I’m not sure when “pickles” came to indicate cucumbers that are pickled, and nothing else. You can buy pickled garlic, pickled eggs (eeeeeew), but the pickles section is predominantly composed of cukes. Oh sure, there’s variety: sweet pickles, bread & butter pickles, dill pickles, kosher dill pickles, zesty dilly pickles, pickle chips, and more. But they are all cucumbers!
It turns out this was not always so. Those of you who can have probably seen many kinds of pickles in your cookbooks. Pickled okra! Pickled beets! Pickled peaches!
And one of my personal favorites, pickled green beans!
Dilly beans start with a heap of fresh, brilliant green snap beans. They’re dirt cheap right now at my local farmers market, so it’s a great time to buy a bunch and pickle them.
Pomegranate is one of my all-time favorite fruits of winter. It is something I buy as a special treat, one of the rare produce items I do not (and as far as I know, cannot) buy locally. So once a year, I buys a few of these beautiful fruits and savor each and every kernel.
To see whole, pomegranates do not look particularly appealing. They are ruddy and lumpy and have a somewhat awkward outie-belly-button looking thing at the top. They’re hard to peel and bruising on the outside can easily damage the inside. As with most good things, however, if you can get past the outward appearance and the time-consuming peeling, the fruit cracks open to reveal a stunning display.
It’s amazing how quickly the thrills of summer transform into those of fall. It’s not just about the temperature, either (in fact, that hasn’t particularly changed). The tree outside my apartment has begun dropping leaves to the ground, and with each trip to my car in the morning, those leaves announce the arrival of autumn with a delicate crunch beneath my feet. The light deepens to gold a bit more each day, and the anticipation I’ve grown accustomed to feeling around this time each year is beginning to grow.
And yet a week ago, my heart was full with summer. And so was my pantry. I’d harvested the last batch of tomatoes from my garden, and after celebrating some of them with some BLT sandwiches, I wanted to try them in a different configuration: as a salad!
This salad is inspired by one that Brad and I usually split at one of our favorite restaurants, and it’s simple enough that I’m frankly stunned I’ve never attempted something like it at home.
You guys. Today is a big day! Today marks the five-year anniversary of the day I cautiously served up my first blog post, inviting you all into my kitchen and my world, and hoping that you’d like it.
I’ve spent this week trying to figure out how to mark this occasion. There’s been quite a lot of late-night writing, re-writing, reading, and immediate deleting. In the course of that work, poignant memories unearthed themselves and forced their way to the forefront of my mind. I reminisced at length about the two months I spent developing the site, stumbling my way through the coding to get everything to look just exactly the way I wanted. I chuckled about the early days, when I spent most evenings perched on chairs or counter tops balancing a tripod precariously against the ceiling to get the shot I wanted, only to discover that the muted, incandescent light in my kitchen was the actual WORST. I looked back through my posts, clicking through them one at a time, amazed at the memories that each one elicits. The times and places they evoke.
A lot has changed. Since this date five years ago, I’ve switched jobs three times. Moved four. Lived in three different states with very different growing seasons. I’ve joined three community gardens and have failed spectacularly at three balcony gardens. I’ve swapped cheap Teflon pans for stainless steel, and my meager collection of college dishes has been supplanted by an arsenal of culinary tools for everything from canning to wedding cake baking. Recipes that I once perceived as daunting, showy meals have now worked their way into my regular weeknight rotation. My weekly pilgrimage to the farmers market for groceries is no longer a novelty but a way of life.
Food blogs don’t seem to be quite the craze that they used to be, and I long ago made my peace with the fact that I will not likely be the next Deb Perelman or Joy Wilson. But I still get such joy out of the cooking, photographing, writing, and sharing that happens on this little site. This blog has always been a creative outlet for me, but I hope you’ve gotten a little enjoyment out of it in the process too.
Speaking of enjoyment, I think I’m done waxing poetic for the day. There’s a balcony full of sunshine waiting for me, so it seems a shame to miss out.
Happy birthday, 30 Pounds of Apples! Here’s to another five years!
If heaven is real, then I really don’t think it’s made of puffy clouds and golden harps. I rather imagine it must be filled with endless tables, buckling under the weight of all the chips, dips, cheeses and crackers (all calorie-free, OBVIOUSLY) that a person could possibly want. Really, is there a better way to eat than scooping up succulent dips and salsas with crisp, salty shards of simple carbohydrates?
My obsession with chips is pretty severe. I’m hopeless at Mexican restaurants. Those continuously re-filling bowls of free chips and salsa at the start of the meal virtually guarantee that I’ll be in a food coma before my main course even arrives. I’m pretty shameless about them at potlucks and dinner parties, too. But unless I am hosting a party of my own, I actually avoid buying them: if I have chips in the house, there’s like a 70% chance that I’ll skip cooking dinner and simply dine on chips and salsa instead, strangely able to justify it by pretending they are vegetables. Sad, I know.
But I’ve found a little loophole. As long as I have corn tortillas in my fridge (which is pretty regular) I can make teeny batches of chips whenever I like! Satisfy my cravings without overdosing! Plus they are baked, which in the chip world, is code for healthy! (Right?)
It’s shockingly simple. Cut tortillas. Spray with cooking spray and salt. Flip over and repeat. Bake. Eat.
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.
Over the last few years, I’ve grown out of my delusions of I’m-young-and-can-eat-whatever-I-want and now do boring things like pack salads for lunch and box up half of my pasta when we go out for Italian. Le sigh. But there continues to be one thing that, when placed in front of me, I have absolutely no control or willpower to stop myself from eating.
Chips and salsa.
Whenever I dine at a Mexican restaurant, it’s a sure bet that I’ll eat my weight in free chips and salsa before my meal arrives. I know that I’m gonna feel like I’m dying within a few hours, but I just can’t help it. Too spicy? Doesn’t matter, I’ll cry through the pain. Not hungry? That’s literally not a thing.
Typically, when I make salsa at home, they are collections of diced vegetables and herbs. But sometimes I just want a nice, runny, completely blended, restaurant-style salsa.
This particular recipe includes a crap-ton of cilantro and a couple of chipotles en adobo. The combination of bright, herb-y flavor from the cilantro and the deep, smoky spice of the chiles creates a unique spin on the classic restaurant salsa.
Perhaps the best part of this salsa is that it’s SO FAST to put together. Once the onion and cilantro are chopped, everything else gets tossed in a food processor and whirled into salsa in just a few seconds flat.
One of the most amazing but frustrating things about moving all the time is that I am constantly re-learning local produce. While most of the produce itself has remained the same from city to city and state to state, the timing has shifted a month or two or even three in different climates. But tree fruit. Tree fruit has been the one genre of produce that has just been completely unpredictable as I’ve moved from place to place. DC’s tree fruit scene was insanely awesome. Durham, on the other hand, not so much (though GOD I miss the blueberries.) Columbus had great apples and decent peaches, but not really any cherries or plums to speak of.
Moving back to Colorado, I knew I would return to a land of great, high-altitude peaches from Palisade and other farming communities on the Western Slope. But I did not expect the cherries.
Oh em gee the cherries!
Colorado has had rather a bumper crop this year, and I’m obsessed. For weeks now, I’ve been eating them faster than I can buy them. In fact I COMPLETELY missed strawberry season because I was so distracted by these round little rubies. Which, actually, is fine with me because the cherry is my new number one.
I can’t decide if I am more nervous or excited about sharing this with you. So bear with me.
Since I started this blog two and a half years ago, it has been solely a digital enterprise. Oh sure the cooking and the gardening and the eating exist beyond this little corner of the internet, but my writing and photography and recipes live only here. Recently I’ve been toying with the idea of bringing some of that work to life, creating something that could live on a wall or a desk or a shelf. And no, I am NOT attempting to write a cookbook: I have neither the talent nor the time to take on a project of that scale.
It seems only appropriate: the available local produce marks seasonal changes for me just as strongly as weather and leaves and hours of daylight. I’ve sifted through hundreds of photos in the last few weeks to find my favorites for each month, and I am thrilled to present the final product to you. I’ve already received a proof, and I am very happy with the result: thick pages, bright colors, and a clean, simple month design make a good calendar in my mind, and this one has all three!
So if you’ve ever wanted some 30 Pounds of Apples swag, your moment has arrived. If you think this looks like something you want on your own wall, or something you want to give to someone else, I hope you’ll order one! I really think you’ll like it. Everyone needs a calendar, right?
PS:
I also want to give away a copy to one of you. I get so much out of this blog, but my favorite aspect continues to be the conversation, the question-asking, the story-telling from those of you reading. I’m so glad you’re here.
How to Win the 30 Pounds of Apples 2014 Calendar
1. Leave a comment on this post to answer this question: What is your favorite month, and why is it your favorite?
2. BONUS! To enter twice, head on over to 30 Pounds of Apples on Facebook and like the page. Then, come back to this post and leave me a comment saying you liked the Facebook page, and you’ll be entered twice. Fancy! (New likes only, but thanks to all the early adopters!)
3. Enter by 11:59pm EST on Monday, December 2. Winner will be announced on Tuesday, December 3.
4. Open to US residents only (sorry to my international readers, shipping is so dang expensive!)
I don’t really recall eating much rice before I was thirteen. It was then that I had my first delicious bites of Chinese takeout (strangely, in Disneyworld). My sister and I were hooked, so suddenly, stir fry became a regular meal in our household. My dad would bust out a giant wok, a pound of chicken breast, and a smattering of stir fry vegetables, and within minutes the house would fill with the sounds and smells of the quickly cooking meal.
Rice, too, was always part of these week-night stir fries. And it was the rice that yielded the best leftovers, because the following morning, dad would make rice cakes.
Rice cakes, as I grew up with them, are not comparable to the puffy, crunchy discs of rice you can buy at the store. These rice cakes are rather more like pancakes, cooked in a frying pan and slathered with butter and maple syrup to make a scrumptious breakfast.
Whether you make your rice for stir fry, curry, or something like this, make a little extra and you can set yourself up for a week’s worth of awesome breakfasts.
