When life hands you an abundance of root vegetables...

Maybe it was because I had the first of two Thanksgivings this year at my boyfriend's parent's house this weekend, or because I just spent some time researching and otherwise contemplating the perfect pie recipes for Thanksgiving with my family in Texas, or maybe just because I have a natural tendency toward gluttony, but today's post will be about fall recipes. These are not necessarily Thanksgiving recipes, mind you, just things that I've created in the last few weeks through the bounty of my farm share. I'll be sad to it come to an end this week, but I chose to not sign up for the winter share, but rather rejoin next spring. I know I'll be traveling a bit more in the winter, so it's for the best. That and I'm thinking I need a break

from squash and carrots for a couple of months. But before I besmirch the good name of root vegetables and the harvest season, here's some of what I've been making lately (all photos are not of actual food I have made, but are thanks to the good people of the Internet and serve as suggestions of what my food looked like or would have looked like if I gave more emphasis on proper plating.)

Butternut Squash Ravioli:

Did you know that you can make ravioli without a pasta maker using wonton wrappers? Okay, likely you did, but I've been meaning to try this trick for years, and only recently discovered wonton wrappers are actually very easy to find in my grocery store (right next to the tofu--of course!). I don't remember exactly what I stuffed these bad boys with, but here's an approximation of my process:

Ingredients:

1 small butternut squash (roasted with a little olive oil and salt in the oven for 30 minutes until soft enough to scoop and blend with a fork)

1/2 cup ricotta cheese

1/4 cup parmesan cheese (or rather, I just grated until I got tired)

1 tsp chopped fresh sage

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 pepper

minced garlic (in whatever number of cloves you want)

wonton wrappers

1 egg white

Mix all ingredients together (well except for the last two). Scoop a small spoonful of filling onto the center of each wrapper. Beat the egg white and a little water in small bowl with a fork. Rub some of the egg white mixture on the edges of the wonton wrapper. Fold wrapper over filling so that it forms a right triangle. Press edges to seal and crimp with a fork. Once you've finished all the ravioli, put them in boiling water for about 5 minutes or until the ravioli float and the skins look slightly translucent. I served these with some browned butter with more sage, some toasted chopped walnuts, and a little more parmesan cheese. Excellent way to make squash as unhealthy as possible.

Sunchoke puree:

Cook peeled and chopped sunchokes with a peeled and chopped potato or two and whatever root vegetables (turnips, parsnips, what have you) you desperately want to rid of with enough vegetable broth to just cover. Simmer until vegetables are soft (takes about 30 minutes). Drain off some of the liquid, but retain enough to blend smoothly in a blender or food processor (or using an immersion blender if you didn't buy yours from Bargain Stop and find that it lacks the wherewithall to so much as froth milk). Once blended add a couple of tablespoons of butter, a tsp salt, and a little milk if it needs to be thinned. Serves nicely with a spice crusted salmon. Also, judging by the image I found, it would pair fairly nicely with a panko crusted scallop. Something to think about.

Green Tomato Bread:

At the end of summer, there is apparently always a plethora of green tomatoes left on the vine that never ripened. This is something I only learned when my farm share started heaving green tomatoes on us by the pound-ful. My first instinct was to fry them as that's the only use for green tomatoes I know of. However, in the interest of being healthier and not immediately giving into every impulse I have to deep fry something, I researched further. Turns out there are tons of green tomato recipes to choose from. I wasn't that interested in the relish or the chutney, so I opted for the green tomato bread (which, yes, I realize is arguably just as unhealthy as deep frying them). I didn't tweak the recipe at all, so I'm not going to write it out here. It was a pretty tasty bread though--similar to most spiced quick breads, but with an underlying tartness from the tomatoes.

So tell me, readers, what have you been making this harvest season?

The apple that doesn't fall from the tree

This weekend, I did the very fall activity that I did this time last year (or rather one week earlier, this time last year). As you can see here, I am nothing if not predictable in my autumn outings. I traveled with many of the same friends, and then went to the exact orchard we went to last year (mostly because we didn't want to do any research). However, apparently going one week later into the end of apple season makes quite a difference. Last year, I remember us basking in the sun by the farmer's market pumpkin patch eating our donuts. This year, it was windy and cold, and we opted for hot cider to go with our donuts because apple cider donuts are lovely and some things are not dependent on the weather.

More importantly as regards apple picking, this year when we got there, they informed us they were out of apples. They claimed this wasn't just because it was late in the season but because the apple crop had been short this season due to storms (I'm looking at you, Hurricane Irene--months later and still ruining my outings). Interestingly, this information did not make it to their website which my friend had specifically checked when she heard rumors of apple shortages.

The thing is, they weren't fully out of apples, they just weren't on the trees any more. They'd taken the last of the crop and put it in big baskets for you to pick from. At first we weren't sure how this was different from choosing apples from the basket at the grocery store, but at least we were amongst the apple trees and a beautiful hour drive into the Hudson Valley. Fall foliage was starting to turn and the air was crisp. Also, as we walked the orchard, my friend Kim quickly discovered that there were in fact a few apples left on the tree waiting for the few and the bold who were willing to climb for them.

Kim climbs to great heights and acquires a single Macintosh for her efforts. Normally, Macs aren't my favorite, but these were crisp, tart, and perfect.

Kim assails yet another tree with apple in her mouth, simultaneously breaking the only two posted rules for the orchard: 1) No climbing the trees, and 2) No eating the apples. The rest of us watch awestruck from the ground.

Those of us with poor climbing foot wear and short limbs as well as those who were recovering from a cold, chose our apples from the bin as instructed. They didn't taste quite as sweet as the hard-won tree apples though.

The orchard also had a pumpkin patch. Those of us attending our Halloween party in a couple of weeks should look out for these bad boys done up Martha Stewart style.

Apples or no apples, it's just nice to get out of the city on a cool fall day.

I now have a mess of apples and am trying to figure out what to do with all of them that is a bit more health conscious than my usual fatty, sugar-filled apple pie or crisp (not that I won't do that too!). Look forward to an apple recipe post soon!

Labor Day weekend, as seen entirely through promotional photos

Another year, another Labor Day, am I right, readers? I enjoy the four-day-weekend (at my company I had Friday off as well), but I find it a little bittersweet as it signifies the end of summer Fridays. Thanks to having today off and some shrewd personal day taking I won't have to face the dreaded five-day-week until late September, but I already don't like where this is headed. On the plus side, Labor Day also heralds the coming of autumn which is my favorite season in New York. (I'd say it was my favorite season anywhere, but I grew up in a place without seasons, so I don't have that much of a frame of reference.) Autumn means the joys of baking, pumpkin everywhere, apple picking, cardigans, and not having to pay to run the AC all the time.

But enough about fall. I spent the last weekend of summer relaxing and enjoying the beautiful weather. I feel like this weekend was a repayment for last weekend's rain and being forced indoors. Per the usual, I didn't bring a camera along for any of my relaxing, but instead of I'm going to google the places I went and see what images best replicate my experiences. My new photo blogging philosophy is best summed up as: why bother to take photos if someone with a better camera and a degree in design probably already did?

Cool Haus is an awesome ice cream sandwich place that apparently has locations in New York, Austin, and LA. The New York location is right by the temporary roller rink under the Highline, but I think this place is the real draw. You can pick both your cookie and ice cream. The sandwich at the top of the second column probably best approximates my choices which were (for those playing along at home), cookie: oatmeal raisin, ice cream: balsamic date and mascapone. I also tried my friend's sandwich (which was most like the bottom entry of the center column seen above). She had strawberry ice cream with the cookie of the day which, on this particular day, was potato chip.

It's weird choosing a promotional photo for this one, since the new section of the Highline park has now been open a month or two. But this really it has it ended up looking, other than the people and grass being a little less animated. It was such a lovely day that for the first time ever I walked from one end of the Highline all the way to the other.

This photo diverges from my experience sitting on the grass in Hudson River Park in the following ways: 1) When I was there, it was closer to sunset, 2) He doesn't appear in this picture, but when my friend and I were there, there was some sort of kite whisperer--this old man who gave kites to all the children in the park. He made a pretty impressive display with kites and streamers. It's a very zen-like activity, kite flying. Even more zen-like is just laying on the grass and watching other people fly them and not having to worry about accidently getting entangled with some novice's tacky cow kite.

I sincerely doubt this is the actual make and model of my boyfriend's parent's grill, but I am quite certain the food we (er, I contributed by chopping vegetables) made was just as tasty as this appears. Also, we didn't waste our time with chicken wings.

Okay, so this one isn't really a promotional photo. But the only photo I could find advertising the annual 30th Ave Street Fair in Astoria (!) was a thumbnail. It's like they don't even want to promote it. At any rate, I didn't really intend to go to this so much as it was in my direct path to the grocery store. I consider it a personal triumph that I passed 3 mozzarepas stands and 2 funnel cake booths and still came out unscathed. (By "unscathed," I mean I only purchased kettle corn which is about the only fair food one can eat without hours later being reduced to a quivering pile of powdered sugar and regret.)

The rest of the weekend was either spent working on my books (for which no promotional photos yet exist, although I was sorely tempted to make a cover mock up for the Jimmy Wales bio using this image) or enjoying an excellent dinner in Brooklyn with friends (promotional photos really should exist for my friend's fantastic lasagna). I suppose not all experiences can be so easily marketed. At any rate, I hope you all had very happy Labor Day weekends and are looking forward to fall as I am!

Shutting up and reminissing about leaves

I'm still working on writing so this will be a (nearly) wordless post. The cold has finally hit New York and with it has come the darkness. Or maybe that's more the fault of daylight savings time. Anyway, all I know is that when I leave work it's dark now. To compensate, I'm posting some pictures of Fall taken within the last few weeks when we still had nice things like daylight in the evening and warm days to enjoy the park.

Note the color in the leaves and the fact that you can still see Central Park because of the magic of sunlight.

It's just like When Harry Met Sally, except slightly more dead.


Now that's a proper Central Park Fall tree.


The always lovely Bethesda Fountain, bathed in (albeit somewhat waning) evening light.


Sorry this last one's a little blurry. I was trying to be stealthy, although I'm not sure why because really you probably wouldn't dress your dachshund as a hot dog if you didn't want people to photograph the little frankfurter.

Remind me to tell you later about the live chicken living on the 5th floor of my office building (in accounts payable) last week, the excellent production of Carmen I just saw, and the recipe for mac and cheese with butternut squash in it that recently changed my life. But for now, back to the writing! I promise you I'm making progress. The word count hasn't increased that much, but the IDEAS are there.

Talented pumpkin artists and the deadbeats who love them

As you know (or may have gathered from previous blog posts), I am an avid entrant of Internet contests. Naturally, I prefer contests where a degree of skill is involved, be it writing short essays about meatballs or crafting Valentines haikus devoted to car-sharing or condensing whole stories into 25 words. I don't win said contests, but I find them an enjoyable diversion during the workday. (This is not to say that I'm too good for sweepstakes; I lose those too. However, I'd only recommend them if you have a separate email address set up just for siphoning off junk mail). Anyway, the latest contest to grace my inbox was sponsored by the car-sharing service I'm a member of: Zipcar (incidentally the same people who rejected my loving haikus of contests past). But putting aside past defeats, I saw that Zipcar had asked its members to carve a pumpkin into a "Zipcar inspired" masterpiece for Halloween this year.

This seemingly simple task was only problematic because I lack any real gourd-carving skills. My artistic talent is really limited to an excellent eye for collaging (if I do say so) and the ability to draw cartoon people that all look the same regardless of intended gender. Luckily, I have an ace in the hole: a boyfriend who went to art school and is generally enabling of my single-minded obsession with winning $200 in driving credit. My contributions to the project were the following: accidentally puchasing a pumpkin with the thickest skin of any squash I've ever laid knife to, refusing to let him use stencils or too many ideas from google because "we have to be creative, if we want to WIN," and taking numerous pictures of my cat with her head in the pumpkin (something she did of her own volition). Pictures follow, of course:

Isn't that cute? Well, perhaps you had to be there.

Once we removed Dinah, we formulated a plan:The plan. It's a car with the Zipcar logo on it in front of the skyline. Hopefully, that's obvious at this point.

Behold the hands of an artist at work:
At this point, I was mostly just watching what turned out to be a patently unfunny episode of The Office, and occasionally offering helpful advice like "try not to cut yourself."

Without further ado, our (er, his) creation:
You might notice that this picture was taken in a well lit room, with clearly no candle in the pumpkin. This is because we couldn't cut away enough of the skin for you to really even see light through it. I tell you, this pumpkin was a beast.

All other Zipcar annual pumpkin carving contest entrants better watch out!

And finally, for those wondering (which I'm sure was all of you) about my honorable, if unmentioned, entry in the Valentines haiku contest (the prize for which was only a paltry $100 in driving credit), here it is:

Sharing is caring-
"I'll share a ride with you, Love,"
Whispers my Zipcar.

I take pride in how creepy and anthropomorphic I was able to make that in only 17 syllables.

Apples to apples

This weekend, I did a fall activity I've been talking about every year since I moved here. That's right; I went apple picking. In previous years, apple season has eluded me. It's surprisingly short, you know. There's a fine line between un-ripe and completely picked over. And it's funny how popular picking your own fruit can be. I don't know why they don't have places to reap and grind your own wheat, too. Actually, they probably do somewhere.

My friends and I drove a good hour and a half into the Hudson Valley in search of the elusive organic orchard. This was done to appease my friend with a social conscience (for the record, I'm pro-organic too!), but had the dual perk of making it possible for us to eat apples directly off the trees without fear of pesticide poisoning. I wish I had pictures of the beautiful trees and us picking delicious fruit from them, but unfortunately they're stuck on my camera. I lost my cord a while ago, and these pictures ended up on my camera's internal memory. Did you know you can't buy a camera cord without contacting the manufacturer? I didn't until today! But that's really neither here nor there. Suffice is to say, you'll just have to use your imagination.

Naturally, the joy of apple picking is that you return from a day of basking in the crisp fall weather with several bushels of apples. The curse of apple picking is also that you return with several bushels of apples. Once divided amongst all of us, the apples were a more manageable quantity. Still, it's far too many apples for me to eat just for snacking (I go through apples at the doctor approved one per diem), without risking losing some. The solution of course was to start baking. My first apple project was a pie. I was careful to make sure this pie ended up on my memory card. Behold:It's vegan, made without refined sugar, and made with apples from an organic orchard. I'm ready for my New Age foodie badge now.

For those interested in the recipe, I got the crust recipe from my roommate's sister-in-law.

Vegan Pie Crust
2 cups flour
1/2 cup margarine/vegetable shortening (I used Earth Balance)
1/2 tsp salt
1 T vinegar
5-8 T water (give or take)

Put everything, minus the water, in the food processor and pulse to achieve course crumbs. Then slowly add water until mixture forms a ball. In my food processor this is also accompanied by a loud noise and shaking. My food processor is kind of old, I think. Refrigerate in a ball until ready to roll out. Makes two crusts.

For the actual pie, I used the recipe for "Amazing Apple Pie" from my roommate's vegan cookbook (she's the actual vegan; I just very occasionally moonlight). Specifically: How It All Vegan!.

Ingredients
6-8 large baking apples (I used a mix of about 5 species pulled from my grab bag. I would be hard pressed to tell you which ones)
3/4 c maple syrup (I used a mix of maple syrup and agave syrup because I ran out of maple)
1-2 T lemon juice
2 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 T corn starch or arrowroot powder

First, you peel, core, and dice the apples. Then boil them in water for about 8 minutes. Drain them, but set aside 1/4 cup of the "apple water." Mix the apples with the syrup, lemon juice, and cinnamon. Then heat on medium the 1/4 cup apple water with the corn starch until it becomes thick (if you use arrowroot powder, as I did, it forms a sort of gel). Add the thickened mixture to the apples. Pour everything into your crust. Cook in preheated 350 degree oven for 40 minutes.

If you perform all of these steps correctly, you should end up with an apple pie. I know I did.