Ginger has never really been something I’ve thought about very much. Occasionally, my dad would add some ground ginger to stir fry, or I’d use some in fall desserts. But the farmers near Durham have been showcasing mounds of baby ginger at their tables for the last few weeks, and my curiosity about this knobby little root grew with each table I passed.
And with fortuitous timing, I came across this recipe for ginger apple chutney. Combined with apples & onions, also plentiful at local markets, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to buy a chunk of ginger. The recipe wasn’t written as one for canning, but I suspected the acid content would be high enough for canning and checked with a deft canning blogger to be sure.
I try to post recipes on this site that are seasonally appropriate for my locale. There are a few oddballs, but for the most part, strawberry dishes hit in the spring, tomatoes are featured in the summer, and pumpkin treats fill the fall.
You might be wondering, then, why I’m giving you this pizza that (at least to me) screams “Summer!!” as we leave the last vestiges of autumn behind and move full-steam into the winter holiday season.
In truth, I feel a bit seasonally confused. I spent the last week in Florida with my family visiting magical places, seeing magical sights, and enjoying 70-degree weather surrounded by palm trees while Christmas carols blared from speakers across the parks.
So in celebration of this confusion, I give you this! Barbecue, Bacon, and Toasted Corn Flatbread Pizza. It’s a shout out to the last summer produce, the last summer cookout, that many of us celebrated months ago. I used the tail end of the summer’s corn to make this pizza, but you can also easily use a can of corn that has been drained.
This Thanksgiving, I’m not cooking Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, I’m not cooking anything. Instead, I’m joining eleven of my family members in Florida for several days in Disneyworld and Universal Studios!
But this is a food blog and food blogs in the United States simply MUST address Thanksgiving. I’m thrilled to say that Sierra (if you don’t know her by now, here’s a little intro) has volunteered to guest post one of her most precious Thanksgiving recipes! Sadly, I didn’t get to eat any of this gorgeous dessert, but I’m anxious to give the recipe a try when I return from the Sunshine State.
I hope you enjoy Sierra’s post, and I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!
Pumpkin Chiffon Pie, by Sierra H.
I know we just met, but I’m going to tell you a secret. This is something that I have hidden deep inside for as long as I can remember, and it weighs on my mind every Thanksgiving season.
I hate classic pumpkin pie.
There, I said it. I’ll eat it, but I’d almost just as rather eat pumpkin-scented lotions and candles. If you’ve been following Kristi’s chronicle of wedding cake baking, then you’ll know that I adore pumpkin, but the hard, dense, often over-sweet classic pumpkin pie just isn’t my thing.
It isn’t pumpkin pie’s fault. The blame belongs squarely on the shoulders of one lady: Grammy LoLo. My father’s mother, Grammy LoLo (you can call her that, too, by the way, everyone does) gave us the tradition of another kind of pumpkin pie: one that is light and airy, pumpkin-filled, and gorgeous light orange with just a teeny bit of pure whipped cream to make it the perfect end to a holiday meal (or a stunning post-Thanksgiving breakfast). In our house, we always just called it The Chiffon, and it had a special place in the Thanksgiving preparatory kitchen, often the day before the real craziness began.
I’ve talked rather a lot in the last few months about the wedding in early October for which I traveled across the continent, stood up as a bridesmaid, and baked the groom’s cake & wedding cake. What I haven’t talked quite so much about is the wedding I attended the week after as, quite blissfully, simply a guest.
Just a few short days after I returned from my whirlwind week in Colorado, Brad and I headed north to Washington DC for wedding #2. Though we stayed in the city with a friend who was also on the guest list, the ceremony itself was about an hour outside the city at a quaint little vineyard nestled in the rolling hills of Northern Virginia. It was a beautiful, clear evening, though the chill of autumn had definitely arrived. And while the wedding party raced against the sun to capture all their photos, the rest of us took advantage of the occasional & delicious delivery of appetizers throughout the cocktail hour.
Our favorite? Shot glasses full of brilliant orange sweet potato soup. Since we were shamelessly stalking the catering staff for more and subsequently tilting each glass back to drain every last drop, I knew I must try to recreate it at home.
This soup is another super-thick, veggie-packed, warm and filling delight. Its the latest installment of my recent obsession with soups (I’ve made no less than five large batches of soup this fall) and it’s certainly one I’ll make again. It begins, of course, with sweet potatoes, and is supported by a smattering of other vegetables.
I haven’t baked much since I spent four days in early October creating two massive cakes for Sierra’s wedding. So it might seem rather surprising that the first time I pull out my cake pans after such a project, it’s to reprise the very recipes I used for the largest tier of the wedding cake. I, however, am not surprised, as I have been wanting to share this recipe in a normal, human-sized dessert that you can make for you and your family instead of a full wedding guest list.
Before autumn wanes completely, I urge you to make this cake. This cake is rich, moist, and full of pumpkin flavor. This maple cream is studded with these sugared pecans (easily my favorite discovery of the season) and compliments the spicy cake perfectly. And for layer cake, this is pretty easy! No icing to smooth, no crumbs to worry about, no delicate folding dry ingredients into the batter, no piping. You can totally do this.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it in every post since mid-September: I love fall. Everything about it… almost. That cool, brisk air and the crunchy golden leaves fluttering down like pennies in a pool are spectacular elements of the season. But they are caused, of course, by our hemisphere tipping away from the sun for the winter, and our hours of sunshine diminish rapidly. Add in our “fall back” from Daylight Savings Time, and suddenly I’m driving home from work in the dark every day for the next four months. This lack of sunshine not only lowers my energy and productivity, it also seriously cramps my food-bloggin’ style.
In early summer, I discovered that I had a much easier time taking photos for this site if I essentially stopped preparing food in my dismally dark kitchen. A table in our office against the window (purchased by Brad some time ago as a study station for the rare moments he wants to study at home) has now become my destination for cutting boards full of ingredients. The natural light that pours into this room is vastly superior than the peaked light fixture in the kitchen. I’ve virtually stopped photographing in my kitchen all together, save for the occasional cooking-in-the-pot action shot or rolled-out-dough-on-the-counter.
So as the days get shorter, you can pretty much guarantee that if the sun is out and I’m not at my job, I’m probably trucking ingredients back and fort between the office and the kitchen.
As a junior in college, I moved out of the dorms and into my first apartment. I was thrilled to flex my baby culinary muscles beyond what they could make in a microwave or a contraband toaster, so my friend and I marched to the grocery store to see what there was to see. And what there was to see was Jiffy corn muffin mix, for twenty cents a box. We bought about a dozen boxes and a 2-pack of cheap muffin tins so that each of us could make cornbread at any hour of any day with our new-found kitchens.
Several years have passed, and my kitchen has come a long way since those first cornbread-baking days (though I still have that very same muffin tin). I still make this tasty treat quite a lot, though I haven’t bought a box of the Jiffy for years. Why? Because I discovered it’s just as simple to make it from scratch as it is from a mix. Seriously.
This Halloween is a bit odd for a huge swath of the U.S. A deep cold has arrived much earlier than normal due, in major part, to the massive storm that walloped the Eastern seaboard early this week and continues to wreak havoc as it churns slowly west. Durham was spared much of the power of the storm, but for many cities with transit systems shut down, widespread power outages, hugely destructive flooding, fires, and heavy snows, it is a bit of an understatement to suppose that many a trick-or-treater’s plans have been marred or cancelled all together.
This chili, based on my mom & dad’s recipe, is normally something I strongly associate with winter. I didn’t particularly care for it much as a kid, and yet there was nothing I wanted more after a day outside in the snow. Thick, warm, and hearty, I’ve come to favor it earlier and earlier in the season every year.
I love Christmas, I really do. But I’m not ready for it. Not for candy canes and glittery pine cones and red ribbons on the ends of the aisle. I’m not ready for the ghost and goblin decor to be heaped haphazardly on a clearance rack by the checkout while pine boughs and Santa hats flood in from the back room. It’s Halloween this week, thank you very much, it’s Thanksgiving in a month, and there are several beautiful weeks of autumn between now and then.
And for you big-budget stores, I’m really not ready for jingle bells and dancing elves to adorn your circulars & commercials.
So in defiance of the ever-earlier Christmas season, I offer these treats that scream “Halloween!” loudly enough to drown out the dancing elves, at least for the next few days.
I speak, of course, of caramel apples. It’s no wonder this treat is a classic: a tart, crisp apple enrobed in a sheen of chewy honey caramel is one of the greatest joys of fall. These apples are Pink Ladies, my favorite variety, and they hail from this year’s annual apple-picking trip, which has become a cornerstone of every fall for me (my little blog is named after it!)
Apple cider. It is,without question, my favorite thing to drink. I’m rather fond of apple cider cold and unpasteurized, straight from an orchard, but I also believe that apple cider is truly at its best served warm, in a cozy little mug, for a soothing drink on cool nights in the fall and winter. From early October to New Years Eve, I need only the tiniest hint of a social gathering to bust out the crock pot and a half gallon of cider and am forlorn when parties I attend elsewhere don’t feature this essential holiday beverage.
The singular challenge I face with my affection for spiced hot cider? Unless I am hosting a party, I simply need one mugful. I’ve tried various packets of instant cider mix, but I usually find them far too sweet and not apple-y enough for my tastes. And the Caramel Apple Spice from Starbucks? Tasty, but not good for the wallet. And again with the too sweet.
