A little greasy for holding hands

Lately, the food blogs I frequent seem to be hardcore pushing this Valentines Day thing. I can get behind stacks of red velvet pancakes for a "Valentines Day" breakfast or any number of random, ridiculously rich, indulgent desserts, but do they have to be exclusive to one day in mid-February? Is the food blog world trying to tell me that I shouldn't be eating French toast with chocolate sauce (heart shaped or otherwise) for breakfast the other 364 days a year? Also, it seems that they aren't drawing the line at only heart-shaped, chocolate, or champagne themed food items. Any food can be romantic so long as it's posted about in the one and a half month period following New Years but before February 14th. One blog offers cheddar biscuit sandwiches as the perfect Valentines breakfast in bed. And for the perfect Valentines dinner another blog suggests flank steak with mushrooms. I have a feeling I could enjoy these items just as well alone with my cat on any old Monday night (although I guess since my boyfriend's the one who likes steak, I wouldn't stage something that ambitious on a night he was out).

I think too many food bloggers are overlooking the bigger food holiday coming up that allows--nay demands--foods with the highest possible contents of fat, sugar, and salt. Even non-football fans such as myself can appreciate the unhealthy food opportunities presented by Superbowl Sunday. But I don't think it should really matter about having an excuse, be it romance or pigskins, to eat poorly. (And yes, I realize this goes against everything I said in my last food post about baking healthier.) To that end, a week ago I had a true stroke of inspiration: maple bacon caramel corn.

I know, right?

This genius was the product of having an overabundance of bacon in my fridge and a love of sweet and salty combos, especially on popcorn. It might need some fine-tuning, but here's my process thus far:

Ingredients:

1/2 unpopped popcorn

3 slices bacon

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup maple

a couple of dashes of salt

Preheat oven to 375.

Then cook the bacon to the crispiness you desire and move it to some paper towels to cool. Make sure to reserve the bacon grease.

Add the bacon grease to a large pan with a cover. Turn on medium high and add the popcorn. Cover with the lid and shake until most of the kernels are popped. Remove from heat and transfer to a large bowl.

In another pot (or if you're like me, the same one, rinsed and dried), add the maple syrup and butter and heat over medium heat. When bubbles start to form, stir vigorously with a whisk for 4-5 minutes until thickened. Remove from heat.

Crumble the bacon and add it to the bowl with the popcorn. Pour the caramel sauce over the popcorn. I then tossed it with salad tongs to evenly distribute. Pour the popcorn onto a cookie sheet lined with foil or parchment paper (or one of those slipat mats if you have one). Put in the oven for around 10 minutes until the caramel is dry and delicious.

Separate any globs of popcorn that may have become stuck together and enjoy!

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 many exciting uses of apples

I promised an apple recipe post, and I always follow through on my relatively easy promises. I wanted to be revolutionary and offer you a selection of unique apple recipes like the creative and intrepid food blogger I sometimes aspire to be. I had high hopes. But then everything I could think to add to mix things up a little just seemed like it would detract from the simple, delicious flavor of apples. So instead, this post will be less of an informative, edgy look at the newest in apple recipes, but rather a softer, less thought-provoking answer to the question: what would I do if I had a large quantity of apples at my disposal? The first three things you think of are likely the first three things I thought of, and therefore, the things that I made. I did try a couple of dinner dishes that involved apples which I'm including here, but I'm sorry to say that neither of them really tasted like apples. Oh well, at least I've gotten through all my apples this week with no spoiling! The only downside is that there is an impromptu apple pie bake-off at my office on Monday, and I no longer have the goods to compete.

Apple recipe 1: Apple sauce

Seeing the big bag of apples, my first thought was to conden

se as many as possible. The quickest way to do that was to make apple sauce. I have a crock pot, so it was easy enough to do even while away at brunch and discovering the magic of $9.90 jeans at the new Uniqlo Flagship Store. I didn't use a recipe but

here is the approximate measurements of what I did.

Crock Pot Apple Sauce

7 apples cored and peeled (I'm not sure what kind as they all go thrown in the same bag, but it was some combination of Macoun, Macintosh, Jonamac,

Empire, Granny Smith, and Golden Delicious).

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

1 T brown sugar

1/2 water

Stir all ingredients in crock pot and then cook on high for 6 hours on low. At this point apples should be easy to mash with a fork or potato masher un

til substance resembles apple sauce. I took a picture of this final product but frankly apple sauce is not a particularly photogenic food. It was hard to tell rather I had cooked the apples or they had been regurgitated by a pelican. Nevertheless, i

t tasted delicious.

Apple recipe 2: Turkey Meatballs

This is one of those apple dinner recipes I mentioned above. While it didn't get me through a large quantity of apples, I did manage to find a recipe that involved one. You couldn't really taste it, but it still counts. More importantly it allowed me to use my crock pot a second time in the same week. I won't post this recipe because I followed it almost exactly from here. My only change was to use chopped fresh onions instead of onion powder, simply because that's what I had on hand. Sadly, this was not the first time I attempted this recipe. Last week, I bought all the ingredients and got up early to make these. It was a Tuesday, when I have tin whistle classes and don't necessarily want to come home and mak

e dinner right away. Sadly, I forgot the most important step to coming home to a delicious meatball dinner: turning the crock pot on. Thus making these meatballs with a freshly picked apple was something of a redemption. They turned out okay, but a little dry. I promise I took a picture, but it's nowhere to be found right now. You'll just have to trust me; they looked like meatballs.

UPDATE: I came back to this post and realized it isn't very good. The least I can do is dig up a picture!

Apple recipe 3: Butternut Squash Apple Soup

This recipe was the inspiration of receiving a butternut squash in my farm share. It turns out adding a couple of apples transforms a traditional creamy butternut squash soup into a delicious fall medley. I didn't take a picture of this one because I realized that most apple dishes really aren't that showy. Or maybe it's that most soups that I make (because I care more for immediacy than for garnish) aren't that showy. Suffice is to say, I passed up the opportunity to make a nice showy apple tart, and that is probably the reason my food blogger aspirations will never be realized. That and the fact that even when I take photos, I can't seem to upload them.

At any rate, here is the soup recipe, I used and highly recommend. It's autumn in a bowl.

Apple recipe 4: apple crisp.

There isn't much to say about apple crisp. I'll be honest and say I haven't even tried this one yet, and moreover, I didn't even make it. That said, it is an apple classic, and I'm convinced is a slightly healthier alternative to straight up apple pie, assuming you don't serve it with ice cream. Here is the one that was used (with no assistance from me whatsoever!). I have no doubt that it is delicious.

That about does it for my apple-ful week. I have two remaining that I will likely just eat in slices with peanut butter per my usual treatment. I hope you have found this, unfortunately visually lacking, post an inspiration. If you come up with some totally original apple recipe that involves wild, previously unconsidered combinations like apples and chile powder, feel free to share in the comments section.