Let’s talk about how pumpkin flavors are forced into everything at this time of year. I know this isn’t a universal feeling, but I kinda run screaming from pumpkin spiced lattes, pumpkin ale, pumpkin yogurt, pumpkin pie flavored vodka (blech) and many of the “pumpkin spice” type commercial products that hit the shelves in October…
Season
Plum Jamtini Cocktail – Pass The Ice, Pass The Shaker!
My friend Theresa is the Co-Executive Producer of Growing A Greener World, a fantastic TV show about all things gardening. She’s also a wicked good urban homesteader, master canner, great writer (check out her personal blog), and a super nice person. Theresa knows I have a soft spot for combining jam with booze (strawberry jam margarita, anyone?), so…
Fresh Blackberry Sorbet
So, my last post was about making ice cream and then I got busy and haven’t posted in a week and now I’m back with a post about sorbet. This is not what I’d call a blogging win, because clearly I am obsessed with homemade frozen desserts. You can’t really blame me – it’s 85…
Turn Your Homemade Jam Into Easy Homemade Ice Cream
Perhaps, like me, you are rolling into preserving season 2013 with some, shall we say, overstock in certain areas. In 2012 around this time I still had apricot preserves hanging on from 2011. Then I happened into a giant windfall of free apricots. I turned that bounty into cases of delicious homemade apricot preserves and promptly learned…
Lamb Blade Chops with Apricot Halves and Salt Preserved Lemon
This is a simple one-skillet dish disguised as a fancy-pants chef-type meal. The deception works because we’re using slightly more exotic pantry ingredients like salt-preserved lemons and apricot halves in syrup. The salted lemons, apricots and warm spices meld together into a Moroccan-influenced sweet and sour sauce that rocks with the lamb blade chops. If you don’t…
Is A Heritage Turkey Worth It?
Last year we performed a taste test. We ordered two, 12 pound turkeys from our local yuppie-hippie market. Both were raised by Diestel, a large, independent, family-owned turkey ranch in California. By all accounts the birds had a good life and one bad day, living on pasture, free-ranging and eating vegetarian feed and whatever bugs…
Two Ingredient/Two Minute Cherry Ice Cream
Some tastes are summer in your mouth. This is one of them. When the weather gets gloomy, and the great overcast sky of Seattle forms a continuous ombrey of silver-darkening-to-slate with the damp pavement, this is the flavor that recalls sun on your neck and trips to the lake. This is also the recipe that…
Cinnamon Spiced Apple Fritters
My counter was full of good but not perfect apples from the espaliers. Each had a little scab or a bruise or a small wormhole, so they weren’t going into storage in the refrigerator. Over the course of the day the whisper in my brain: “apple fritters…apple fritters….” rang louder and louder until finally I…
Figs with Lemon Ricotta and Mint
This is one of those dishes that, as a caterer, I could charge $3 per piece for and people would happily pay it. Perfectly fresh figs topped with homemade fresh lemon ricotta and sprigs of organic spearmint. Can’t you just hear the cash draining from wallets everywhere? Actually, figs are a beast to work with…
Ginger Breadcrumb Fried Cauliflower with Sriracha Dipping Sauce
Like most everyone with a pulse, I love crispy, high-fat food. I also like a good honest hot oil burn on my forearm, so deep frying should be right up my alley. But because of the hot aerosolized fat that goes everywhere, the 7 or 8 bowls it usually takes and the cup or more…
Putting The Harvest Back In The Harvest Festival
Thanksgiving is my favorite of the celebratory checkpoints in the Fall-to-Winter Holiday Season. Putting aside the historical – ahem – issues regarding the origin story of Thanksgiving, I can really get behind a good celebration of the harvest and a day dedicated to gluttony and loosening one’s pants. This year’s Thanksgiving was a bit different because we…
Kohlrabi Slaw and Baseline Slaw Dressing
And I quote: “Kohlrabi (German turnip) is a low, stout cultivar of the cabbage that will grow almost anywhere.” Now that’s my kind of vegetable. You can keep your hothouse flowering melons and peppers – “will grow almost anywhere” is exactly what I’m looking for in a vegetable, especially if that tenacity is combined with…