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Happy (B)Earth Day, 30 Pounds!

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It’s Earth Day! I try my best to make every day an Earth Day, but I do so love that this pretty planet has a holiday all to itself. Over the years, I’ve celebrated Earth Day in a variety of ways: planting seeds in milk cartons to watch them grow, attending festivals where local food stands front and center, marathoning Wall-E  and Fern Gully, or just getting outside to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air which we are so lucky to have.

This year, I have yet another way to celebrate: today marks the first birthday of 30 Pounds of Apples!

I know a year of blogging isn’t really a huge deal: some of the blogs I read have been pumping out new content for five, eight, or ten years. But a little over a year ago, when I published my first post, I was still trying to convince myself that this idea was sane. As it turns out, the cooking, photographing, gardening, writing, and sharing that go into this site have brought me more happiness than I ever expected.

I’ve spent the last few days reflecting on what I’ve learned over the last twelve months, where I’ve flubbed up, and what I’m looking forward to before the next blog-o-versary comes to pass. There are many methods by which I can sum up the last year, and I want to share a few of them with you.

So without further ado, consider this the first-year highlights reel of 30 Pounds of Apples.

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Pasta with Chicken and Mushroom Sauce

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This summer and fall, though I was on an accidental-on-purpose hiatus from posting, I was not on hiatus from cooking. I was, however, dialing back my habit of dramatically over-estimating how many evenings a week I could cook, how long exotic ingredients would keep their freshness or my interest, or how committed I would be to cooking after working a 12-hour day. I started using a lot of ingredients on repeat, mixing and matching them in different variations depending on how whacked out my schedule ended up looking like on any given day. A few of the ingredients I came to rely heavily on were mushrooms, zucchini and yellow squash that were exploding out of my garden at a tremendous clip, chicken breast, and of course, pasta.

If I published every variation of vegetable-y pastas with light cream sauces that I played with last fall, I’m pretty sure you’d think that’s all I ate. (At some point I’ll share some more of them with you, when I actually have more vegetables growing in their prime.) This is one of my favorites that came out of those months, my quick-I-need-dinner-and-what-do-I-have-in-the-fridge-to-piece-it-together season.

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Summer Potluck Favorites

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Watermelon small
Despite the seasonally cold and rainy weather that has swept across the majority of the US over the last few days, the beginning of summer is approaching in all its three-day-weekend glory. I love the bookends that Memorial Day and Labor Day offer to summer: for many, they mark the first and last travel weekends, family weekends and most significantly, cookout and potluck weekends of this productive season.

I always look forward to summer potlucks. As someone who hates to eat just one thing for dinner, the wide array of casserole dishes, salad bowls, and serving platters squashed together on an eight-foot table is a favorite sight of mine. I also relish the chance to pull out a few of my favorite recipes that are either too large or too high-calorie to cook for our two-person household. I imagine you have a few of these recipes of your own.

But if you don’t, or if you’re looking for something new to bring to any festivities you may have planned for the weekend, I dug through the archives for my favorite summer dishes that make for good sharing.

Broccoli Cauliflower Salad

Side salad
While I first learned to make this salad as a light, fresh foil to rich and heavy holiday menus, I find it really shines at summer cookouts and potlucks. It does take some time to prep as all the ingredients must be chopped and layered, but this can be done a day in advance. By adding the dressing immediately before serving, the result is a textured, satisfyingly crunchy salad that you cohorts will love. It’s almost a sure bet that your salad bowl will come home with you completely empty.

Caramelized Onion Dip

Dippity dip dip
This dip is easily one of my favorite culinary discoveries. Piles of onions are caramelized down to the soft, sugary, sultry versions of themselves. Then, mixed into Greek yogurt and mayonnaise, a delectable ambrosia emerges. I make this exclusively parties and potlucks: it’s not particularly high-calorie on its own, the thick-cut potato chips are a different story. Spread the calorie love!

Strawberry Rhubarb & Goat Cheese Toasts

Fancy breakfast
‘Tis the season for strawberries and rhubarb! And it’s ALWAYS the season for goat cheese and toasty bread. Give your party-goers a little DIY fun with these easy toasts.

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Garlic Dill Refrigerator Pickles

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Pickles.

Remember the giant whole pickles? I used to buy them in elementary school in the snack line at recess, plucked straight from a vat of brine by the school cook and deftly wrapped in a flimsy paper napkin.  Only fifty cents! Add to that a Sunny D or a zebra cake. Then to the tire swings!!

Those were the days. Minus kids making fun of my glasses and my last name.

Nine-year olds.

I’ve always known that pickles are a relatively easy canning project, but I had never actually made them until last weekend. This particular method is easier than I could have possibly imagined.

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Four Cheese Fettuccine

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My favorite dish as a kid was spaghetti with butter and parmesan cheese (the powdery kind, mind you). It was years before I would tolerate spaghetti with spaghetti sauce, and to this day, I still prefer it without.

But the first time I indulged in the miracle of the universe that is fettuccine alfredo, I was hooked. Thoroughly convinced it was the best. food. ever.

Not much has changed.

And so! For years I have searched for a recipe that achieves in my kitchen what various restaurants mysteriously create every day: a creamy, cheesy, tangled mass of warm pasta that knocks my socks off.

When I stumbled across this recipe, it was love at first sight. I HAD to try it. The first taste was enough to convince me that it was definitely worth making over and over and over. And I have!

To be sure, this dish certainly steps it up a bit from the powdered parmesan I grew up on. I’ll admit, my new found love of these cheeses takes a larger chunk of my budget than your standard block of orange cheddar. But oooh, they are worth every grated bite.

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Penne alla Vodka

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Hello again! I hope you’ll pardon my brief hiatus from posting…  I’ve spent the majority of the last ten days in cars, on planes, and briefly enjoying the company of friends and family I rarely get to see, traveling almost 4,500 miles and catching ten states along the way. But I’ve now returned to my humid North Carolina abode, so it is time to crack open the fridge and the laptop to share a recipe with you!

I’ve previously discussed my affinity for pasta, but just in case there was any doubt: I love pasta. I’ll eat it pretty much any time, any way, any day. Love. Pasta. Lately, I’ve been looking for new ways to prepare this versatile and scrumptious food, and this has quickly become one of my favorites.

I first had penne alla vodka at a dinner party after a successful campaign I worked on at my first job out of college. Both creamy and tomato-y, I was amazed I could like pasta sauce so much. Foolishly, I didn’t ask for the recipe. Never be ashamed to ask for a recipe that you like, it’s not worth missing out on later when you want to make it yourself. Anyway, I’ve tried a few different recipes for vodka sauce, and this one is just the right balance of savory, tangy, and smooth.

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Manicotti

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Manicotti

Do you like Italian food? Do you like food that is kind of like lasagne but not exactly like lasagne?

Do you like making a multi-step meal that involves scratch-made sauce and hand-filled pasta?

Do you like leftovers that last for days and only get better with time? Do you like perfectly delightful combinations of pasta, cheese, spinach, and meat sauce?  Do you like noodle tubes filled with magic and topped with awesome?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then this is a recipe for you!

Classic Manicotti

I started making manicotti a couple years ago when I was home for Christmas. My mom, a long-time lasagne maker, decided to mix it up and buy manicotti shells instead for a family dinner. I volunteered to help, and though it was a lengthy process, I genuinely enjoyed stuffing a cheesy, spinach-y goo into the shells. Since then I’ve tinkered with different recipes, and I finally landed on the right balance. Like, a year ago. But it takes a long time to make already, so I hadn’t yet talked myself into taking the time to photograph the process. Not to mention, I keep making it in the winter when I have little evening light for shooting photos, soooooo.

Sorry for the delay!

Noooodles

A warning: if you’re looking for a quick week-night dinner, this is not the right choice. It could be if you decide to use frozen spinach instead of fresh or pre-made pasta sauce. But where’s the fun in that?

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Glazed Whole Carrots

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Simple Glazed Carrots

My grandmother, who I’ve talked about quite a lot on this site, passed away this week just a few days before her 97th birthday. She was an inspiration to me in almost every way that affects this blog: canning, gardening, cooking, and even just appreciating the delight of fresh, homegrown food. She always insisted that the best recipes were the simplest ones, and that “modern recipes” just had too many unnecessary ingredients. I frequently watched her shake her head and scoff at magazine recipes bedazzled with so many obscure herbs and spices that you’d hardly be able to taste the feature of the dish (let alone afford to make it). Since she was renowned for what she could do with food from seed to table, I usually find it’s best to heed the advice she seemed to live by: grow food, buy fresh, cook simply, and savor the resulting meal.

To honor my grandmother, I want to share with you some of the simple, basic recipes that I rely upon heavily in my daily cooking. I admit, I feel both ridiculous for sharing them and also ridiculous for keeping them from you for so long. Sometimes it’s hard to decide what to share here in this space, and I often think, “nah, they don’t wanna hear about this, it’s nothing fancy.”

But then I remember that many of these dishes have entered my kitchen in only the last few years: why should I assume that they are already in yours? It seems unfair to keep them to myself. Plus, while I’m sure we all love the idea of elaborate culinary projects resulting in surprising and impressive dishes, my guess is that most of you (like me) are ultimately just trying to put dinner on the table every night without relying on a microwave dinner or a frozen pizza. For me, having an repertoire composed of simple, savory dishes is the key to making this happen.

Thin and simple carrots
This is one of my favorite side dishes both in flavor and style, it goes well with just about anything, and it starts and ends with a bunch of carrots. Though many of us get our carrots mostly in the form of stripped-down nubbins that appear on veggie platters at office parties, this dish uses the whole thing. For this particular dish, I like to use the thinnest carrots I can find.

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Raspberry Cheesecake Bars

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Valentines Raspberry Cheesecake Bars
Hello!

I’m so happy to say that. You may have thought that I had given up the goat, abandoned this little blog and buried it in the snow of this long, deep winter. But the truth is I just, quite simply, haven’t had the time or creative energy to handle it these last couple of months. Between the final events push of the fall semester at Duke, co-hosting a holiday party, moving out of my sublet, traveling for the holidays, camping on a friend’s couch for two weeks, saying goodbye to Durham, moving to Columbus, unpacking, organizing, starting a new job, visiting old friends, re-organizing, visiting more friends, and enjoying the company of Brad again, my camera has sat dormant for just over two months.

This move was a toughie. I started my new job almost immediately  upon my arrival in Columbus, and the cold weather provided me with little incentive to do much more than curl up in blankets when I got home each night. It’s taken several weeks to get used to my new kitchen. I’ve spent several evenings lamenting the fate of meals I nearly burned to death as I try to get used to cooking on a glass-top stove. I keep reaching for things where they used to be in my old kitchen. The pantry, still, is a total nightmare, as I have yet to find several hours to sit down and really consider where everything should go (doesn’t everyone do that?)

But finally, the time came this weekend for me to break out a recipe I’ve wanted to share with you since I started this blog. I must say, glass stove and messy pantry aside, I can’t deny that my current kitchen is far more equipped for blogging than my last, primarily due to one giant feature.

LIGHT!

Light, glorious light! Flooding in to every corner of our apartment, these gaping sunny windows line the southern and western walls of our new home. They overlook a park and a river and trees and some sort of weird oyster-and-pearl sculpture. Admittedly, also a freeway, but I confess it is somewhat fascinating to watch the sludge of evening traffic heading north after Brad and I have already arrived home.

The point, here, is that not only did I shoot one recipe this weekend, I shot three! Complete with the natural, angular light that I love to shoot in. No more toting cutting boards topped with carefully balanced ingredients to the office!

Let’s get started, shall we? Three years ago, about two weeks BEFORE I decided to start a food blog, I made these compact cheesecake bars to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Thinner than normal cheesecake, they can easily be eaten without a fork and can be made in any shape you so desire.

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Broccoli Cauliflower Salad

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Ah, summer. Welcomed in over Memorial Day with cookouts, good friends, and sunny weather, it’s a season of bounty in most of the States. In North Carolina, summer came (and often comes) early: the farms and gardens here are already flush with zucchini, peaches, blueberries, tomatoes, and even peppers.

I, however, skipped my market trip this week in favor of a long weekend visiting dear friends in Madison, Wisconsin.

As seems to be more and more common for me, I spent a lot of my trip observing not just the city itself, but the food. And let me tell you. I was pleasantly surprised by what Madison had to offer.

Just two blocks from my friends’ apartment, the crowds at the city’s largest farmers market were rivaled only by the huge quantities of locally produced food. At first glance, the market here looked like Durham’s two months ago: green spears of asparagus, waxy baby onions, and the first tender snap peas covered the tables.

But there were also treasures not easily obtained in the Bull City.

One would think that local market-goers would tire of cheese in the Nation’s Dairyland. But no… many booths, each of them packed with customers, purveyed cheeses aged for years and curds made only hours before (some of which may or may not have returned in my backpack with a small ice pack). Even beyond the tiny white tops of the farmers market, it was clear that Madison loves its food.

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