Fall

We went to a pumpkin farm with Georgia a couple weeks ago:

She fed chickens.

She had a hard time picking a pumpkin.  She finally chose an appropriately baby-sized one.

She had lots of fun on the hayride!

Fall is finally fully here--it's cool and crisp, the leaves on our street are turning yellow, and we're making lots of delicious soups and chilis and eating more than our share of apples, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes!  I  made this pie last week, and it was absolutely ridiculous!  I should have known better to make something like that for a family of two and a half, but I couldn't resist.  It's so easy, too.  Pie crusts scare me (although Josh is a champion pie crust maker) so the fact that it has a graham cracker crust really sold me.  Make it if you dare!

Oh, pictures of the house gussied up for Halloween are on my Halloween blog (which I've done about as good keeping up with as this one.  Oops!)

A Night Out

I am currently sitting at the computer completely unmolested by a certain 1 year old girl who wants to type HER masterpiece on the keyboard.  I slept in until 10:00.  We went to a concert last night in Cincinnati.  It was our first night away from Georgia since she was born.  I miss her, but it feels good to know that after I type this, I am going to go downstairs and eat some breakfast, then I'm going to lay on the couch and watch TV or read without little hands trying to pull my book from me or close the TV cabinet.  Then maybe, just maybe, we'll finally get the dining room nook painted before Georgia comes back home.  The only question now is what to  make for breakfast.

Oh, yeah, Georgia is over at her aunt's house, I'm sure she's having a great time playing with her cousins, having clothes bought for her, and not missing us at all.

Fall Decorating

I took yesterday afternoon to do some decorating around the house for fall.
The front porch, now with mums (and a small baby):

The front door, with fall-leaf wreath:

The mantle, now with pumpkins:

Other areas were decorated, too, but they were too messy for me to take pictures of!

Learning to Cook

It seems like every few years of my adult life, I go through a “self-improvement” phase. The first one was when I was a sophomore in college, and decided I was going to be a “lady”. I wore makeup and perfume and did my hair every day. I wore jewelry. I wore nice clothes to class (no sloppy t-shirts and sneakers for me!). I started drinking Perrier. I listened to jazz. I made cute decorations for my dorm room to make it homey and welcoming. Although I hope I retained some of the internal lessons of that period (ie, being gracious and welcoming and kind), the aesthetics didn’t exactly last.


The next period of self-improvement came when I was 22 or 23, out of college and post bad breakup. I decided I would read any classics I had missed in college or high school. I would knit and sew fabulous things. I would listen to music only on vinyl and make amazing mix tapes! I would rent the entire Criterion Collection from the library! I would learn to cook! And while I did, or tried to do, most of those things, the one that has served me best in life is learning to cook. One of the first recipes I really learned inside and out, and changed to become my own, is this one.

If you’ve never tried this particular soup before, please don’t be intimidated by or skip the peanut butter. It sounds weird, but it just makes the soup creamy and makes the other flavors fuller, somehow. This recipe can easily be adjusted for the kinds and amounts of vegetables you have on hand. You can also skip the rice step if you’re in a hurry.

African Peanut Soup

1 large onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1-2 bell peppers, diced

1 can chickpeas

1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes

4 cups chicken or vegetable stock

Salt and pepper

Curry powder

Olive oil

Hot sauce and/or crushed red pepper

¾ cup rice

½ cup smooth peanut butter

Crushed peanuts for garnish, optional


In a large Dutch oven or soup pot, sauté the garlic, onion, and bell pepper in some olive oil until soft. Add the chickpeas, salt and pepper, and curry powder. Sauté a couple minutes, until the smell of curry has filled your whole house. Add the crushed tomatoes and stock, bring to a boil. Add the rice, reduce to a simmer and cook, covered until rice is done (can take up to 45 minutes, depending on what kind of rice you use). Once rice is done, whisk in the peanut butter. Add hot sauce or red pepper to taste.  Heat a couple more minutes to make sure the peanut butter is thoroughly melted and mixed in, then serve. We like this with just some crusty bread. Leftovers are even better the next day!

Fall, are you here for good?

Finally, the last day of August. Fall air is already creeping in this week, and I love it. We left our bedroom window open last night, but snuggled underneath a full set of sheets and blankets. I wore a sweater to work today. We seem to return to ourselves each fall. We get into a better routine, we eat dinner at the dining table instead of in front of the tv, our house looks its best dressed up in pumpkins and yellow and orange leaves. Fall has always been a time of change for me, mostly good—of course, going back to school each year, with new books, teachers, classrooms. I moved to Dayton in September. I always seem to start new jobs in the fall. Josh and I got married in October. We moved into our house in October. Will this fall yet again bring change? Will it be good change?

A list of my favorite things about fall, and why I look forward to this time of year more than any other:

Weather cool enough for sweaters and jackets, but no snow or bitter cold.
Colored leaves and trees are so much more interesting and beautiful to look at than a sea of green.
Kicking through piles of dried leaves on the sidewalk.
The sky is bluer, in my opinion, in October than any other time of year.
Rainy, chilly days of staying inside and making and eating a giant pot of chili or soup.
The smell of fireplaces and bonfires and burning leaves.
It’s cool enough to start baking again.
Back to school-ness must be ingrained in me, because this time of year makes me want to read, read, read—thick classics, while curled up in an armchair with something warm to drink.
Apple cider, apple pie, baked apples, caramel apples…
Pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin spice lattes…
Halloween is my favorite holiday and I love decorating, seeing other people’s decorations, reading spooky stories, making costumes, and sitting on the front porch drinking hot cider and passing out candy.
A new one: when it’s actually dark at 8:00, it’s much easier to get Georgia to go to bed.
New TV starts (no more crappy reality filler shows!).
Long drives in the country, looking at leaves.


Yay, fall!

A Victorious Shopping Day

I love coupons. I wish I could frame my grocery store receipt from yesterday--$50 of food for $20. Of course, that was just a special shopping trip to take advantage of Kroger having stuff on sale that I also had coupons for, mostly “backup” meals I can keep in the back of the cupboard or freezer for emergencies. We now have about three months’ worth of cookie dough in the freezer. I also came in under budget for my regular grocery trip--$48! Yes, $48 for a family of three for a week. On the menu for this week is:


Steak with tomatoes and scallions and corn on the cob

Orecchiette with cauliflower, bacon, and breadcrumbs

Tomato-pepper soup with ham and cheese wraps

Grilled pork chops with cucumber dill salad

Asian noodle salad with chicken and cilantro

Grilled chicken Cobb salad

(All recipes from Everyday Food except the pasta, from Serious Eats)

Not bad for fifty bucks—plus stuff for sandwiches for lunches, and the aforementioned bonus coupon trip yielded enough breakfasty items to last at least a couple weeks.

We went thrift shopping in the afternoon. I was on a mission to find a new fall jacket, because I haven't been pleased with what I've seen in stores so far. I found one I really liked, sort of motorcycle style in a khaki color.  It was only after I got it home that I realized I already had the same jacket in black, purchased several years ago from Target.  No wonder I liked it so much!  We also got an owl trick or treat bucket for Georgia and an orange cat alarm clock for Josh (he has an obsession with orange cats). At the next thrift store I found a cute nautical-style striped sweater, Josh bought some video and cassette tapes, and Georgia picked out a book about the human body (I don’t know. It was shaped like a little person. She pulled it off the shelf and looked at it through the entire time at the store and the trip home). They had a vintage bike Josh was begging to get, but he’s already bought two vintage bikes in the last month that haven’t even been ridden yet!

We had the grilled chicken Cobb salad last night. They looked pretty, but ended up tasting quite bitter. I’m not sure what went wrong. Was the romaine lettuce bitter? Did I put too much Dijon in the vinaigrette? Was the bit of sesame oil I put in the vinaigrette bad? Who knows.

Next week I fully expect to completely blow the grocery budget. It’s Josh’s birthday and he’s requested wine braised short ribs. I’m going to use the recipe from Smitten Kitchen, which calls for both red wine and port. I’m a bit nervous about this. I was a vegetarian for a long time, so I feel like a bit of a novice when it comes to cooking meat--especially red meat, which I rarely eat. We’ll also be having a cobbled together recipe for chirquican—a Chilean side dish made of mashed potatoes, pumpkin, bacon, onion, and various vegetables. Josh saw this meal on an episode of No Reservations and insisted that it be his birthday dinner. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Back to School

It’s probably just the time of year, but I find myself actually missing school these days. I just read a post on The Kitchn about spicing up college cafeteria food and suddenly I was back in my own college cafeteria. I remember very vividly the smells, the trays, the gray and mauve decorating scheme, the card swipers, figuring out where to sit… I was a vegetarian for most of my college years and went to school in the South, where they put meat in green beans, so most of my lunches consisted of veggie and cheese sandwiches from the sandwich bar. And I always, always, drank raspberry iced tea. I’d almost forgotten about this until I ordered one at a restaurant a couple weeks ago and realized it tasted like “college.”


I know my college days weren’t all light and fun and happy, even though that’s how I remember them. I struggled seriously in my first semester with my chosen major (biochemistry—that didn’t last!) and homesickness. Although I had quite a few friends and friendly acquaintances, I mostly felt like an outcast at my happy/sunny/preppy Christian college. I had a dark, sarcastic sense of humor, I liked “secular” music, movies, and TV, I devoured fashion magazines and design blogs instead of the Bible (okay, I’m not a total heathen—I read the Bible, too), my clothing choices leaned toward the thrift-store indie-rocker look. I am by nature a loner and this was only emphasized at college. I probably looked lonely and pathetic to an outsider, but you know what? I enjoyed eating by myself most days, reading a favorite book or magazine and observing the people around me. I liked spending afternoons dawdling in the library, finding a forgotten corner to hole up in and read books that weren’t required for class. I liked spending fall evenings strolling through the small town adjacent to the college. It’s strange to think that there will never be another time like this in my life. The next time I get excited/scared about college, it will be in 17 years when my daughter goes. I don’t have the luxury of loneliness anymore. I have a husband and daughter to be accountable to, who will worry if I go off by myself for too long. Don’t get me wrong, I love that my Saturday nights are now filled with hanging out with Josh, watching movies, drinking wine, and making dinner together. But every once in a while, I’d like to return to my college days with a lonely evening eating a cheese and veggie sandwich, watching Freaks & Geeks with some vending machine snacks, followed by a stroll through someone else’s neighborhood, getting glimpses through living room windows of the life that I now have.

So, in honor of college, a “recipe” for another sandwich I often had for lunch after I moved into an on-campus apartment and had a real kitchen.

Ingredients:

Pre-sliced honey wheat bread, preferably Kroger brand (if they still make this)
Your favorite baking apple, cored and sliced
Some havarti cheese, sliced (dill is good, plain is fine)
Butter
Maple syrup
Salt and pepper

Place sliced apples on a foil-lined toaster oven tray. Dot each slice with a little butter, drizzle with maple syrup, and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Bake in toaster oven, turning once, until apples are soft when pierced with a knife. Place apples on a slice of bread, drizzling with any leftover juices in the tray. Top with havarti and another slice of bread. Wait, if you have time between classes, to eat until the cheese has softened and melted a little bit from contact with the warm apples. Enjoy with some Dijon kettle chips and raspberry iced tea. Have some chocolate chip cookies (from your care package from mom!) for dessert.

Obsessing Over Dinner

It’s late afternoon and, as is normal this time of day, my thoughts turn to dinner. For the past year or so, I’ve been attempting to plan our meals ahead of time, because this was happening way too often:

Me: Whaddya want for dinner tonight?
Husband: I dunno, what do you want?
Me: I dunno, what do we have stuff for?
Husband: Nothing. We’ll probably have to go to the store.

Followed by a hungry trip to the grocery store where we proceed to drop $50 on ingredients for one dinner plus whatever we see that looks good (which, at 7 in the evening on an empty stomach, is EVERYTHING).

So I’m learning to plan. I’ve actually gotten a bit compulsive about it. I keep a spreadsheet with each week of the year on a tab and I list 6 dinners, then a grocery list broken up into different grocery store departments.

This is not “me.” This is something a super-organized, together, clean-freak type person would do. I’m pretty much the opposite of those things. But here I am, planning meals months in advance and coordinating and organizing them so I can only buy ingredients once and we’re eating what’s in season. I think the only reason I am successful at this is because of how much I love food. I obsessively read food blogs and magazines and compile recipes.

So back to this afternoon, and thinking about dinner. We’re having Thai lettuce wraps. Josh (the husband) is making them. Last time he made them, they were pretty amazing. He roasted a pork shoulder basted with some magical sauce he made up. We sat on the back porch with a pile of lettuce leaves on a plate, a mound of shredded pork, and some sort of soy sauce-cilantro-carrot-chili pepper dipping/drizzling sauce Josh, again, made up. It was spicy and drippy and crunchy and everything you’d want a summer evening’s dinner on the back porch to be.

How much longer until dinner?