roasting vegetables more--the root ones and brussels sprouts especially--and enjoying pomegranates and various citrus fruits too. (Trying to look on the bright side, as I am already mourning the fresh fruit, berries and waning tomato crop... sigh.)

What autumn food are you looking forward to making? Do soups make your list?

Jen and I (and now my mom and Lisa too!) are blog challenging throughout September. You can catch her blog over at Stuff Jen Says. If you want to write along with us, give me a shout and I'll send you the blog prompts.

Sept. 17: Corn salads for end-of-summer goodness

Well, I'm officially mailing it in. While Jen and I were texting random nonsense yesterday, and accusing each other of creating challenging blog post topics (it's a blog challenge, doh!), I threw out the idea that maybe a recipe didn't have to be one that we'd actually MADE. Rather, it could be one that we are hoping to make at some point in the near future (who would know if that never happened, the blog police?).

At the time, I had every intention of coming home from our weekend away and making one of the recipes you'll see below. But, I'm not sure what was really going on upstairs (add that to the things to work on: be more realistic about expectations), as time went skittering away quite rapidly upon our return home last evening.

So, I submit to you, three salads (see, not just one!) that I have every intention of making before this season's corn is gone for good. (Which means, in the next week or so!)

Summer vegetable potato salad

Roasted corn Caesar salad

Charred corn and cherry tomato salad

The biggest question is: which one should I make first?

What's on your list to make before the summer produce runs out? Or have you already transitioned to fall food? Tell me where you're at with seasonal eating!

Jen and I (and now my mom and Lisa too!) are blog challenging throughout September. You can catch her blog over at Stuff Jen Says. If you want to write along with us, give me a shout and I'll send you the blog prompts.

Sept. 12: Long overdue cookie joy!

This summer we had our annual summer picnic at work, with the theme of a country fair. My husband's sister does an amazing job of planning the company gatherings down to the smallest detail; she is really quite gifted at events. I was in charge of cookies--blue ribbon state fair winning cookies, to be exact.

After a fair amount of research,  we arrived at the following cookies:

Snickerdoodles with white chocolate chips (Utah)

Molasses cookies (Ohio)

Chocolate chip cookies (Island County Fair)

Peanut butter cookies (Maryland)

Ultimate dark chocolate chip cookies (Wisconsin)

Healthy oatmeal cookies (Virginia)

I have to give big props to Pinterest once again (what else is new?). It was a very valuable search engine for finding official blue ribbon recipes, better than Google in some regards. And, of course, a handy way to save recipes for making later!

I am not a big molasses fan, but I heard more compliments on that cookie than any other. The snickerdoodles were good but had a tendency to dry out (crisp) rather than stay soft as I had hoped. My absolute favorite was the ultimate dark chocolate chip cookie, as it had craisins, dried apricots, two kinds of nuts AND chocolate. A really packed cookie, and very flavorful.

Husband's favorite was the healthy oatmeal cookie, which was similar to the dark chocolate, except not quite as packed with fruit, and only one nut. And healthier. :)

My big takeaway from the cookie making extravaganza (I made upwards of 300, just to cover my bases) was that I'd forgotten how easy cookies are to make! I remarked many times, "I need to make cookies more often!" And have I? Um, no. But still, it was a good reminder that when a sweet tooth hits, warming up the mixer and throwing in some ingredients is not a bad way to go!

What's your favorite cookie recipe? I'm always up for a new one!

Jen and I (and now my mom and Lisa too!) are blog challenging throughout September. You can catch her blog over at Stuff Jen Says. If you want to write along with us, give me a shout and I'll send you the blog prompts.

A-Z blogging challenge: K is for Kale

I know, I know, kale is all the rage, kinda like quinoa. But that doesn't mean it's not worthy of all the recent love and adulation. Kale is a powerhouse.

Much like any other produce, kale that comes from a garden patch tastes exponentially better than storebought kale. It's true; I hope you give it a try if you haven't already. There are some really great, pest-resistent kale varieties that are tender and long-lasting into the heat of the summer; my two favorites are Tuscan kale and Red Russian kale. If your grocery store is anything like most of the grocery stores where I live, it's curly green kale and curly red kale, period. And imagine how long ago it was picked... yep, it's the garden for me, whenever possible.

Right now the garden is not quite there, yet. If we had overwintered our kale (which would have been possible with the mild winter we enjoyed), maybe. But we didn't. So when I discovered a box of baby kale in the produce section recently, I did a happy dance. Making the assumption that tiny would equal flavorful turned out well in this case. I have been meaning to make a version of a salad with kale and shaved Brussels sprouts that's been making the rounds on Pinterest lately (Costco even has one, bagged, I believe), so when the letter "K" approached in the alphabet blogging challenge, it was my perfect excuse to bust out the salad supper.

Kale, Brussels sprouts and asparagus salad
Serves 1 as a meal, 2 as a side
2 cups baby kale leaves
6 Brussels sprouts, sliced very thinly (if you have a mandoline, bust it out)
6 stalks asparagus, steamed and cooled to room temperature
1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped
1/4 cup blue cheese, crumbled
3 Tbsp. simple vinaigrette
Salt and pepper to taste

Wash and pat dry the kale. Slice the Brussels sprouts, as thinly as possible; if you don't have a mandoline, the best method would be to halve the sprout lengthwise, then slice thinly--I sliced them whole with the mandoline and that worked very well. (Careful for the fingertips!)

Chop the asparagus into 1/2 inch pieces. Put in a medium size bowl, and add the hazelnuts and blue cheese; drizzle the vinaigrette over the mixture and toss well. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to plates and serve.

Side note about the Brussels sprouts: don't be frightened. I know many people who avoid the vegetable, having had atrocious dishes at the holidays where they've been over/wrongly cooked. Raw, they are just baby cabbages, so think of this as a kind of coleslaw! They really provided an excellent flavor counterpoint to the kale and worked very well with the blue cheese and hazelnuts (well, what doesn't work well with blue cheese and hazelnuts, really?).

If you are not lucky enough to find baby kale, which is very tender, regular kale will work fine, but you'll need to treat it a bit differently. Have you ever massaged raw kale? It's a fabulous trick to soften kale and makes excellent use of larger kale leaves, once you've taken out the center spine.

We also steam kale, put it in soups and smoothies, and kale chips are on the list to make soon--I hear great things about them. What's your favorite way to eat kale?

What's this A-Z business about? Check out my kick-off post. And stay tuned for the random joy and nonsense I concoct during the month of April!

A-Z blogging challenge: A is for Asian-inspired salad

Sometimes the menu mood calls for a crunchy salad, full of vegetables and lightly dressed. Some might call the following dish a coleslaw--I waffle between a chopped salad and, yes, coleslaw. Though, while many coleslaws get weighed down with heavy, sweet, mayo-laden dressings, this version keeps it light and tangy. I often mix the main salad contents up with whatever vegetables are around--asparagus will be a wonderful addition when it is available here locally in the next month or so! Also, colored peppers (red, yellow, orange) make a lovely and vibrant addition in the summer months!

Asian-inspired salad 
Serves 8-10 as a side dish
1 cup cucumber, quartered and sliced thinly
1 bunch radishes, halved and sliced thinly
1/2 head green cabbage (or a bag of coleslaw from the produce section), chopped fine
1 cup peapods, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1/2 cup carrots, shredded, or baby carrots sliced thinly
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped finely

Dressing
5 tablespoons canola oil
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon lime juice

Chop all the vegetables and mix together thoroughly in a large mixing bowl.

Mix the dressing ingredients in a small bowl, whisk vigorously to blend well.

Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss to coat. Serve immediately, or chill until ready to serve.

The bonus of this salad is that it doesn't immediately break down as many other salads do--especially greens-based salads. I was pleased to have some as leftovers the day following a stirfry, springroll and salad feast, and the vegetables still had a great deal of crunch. How often can you say that about a salad?

Enjoy!

What's this A-Z business about? Check out my kick-off post. And stay tuned for the random joy and nonsense I concoct during the month of April!

It's so easy being green

When I saw a recipe for green minestrone recently, my first thought was "Why didn't I think of that?" Because I really hadn't, ever. And if there's anything I appreciate, it's green! I get routinely teased for green shoes, coats, toenails... but I can handle it. What good is a favorite color if you can't take a little teasing?

So I tucked away the basic idea behind the various green soups I saw online, gathered every green vegetable in the house and went to town.

Green vegetable soup 
Makes 12 cups
1 Tbsp olive oil
3 stalks of leeks, halved lengthwise and sliced thinly
6 green onions, chopped finely
2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 Anaheim peppers, seeded and chopped semi-finely
3 cups kale leaves, destemmed and chopped finely
1.5 cups edamame, shelled
4 baby zucchini, halved lengthwise and sliced
1 bunch asparagus, cleaned and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
8 cups vegetable broth
Salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and add the leeks, onions and garlic. Saute until tender and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the kale and edamame and broth, and bring to a simmer for 10-12 minutes, add the zucchini and asparagus and cook for 5-7 minutes more. Taste the soup for desired vegetable tenderness, and add salt and pepper to taste.

Tip: this soup is a great one to make one evening and eat the following. The flavor is, as with most soups, really better the next day.

This is a really healthy soup! Maybe a little too healthy for some of us (me)... so I trotted out a bit of ricotta and whipped up a quick batch of ricotta gnocchi to go along with the healthy goodness. Lovely. Just the right bit of cheese to counteract the rolicking good health of the soup, and fabulous flavor, to boot.

The variations on this could be somewhat endless... is it green? Toss it in! And if one wanted to make it a true minestrone, little pasta shapes could help toward that end, as well as maybe some cannellini beans...

Enjoy!

Monday morning inspiration

The view for much of our roadtrip this past weekend.

I have been reflecting on my lack of dietary freshness of late. Some winters I do a better job with keeping up on the salads and such, other winters... not so much. This is one of those not so much winters. So, knowing I should be doing better, I have been looking for some inspiration beyond the box of greens languishing in the fridge, and of course, there are plenty of options.

Kale and squash salad or Brussels sprout salad or Winter radicchio slaw or Endive salad with blue cheese, red grapes and pecans. There is surely no excuse for my lack of salad intake... I'm determined to turn this trend around!

I was cleaning out my inbox over the weekend--it tends to creep up in number if I don't keep an eye out, know what I mean?--and saw a leftover devotional email from the very end of 2012, talking about a Psalm for the new year, Psalm 90. I saw this paraphrase below, and love how it aligns with so much of what I want to remember every day, as well as what I've chosen for my OLW 2013: Light. I love it when my procrastination results in an a-ha moment when that same email might have gotten a quick delete a month or two ago.

Spring doesn't seem so far away these days. The sun has come out here and there, enough to tease toward whole days of cloudless skies. And the temperatures have been almost balmy as well. Seeing color forecasts from Pantone never hurts, either. I actually saw the fall one first and thought, "Oh brother, surely we aren't fast-forwarding straight to fall?" and went looking for spring.

Which are your favorites? For spring, mine has to be Tender Shoots or Lemon Zest or Nectarine (I know, hard to choose!). For fall, I'm Acai and Koi, with a little Mykonos Blue... Regardless, I do love both palettes!

pantone spring

pantone fall fashion

Panorama of the lake of my childhood, Okanagan Lake.

Wishing you the kind of week that brings blue skies, fresh air and glassy lakes (even if they're all just figurative!).

Thursday 13: Recipes to share

y various RSS feeds have gone largely ignored of late, I've really been falling down on the job! Ha. So the past couple of weekends, just so I don't miss EVERYthing good out there on the interwebs, I've breezed through a few of my folders and highlighted posts to come back to and save or move along.

In my food feed, there were a number of lovelies worth a try, so of course I pinned them or starred them, and I thought I would share 13 of them with you.

1. I could eat a variation on this almost every day! Heuvos Californios. Yum.

2. Flan is fabulous, and suits my custard-loving ways so well.

3. A blogger posted corn recipes from other bloggers, and looking through them, these corn cakes cried out to me, "Make me!"

4. Around here we like Mexican, we love lentils, so this stew will have to be on the menu this fall!

5. Raspberry frangipane tart with honey raspberry icecream? You had me at frangipane!

6. I have been in a curry mood all summer. Here's a version from a cook at PBS. Again, on the menu for fall!

7. This pasta with squash blossoms might still need to be made this summer... those squash blossoms aren't slowing down yet in the garden!

8. The takeaway in this recipe for me is the creamed feta. Sounds absolutely heavenly. I could see putting it over any grilled vegetables, really...

9. And another use for the zucchini? OK, can do! (Especially since it has Julia's name all over it.)

10. And now for a little  decadence. Anything with "lava" in the title needs to be tried, I say.

11. Apple slaw sounds like a great option to try with our very own apples this fall.

12. And if there's a rainbow, I've got to find it, right? This dessert is apparently a bunch of sit-around-and-wait time, but boy I do think it would be worth taking a day off work just to make it, don't you think?

13. Last but definitely not least, this salad was posted quite some time ago, and I missed pomegranate season to try it... but seasons come around again, so I have tucked this away.

So, which one should I make first? It's hard to pick, but it's sure to be something that has fresh produce right now, like the squash blossoms or zucchini tian... What would YOU make?

For more Thursday 13s, go here.

Cream scones fit for a Queen, or at the very least, a Prince!

o proper English tea would be complete without scones, would it? I can't imagine why you'd want to even try! The lightness of this dough, combined with jam, cream, butter... whatever your pleasure... they really are delicious little gems. Thankfully, they also got the real-deal-thumbs-up from our resident Brit at work (whew!).

I'm putting them into my "make again & always" file for future scone needs. Why keep looking around when the jackpot has been hit?

Cream scones (with currents, if you choose. I did not.)
from Baking Illustrated
2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
3 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
5 Tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1/2 cup currants (if that's your inclination...)
1 cup heavy cream (I did mostly heavy cream, but some whole milk. I would imagine I could cut it even further downward in the fat department for future bakings

Guest post over at Sprout

y friend Chel at GingerBlue Studios asked me if I'd do a guest post for a gardening blog she writes with a couple of other people. I said, "YES!" of course.

Check it out.

Few things are more British than tea...

othing like an international extravaganza--Olympics, anyone?--to bring out the festive. We closed off the medal chase at work yesterday with a English-inspired tea-for-lunch to celebrate, complete with fabulous decor and flowers (my sister-in-law knows how to throw a party, for sure!), and even cut-outs of the royal family to facilitate the mood.

The menu for our tea (it was really hard for me to narrow the choices down, so many fun things to choose from!):

Tea sandwiches
Egg salad with chives
Blue cheese with watercress
Cucumber
Coronation chicken salad
Salmon mousse

Quiches
Roasted red pepper with cheddar
Artichoke with sundried tomato

Union Jack cheesecake berry puff (above)

Union Jack petit fours (top photo) 

Violet shortbreads (below)

Banbury tarts

Trifle

Cream scones

Lemon curd

Clotted cream

Strawberry jam

Iced tea with lavender, hibiscus and ginger-passionfruit simple syrups to flavor

Those Brits, not too shy with the butter... or the cream! 

The recipes worth sharing are bold, above. If I adapted them, I'll post what I did and how it evolved... but the recipes I found online are linked to those sites. I will work on posting the others in the next week or so.

It's always a little sad when the Olypmics are finished, even if this time around I didn't watch nearly the amount I usually do... but, soon enough we'll be in Russia for 2014 and Rio for 2016... crazy how quickly that will be upon us!

Off to have a little scone with my coffee (uh-oh, maybe I should have said tea...).

Salads of the season

t's hard to believe it's already more than a couple of weeks since girlfriend Kate came to town and we staycationed for a couple of days. It was lovely, and our time together so looked forward to, and then in a blip (but a very relaxing blip) it was over...

One of our meal outings was to a dinner event that Kate had participated in last year, called Outstanding in the Field. The setting was lovely, the food fresh and local and tasty, and the group of friends that Kate invited for the meal (this was a wee bit belated birthday celebration) entirely lovely.

One of the dishes from the evening that got the most ooohs and ahhs was an apricot fattoush, and I instantly knew that given the state of our apricot tree, I would be making this at home, many times.

For some strange reason, I knew that the herb was mint, but as I went to make it for myself at home, later, all I heard in my head was "dill." And in true Sher fashion, I of course didn't look back at the picture from the dinner, so my ratio of greens to bread is very different as well. But, I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed my take on the salad immensely.

Apricot, arugula and chevre salad
Serves one as a meal or two as an accompaniment
3 cups arugula mixture with some additional greens (in my case, a few basil leaves as well)
1 cup homemade baguette croutons
1 lemon cucumber, peeled, quartered and sliced
6 apricots, pitted and quartered
2 Tbsp dill, very roughly chopped off the stem
1/3 cup thinly sliced Walla Walla Sweet Onions
2 Tbsp light dressing of olive oil, garlic and citrus balsamic
1/2 cup chevre, crumbled (the original salad had feta listed, but it is such a fresh, soft feta, I thought I could get away with chevre, and it was very yummy of course)
Salt and pepper to taste

Toss the greens with the dressing in a medium bowl and makes sure the leaves are well coated. Add the apricots, croutons, cucumber and dill and mix again; add the chevre and toss gently. Turn out onto a serving plate or platter (this would double nicely for a dinner party), and add a bit more chevre to the top, as seems appropriate (when is additional chevre NOT appropriate?).

Enjoy!

Of course, as soon as I was done photographing the salad for the sake of the experiment, out came the figs and I halved up a number of those for on top as well! They went extremely well with all the other ingredients, and added to my overall enjoyment of the salad, definitely.

The following day I felt the need to mix it up a bit further. Same greens, same croutons, but I dressed it in the arugula pesto I've been enjoying, and added blue cheese instead of chevre. Also, I replaced the apricots with nectarines, and kept the figs (of course!).

Quite a heavenly lunch.

Tis the season for salad appreciation, and I am embracing it fully! Hope you enjoy the flavors of the season, too!

A few more photos from the evening, before it fades from memory...

To the left side is the airstream that the crew travels in (and Megan wanted to take home) and to the 

right is the outdoor kitchen.

Isn't that purple fabulous?

I made a friend at the farm.

Kate and her lovelies.