ingestibles

thankful

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:58:25 -0500

Some very belated, and very disorganized, and unforgiveably unreciped, tidbits from the past weeks:

Lucky boyfriend got three birthday cakes this year: favorite flourless chocolate, pumpkin cake, and a (very messy but delicious) triple-layer mint chocolate chip ice cream cake with mint chocolate ganache and whipped topping (one layer was another flourless chocolate, so this might’ve had an unfair edge on being the best of the three.)

I flew home for Thanksgiving to be with my family and spent three days straight cooking: multiple loaves of Mark Bittman’s No-Knead Bread (I feel like an idiot for ever having even experimented with bread recipes other than this one). Savory cornbread to turn into a marvelous stuffing and sweet cornbread (for which I made homemade buttermilk for the first time) to bring to a family friend’s Thanksgiving potluck. Melissa Clark’s Mashed Potato Casserole which I worried would verge on Deen-esque and did, gloriously so. Roasted sweet potatoes tossed with olive oil, salt and chili powder. Very garlicky hummus. Brussels sprouts steamed with caramelized shallots. Vegan wild rice pilaf with sauteed onions, apples and raisins and toasted chopped almonds. Turkey. My mom made cranberry sauce, as she does every year, with a recipe I just found out this year is her grandmother’s. She does the pies, too, before the sun rises, and made an extra that my dad and I ate for breakfast and lunch. I made apple yogurt cake, trying to recreate one that I’d invented before but not written down (successfully!). And flourless chocolate cake, again. And vegan pumpkin chocolate cake. And pumpkin butter with fresh-squeezed apple juice and lots of ginger that turned out even better than Trader Joe’s. I couldn’t stop. It was the perfect vacation.

bulgogi & rice noodles with broccoli, spinach and bok choy

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 22:39:46 -0500

Dinner last Wednesday: three kinds of kimchi from Woorijip, Trader Joe’s bulgogi marinated boneless beef short ribs (panfry for five minutes on each side, these are effortless and REALLY REALLY GOOD), and rice noodles with sesame sauce, broccoli, spinach and bok choy that I’d made the day before.

Rice noodles with broccoli, spinach and bok choy:

1 large package rice noodles
1 head of broccoli
1 bag of spinach
1 bunch of baby bok choy
1/4 cup tahini
1/3 cup tamari
1 packet spicy Chinese restaurant mustard

Steam the broccoli, bok choy and spinach until spinach is wilted and broccoli is tender but still crunchy.
Cook the rice noodles according to the package instructions.
Saute the vegetables in about half of the tahini and tamari, and the mustard.
Drain the noodles and add the remaining tahini and tamari.
Mix together the vegetables and the noodles, add more tahini and tamari as needed to taste.

A note: tamari and soy sauce are not synonyms. There are different kinds of soy sauce - like tamari and shoyu - tamari only includes soy, no wheat, resulting in a more intense, protein-laden umami flavor that stands up well through cooking.

eggplant parmesan

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 08:49:00 -0500

Dinner last night was cheesy, saucy, salty eggplant parm, which I’ve attempted to make several times before (and always failed in one way or another). Last night’s was excellent, and reminded me how much I like eggplant (some fantastic baigan bharta at Tiffin Wallah Friday night helped too). It’s easy and done in under an hour and doesn’t even require a side of linguine or garlic bread (although I’m sure there wouldn’t be complaints).

Eggplant parmesan:

One large eggplant (you’ll only use half, if that)
About 3/4 cup shredded parmesan
About 3 oz fresh mozzarella
1 cup breadcrumbs
3 eggs
6 tbsp olive oil
1 jar sauce, or homemade (this was Trader Joe’s marinara)
lots of salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and garlic powder

Begin by slicing the eggplant into pieces about 1/2 inch thick. Salt them on both sides and let them sit in a colander for 15-30 minutes to let out some of the moisture. Rinse them and pat them dry.
Beat the eggs in a bowl. In another bowl, mix together breadcrumbs and seasoning. Dip each eggplant slice in the breadcrumbs, then the eggs, then the breadcrumbs again. Fry in about 2 tbsp of olive oil, 2-3 minutes on each side or until browned. Add more olive oil to the pan after each batch.
Coat the bottom of a 9x9 square baking dish with sauce. Add a layer of fried eggplant. Top with some shredded parmesan and more sauce. Then add another layer of fried eggplant, more parmesan, more sauce, and on top, the mozzarella in pieces.
Bake, covered, for about 20-25 minutes. Uncover and bake for an additional 10 minutes or until the mozzarella is browned and the sauce is bubbly.

stove-top roasted chestnuts

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:05:13 -0500

Anyone else breaking out the Christmas albums yet? No? Just me and the Wal-Mart advertising committee? Oh, okay. With sincere apologies for those of you who aren’t as thrilled as I am to see wrapping paper on the shelves and Reeses’ trees replacing the pumpkins at the Duane Reade, I AM EXCITED ABOUT THIS SEASON. So, on Sunday, I bought a few handfuls of chestnuts and determined to roast them. On an open pilot stove.

Roasted chestnuts:

As many chestnuts as you plan to eat
A tablespoon of olive oil
1/4 cup water

On one side of each chestnut, cut an X with a sharp knife to let the steam escape.
Add the oil and chestnuts to a bowl and toss to coat.
Heat a pan on low and add the chestnuts. Cover and stir frequently for 10-15 minutes.
Add water, re-cover and leave over heat for another 5 minutes or until water is absorbed.
Wait just until they won’t burn your fingers, peel, and eat!

comfort food

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:30:52 -0400

Black beans, spicy Cuban rice & beans, and goat stew from Sophie’s. Nice follow-up to a morning in the cold moving furniture and boxes of cookbooks from the old office to the new one.

birthday blizzard & pumpkin whoopie pies

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:23:06 -0400

I have resentful memories of late October weather as a kid, investing hours conceiving a perfect Halloween costume only to have it ruined by the parental enforcement of an unmatching puffy winter coat. My birthday is the 29th, and this year I spent hours trawling thrift shops on the evening of the 28th to find a perfect white trenchcoat to match my Holly Golightly costume in anticipation of the unseasonal snowstorm that hit New York last weekend. Waking up on Saturday morning at 6 a.m. to construct a beehive and shellac it with enough hairspray to resist the elements, I roused the rest of the household by practically jumping on the bed until the remaining inhabitants were enlisted on an 8 am trip to Alice’s Teacup for breakfast tea. When I say “the rest of the household”, I mean that we brought stuffed animal friends and ordered scones for them. I take my birthday seriously.

By the time we’d returned from breakfast, heavy, thick flakes had started to fall, coating the view outside my window in a slushy sheen of white. So I did the only logical thing: cued up some Christmas music on Spotify and got to baking.

I’d initially planned to bake pumpkin cookies, by request for a Halloween party later than night, but in an effort to make something a little more festive looking than misshapen orange blobs, I turned them into miniature pumpkin whoopie pies, with pumpkin buttercream filling and the edges rolled in gold sugar sprinkles.

I began with this recipe for the cookies, doubling all the spices (as I always do in pumpkin desserts), adding nutmeg and ground clove, and omitting the vanilla and ginger since I was out and not planning to head to Trader Joe’s mid-blizzard. Instead of cream cheese filling, I beat together butter with confectioners’ sugar and a touch of Trader Joe’s pumpkin butter to make buttercream frosting. Each whoopie pie got a daub of pumpkin butter, then a healthy spoonful of frosting before another cookie was sandwiched on top and the edges were rolled in sprinkles. Tiny, adorable, festive and surprisingly portable.

apple cider

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:26:00 -0400

For the past few weeks, we’ve developed a Sunday tradition of pumpkin beer imbibed in bed sometime between 10 am and 3 pm. This past Sunday broke our streak, as I couldn’t find any pumpkin beer at the Fairway but was intrigued by “The Saint” by Crispin, a hard apple cider. “Artisanal” and “natural” with Belgian Trappist yeasts (ooooooh) and organic maple syrup (aaahhhh), I was prepared to be impressed.

After his first sip, my boyfriend made a face that let me know I’d be finishing his glass. I swished mine around in my mouth for a few seconds before pinpointing exactly what it reminded me of: watered-down glasses of daycare apple juice, thin and sweet and cloudy yellow. Seeing as I’m still head over heels about everything that reminds me of back-to-school season, this cider was like a comforting reminder that it is October, on an eighty-five degree day in New York when I wished I was wearing wool tights instead of cutoff overalls. Fans of darker ciders with a stronger spice flavor and more carbonation should probably stick to Woodchuck, or whatever you drink, but I had no qualms happily finishing all 22 ounces of this. If only it had been in a juice box with a bendy straw.

pumpkin cake with graham cracker streusel and butterscotch sauce

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 08:36:06 -0400

Pumpkin blondies notwithstanding, this was the first pumpkin cake of the season, made on a whim after a healthy vegetarian tofu dinner and for no occasion in particular, although we did end up taking the remaining third of it (after putting away 2/3 ourselves in 24 hours. yep. that’s right.) to my boyfriend’s parents’ house for pre-Yom Kippur dinner last night. I have two go-to pumpkin cake recipes as holdovers from last fall: this one and the one inscribed on the back of the Trader’s Joe’s Pumpkin Bread and Muffin Mix box, doctored with extra spices and TJ’s pumpkin butter. This pumpkin cake started with the Trader Joe’s box, but instead of two eggs, oil and water, I added a whole can of pumpkin, about a cup of milk, and tons of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. Then I made streusel topping, enough for a very generous layer on top of the batter, with crumbled graham crackers, butter, brown sugar and more cinnamon.

I still had some leftover butterscotch chips from the blondies, and had been thinking about mixing them into the batter when my boyfriend, whose cooking advice generally comes from what-seems-like-it-might-work rather than experience, suggested making butterscotch sauce to go with the cake. “Put some butter in it, too!” he directed, “and scotch!” So I’m pouring a half-shot of Johnnie Walker Black Label into the mixture of melted butterscotch chips and milk I’m stirring in a saucepan on the stove when it occurs to me to ask. “Hey, is there actually scotch in butterscotch?”

“No idea,” he says. (turns out butterscotch is traditionally the alchemy of butter and brown sugar. According to Wikipedia, “Food historians have several theories regarding the name and origin of this confectionery, but none are conclusive. One explanation is the meaning “to cut or score” for the word “scotch”, as the confection must be cut into pieces, or “scotched”, before hardening^.It is also possible that the “scotch” part of its name was derived from the word “scorch”.)

Here’s my super professional chef pro tip: it is definitely a really good idea to assume flavors go together if you think an ingredient is part of the name for another ingredient. Definitely always do this. Or maybe just with anything and scotch, because this butterscotch sauce was out of this world and I literally was drinking it by the spoonful.

stuffed tofu squares & oven fries

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:44:03 -0400

Don’t get me wrong, I adore tofu. Really, I do. I like it in stir-frys. I like it crispy and pan-fried in olive oil. I like it instead of ricotta in my lasagna recipe. And I like it - um, wait. Those are all of the things I ever do with tofu. For someone who was vegan for over a year, my lack of tofumagination is kind of depressing. So today, I did something I sort of rarely do for a regular weeknight dinner - I actually sought out a recipe! I landed on Katie and Leeanne Chin’s Braised Stuffed Tofu, which looked perfect except for the fact that I A) didn’t have Sichuan cabbage, mushrooms, cornstarch, bok choy, or oyster sauce and B) was totally skeptical of the proposition that I could panfry a delicate stuffing-filled tofu square on both sides without it sticking to the pan, imploding into a goopy mess, or setting off my fire alarm (or all of the above). So I improvised.

Stuffed tofu squares:

1 block firm tofu
2 frozen veggie burgers of your choice (or half a baked potato and some curry powder, or whatever you think will be yummy)
1/4 cup frozen peas
1/4 cup frozen spinach
about 4 tbsp olive oil
about 4 tbsp soy sauce, tamari or namashoyu

Cut the tofu into twelve equal-sized squares and dry them as best you can with a cloth (don’t use paper towels, you’ll go through a whole roll).
Carefully scoop out a small spoonful of tofu from the middle of each square - don’t scoop all the way through to the other side, and leave enough of a border that the squares remain sturdy. Douse the empty squares with soy sauce.
Cook the veggie burgers, frozen vegetables and scooped-out tofu innards in a saucepan until cooked through. Fill each tofu square with a spoonful of the mixture.
Heat the olive oil in a large wok or skillet. Place the squares in the wok and cook until at least the bottoms are panfried. If you’re brave, try flipping them. If you’re me, cover with a lid to steam the tops.

Oven fries:

1 large russet potato
about 4 tbsp olive oil
salt, pepper, garlic powder and cayenne
KETCHUP

Wash the potato and slice it up into equal-sized slivers. Toss them in a bowl with salt, pepper, garlic powder and cayenne (as much as you’re into). Place fries in a single layer on a foil-lined baking sheet or dish and bake at 400 degrees for about an hour, depending on how crispy you like them.
Serve with SO MUCH KETCHUP. MORE. MORE THAN THAT.

lazy sunday stovetop slow-cooked barbecue chicken

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 21:18:42 -0400

Even though the weather outside is still persistently not autumnal enough, I’m forging ahead anyway with my knitted wool tights and hot ginger tea and legwarmers and lace-up boots and new Neon Indian album and oversized sweaters and hearty, heavy one-pot meals that are best eaten curled up on the sofa in aforementioned legwarmers.

Back-to-school season changes Sundays, giving them a bittersweetness that everyone remembers from being small and clinging desperately to each of those last weekend hours that belong solely, wholly to you. We have Sunday rituals that consist of the fleamarket and grocery shopping, brunch and a long walk and a lot of sitting around reading and talking about how sometime, maybe, later, some laundry ought to get done. I felt like cooking something that would take a long time but not much effort, and since our new oven doesn’t get installed until tomorrow, it had to be be a stovetop project. I wanted a meat dish that would end up braised and fork-tender, falling apart at each bite. This chicken is fantastic, and I’m sure it’ll be even better for lunch tomorrow. The best kind of time invested on a Sunday - the kind that makes the following Monday substantially better in return.

Stovetop slow-cooked barbecue chicken:

2 pounds (give or take) boneless, skinless chicken breasts
12 oz beer (Trader Joe’s Simpler Times, here)
18 oz barbecue sauce, homemade or your favorite (This was Trader Joe’s Kansas City Style, which is sweet & smoky and has a super-rich, smooth texture that the dish relies on.)
1 red onion
black pepper, garlic powder and cayenne to taste

Sear the chicken breasts in an empty nonstick stock pot or Dutch oven.
Add the barbecue sauce and beer.
Slice the onion thinly and add it raw to the pot, along with the spices.
Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for at least two to four hours. Stir often enough to keep the pot’s contents from starting to stick to the bottom, using a spatula or fork to help the shredding process along.
Serve on sandwiches, or with baked potatoes, or with corn on the cob. We had ours with big salads and homemade chips.

pumpkin spice french toast

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 10:26:52 -0400

I don’t understand the conception that French toast is difficult to make. As someone who struggles to achieve perfect pancakes and doesn’t own a wafflemaker, French toast is my standard special-occasion breakfast to impress. Even - or perhaps especially - on occasions when a slightly hungover me is the only one that needs impressing.

Also, HAPPY OCTOBER! Did you know that it’s my favorite month?! And it’s my birthday month, so this was basically a pre-pre-birthday breakfast. I had it with a tall glass of milk rather than with the namesake beverage, but I’m sure if your threshold for pumpkin is as high as mine it’d be delish that way too.

Pumpkin spice French toast:

3 slices challah, a day or two old
1 large egg
1 apple
1/2 cup milk
honey, cinnamon, and nutmeg
1 tbsp + 1 tsp butter
optional toppings: ice cream, whipped cream, more honey, and/or maple syrup

Dice the apple finely and add it to a saucepan with a teaspoon of butter, a squirt of honey, and cinnamon & nutmeg to taste. Cover pan with a lid and cook, stirring every so often, for 5-10 minutes, until apples are softened to your liking.
In the meantime, beat together the egg, milk, more honey, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Dredge challah slices in the mixture for about a minute.
Heat 1 tbsp butter in a frying pan. Place french toast slices in the pan and cook until browned on the outside, about 2-3 minutes per side. Some people put their French toast in the oven for a few minutes after this part. I don’t because A) My oven is broken, B) I’m not ultra-paranoid about raw eggs because I buy good-quality organic ones and have a very strong stomach and C) I love love love when French toast is all moist and custardy on the inside. It’s your call.
Plate French toast, add cooked apples, and top with whipped cream or ice cream - I used Trader Joe’s pumpkin ice cream, which we (okay, pretty much just I) have gone through a quart of this week.

shana tova

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 22:11:18 -0400

So, whatever, I am like an eighth Jewish and sometimes my Jewisher friends like to tease me about it. Then I have to prove myself by doing things like eating chopped liver by the pound. I am only bummed that because my oven is broken, I had to buy Zabar’s challah and couldn’t make honey cake from scratch, but I’ll atone for it on Yom Kippur.

Apples & honey, for a sweet new year.

An ENTIRE FISH, because I’m hardcore. This apparently has to do with Rosh Hashanah literally translating to the ‘head of the year’, and also something about being ‘the head and not the tail’ - leaders rather than followers (the shiksa blog claims this appears in Deuteronomy. I grew up going to Unitarian church where we were busy making bird feeders out of pinecones and not learning this stuff, but I can tell you that an entire tilapia can be purchased at Pioneer for three dollars, that it’s a very impressive presentation, and that with a little olive oil, salt and lemon, it tastes pretty darn good.)

Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads.

KASHA VARNISHKES! I love kasha varnishkes. Kasha varnishkes from the 2nd Avenue Deli got me hooked, but this was the first time I’d tried making them from scratch. They are fairly impossible to screw up, containing four main ingredients - buckwheat groats, onions, farfalle (which my boyfriend pronounces “farfle”) and olive oil or schmaltz. I knew they’d be better with schmaltz, but I couldn’t figure out where to buy it - anywhere legit enough to sell me some was closed today - so I did them with olive oil and The New York Times recipe. My Polish great-great-grandmother Loewenstein would’ve been proud.

Challah from Zabar’s. The round kind, braided into a circle, represents the cycle of the year. The way this particular loaf tasted reminded me how excited I am for Christmas panettone. We had it with Trader Joe’s honeybear honey and kosher cabernet.

Apples & pomegranate - new fruit.

date night

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:48:42 -0400

Saturday night at Sushi of Gari, literally right downstairs from our apartment.

Near plate: sashimi platter. Highlight was the garlic-miso seared swordfish (I think) on the far left. The quality of the fish was pretty unmatched, and I liked that the waitress walked me through everything on my plate (although, clearly, it didn’t stick with me once I was busy eating it all.)

Far plate: Gari platter. Highlight was some amazing pickled pine nut tuna business, and the spicy tuna roll, but all of it was amazing. The rice-to-fish ratio was perfect, and each of the ingredients in every unique piece felt like they added something, rather than just being overstylized.

Not pictured: Maguro avocado appetizer (blue fin tuna and wasabi sauce on half an avocado); lots of sake.

Dessert: Grom gelato. The girl at the counter was a total sweetheart and cautioned me against my inclination to get their flavor of the month (cinnamon with white chocolate). She was right - it tasted like a Yankee candle. She was also generous with the samples. I tried the crema de grom (organic egg cream with corn biscuits and Columbian “Teyuna” chocolate chips) and nearly committed to a whole scoop of its fantastic flavor and appealing graininess, but ultimately went with my classic pairing of nocciola and tiramisu. Some people are purists and had the vanilla bean and chocolate (see above). I hate to admit it, but the chocolate - more bitter than sweet - was the best of the bunch.

shipyard smashed pumpkin

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 09:10:00 -0400

In further pursuit of my goal to try a large percentage of the pumpkin beers on the market this season, yesterday we split a Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin (Pugsley’s Signature Series.) In contrast to the sweet, almost syrupy pumpkin pie-ishness of Southern Tier’s Pumking, this one hovered in the savory pumpkin category - sort of like eating a spoonful of plain, organic pumpkin out of the can when you’re baking with it. The earthy autumn heartiness was still very present, but this was a beer I could imagine drinking with beef stew or short ribs or sharp cheese, not just along with or instead of dessert.

And, like all my favorite beers, the alcohol content is over 9%. What? A girl’s got to stay warm in October somehow!

housewarming: brownies & pumpkin blondies

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 14:21:53 -0400

I first made this cake on New Year’s Eve of this year, so I think of it sort of as my good luck charm of two thousand eleven, symbolic of how far I’ve come in my relationship with food this year. It is to 2011 what pumpkin cake was to my 2010 (see top of page 2 in the link): representative of what kind of cook I am, and what I want to feed people when I cook for them. Despite my haphazard history with baking, it’s somehow impossible for me to screw up, and people like it, they really do. It’s the Sally Field of my recipe repertoire. Also, when you cut it into squares, it makes the best possible brownies you can imagine. The quality, obviously, depends on the quality of the chocolate you use. I made them for our housewarming party on Friday, along with chocolate-chip-Kit-Kat cookies and pumpkin blondies with butterscotch chips and white chocolate chips, which were not particularly good-looking but tasted fantastic. Homemade garlic hummus, peppers in red wine, a cheese plate with Zabar’s rye and 7-grain bread, dry aged monterey, goat brie, camembert and New York cheddar, vodka-orange sparkling punch, and Magnolia Bakery cupcakes rounded out the menu. Apartment officially warmed, just in time for the chilly weather.

non-copyright-infringing froyo with assorted toppings

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:57:22 -0400

I know I’m super late on this, but I’ve discovered a new favorite food blog: whatsgoodattraderjoes.com. I’m telling myself that it’s just entered my awareness because never before have I lived seven blocks from a Trader Joe’s, but it’s suddenly become a significant influence in my purchasing decisions. For example, nonfat plain frozen yogurt was not exactly at the top of my must-try list, but I was intrigued. And for good reason. It tastes like yogurt. Which is frozen. Which is PERFECT for UNLIMITED TOPPINGS.

It’s actually pretty fantastic on its own (although not as amazing as the TJ’s pomegranate blueberry sherbet) but also not too shabby topped with crumbled graham crackers and chopped frozen Snickers.

strip steak with peppers & onions in red wine sauce

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 14:57:38 -0400

Our new kitchen on the upper west side is not perfect. It has perks: the dishwasher, the fantastic stainless steel appliances and black marble counters. It also has cons, the most significant of which is the fact that pretty much whenever you pan-fry anything with the remotest amount of gusto, the smoke alarm in the living room adjacent goes off. And off. And off. No amount of standing on chairs, fanning with cardboard, pressing the button, or removing the batteries can shut this thing up. I have a headache just thinking about it (or maybe that’s the meat sweats). So last night, when we made a boneless prime dry-aged ribeye for dinner, our time was pretty equally split between tending to the steak and tending to the screeching smoke detector. It was still good, and worth the effort, but when we went to cook the other of the two pieces of meat I’d bought today for lunch, I took the time to rig a complex fan system to prevent the same chaos from happening again.

It worked! And in the time saved in dealing with the smoke alarm, I made an absolutely fantastic side dish of red peppers, onions and carrots in red wine sauce. Whenever I make a vegetable side with steak, I have a terrible habit of ignoring it altogether. Other than sauteed portobellos (which my boyfriend doesn’t like), this was the first non-potato side to truly enhance my steak experience. We ate it with fresh-baked seven-grain bread and pinot noir. Hello, adult lunch.

Peppers & onions in red wine sauce:

1 raw red bell pepper, sliced
1 jar roasted red bell peppers, sliced
1 medium yellow sweet onion, sliced
1/2 cup baby carrots
2 cups red wine (this was 2007 Cherry Hill Winery Pinot Noir Papillon from Lot18, which I bought solely because of the puppy on the label)
3/4 cup marinara sauce (this was Trader Joe’s)
2 tbsp herbs de provence
2 tbsp olive oil
plenty of sea salt to taste

Saute sliced vegetables in the bottom of a stockpot with olive oil and herbs.
When onions are golden and translucent, add red wine, marinara and sauce.
Cook uncovered at least 10 minutes, then covered an additional 5-10 minutes.

whole foods wedding cake

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:36:43 -0400

A coworker’s last day in the office before leaving for her wedding, so I picked out this black-and-white cake: a layer chocolate cake and a layer yellow, with chocolate ganache in between and buttercream over the outside and pink icing flowers on top. Way to step it up, Whole Foods. It was beautiful and yummy. And, since she’s having peach crisp at her wedding this weekend, suitably traditional.

pumpkin season

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:43:20 -0400

It is September. That means a lot of things. Fall (eff you stop calling it autumn) is my favorite season: leaves falling and brown wool sweaters and thick argyle socks and fresh apple cider and composition books and short nails painted burgundy and brick red and grey tights and cat faces carved into jack-o-lanterns and gold necklaces and birthdays of everyone I love. I am a total dork about fall, unapologetically. I have already planned out the title of my Fall 2011 Facebook album (“bouquets of sharpened pencils”). It’s embarrassing. But the enthusiasm is a little bit infectious, especially when it comes to pumpkin season. Infinite varieties of pumpkin cake with pumpkin frosting, pumpkin butter, pumpkin cookies, homemade pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin jam, pumpkin cheesecake, and inevitably, ovenloads of pumpkin pie. There are other fantastic Fall foods to get excited for: soups, stews, butternut squash with a little cinnamon, crunchy apples baked into tarte tatins, sweet potatoes roasted in their jackets. But pumpkin is pretty much where it’s at. I’m actually impressed I’ve held out this long before breaking the seal on pumpkin season (last year I made a pumpkin pie mid-August) and today was the big day, kicking off with Southern Tier Brewing Company’s Pumking pumpkin ale.

It comes out bright orange, and tastes unmistakably like pumpkin pie: cinnamon, nutmeg, creamy vanilla, and brown sugar all come through. It’s thin and drinkable, belying its nearly 9% alcohol content, with barely a head and a mouthfeel that’s more frothy than carbonated. I’d definitely buy it again, with vanilla ice cream next time to make beer floats.

labor day breakfast

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:40:00 -0400

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to his grandma’s house down the shore where he grew up, which turns out to be not terribly far from the places down the shore where I spent a lot of time during summers as a kid (the Maps app on my iPad had me playing a well-illustrated version of the “What exit?” game in the backseat). We ate Vic’s pizza with extra garlic, sausage and peppers. We ate linguine with anchovies and chicken marsala and ziti marinara and good bread. So this morning, I woke up full of carbs and salt and grease but craving something for dessert.

I’m not a big yogurt fan - on the whole, it strikes me as too goopy and/or watery and/or tart and/or boring - but I’ve recently come serendipitously across a yogurt I adore. Zabar’s has a special on these adorable mini-cups of a full-fat, fruity French yogurt that is ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS (and, as Google would have it, I’m not the only one who thinks so). The size of the cups implies a responsible portion control, but this morning I’ve had three of them. Strawberry is the best, with apricot trailing close behind. I’ve also discovered a new favorite in the combination of Zabar’s rye bread spread with Crunch Time peanut butter and a little honey. Yum.