Autumn!

Autumn is steadily rolling into Seattle. The way it happens here is that we're fooled into thinking that it's still summer, usually into the beginning of October. The past couple of weeks have given us temperatures between 65 and 85 degrees and it is lovely.

This week, we were graced with weather ranging from temperate and lovely

to foggy and oddly warm

 

That is all well and good. We're used to that here. It's what we do. Yesterday, it was gorgeous, sunny and warm. Le Boyfriend and I woke up around 6:30 this morning (Saturday sacrilege!) and it was pouring down rain. YES!

While he had plans with the guys to bid farewell to their weekly nerdiness with remote-controlled rock crawler trucks, I had nothing to do but laundry. A lot of laundry. You see, I had no closets at my old place and now I have two closets and that means that I should hang things up and I really don't want to hang things up that have been sitting around in bags for the last 6 weeks, so laundry was a necessity.

Aside from doing laundry, I figured that eating dinner wouldn't be a bad idea. Before heading out for his nerdfest, Nick took me to see the new grocery store that opened two blocks from Terabithia. We'd gone to Metropolitan Market last night, as they seemed to be the only place that said "Why yes! We can help you with that!" when I called around in search of steel cut oats to make for breakfast. They were also very nice and the produce was gorgeous and I spent a very pretty penny there on basics, but I forgot to go back outside and grab one of the acorn squash I'd been eyeing. I was hoping QFC would come through, but especially with a new store, it's always kind of hard to tell if things will be available. Pulling into the parking garage, we were assailed by some wretched music being blared from tinny loudpseakers. Gross. STOP THAT, please! As if the denizens of my slightly hoity-toity neighborhood weren't confused enough by a parking garage with slippery wet floors, there was No Doubt screeching out at them. Passing a couple of stalls, we noticed The Most Ridiculous Thing Ever: valet parking. Valet parking at a grocery store. Cripes, man. Isn't that reaching just a BIT? I mean, maybe if you hasn't designed your parking garage like one of those little handheld mazes that you get in Cracker Jack boxes, people might not need someone else to park their car in a 3"x3" parking spot, yeah? YEAH. Jerks.

Anyway. Squash. I found some. I was considering some butternut noise, but then confirmed with Nick that the time I made The Most Amazing Squash In The World, we'd used acorn squash, so that was the choice. Throwing some boneless pork loin chops, onions, yams, potatoes, garlic and a couple of those gorgeous squash into the basket, we checked out and headed back to the car by way of the second creepiest thing after crustaceans: the glass elevators they have that sort of force you into an awkward staring contest with the person(s) in the other elevator. Ugh. No one NEEDS this stuff, QFC. Knock it off. It's weird.

After bidding Nickolas goodbye, I put the groceries away, started some laundry and then knocked some ideas around for what to do with those pork chops. I was considering roasting them and shredding them with some caramelized onion, then stuffing the squash with that, but decided instead to go outside to the community rosemary bush and snag some delicious herbs. I think I chose wisely.

The Most Delicious Dinner Ever - serves 4

4 boneless thin-cut pork loin chops

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1/4 onion, sliced

1/2 firm apple, chopped (Gala or Fuji work well)

1 large sprig rosemary (6-8"), leaves stripped from the stem

coarse sea salt

ground pepper

2 Red Garnet yams, peeled, cubed and boiled until soft

1 acorn squash, cut in half and roasted until mashable

2T unsalted butter

2 t unsalted butter

1.5 t flour

1 T fresh rosemary leaves, chopped

1/2 cup half & half

coarse salt

Beforehand: sprinkle the chops with sea salt and pepper, then toss with the onion, rosemary, apple and garlic and chill for a few hours in the fridge. Steam the squash and remove the pulp from the shell and set aside. Boil and mash the yams, adding a bit of milk if needed to ensure a smooth consistency.

Lay the chops in a single layer in a baking pan, making sure that some of the apple and onion lay below them. Cover with foil and bake for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees. While the chops cook, heat the squash and mashed yams in separate pans on the stove, adding 1T butter to each as they heat.

In a small saucepan, melt 2t butter with chopped rosemary. Add flour and cook over low heat until slightly bubbly. Whish in half & half and cook on medium-low until the sauce begins to bubble a bit, then remove from heat.

Remove the chops from the oven and let rest for 5 minutes; they will continue cooking and will be moist without being undercooked. Spoon some of the squash and yam onto a plate and top with a piece of the pork, making sure to include some of the chopped apples, onion and garlic. Drizzle just a little bit of the rosemary cream sauce around and then eat it and enjoy it because it is so incredibly delicious.

To be honest, I'm torn on this dinner. I am a little bit sad because Nick should really be eating this with me, but I am also incredibly prepared to gloat to him about what he missed. I'm not a huge fan of pork, but there was no real fat.While the meat was indeed delicious, I don't think it would have been as good if paired with potatoes or spinach or something. Aside from being waaaaaaaaaaaay tasty, yams are full of good stuff like vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamine and niacin and the acorn squash offers up vitamins B1 and B6, vitamin C, calcium, magnesium and potassium. Hello, nutrients!

This was an amazingly delicious dinner. The taste made me think of walking thorugh crunchy leaves, drinking spiced cider and snuggling down with extra blankets at night.

 I have plenty of both the yams and the squash left over, so ideally I'd like to stuff some homemade ravioli with them later this week, if time permits. Some of the mashed yam may very well make its way onto the top of tomorrrow's steel cut oats. Or maybe it will be dessert. I don't know. It's no secret that I love love LOVE yams and sweet potatoes and that I also adore squash and I'd eat bowls of the stuff for every meal if I could get away with it. Unfortunately, Nick doesn't allow such things and that's probably just as well since I'm half convinced I'd turn orange the way I did when I was little and refused to eat anything but 5lbs of carrots every day. Yeah. My mother was, as you can imagine, incredibly pleased by this. Is it possible to overdose on delicious yams? Please tell me it isn't so.

Something delicious is in the works.

Muffins!

The past week has been slightly hectic. I spent a lot of time on the phone interviewing for jobs, and very little time feeding myself. Le Boyfriend actually took over a large share of food-related duties, ordering in a couple nights and feeding me delicious breakfasts when he was here, which resulted in me scavenging leftovers for most of my remaining meals. We won't talk about the fact that I ate nothing but carrots for two meals and bread for another. There may have also been a couple of means comprised entirely of coffee. These things are inconsequential, I think. Or maybe I just don't want to be scolded by said wonderful boyfriend. Either way.

Tomorrow I start working at a rather large social networking site that shall remain unnamed. We will refer to it as Hello, Internet. HI is a nice acronym for a site that lets you find and contact people you used to know, yes? I believe so. Anyway, for the first time in a while, I will be at the mercy of whatever is closest to my office in terms of sustenance. Because I am cheap, I am adamant that I will bring breakfast every morning, but I was having a very hard time getting excited about sitting over a bowl of oatmeal a the office.

After Nick left yesterday, I started thumbing through my copy of 1001 Muffins, in hopes that inspiration would strike. Given that I had a couple of containers of frozen blueberries, I wanted something that used those, but nothing really hit the sweet spot in terms of those recipes. I should also mention that I had about 3 tablespoons of sugar to my name and was not trying to trek up to the store at 9pm, so something with a bit less of the sweet stuff was preferable. I did have orange juice that would stand in as a sweetener and flavor agent, so I searched for recipes using that. After I'd made it through a good chunk of the section with muffin recipes, I stumbled across their Citrus Muffins recipe. It called for only a small amount of sugar and used orange and lime zest for flavoring. It looked promising, but I really dislike zested citrus rinds unless we're talking lemon. I sat and ran the numbers in my head and decided I'd modify it to make something I would actually eat. 

At the end of the process, I had some delicious orange-blueberry muffins that will be perfect to take with me this week for breakfast. They're not terribly sweet, but they're super moist (UGLIEST WORD EVER, fyi) and delicious and my adjustments to the original recipe worked out beautifully. I was worried that the proportions I doctored would give me a dozen-odd weird little blueberry-studded bricks, but I lucked out. I added a bit more flour and baking powder to compensate for the blueberries adding weight and liquid to the batter, then increased the liquid ingredients by 1/4 cup to make sure the batter wouldn't be a nasty, gummy paste.

Please excuse the wretched photo. My kitchen has minimal matural light at 8pm :)

Orange-blueberry muffins - yields 16

1 5/8 c flour

1 1/4 T baking powder

2 T granulated sugar 

1/4 t salt

1 large egg

1/2 c milk

1/2 c orange juice concentrate

1/3 c melted unsalted butter

1 cup fresh blueberries 

Preheat oven to 400. Sift together the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. In a second bowl, whisk the orange juice, milk, egg and butter together, then combine with the dry ingredients. Fold blueberries in and spoon into muffin cups/papers to 2/3 full (I use an ice cream scoop because I am terribly clumsy). Bake approximately 14 minutes or until muffins are golden on top and spring back from touch.

As a bonus, I got to use the awesome silicone cupcake/muffin wrappers that Nick got me for Christmas last year. I'd never used them before, but I am absolutely smitten with them. I think I will make him some delicious cupcakes with them that he can keep all for himself.

Speaking of that boyfriend of mine, I am in the middle of making him the most delightfully ridiculous, corny, AWESOMELY NERDY gift ever. In just a few weeks, we will celebrate anniversary number two together. I feel that such a gift is warranted for any man willing to deal with my preposterous behavior for more than a short duration, nevermind two continuous years of such torture. He does seem to like it, which has maybe made me question his own sanity and taste once or twice for a brief, fleeting second but he thinks that all these quirks of mine are charming and I find him to be the most lovely person I have ever known, so I will give him that ridiculous gift and look forward to year number three, and all beyond that. 

Now I must go to bed. Tomorrow is day one at Hello, Internet and I am more than slightly nervous (read: TERRIFIED), but it will be nice to be around other people during the daytime hours, since the dog and cat are terrible conversationalists. Wish me luck. Goodnight <3

Blueberries

The other night, Nick and I went to the store for dinner supplies and some fruit to put on top of dutch babies in the morning. His first choice was peaches, but they were all like rocks. He then suggested apples, but they were all mushy and mealy. The strawberries weren't looking awesome and bananas seemed boring and I was quickly losing patience with the fruit situation. The produce selection at the grocery store down the street from my house is absolutely atrocious. It makes me so sad. I've found some potatoes, carrots and a few apples there since I moved here, but nothing else worthwhile. I'd completely taken for granted how good I had it in my old neighborhood, where my lovely brother-in-law was the produce manager. The only thing that really stood out were some blackberries ($5 for a PINT?!) and some blueberries that were on super sale. A pint of blueberries was $3.99, but 2lbs was $3.88; because I am cheap, I naturally went with the bigger container after confirming with Nick that they'd be suitable for breakfasty things.


Much like with my artichoke situation, I got the blueberries home and looked at them without any idea as to what to DO with them aside from the dutch babies. I've been scouring the internet for ideas. My dear friend Mardi wants to make some blueberry syrup, so I'm looking for a Jessica-proof recipe for that and intend to make some semblance of this lemon curd & blueberry tart on Wednesday. In the meantime, those blueberries have been staring at me every time I open the fridge to get some half & half for my coffee. I'm not known for being a fan of blueberries. I tend to avoid them unless the choice is between a blueberry muffin or no muffin. I am loathe to admit that the first time I even saw the inside of  a blueberry was when we were in the middle of brunch the other morning. Between bites of dutch baby, I picked a berry up, bit it in half and noticed that the inside was sort of pinkish opaque. When I exclaimed my discovery loudly, Nick just smirked a little bit and told me I was cute. I am guessing that I am the last person in the world that found out that the inside of a blueberry isn't blue. Charming!


Anyway, Nick went home late Sunday afternoon and I came back to the apartment, cuddled with the puppy, drank some coffee and put some more thought into using those blueberries. I thought of making some blueberry scones, but meh. I could freeze them and use them in pancakes later on, but that didn't sound very exciting either. Cursory examination of the cupboards revealed the same basic baking staples as always, plus some dark cocoa. Blueberries can work with dark chocolate cake, right? I used the same (eggless) chocolate cake recipe I've been using for a few years now. I've pared it down to a 6-serving recipe, but to be honest it seems more like an 8 or 10 serving cake. I might be a bit biased since I'm not a huge chocolate cake fan, but it's pretty dense and a little bit goes a long way.

 

After ridding myself of most of the cake via a hungry neighbor, I paired a little slice with some lemon pudding and a handful of blueberries for dessert.The cake isn't terribly sweet and the lemon makes the blueberries taste brighter and it's pretty. And delicious. Delicious and pretty and you should make it into a trifle and serve it to people that you like because they will find it delicious, even though it seems like a strange combination of wonderful things.


 Eggless Chocolate Cake

1 cup + 2 tablespoons sifted unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon raw sugar (you can use white sugar, if you prefer)
1/3 cup unsweetened good dark cocoa powder
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons good vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt together, then whisk in the sugar. Add the vanilla, water and oil and mix well. Pour into an 8" pan and bake for 50-60 minutes or until a cake tested inserted in the center comes out clean.