Fall

This past weekend at the BlogHer Conference, I was on a panel entitled, "The Meaning of Identity and The Value of Voice in a Crowded Foodblogging World." I shared the stage with three lovely and talented food bloggers: Dianne of Will Write For Food, Garrett of Vanilla Garlic, and Ree of Pioneer Woman.

When asked to identify "voice," we all agreed: Voice is an expression of you – your personality, your beliefs, your attitudes, your quirks, etc. My post today is a perfect illustration of that.

Every time I get dressed to go out, I try on at least two, sometimes three different outfits. Even if the first outfit is ideal for the occasion, I feel compelled to try on at least one another. What if I don't like the way that dress looks when I put it on? What if I'm cold in a sleeveless top? What if? What if? What if?

I like foods that add a touch of luxury, where a little goes a long way. I'm thinking of things like caviar, smoked fish, truffles, whipped cream, chocolate. Nuts fall into that category for me too, maybe it's their association with the holidays or with desserts like cakes and cookies. Or maybe it's because they are so rich.

Walnuts have a richness due to their fat content. They have an inherent sweetness but also a slight bitterness. That bitterness is actually what complements so many foods. The flavor of walnuts is more mellow and buttery when toasted which is great for baked goods and desserts. But when it comes to strong foods like beef, bitter greens, cheese and herbs like basil, un-toasted walnuts add another more complex dimension. If you've made pesto you might have noticed that most pesto recipes call for un-toasted nuts, so clearly I'm not the first to realize this.

In experimenting with different kinds of nuts, I have found walnuts to be the most versatile of all due to their buttery, rich, sweet and bitter flavors. I also found that lemon almost always complements walnuts, toasted or not. The possibilities are endless, salad topped with walnuts and tossed with a lemon dressing, lemon tea cake with walnuts, lemon walnut biscotti, lemon peel and walnuts as a topping for green beans...

It can be a challenge cooking for two. When I made a big batch of Baked Garden Vegetable Stack the other day, I had a lot of tender vegetables left over. I turned them into creamy soup in 30 minutes.

The thin slices of potatoes and tender ribbons of cabbage seemed to demand caraway, that distinctly flavored seed typically found in rye bread. I used to love ladling my mom’s sauerkraut dotted with caraway seeds over creamy chunks of boiled potatoes.

I started the soup by sauteing chopped onions and caraway seeds in hot oil. I tried a bit of the Butter Olive Oil I bought at Oh! Olive, a cute little shop in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. The oil is organic with natural butter flavor, but is dairy-free and contains no animal products. I’ve discovered it’s perfect for popping corn, or drizzling over a bowl of hot popped corn. Anyway, when the onions began to turn golden brown, I dumped in all my leftover vegetables (I had quite a bit — only two of us ate a meal from that big pan of veggies), poured in a few cups of vegetable broth and let it all simmer together for about 20 minutes.

From the Huffington Post

While summer cocktails conjure up a specific image -- usually of tiny umbrellas and slices of watermelon -- autumn brings about libations that are, shall we say, less photogenic. The dearth of the fresh ingredients that make summer drinks such colorful beachside accompaniments force harvest season cocktails into a comparatively substandard role. But this seems wrong considering the other pleasures we gleefully anticipate with first nip in the air. People salivate on line at Starbucks eagerly awaiting their pumpkin spice lattes and delight in slipping on lightweight jackets to compliment the blushing foliage. Why too shouldn't lifting the year's first glass of Apple Brandy be part of the tradition?

The beauty of it is, cocktails that evoke the changing of the seasons don't have to be entirely new drinks. They can follow the same basic template classics cocktails do, just with seasonal substitutions. Here are a few suggestions.

The best place to start is swapping out the sweetener in a drink, it's the simplest and most effective way alter a cocktail. Take for instance a whiskey sour which we know is generally two parts whiskey -- bourbon, rye, Tennessee, your choice -- one part simple syrup, and one part fresh lemon juice depending on taste. Instead of simple syrup make it with maple syrup and bam(!), the autumn whiskey sour.

Read more...