Butternut Squash Soup

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With both colder weather and a bothersome chest cold arriving in the last couple of weeks, I’ve craved almost nothing but soup. I know many of you live in areas where it’s still a bit too balmy to day dream about tiny basins full of steaming soup, but bear with me. Your cooler weather will arrive soon enough, and when it does, you need to be ready to make this incredibly incredible soup featuring a vegetable almost as synonymous with autumn as king pumpkin: the butternut squash.

I won’t lie to you. Butternut squash is only something I’ve come to appreciate very, very recently. I don’t remember eating it much as a kid; we tended to favor summer squashes in my house. So when a friend brought me a bowl of butternut squash soup (in the worst days of my cold) I admit: I was a bit nervous. But after one spoonful, I became keenly aware that I may have been missing out on a vegetable that is practically given away at the farmers market, easy to store for long winters, and downright delicious.

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Classic Meatballs

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And now, for something thoroughly NOT wedding cake:

Meatballs!

After spending the majority of last week baking more cake than many people bake in a lifetime, I’m celebrating this week by not baking anything sweet. No cookies, no cakes, no pies, nothin’. Instead, MEATBALLS.

These particular meatballs are a blend, primarily, of ground beef and ground pork. You can really mix and match any ground meats you like, or you can just use one variety. I’ve made excellent batches using only ground turkey, but beef and pork were in the freezer, so there you are. But contrary to their name, meatballs are not entirely meat. I daresay that every recipe I’ve seen suggests that bread crumbs are just as important as the meat itself.

Let’s actually talk about bread crumbs for a moment. Bread crumbs are incredibly easy to produce (if you have bread, you can make bread crumbs), but they have still managed to find their way onto the shelves of grocery stores in a consistency that often is not so much of crumbs as it is a fine dust. If you have fresh bread, a few minutes in the oven will crisp it enough that you can smash it into crumbs at whatever consistency you fancy. Or, if you have trouble making it through a baguette before it goes stale, as I always seem to do, you can grind that sucker up in the food processor for bread crumbs far more satisfying and probably more economical than the canisters at the store.

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To Bake a Wedding Cake, Part VI: The Big Reveal

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Previously:
Part I: A Prologue
Part II: Um, So, What Are We Doing?
Part III: To Do
Part IV: Testing 1, 2, 3
Part V: The Home Stretch

Welcome to the last of my six-part series about the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of baking a wedding cake. Last Tuesday, I flew to Colorado to attend a hen party, participate in the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, stand up as a bridesmaid, and last but not least, to bake a groom’s cake and a wedding cake for Sierra, my best friend of 15 years, and her fiancé husband, Sean.

It was quite a whirlwind trip.

This was also the first time I’ve made a trip to Colorado since leaving for college eight years ago that coincided with luscious autumn colors glazing the mountains and meadows of home. The scene was nothing short of breathtaking.

But you’re probably not here for my photos of leaf-peeping and coasting down Hesperus Hill. I’ll wager you wanna see some dang cake!

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To Bake a Wedding Cake, Part V: The Home Stretch

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Friends, it’s wedding cake time!

After several months of, design and re-design, recipe hunting, cake baking, flavor testing, and technique practicing, I’ve arrived in Colorado to do the real thing. Though the next few days will be long, busy, and full of butter, I’m really quite thrilled to be here. I haven’t seen October in Colorado since my senior year of high school, and it sure is something to see. We don’t have the red sugar maples of the east coast, but golden aspens against evergreens and snow-capped peaks are truly breathtaking. I hope I have at least one evening to take a drive through the mountains and enjoy some Colorado autumn.

But the priority this week is cake. Monday night found me bustling around my apartment packing what may be the strangest looking luggage I’ve ever compiled. In addition to my standard jeans, t-shirts, and socks, I’ve packed 10 cake pans, a quart of pecans, a case of decorating tips, piping bags, a bridesmaids dress, three options for shoes to wear with said dress (I may end up using all three, who knows), two antique glass insulators, four cake knives, one cake layer slicer, a box of parchment paper, two tubes of raspberry filling, a Lazy Susan, a cake turner, a jar of ginger, a roll of blue cellophane, a tripod, a pack of paintbrushes, gum paste, almond paste, vanilla bean paste, and a few other odds and ends that I’ll need to make this cake happen.

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DIY Greek Yogurt

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I spend a lot of time contemplating my groceries. And frankly, rather a lot of time getting them. The bulk of them come from the farmers market: stall by stall, I buy some eggs here, zucchini there, a pound of pecans or cheese when I’m feeling flush. But I am rarely able to get everything I need at this weekly market. Due to rather restrictive small dairy laws in North Carolina, it’s nearly impossible to get liquid dairy products (like milk or cream) from a small farm. Needless to say, my cart at the grocery store often suggests that I need a cow of my own. Milk, cream, yogurt, cream cheese, cottage cheese… I get a lot of funny looks from cashiers.

Well I can’t have a cow. I’m sure the neighbors below us wouldn’t appreciate it. But I CAN mark another dairy product off the list of things to buy. It turns out yogurt is really, really easy to make. No rennet, no citric acid, no stretching, no aging (well, 8 hours), no cheese wax: all you really need to start yogurt is milk. And, of course, a little bit of yogurt.

At the risk of sounding icky, it’s important to know what yogurt is to understand why this method works. Yogurt is essentially milk that has been fermented by bacteria, and in most yogurts, the bacteria remains active. Seen the phrases “pro-biotic” and “active” on your yogurt? That’s a nice way of saying it’s basically alive. But don’t be grossed out! These are happy yogurt bacteria. With smiling little bacteria faces.

Anyway.

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To Bake a Wedding Cake, Part IV: Testing 1, 2, 3

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Previously:
Part I: A Prologue
Part II: Um, So, What Are We Doing?
Part III: To Do

I’ve spent the last two months baking inordinately large quantities of cake to prepare for the wedding cake I begin baking in t-minus ten days. The flavors of fall permeated my apartment long before the weather did as I tested recipes for sugared pecans, maple cream filling, pumpkin cake, almond cake, and more. Thankfully, I work at a university with a veritable army of cake-loving, high-metabolism college students ready to sample these cakes as they positively burst from my kitchen.

I must admit, overall, I’ve been pretty lucky with first attempts. I, and all of my faithful testers, were over the moon for the very first pumpkin cake recipe I tested, along with the experimental maple cream filling that went with it. I’d already made the almond cake, so I really didn’t need much adjustment there, and a vanilla cake that will compose the tiny top layer (for guests with nut allergies!) was easy enough. There were, however some unfortunate discoveries.

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Baked Tomato Pasta

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Last year, I planted tomatoes in my little community garden plot. They were… unsuccessful. Extremely. I think I harvested two,maybe three tomatoes before they were attacked by bugs or rotted rather than ripened on the vine. Needless to say, I was distressed, but also determined to do better this year.

So I planted more tomatoes. Six plants, actually. And on the big tomato front, guess what? I still did not succeed. Dozens of green globes filled me with anticipation alllll summer. And then? Kaput. Like seriously, five tomatoes. It appears that I am doing something terribly wrong with my large tomatoes.

But the little guys! For the last six weeks, I’ve been harvesting dozens and dozens of both Sungolds, tiny orange spheres, generally considered the most flavorful cherry tomatoes, and Juliets, slightly larger egg-shaped tomatoes that ripen to a classic tomato red. A couple weeks ago, the harvests became so immense that even my tomato-loving beau couldn’t keep up with them. So what does one do with a couple pints of tiny tomatoes before they meet their maker?

This recipe features the tomatoes about as close to their natural form as is possible to get in a pasta “sauce”. To start, the tomatoes are simply sliced, squashed into a baking dish, and sprinkled with bread crumbs, cheese, garlic, and olive oil.

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Money Where Your Mouth Is: June-August 2012

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After not only one but two majorly epic failures in the kitchen yesterday, I thought I’d start off today with an easy, food budget update. I started the year off posting monthly, but as winter slid into spring, spring into summer, things got busy, and I’d suddenly find myself half-way through the month and still didn’t have time to post about my edible expenses from the previous month. In fact even this month, I’m clearly not posting until halfway through, but since this too is an accumulation of three months, I tossed up my hands and decided to post anyway.

And, as I discovered when looking at my graphs this morning, I’m glad I did. June, July, and August have, for the last two years, been a very unusual time for me. Brad has been away on internships both summers, which leaves me living a life of full of single lady meals at home and, frankly, a lot of take-out. I also traveled rather a lot, grew a lot of food in the garden, and canned copious amounts of summer produce that I otherwise would not have purchased. In some ways, my graphs reflect a bit of back-sliding from the previous installment of the rather fortuitous months of March, April, and May. Here’s how things shook out:

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Caramelized Onion Dip

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A shift in the weather has finally come to North Carolina.  After a disgustingly hot Labor Day weekend, the last few days have been gloriously cool. I’m thrilled for fall to arrive, but sometimes, I think the transition into the season is almost more exhilarating than the heart of the season itself. Just a few months ago, I ached for the warmth of summer. I couldn’t wait to shed my scarves, jeans, and sweaters and swap them out for flip flops and tank tops. But now, as we teeter on the outer edge of a long, hot summer, I can’t wait to don my long-sleeved tees, comfy socks, and tall, brown boots.

Buuuut it’s still a bit warm for that. But there are still plenty of ways to get ready for fall. One of them is to add this rockin’ dip to your TO MAKE IMMEDIATELY list. Take it to your next football tailgate, Halloween party, or movie night. Seriously, I urge you to find any excuse.

I’ve “made” onion dip before. A packet of onion soup mix and a tub of sour cream and shazam! Chip & dip time! But this is unlike any onion dip I’ve ever had. probably because it actually features the fine, fine flavors of real onion. A LOT of onion. This recipe yields about three cups, but it starts with four full cups of raw onion. Then, aided by the deep and sultry additions of balsamic vinegar and brown sugar, those crisp raw onions transform until their decadent, caramelized selves.

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Sugar ‘n’ Spiced Pecans

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To kick off my favorite season here at 30 Pounds of Apples, I have something for you. I was trying to wait. I thought these would be good to share right when you are planning treats for Halloween parties. Maybe around Thanksgiving? Or do I dare wait until the holiday season?

But they’re too good. I simply couldn’t wait to share this secret with you, because it will change your world. At least, it will change your world if you have pecans on hand and a deep or even moderate love of those tasty nuts that cost $10 a cone at any given festival or county fair. I’m here to report that you may never buy those again. Why?

Because you can make them yourself! And they are dangerously, frighteningly easy.

I must confess, I had never considered making these little gems myself until I started pulling together recipes for this little wedding cake project I’m working on. I sort of expected them to be a challenge. After all, the first few recipes I ran across involved oil and frying and a precise level of humidity. Yikes. It seemed like a difficult process. But this particular recipe involves none of those pesky hurdles.

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