Fall Favorites, recipes and a new scarf.

Fall begins early in the Pacific Northwest, and may actually last two or more months.  Where I grew up in the Northeast, fall is a quick week-and-a-half-long event right between the hot, humid of summer and the (i n c r e d i b l y) cold and dry winter.  Basically only the third week in October is spared.

But here in Oregon, Fall is a long, slow affair with some sunny days, trending towards mainly rainy ones.  Leaves may turn and slip off the trees slowly.  Sweater weather lasts a long, long time.  Soup is a perfect meal.

I found this book at work, recently. Quick Food (which is shockingly published by Readers' Digest) contains over 300 recipes that you can make in half an hour. Most recipes produce about 4 servings, perfect for two people (with leftovers) or a modern-sized family of 1-2 children.  Since I work in the library, I've come across lots of different recipe books so far, but with so many fast recipes to choose from, this book is a winner.  I've already made two soups from it, it's great!

The first soup I made was the potato leek soup.  So good, and only a few (very affordable) ingredients.  My husband and I had seconds, its fabulous and really does only take 30 minutes.

Tonight I'm making the Thai Sweet Potato soup.  Currently, its still on the stove.

Update:  Sweet Potato soup was good.  Good enough to make me eat the leftovers, which I hate to do.  I might use this recipe and substitute pumpkin chunks for the sweet potato for a good fall Thai soup.  Its much easier than the easy pumpkin soup I've been making for years now, which is already extremely easy.  But cooking with sweet potatoes is easy in its own way, much less cleaning and cutting than when using pumpkin.  I suspect this will still work though!

The book has everything from starters, meat, poultry, vegetable dishes, soups and desserts.  Many of the soups can easily be made vegetarian or vegan simply by swapping chicken broth for vegetable broth.  Its perfect for nearly no-mess, neat-little-package kind of cooking.  Beginning to end (and probably cleaned up) in an hour.

Since soups don't photograph very well, here's something prettier that I've made lately:

Palmiers are easy to make, made with frozen puff pastry and sugar, they are nearly foolproof.  Good instructions can be found here:  Palmiers.

Hot off the needles:  Shizuku Scarf.  Easy, nearly meditative knitting produces a triangular-shaped scarf with fun dangly fringe.  Balloon loves it, naturally.

 Perfect for fall and made with my favorite yarn:  Noro Kureyon.  The pattern is free, make it yourself!  Suitable for advanced beginners.

All things Vegetarian...

After a few months of meat-eating, I am trying to go vegetarian again.  I've been cooking up some tasty foods to make the switch easier.  Here are the dishes I've been making this week:

Hummus is an easy favorite.  I try always to make it with chick peas I cooked myself, but this process takes a long time.  Chick peas must be soaked for about 4 hours, then simmered for 2.  I made the hummus over two days using a pretty basic recipe:  Lemon juice and peel, tahini, chick peas, garlic, salt and pepper + some olive oil during blending.  The hummus on the left has added sun-dried tomatoes, and the hummus on the right has a roasted red pepper added to the mix before blending.

:( the kitty-cat is upside down in this shot.

Cheesy tomato bisque is another favorite that practically doesn't need a recipe.  Two cans of whole tomatoes, 1 cup of chopped onions, garlic powder, sugar, salt, pepper, and (quite a bit of) garlic powder.  To this I added cream cheese and small cubes of cheddar.  I used my immersion blender to make it smooth.  Rave reviews from Zach who enjoyed dipping pretzels in it.  Ms. T always makes breadsticks with this soup, but I didn't have time last night.  I'm going to try next time though!  I might also try adding some plain yogurt next time instead of all the cheese, as my stomach is a bit upset from all the unbridled dairy I've been consuming.

Finally, for dessert last night I had some of these:

What are they?  They happen to be the bloodiest blood oranges I've ever seen. I have to go back to the store today and get another bag, because they are fantastic.  They are dark red, almost brown, and they stain your fingers like maybe beets or blackberries.  They are a bit bitter, and they really remind me of this soda:

San Pelligrino Chinotto is a apertif (that means it's bitter!) soda that you can purchase in a lot of Italian grocery stores.  Most stores, if they carry San Pellegrino soda its usually only the orange and lemon flavors.  Its kind of good, but I don't know if I'd recommend other people try it unless they're pretty brave.

That's all for now.  I worked all last weekend, so the cookie of the week got put off.  Maybe i'll whip something up tonight.

Have a Soup-er day.

The weather lately has been really cold.  It was especially windy and rainy today.  Soup to the rescue!  I threw together this easy soup that tastes pretty fantastic.

6oz Fully-cooked Chicken Sausage Meat.  Italian-y flavors would probably be best. Find them at Trader Joe's

1 large carrot, chopped

1 stalk of celery, chopped

1 small yellow onion, chopped

1 small tomato, chopped

4 cups of broth (chicken or vegetable)

1 can cannellini beans

cooked orecchiette or similar pasta.  About 1 cup, cooked.

2 tbsp butter

olive oil

dried thyme, basil, rosemary, oregano

salt and pepper

Melt the butter and add the Chopped Chicken meat.  Brown about 2 minutes, then add the carrot, celery and yellow onion.  Cook until the onion is transparent.  Add the broth, tomato, beans and olive oil, herbs and salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer.  Let it go about 20 minutes.  Add the pasta when you're ready to eat.  This soup tastes great reheated.

I got rave reviews from Zach.  Make it!  Enjoy!

Fall Favorites...

Whoever told me fall isn't as nice in the Pacific Northwest as back east must have been confused...It's just as nice and much, much longer.  Up until yesterday it has been in the 60's and partly cloudy.  Its grey now but the leaves have been colorful on the trees for weeks now,and it doesn't look like they're going anywhere anytime soon.

So of course, its time for a great sweater and some fall favorite recipes.  Disclaimer:  Cooking with fresh pumpkin is not for the faint of heart.  It takes all day and gets pretty messy, even if you cheat and roast it in the microwave instead of the oven.  That being said, I definitely recommend getting the small, flavorful pie-type pumpkins rather than cooking with a large jack-o-lantern type pumpkin.  I always like to cook with my jack-o-lantern, but cooking with smaller ones bred for pies makes an incredible difference.

Last week I made one of my favorite soups:  Creamy Thai Pumpkin Soup.

This soup is great, especially if you're a fan of tom kha gai or other thai food.  Some advice, however:  If you put all the ingredients in at the beginning as the recipe suggests, it ends up rather bland.  What I will do next time is actually cook the pumpkin in the broth, then later add some crushed garlic, lemongrass, coconut milk and other ingredients (its really good if you add fresh ginger, too) right before its done cooking.  While it cools, the ingredients will flavor the soup, and you won't lose any of the boldness. Also, please try to avoid the problem I always have:  missing some of the lemongrass before I puree it, which leaves it really stringy (a note about lemongrass:  even though the recipe doesn't really mention this, you do have to remove it. It won't puree smoothly no matter how long you try).

My second favorite pumpkin recipe is the best one to share.  These Easy Pumpkin Muffins are great to take to fall potlucks, family Thanksgiving dinners, classes, meetings, or work.  People will love you, just don't tell them they take almost no effort to make.

I love the orange color that it turns when you add the pumpkin!

Follow the recipe exactly.  The batter will be thick, but don't add eggs or oil.  They don't actually need it, and if you do your muffins will end up too wet.  I've tried this with Trader Joe's baking mix as well with limited results.  I know its bad for you and blah blah blah but it is just best with a Duncan Hines mix.  Add walnuts and top them with brown sugar for a crunch.

I also made mine mini, they're better for sharing.