Fall

Sometimes lettuce is just not good enough. With its peppery spiciness, arugula has a refreshing bite. In Southern California, even though it gets cold in the Winter, arugula thrives in the year-round sunshine, so we're able to buy fat bunches any time of the year for $1.00/bunch.

Persimmons and pomegranates are more seasonal. When they're all available, our favorite salad is a simple combination of all three. <Suzanne Goin created a complex salad with all these ingredients.  I used her recipe as a starting point, choosing to simplify the ingredients and directions.

The combination of tastes is near perfect: peppery arugula, sweet persimmon, tart pomegranate seeds, and crunchy hazelnuts, all held together by the emulsion of olive oil and reduced balsamic vinegar.

If you consider yourself "pie crust challenged", this recipe is your new best friend.  I first saw this pie over at Lisa's blog and I knew I had to give it a try, it looked delicious.

While I have no problem making pie crust, so many people have had bad experiences making pie crust from scratch and have just given up.  It does take practice.

This recipe was intriguing as it uses refrigerated pie crust.  I normally do not like the texture of refrigerated pie crust as opposed to homemade but a homemade pie crust is unnecessary here.  With all the sticky goodness on top of this pie your crust efforts would be lost in the shuffle.  Save homemade crust making for another pie where the crust is showcased.

This pie is absolutely fantastic and after the hubby and I ate our share, we both agreed we prefer this apple pie to regular apple pie any day.  That shocked me, but it's that good.  The flavor is out of control gooey, cinnamony and just overall out of this world. 

We are just done with regular apple pie...can you believe it?  I still can't.

Eggplant is a delicious and versatile fruit. Yes, eggplant, a member of the nightshade family with tomatoes and potatoes,  is technically a berry. There are several different varieties of eggplant, some long, narrow and pale purple, some small, white and egg-shaped (do ya think that’s where the name came from?), some yellow, some striped and of course there is the large purpley-black globes that are the most common. I grew two varieties of eggplant this year, and while successful, the plants did not produce enough fruit to keep up with my appetite.

Eggplant is at it’s peak right now. I often pick up the big eggplants at the farmers’ market. I like to grill or broil eggplants slices and have them on hand for salads and sandwiches. I always salt, rinse and dry the slices before cooking; the salting process alters the surface—it doesn’t soak up olive oil. 

Move over apple turnovers. Here comes pumpkin.

Begin with a can of pure pumpkin puree, and it’s amazing how some sugar and spice can make everything nice. Pie crust helps out, too.

Grab-and-Go Sweet Pumpkin Turnovers are a little bit cookie and little bit pie. When refrigerated pie crust is sprinkled with chopped walnuts and cut into rounds, then mounded with a filling that will remind you of pumpkin pie, it’s hard to know what it should be called. Most certainly, it is a turnover.

The use of refrigerated pie crust speeds up the process of creating these turnovers. Pressing chopped walnuts into the dough adds crunchy texture and gives the pastry a homemade flair.

When the turnovers are eaten on the day they are baked, your teeth will crack through a crunchy topping of cinnamon and sugar. Once the turnovers have been stored in an airtight container, that crunchy shell will become melt-in-the-mouth soft. Either way, they are delicious.