After Wednesday Market Dinner

I've got a new post up at the Farmers' Market blog. This one is a list of ingredients and a loose set of instructions. Mostly, it's just evidence of my interior monologue. Here's what it looks like, to entice you...

wed mkt salad

Ultimate Veggie Burgers

It's been a while. I want to point you toward this post on my farmers' market cookbook blog. I've decided to cross-promote here. I've long been in search of the ultimate, bestest (I know that's not a word; indulge me!), doesn't-fall-apart veggie burger. With some tweaks, I think I've found it. With even more tweaks, it will be even better. Personally, I think the burger is a little too sweet, so I'm contemplating taking out the dates and adding some soy sauce in there somewhere. I think it needs more umami. If you've missed some other posts on that cookbook site, you can bookmark this one for sorrel and scape pesto (scapes are gone now!) or check out what I did last year with radishes from Salvaterra's Gardens. Ultimately, the plan is to merge my two blogs (nostalgiabaking.blogspot.com and lvfmcookbook.blogspot.com) into this site. And ultimately, this site will be home to all sorts of useful posts about travel, food, wellness, nutrition, yoga, spirituality, baking, cooking, restaurants, and more. I need to integrate everything I'm doing. It makes no sense to fragment the sites; it all needs to come together.

Stay tuned!

Chicken, Wheatberry and Avocado Salad

Jessica, Laini, Kate: thanks for asking for this recipe. I haven't blogged savory stuff in a while and I'm way overdue. Anyone who encourages me to share is a-ok in my book. And welcome to anyone else who stumbles upon this corner of the world. First, a word about the inspiration. I adapted this recipe from Food and Wine for chicken and bulgur salad with avocado. This is an older recipe that was published in a short collection of super fast recipes, under 30 minutes, that I got because I recently subscribed to the magazine and bought one of its cookbooks. I liked this because a. there was a lovely photo and b. it includes things I typically have in my kitchen or usually buy, so it came together pretty effortlessly. I also figured the bright citrus dressing would feel right for spring, appeal to the boys, and get me in the mood for a summer of farmers' market recipe testing. And it did.

If you want to use bulgur, see the recipe as it was initially written. I used wheatberries because I had about 2 cups of them in my freezer that I defrosted. (They had long been waiting for their assigned duty: I'd been making a dish with broccoli and wheatberries pretty regularly and needed a break). You can also easily veganize this recipe by using either white beans or chickpeas instead of bulgur and/or if you wanted a legume instead of a grain. Food and Wine calls for two 6-ounce chicken breasts with skin on; I don't often find chicken for under a pound at Wegmans when I am buying the organic, skinless and boneless variety, so I used that and changed the amounts accordingly. If it's too much chicken for your liking, cut one of them in half after it cools and set it aside for another use.  I reduced the temperature from the recipe's instructions because I used skinless chicken. Additionally, my husband doesn't like fennel (shame!), not even sliced thinly and tossed in a salad like this, so I don't often buy it or cook with it. Instead, I added cucumber because I had it (an anomaly for my April-May kitchen) and thought the cool-crisp-crunch would suffice. You can certainly omit those ingredients and do it the way it was written; my version can probably benefit from some editing, just like writing.

I just realized this would also be delicious with shrimp. See, I need to stop!

Ingredients:

• 1 lb of boneless chicken breasts (skinless or not), rinsed and patted dry
• 1/4 cup plus 1 T grapeseed oil
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/2 cup shredded basil
• 5 T fresh lemon juice (about juice of one lemon)
• 2-3 large scallions, thinly sliced
• 1-2 avocados, cut into cubes (I used one)
• 1 tomato, roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup cucumber, sliced and quartered

Instructions

1. Prepare your grain of choice by following the directions on the package.
2. Preheat the oven to 450. Coat the chicken with 1 T of grapeseed oil and salt and pepper it generously. Place them on a rimmed baking sheet in the oven for about 20-25 minutes, checking about halfway through and flipping them halfway through. Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Slice thinly on a diagonal, about 1/4 inch thick; because I was feeding children (when am I not?!), I cut the slices into smaller chunks so no one needed a knife.
3. While the chicken does its thing, prep the veggies and other ingredients.
4. Whisk together the orange juice, scallions, lemon and basil with the 1/4 cup of grapeseed oil. (Note: you want something neutral here. Please don't use EVOO because its fruitiness will compete with the citrus). Season the vinaigrette with salt and pepper.
5. In a large bowl, combine the chicken, avocado, wheatberries, tomatoes, and cukes with the vinaigrette. Season again with salt and pepper, and pile onto plates.

Serves 4-6, depending on appetite. In my house, it was shared by me, John, my dad, and the boys, with about 1-2 cups of it left over for lunch. We ate it with homemade multigrain sourdough bread.

If you make this, I'd love to hear how you adapted it, if at all.

Happy Love Day! A Love Letter

Dear Internet, I'm having a great day, and I wanted to put this out there, and keep it in a place where I can refer back to it when days get rough. So I'm writing a love letter to almost everyone and everything I can think of.......

I am not unique in this world to say I love my family. I love my husband more than words can express; we go way back and understand each other better than anyone else. I am grateful that my children are happy and healthy and in a place where they receive excellent care and education. To that end, I love Michaelene Parks, their teacher, and Third Street Alliance. I can't say I always love the challenges my children present sometimes, but I am grateful for what they have taught me about myself thus far, and themselves. And I love my parents: they are the first experience we have with love, and damn, they gave me and my sister and good one. My mother had the biggest heart of anyone I've ever met.

Look what happened, by accident--or not! Heart pancake. 

I love all the people who are, as I like to say, "on my team:" those dear souls whose experiences right now are all dovetailing into one big spiritual soup of change. I think of my sister, whose own path so closely aligns with my own--we are truly each other's biggest cheerleaders right now, I think. I'm grateful she has found an awesome job where her big boss applesauce buys the staffers a Vitamix and tells everyone to not eat lunch at their desk. (Go HuffPost!) I'm endlessly grateful toward my friend Jessica, who is a shining beacon of light and love. Thanks for clearing the pathways and for sharing your gifts with all of us. (Please buy one of her awesome vibration-raising t-shirts.)  I have gratitude toward every single yoga teacher I've ever taken a class with, past and present; you've all informed me, shaped me, helped me, challenged me, encouraged me, laughed with me. We are on this path together, people.

I love my work, even as the definition of "work" is shifting. It all involves food and writing and travel in some regard. I love the time I have spent as a travel writer with Frommers. I suspect it's not totally over yet, but it's shifting for now. I love the people. I am so grateful for those opportunities. I learned today that someone in my new "work" (Beth) knows someone from my old "work" (Stephen). Love those synchronicities! I cherish the encounters, the people I continue to meet as a result of following food love. To that end, I love all of the hilarious people at the Cosmic Cup for the community building that place creates, and the opportunities it provides. I love Warm Sugar and Artisan's Kitchen Project--a new place that's selling my baked goods. I love the food writers I've met in the past year, too. I can't believe the generosity of spirit of those who have offered their advice and insights and help. It seems that the culinary community really understands karma. Or maybe because there is just so much love when it comes to good food, that the professional world of food is necessarily, happily, not like most other working communities. Whatever the case is, I'll take it.

cosmic crunch

I am grateful and dearly love all of my creative friends who inspire me and challenge me and collaborate with me and provide opportunities for me to stretch my writing and cooking muscles--and photo taking muscles, too. (It's a process.)

I love my doctors and healers and all those who look after my health and that of so many others. I love my holistic, crazy-smart, nutritionally-savvy chiropractor and his entire staff (yay Dr. Smith); I love my primary doc and my ob-gyn for being so proactive and full of common sense. I love my pediatrician because he helped center me when I first met him and was crying in his office, while pregnant, just weeks after my mother passed away. The compassion he exhibited was more than I expected and just what was needed. We looked no further. I love the fact that his office calls our house the morning after one of our kids is there for a visit, to check up on how Miles or Desmond is feeling.

I am grateful toward my friends, and yes, even grateful for Facebook, because it gives me such small glimpses into the very busy and interesting lives of very old friends from high school (even when it means there's a Facebook fast!), whether that's someone's art work, someone's dinner, something funny someone's child said, or just a random observation or memory. I am grateful that it shows me how similar we all are, at the end of the day, despite whatever has come between us--time, space, memories, silly disputes, or what have you. I am grateful for the serendipity it has permitted in terms of our ability to connect with people we don't quite know well. I am grateful for what social media has brought me in terms of work, community building opportunities, and the ability to share things that I love, and talk about them. What's the point of it all if you can't share?

Speaking of social media, it's enabling me to hear about the progress of pregnancies right now, of friends who are near and far. I'm so grateful. Jim and Lisa, you will be awesome parents. There is going to be a ton of laughter in your new place in Sleepy Hollow/Tarrytown/literary New York State scary-ville. I can't wait to visit you with cupcakes and cookies and our boys and see how your little girl is experiencing the world. I love that John and I will be able to share our experiences with twin parenting with such dear friends, Jim and Kate, who are facing the arrival of twins in a couple of months. It's a huge gift, sharing the ups and downs of twin pregnancies and twin raising. We don't go through tough times for nothing. If we can't help each other, lean on each other, laugh about stuff and cry about stuff, then what's the point?

Finally, I love Easton. I love the people. I love the architecture. I am evangelical about the Farmers' Market. But if you know me, you know this already, and it's well-expressed elsewhere.

I know there is much more I am missing, forgetting. But  you know I love you, so it's all good, right?

Love, Carrie

PS: Did you get my Simpsons reference in the headline?

Veggie Crock Pot Stock

Say it three times fast: crockpotstock crockpotstock crockpotstock. It's a tongue twister, for sure.

What are you doing with your vegetable food scraps? You know, the stalky parts of broccoli when you want the florets (or, as I used to call them with my sister, the tree tops), the stems of kale or Swiss chard when you are chopping it finely, the peels of your potatoes, the core of the cabbage head? The leafy parts of celery? You may be composting them, or just pitching them, or running them through the disposal. How about giving those castaways new life as part of a very hands-off vegetable stock?

I stopped buying store-bought stock, even the organic stuff, a while ago, in part because of some really common sense thing Michael Ruhlman said about how making soup with water instead of store-bought stock (assuming nothing homemade is handy) means that you are basically creating your own flavorful stock as you go. It made so much sense I felt like a sucker for buying low sodium organic chicken and veggie stock when I didn't have my own on hand. But stock rocks, and the flavor ante is seriously upped by using it. And it's not wasteful. These ingredients give us so much love when we prep them for a meal, why shouldn't we love them back and extend their lives?

Here's what you do. Start a quart-size freezer bag with veggie scraps tonight, as you prepare dinner. Label the bag's content with a Sharpie and masking tape. Mine started off with "mushroom stems" and ended up with much more than that crammed into the bag. When you have reached critical mass—or it seems time to do a freezer clean out, as it was in my house—it's time to make vegetable stock in your slow cooker.

I had two bags' worth of scraps of mushrooms, cabbage, kale, broccoli, and more. I added some amazing Turkish bay leaves I bought from Penzey's, Kosher salt, peppercorns, and a roughly quartered onion, and water. And then I let it do its thing on low for 8 hours, starting at the inopportune dinner hour. Honest to God, the smell woke me up in the middle of the night, and I realized I should turn it off. (Maybe that's weird to be so in tune with one's kitchen. Whatever, I'll take it.)  I shut off the machine and let the earthenware insert sit for a couple hours (I get up early) overnight and then put it away in the morning.

Crock pot, chock full of veggie goodness. 

Here's the loose recipe, but use whatever you regularly cook with and it'll be good. A vegetable stock comes in all kinds of handy, and if you tend to work with lots of the same vegetables in your cooking, using the stock will naturally complement whatever soup, stew, risotto, etc. that you regularly make. My one word of caution here is that you don't overdo it on mushroom, unless you are after an umami-rich stock, because mushrooms tend to usurp other flavors. They are both singular and dominant.

Ingredients for Homemade Veggie Crock Pot Stock

• 1-2 Tbsp. olive oil
• 4-5 cups of frozen veggie scraps
• 6-8 cups water
• 2 Tbsp. peppercorns
• 2-3 good pinches of Kosher salt
• 2-3 bay leaves
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 1 medium onion, quartered
• Other elements such as potatoes peels, a chopped carrot, and celery rib or two can be added; just use what's on hand and don't overthink it

1. Drizzle the oil over the bottom of your slow cooker. Add all the veggies in no particular order, frozen. Add 6-8 cups of water, depending on your cooker's size and heft and cut of your veggies; my cooker can take 6 quarts. Remember, the veggies will give off some water as they slowly heat up.

2. Turn the cooker to the low setting and let it go for 8-10 hours. I suspect you may even be able to let it go for 12. You may find this is a useful weekend activity, if you get up early and will be around for most of the day or back in time to turn it off. Or maybe you have a machine you can program to turn off; I don't. (Mine's pretty utilitarian.) You may also find this a great thing to do right before bed; turn it on and go to sleep and wake up to a nice batch of stock.

3. You'll know it's ready by the way your house smells. Trust me on this. Turn off the pot, and let it sit for a while to cool before straining out the veggies and transferring the liquid gold to several freezer-safe containers.

veggie stock

Note: I used 8 cups of water and it yielded 12 cups of stock, which are now hanging out in my freezer, waiting for their next assignment.

Inadvertent thanks and inspiration go to my friend Stacey Chevalier Kerr, who years ago told me about how she makes chicken stock in her crock pot and Tamar Adler's book An Everlasting Meal, which I'm currently reading. Adler's writing is spare, beautiful and owes a big ole happy debt to M.F.K. Fisher. She doesn't (as of yet!) specifically discuss making crock pot stock, but her mission is to show you how to economize with your ingredients, especially if they are beautiful, fresh, and organic. Seriously. You don't want stock made with potato peels from conventional potatoes. My farmer friend Eric of Blue Blaze told me they use rat poison in conventional farming to keep away those critters.

Speaking of which, I can't imagine how much fun this is going to be in the summer, with the leftovers of summer produce. It'll be a fight between the Vitamix and the crock pot to see who gets the castaways in June.

Lehigh Valley Beer Week

Hey you! Like beer? Did you know about Lehigh Valley Beer Week? It's the first, but certainly not going to be the last. We are not New York or Philly, but we do have a great beer culture here and it's growing every year. Weyerbacher just busted out of its seams and expanded, Easton has a new brew pub called Two Rivers Brewing Company with fabulous food in an historic space, and Allentown is getting another brewery in the next year or so. On top of that, we've got restaurants such as Porters' Pub, The Trapp Door, the Mint, Black and Blue, Pearly Bakers', Maxim's 22, Allentown and Bethlehem Brew Works,  Spinnerstown Hotel, and more, more more, all committed to excellent food and fine, fine beers (and other libations).

I'm wishing I had endless cash, endless babysitters, and endless time to take part in all of these activities, which run the gamut from tastings and pairings to special menus and rare releases. The festivities kick off on Monday with a ribbon cutting at Allentown Brew Works with Easton and Bethlehem mayors Panto and Callahan, respectively. Sample from the keg tapping of LVBW1, the winner of the "Brewer for a Day" competition." Zip back over to Easton for what promises to be a fantastic tasting dinner at nascent Two Rivers Brewing Company. On Tuesday, Kelly-Jo is reprising some old favorites from her days at the Weyerbacher pub, and the restaurant is hosting a trivia night. Meet the brewer of Left Hand at Keystone Pub in Whitehall on Wednesday, and on Valentine's day, enjoy beer-themed dinners at Trapp Door, Allentown and Bethlehem Brew Works, Sagra Bistro, and more.  All week long, tap takeover madness will ensue: think Brew Works at Porters', Weyerbacher at P.J. Whelihan, and Stoudts at Bethlehem Brew Works, for starters.

In addition to wishing that I had more time and money and a second stomach, perhaps, I'm also wishing people in the Lehigh Valley would learn that it's Porters' Pub. It's plural possessive. There are three Porter brothers. Sorry. It's just epidemic, and these things make me nuts.

And with that, slainte!

Skinny Elvis Smoothie

The best way to start this post is with a simple declarative sentence: I got a Vitamix for Christmas. I was hoping for one, but honestly, I didn't dream past the entry level one, given the expense. Instead, I got a more souped-up one, with programmed settings and a large, square-ish container and its very own setting for cleaning. Yeah. Nuts. John tends to go overboard at Christmas, in a big way. It's kind of his thing.

I didn't open it until later in the day on Christmas, because I was in disbelief and felt like it was too much. And even though I'd seen countless demonstrations at Wegmans and elsewhere, I was admittedly a little intimidated.  I eventually got over it. It comes with a demo DVD that Michael Voltaggio rather flatly narrates. (Bonus: it's made in Cleveland. And I love Cleveland.)

So one day at lunchtime, I made this smoothie for my kids. It couldn't be easier. I call it a Skinny Elvis because it's got the King's favorite foods in it, but there's no bacon involved. If you are a member of the school of thought that believes everything is better with bacon, you could add a couple of slices of cooked bacon. If you're feeling crazy bacon love, the rendered fat, too.

skinny elvis smoothie

And yeah, I know I'm late for his birthday, but better late than never. I actually made this last week, but I digress....

Ingredients

1 container Organic Stonyfield Chocolate Underground yogurt

1 banana

2-3 Tbsp. peanut butter

2-3 Tbsp. honey (you may omit this if you are using regular peanut butter; I added it because I was using peanut butter we'd made strictly from peanuts, right in the Vitamix.)

1 cup of ice

If you have a Vitamix you likely know you're supposed to put the softer stuff on the bottom first.

Directions:

Combine all, and blend until you've reached the desired consistency. If the machine gives you a hard time and looks like it's struggling, stop it, and add 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup water. I've found with yogurt-based smoothies, you sometimes need a little bit of water, depending on how hard or soft (i.e. frozen or fresh) your fruits and veggies are.

Yield: 1 large smoothie, perfect for one hungry person to split between two people.  I didn't measure it, but you can see by the photo that it filled two smaller glasses.

I imagine if you don't have the chocolate yogurt, you could approximate this with the same amount (six ounces) of plain or vanilla yogurt, and then add a couple of tablespoons of cocoa powder.

Happy blending!

6 Food Resolutions (a.k.a. Intentions) for 2013

You can argue semantics about resolutions vs. plans, goals, or what have you. Making a resolutions seems to have more to do with the cessation of something—smoking, drinking, eating sugar—rather than the initiation or start of something. Last year I covered my take on the language issues and set forth my food resolutions. And of course, they were more than food resolutions—they were life-altering resolutions. For 2013, I'm just calling them intentions, because that's what they are. I had a very powerful experience last year when I did this. Most of them happened, and many of them in ways I could not have predicted. Here's one of them: puff pastry.

Apple turnovers, part of my kitchen to-do list. 

It was a year of synchronicities. Now, here's the harder part: continuing the momentum needed to make things happen. And just trusting it will.

First and foremost, though, I want to express my gratitude toward the various people I've come in contact with in the past year whose guidance and friendship have confirmed that I'm on the right path—there are too many of you to name, but you know who you are. I started writing a cookbook, got derailed when I started testing recipes for someone else's cookbook (thanks, Dave!), and then we went away and the holidays came. I met some amazing people in the Lehigh Valley who are doing beautiful work with food, and some of those relationships continue to be rewarding (hello, the teams at Molinari's and Two Rivers, among others). And toward the end of the year, capping it off, I was asked to serve as a judge at Lehigh Valley Harvest, which I blogged about. It was a delicious honor!

Fitting with the New Year's theme, Tuesday morning's yoga class was about shutting off the negative self-talk, and instead, telling yourself you can do it, that you are perfectly good enough to do what you need to do. I don't want to get too terribly introspective here, but in the past couple of years, the change in self-identification has brought with it lots of fun times but also its fair share of doubt and inertia. It's also brought about the need for incredible, unwavering focus, which is often challenging for numerous reasons (have you met my boys?).

This year, I'm admittedly having a little bit harder time with January and this list. The stakes are higher; I suddenly have time on my hands that I didn't have before, and holes in my income I didn't have before, to match. No one seems to know what will happen to Frommers.com; the last bit of the laid-off web editors are now all officially laid off, as of December 31. It's bittersweet. I hope to continue to do work with them in a new, Google-owned incarnation, but nothing is clear at the moment.

Ok......enough preamble. Here we go!

1. Write a formal proposal for my Lehigh Valley Farmers' Cookbook. It ain't going nowhere without that.

2. Go (with proposal) to the IACP conference in San Francisco. Self-publishing is likely the end result, and not necessarily a bad one, but I want to put it out there before self-publishing is confirmed.

3. Continue to explore cuisines and dishes I haven't done much with (hello, curry!), and cook with one unfamiliar item or cuisine every other week. This was on last year's list, but it was fun and I want it to continue.

4. Integrate all three of my sites: this one, the Lehigh Valley Farmers Market site, and Nostalgia Baking. It's all me, but I don't know how to integrate these, technically speaking; I'd need development and design help for certain.  I don't know which is the "brand"? (I'm kind of laughing at the word.) Maybe it's just my namesake site, which seems most logical.

5.  Start producing more of my own content: i.e., take those integrated projects and aspects of my work and do more of my own blogging, become something resembling my own media outlet. I'm not going to stress and worry about how to find readers, but there won't be readers unless there is regular content.

6. Find new outlets for writing about food and travel.

I'm going to stop at six, because this list is smaller but more difficult than last year's. These need to be manageable tasks. I'm just going to hope that I can work toward it and that the right people will appear (and the right circumstances will emerge), in order to facilitate these big changes.

There are other intentions I want to set, mostly of a spiritual nature, but I won't go into that here. Those things, I'm just going to let them evolve on and off the mat. They make all of this possible.

How about you? Do you have any big plans, goals, intentions, resolutions, for 2013? Don't underestimate the power of a clean slate. It's harder to be optimistic, so much easier to be cynical. Anything is possible, always.

Lehigh Valley Harvest: A Celebration of Local and Sustainable

This past Sunday, I had the honor to serve as one of the three judges for Lehigh Valley Harvest, the annual Buy Fresh Buy Local event, which was held at the Lutron headquarters is Coopersburg. Admittedly, a corporate headquarters initially seemed like a strange location for the event but Lutron was the presenting patron and its headquarters is situated along a winding country road. I half-expected a pumpkin patch to pop up somewhere along the way. But I digress. I arrived a few minutes before noon so I could get my clipboard and start wandering around in search of the best dishes. The set-up encompassed two floors of one of Lutron's buildings. Where to start? So much deliciousness, so little time. The voting process required me to rate the dishes from a dozen or so restaurants on a scale of 1 to 5 using the following criteria: creativity, taste, presentation, and use of local foods. In some cases this was a little tricky, because some restaurants offered more than one item to sample and judge, so one had to average the experience. Before I get into the details and tell you my favorites, I'll tell you who won what, because you wanna know, right?

First prize went to Glasbern Inn, with its take on a German staple: kielbasa and sauerkraut. In the hands of chef Yianni Arhontoulis and sous chef Joseph Hammer, this means housemade kielbasa, cippolini aigre-doux, pumpernickel crumble, house fermented sauerkraut. The first two components were sourced right from the Glasbern and the latter two from 14-Acre Farm in Jim Thorpe. For top honors, chefs take home $100 and the trophy; for the record, this is the Glasbern's second straight win. It's hard to get more local than a restaurant's own farm. I enjoyed this; it was a great balance of flavors and there wasn't too much happening to distract you from what it was, at its core—pig and cabbage. Leaving out something pumpernickel would have been sacrilege. I might have preferred a pumpernickel crostini to better keep the concept together, and I mean that literally.

The 2nd place prize went to Bolete, with its hand-held spin on chicken and biscuits. Picture homemade biscuits with a chicken croquette, mustard gravy, red mustard greens, and housemade bread and butter pickles. The provenance of ingredients? Buttermilk from Keepsake Farm, chicken from Happy Farm, greens from Liberty Gardens, pickles courtesy of Teprovich Farms. Perhaps owners Lee Chizmar and Erin Shea need someone to drop off a 40-pound sack of local flour at their Bethlehem restaurant and they should be able to match Glasbern ingredient-for-ingredient next year. (If it were that easy!) This felt like a very apt combination for a Sunday afternoon; it was like a deconstructed, gussied up brunch item. I just wish that my sample hadn't been ice cold; I know the incorrect temperature inhibited my sensory experience of the dish. I could taste its potential greatness lurking in the chemical change that heat brings.

Finally, 3rd place (and the people's choice award) went to Curious Goods at the Bake Oven Inn, Germansville, which gets top honors in my book for having such a great name that makes you, well, curious. Chef Mark Muszynski and general manager wife Catherine were on hand, and they put together something that encompassed breakfast, lunch, dinner all rolled into one. Imagine a pumpkin bread french toast topped with smoked duck and apple ragu, with a drizzle made from Fegley's Devious Pumpkin Ale—and a little bit of brown sugar. The pumpkins came from Just Kiddin' Around Farm (Germansville), duck from Pekin' Paradise (Hamburg), and apples from County Line Orchard. It was hearty and filling, even in a sample. If you ate it first, you might not have been able to eat another thing. I'm not kidding.

Maybe it's the encroaching fall weather, or maybe it's my constantly refining palate, but I found myself most enjoying the dishes that were either comfort-based and somewhat hearty, or more complex and surprising. I realize this may seem to contradict itself, but please bear with me. I was surprised by the subtle tang of pumpkin ale in the mousse adorning the Old Heathen brownies that Leaf was serving. Delicate slices of cucumber were spritzed with German white wine and nestled against a pumpkin wasabi mousse resting in a sweet potato chip served by Zach Pelliccio from Flow in Jim Thorpe. The dish contained its fair share of locally sourced ingredients, and the wasabi revealed itself a few second later without completely clearing your sinuses. I enjoyed the complexity at work here; creating layers like that requires some skills. And if you know me, you know I love Molinari's, so it should come as no surprise to read me saying that the chicken liver crostini was straightforward and flavorful, but I was surprised that chef Mike Joyce and his sous Erik Hoffman held back with just one offering. I will forgive them, though: it's the restaurant's first year in operation and first appearance at the festival. There's always next year. Also, they surprised on another level: they came with their own Frank Sinatra soundtrack. Naturally.

At the other end of the spectrum, you might find the outstanding "Farewell to Summer" corn and roasted tomato soup with barley from Cafe Santosha. This soup killed it; it was hot, delicious, post-equinox food to help ease your dosha into the next season. People, I wanted to pour some of this into quart containers and stick it in my freezer so I could transcend the snow on the ground and eat this in January. This soup typified late summer, using up the last gasps of tomatoes, corn and so forth. It wouldn't make sense in August. The crostini it was served with was just a bonus. My experience also shows why Cafe Santosha has a serious reputation as a serious purveyor of seriously amazing soup. Yeah, I just repeated myself, but that's for emphasis. See how good that looks?!?!

While we are talking about soup, the south Indian sweet potato curry soup from Honey Underground/Balasia/Wendy Landiak was really well balanced; it was sweet with just enough heat.

What else caught my attention? I didn't have much time to explore the special rooms devoted to cheese and apples. Someone please knock out a wall and let us eat both at the same time next year with pairings; and while we're at it, let's include pears, too. With the veggie room, too, this has the making of a full-fledged crudite-themed celebration. I was also happy to see local wineries on hand, too. I had to laugh when someone from Weyerbacher (probably a sales rep, they've seemingly got tons of 'em now) asked me, "Are you familiar with our beers?" Why, yes. If I had a link to the Lehigh Valley Style story I wrote in fall 2010 about beer in the Valley I could drop it in here. But perhaps more significantly, the thought of Imperial Pumpkin Ale helped get me through the very difficult latter part of my pregnancy, four years ago.

What these foods have in common, whether we're talking about kielbasa or soup or brownies or chicken and biscuits or pumpkin wasabi mousse, is a sense of surprise and authenticity. When you call a soup a "farewell to summer," it better damned well taste like it. And if you're going to pair pumpkin and wasabi, you better know what you're doing with it. And beer in baking? Well, chocolate and stout is obvious, but the puff of pumpkin mousse on top of the brownie was a smart pairing, but a surprise because you could only taste the beer at the end—it was an aftertaste but certainly not an afterthought. And on and on and on.

We have food purveyors here in the Lehigh Valley who respect ingredients and try to the best possible culinary job with them. And luckily, those ingredients just happen to be ones you can buy fresh and buy locally.

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

snickerdoodle cupcake

It's almost fall, and so that means boots, jeans, and sweatah-weathah. It also means all things cinnamon, apple, pumpkin, nutmeg, clove, cardamom, and chai. It means that soup, stew and homemade bread are also on the way, the latter thanks to a friend who generously gave me some of her sourdough starter (it made it through the power outage, thanks to another friend who kept it refrigerated). It also means you need to make these cupcakes because it's cold and raining this week. It's a pretty straightforward recipe, adapted from Martha Stewart. The original yield called for more than 2 dozen and I only needed 12, so I cut it in half--or thereabouts.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup cake flour
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon (plus more for dusting)
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 2/3 cup  milk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 and line 12-cup muffin tin with liners.

Cream the sugar and butter together in the bowl of an electric mixer until color has lightened.

Add egg, one at a time, beating well to combine. Add vanilla; mix until just combined

In a separate, medium-sized bowl, sift together all the dry ingredients (flours through cinnamon).

Add flour mix, alternating with milk, beginning and ending with the flour.

Use a 1/4 cup ice cream scoop to fill the tins 3/4 of the way full; any more and these babies will overflow.

Bake for 18-20 minutes, remove from oven, and let them cook for about 10 minutes before removing from pan.

Now, Martha's version calls for these gorgeous looking swirls of seven-minute frosting, but my hunch was that all that meringue-like egg would get crunchy fast. Please, by all means use that frosting if you want; I had to take into account shelf life of a couple of days and you may be serving these for a crowd, immediately. I just used my own standard buttercream recipe, which includes one stick of unsalted butter, more confectioner's sugar than you think you need (about 6-8 ounces, sifted), 2 tsp. or so vanilla extract, and a few tablespoons of milk to keep the consistency fluffy and smooth. The cinnamon sugar dusting on top is essential to achieve that full-fledged snickerdoodle effect: just combine a small about of both in a small bow and use your judgment about how sugary or cinnamony you like it. We tend to err on the side of cinnamon in this house.

Summer Harvest: Thinking Like M.F.K. Fisher

buttermilk stone fruit cake

I described the dinner I was making tonight for friends as a "summer hodgepodge." And indeed, it's true. I'm looking at cucumbers from our community garden, tossed with a bit of white wine vinegar and dressed simply with salt and pepper, along with some chopped burnet and a bit of dill; a smidge goes a long way. (I've fallen in love with dill after long eschewing it; most people overdo dill and a gentle hand really changes the whole flavor profile.) I'm looking at some excellent sausage from Giacomo's down the street, a broccoli gribiche courtesy of Heidi Swanson (this woman can do no wrong) and homemade black bean veggie burgers a la Mark Bittman. (The recipe appears in How to Cook Everything in a slightly different iteration; I'm doing an adaptation of both). Market cilantro, broccoli, potatoes, dill, and then some will fill our bellies. We'll finish it up with my first peach crumb pie of the season, with the very last of the super ripe peaches I got from Frecon Farms last Saturday at the market. They sold me an enormous box of seconds--I want to say it was half a bushel--for $15. Some of them were hit by hail. Most of them were better than fine.

The moral of the story: When you have a fridge full of fresh produce, and a finite number of days before it goes bad, you must re-think your whole approach to cooking. The menu planning starts AFTER you return from the farmers market. I rarely bring a list. Our CSA covers the bulk of it, but I also pick up whatever looks lovely, in addition to staples such as eggs and goat cheese and such. It's not easy to do this—it takes some re-engineering of one's mindset. You must—and should—respond on a whim to the beautiful things you see in the market, even if you're not sure about what you'll do with it when you get it home if you're not eating it raw. You must trust that you will be able to do something worthy with the produce. This week I bought a trio of beans from Salvaterra's Gardens, which included purple, yellow wax beans, and something called dragon tongue beans. I envisioned a bean salad of some sort, doused with a bit of olive oil. I know that people are changing and that dynamics of farmers market shopping is changing because I overheard two middle-aged women asking about yellow tomatoes (what do they taste like? Is this ripe? Are you sure?) at Beechwood's stall, and another woman in line in front of me who was looking at the string bean array at Salvaterra's and saying "I don't know about those purple ones," and I said, "when you steam them they turn back green, and they taste about the same." And she said, "My husband does not like to try new things." So sad! Think of the hues, the nuances, the differences of taste that you miss when you don't open your mind to what's available from Mother Nature's bounty. It's a small tragedy, but for every woman who buys those things (or man) and then cooks them simply for the skeptics and the converted, let's hope it results in a slightly opened mind. I'll call it a small victory for the food wars. These encounters are so humbling, because it means people are curious and want to know. They remind me that not everyone knows what I know (or what my friends know), and this reminds me that there's important work to be done. It means that the market is now serving more than just the converted. The fact that they're at the market at all is a coup for the farmers and the community they serve. If they grow food and no one eats it, that's a bigger tragedy.

This is what I miss in the middle of winter, no matter how frantic sometimes things get around the house when we get back from the market, scrambling to figure out where to put everything and what needs to get rotated up from the basement fridge (or rotated down), with the boys tugging at me (or hitting each other with trains) or the oven beeper going or something happening. On a good week I can take inventory Friday night; it's a good week when the veggie drawer is empty Saturday morning, ready to receive more goodies. It's liberating because it means you're eating the way your ancestors ate, you're eating the way you should be eating, and you're eating a way that makes you feel better, sleep better, play better and work better. No preservatives, no fillers, no strange ingredients. Unadulturated food.

Bagels, Part Deux

So, quite some time ago, I stopped uploading photos into my laptop. My web site got away from me. I'm always amazed by people who make dinner and then instantly blog it or put a photo up and/or put the recipe and/or link to it. Honestly, I'm trying to clean up dinner and get kids in bed and get laundry in or out and generally trying to maintain my sanity. And then do more work that's likely to be due tomorrow. Although I would love to do all of that, I can't seem to. Now, all of that aside—here we are. School's out (for the summer, maybe forever), and I'm trying to get caught up on my overdue posting. You may, in the coming days, find something so untimely as a St. Patty's Day post about green mac and cheese. You may even, gulp, see a photo of a chocolate cookie in the shape of a heart, half-dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with festive sprinkles. Sorry, people.

everything bagels

everything close up

In the meantime, here are some glamor shots of the everything bagels I made in early April.

Crazy Zucchini Harvest: Make Fritters!

IMG_2892

My amazing friend C, who just had a baby, tends to her community garden plot in between feedings. She was there over the weekend and there was only one flower that was bearing fruit. Today she returned and was greeted with a small army of baseball-bat sized zucchini. Ok, I exaggerate, but only slightly. She thought she'd planted seeds for half yellow squash (her preference) and half zucchini, but alas! alack! no such luck.

We lined them up and weighed them. The biggest clocked in at 4 pounds, 11 ounces.

In case you're like us--curious, hungry, and inventive, but man-that's-a-lotta-zucchini--here are some links to some good zucchini recipes, and suggestions for what to do.

Zucchini bread: Tried and true. Freeze a bunch. You'll be glad you did. My favorite recipe comes from  King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, and involves white whole wheat flour, cinnamon, and is really moist.

Grilled, roasted, sauteed. Salt and pepper. Olive oil. You don't need much else.

Turn them into ribbons and saute with herbs.

Eat them raw with salt and pepper.

Slice them thinly and top them on homemade flatbread pizzas.

Zucchini pie. Here's one.

Zucchini Oven Chips, from Cooking Light. I've always wanted to make these. Perhaps this is the year; some are large enough that they'll be more like discs than chips but who cares?

Last summer, with all the swiss chard that kept giving itself up for our enjoyment, I made a lot of reverse frittatas, inspired by a Mark Bittman column. I've been calling it the less egg, more veg frittata. The photo you see here also includes local purple potatoes from last summer.

And finally, my favorite delicious thing to do with zucchini is to make Nigella Lawson's zucchini, mint, and feta fritters. Here's the recipe, from NPR's site. Here's the basic text of it. The recipe is from her book Forever Summer. It yields about two dozen, and it's great as is with salad for dinner, or makes a good summer lunch, too.

* 4 zucchini (approx. 1 pounds)

* 5-6 scallions, finely chopped

* 9 ounces feta cheese

* small bunch fresh parsley, chopped

* small bunch fresh mint, chopped, plus extra to sprinkle over at the end

* 1 tablespoon dried mint

* 1 teaspoon paprika

* scant 1 cup all-purpose flour

* salt and pepper

* 3 eggs, beaten

* olive oil for frying

* 3-4 limes

Coarsely grate the zucchini with either the grating blade in the food processor or by hand. Spread the little shards out on a tea towel and leave for about 20 minutes to get rid of any excess wetness.

Put the chopped scallions in a bowl and crumble in the feta. Stir in the chopped parsley and mint, along with the dried mint and paprika. Add the flour and season well with salt and pepper. Gradually add the beaten egg and mix thoroughly before stirring in the drained, grated zucchini. Don't be alarmed by the unflowing straggly lumpiness of this batter; it's meant to be this way.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a large frying pan and drop heaped dessertspoons of the moisture into the hot oil, flattening the little cakes down the back of the spoon as you go. Cook these little patties for about 2 minutes each side until golden, and then transfer to a couple of waiting plates.

Chop up the limes and tumble them about the edges of the plates. Sprinkle over a little more chopped mint and eat them just as they are, spritzed with lime juice as you go.

And finally, here's the zucchini haul. Note the Croc, carefully positioned, to provide perspective.

IMG_5298

Homemade Granola Bars

I’ve been busy cooking and baking fun things this semester and regret that I have not put more of those items up on our blog. However, I’ve been too busy reading papers. One thing I’ve been making a lot of lately is homemade granola bars. John got me a dehydrator for Christmas and I’ve used it for some things; dried fruits have been on the brain. This recipe is one I adapted from King Arthur Flour online. Granola bars are one of those mass-produced items that are really easy to make on your own, and immensely more satisfying because you can customize them to your liking. For example, the original recipe called for or at least suggested coconut, which I abhor (texture issues). You can do almost whatever you like. I’ve done dried cranberries, cherries, blueberries (hard to find but delicious), mini chocolate chips, almonds, walnuts, white sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, and the like. What’s even better is that everyone, including the boys, likes them. I must say a few words about the ingredients. Many granola bar recipes I tried before changing this one and adapting it to my liking contained melted butter whisked together with brown sugar as the sweetening/binding/wet ingredients. I tried it, and it was way too sweet for me. I could not really taste the other ingredients. On a lark, I’d gotten some blue agave nectar when I was at Trader Joe’s (it’s a vegan choice, and although I’m not, I thought I’d mention it for those who are). It has a longer shelf life than honey and does not crystallize like honey does, although you can use it much in the same way. It also has a low glycemic index, so it does not give you a sugar spike like regular granulated sugar would. But you can feel free to use some combination of honey and the other two sweeteners, or even try melted butter (I would suggest about 1/4 cup, or half a stick, for starters). I’ve also used golden syrup, maple syrup (good for fall granola bars, I think), and light corn syrup in a pinch. However, if you can find the blue agave, and the brown rice syrup (I can imagine the latter being delicious on vanilla ice cream) in the natural/organic sections of your supermarket or elsewhere you may indeed find that you have a new fun thing to play with in the kitchen. Blue agave is good on pancakes, french toast, and agave is good in tea and iced tea and more. Ok, on with the recipe!

It's time for your close-up, homemade granola bars

Homemade Granola Bars

Yield: About 16-20, depending on how big you cut them

1 2/3 cup quick rolled oats

1/3 cup whole wheat flour or white whole wheat flour

1/3 cup brown rice syrup

1/4 to 1/3 cup organic raw agave nectar (Trader Joe’s sells one for a mere $2.99!)

1/2 tsp. salt (Note: If you used salted nuts, omit salt here)

1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon, optional (I also tried it with ground ginger or nutmeg; equally good)

2 to 3 cups mix of dried fruits and nuts (I commonly used cranberries, blueberries, almonds, walnuts and sunflower seeds, but think of raisins, prunes, apricots, coconut, pecans–the sky’s the limit.)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325. Line a 9 x 13 inch pan with parchment; grease or spray the parchment for easy cutting and removal.
2. Stir together all the dry ingredients, including the fruit and nuts.
3. Add the wet, syrupy sweet ingredients and stir carefully to coat everything; use a wide plastic spatula.
4. Spread it out in the pan, patting it down gently so that it is evenly distributed. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, possibly longer depending on your oven, until it is golden brown around the edges.
5. Remove it from the oven and loosen the edges. Cool for at least five minutes but not too much longer.
6. Cut the bars while they’re still warm, in the pan, then remove, carefully, using the overhanging parchment, and cool completely on a wire rack.

Note: These will keep covered, in an airtight container, for up to a week. However, they won’t last that long, trust me. If you can’t get them cut evenly, don’t fret. Broken up granola is good with yogurt, ice cream, fruit, or by itself in your greedy hands.

Why I Live Here

I'm doing some work with a friend on her excellent web site, Laini's Little Pocket Guide, a natural online outgrowth of a great, smart, insightful pocket guide she's published to both Easton and Bethlehem. The world needs more fresh, original voices. Anyway, one of the first things she wrote after the site went live a couple of weeks ago was something called "Why I Live Here," and so, because I'm going to work as online editor for her site, I suggested I write one, too. It took me a matter of minutes. I can't remember the last time I wrote so quickly and with such conviction. What do you think? Why do you live where you do? After a while, it moves beyond proximity to your job, especially if you are purposeful about it and have bought a home.