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.

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.

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

1. 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.
2. In the meantime, beat together the egg, milk, more honey, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Dredge challah slices in the mixture for about a minute.
3. 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.
4. 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.

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.

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.