peaches - yum!

Yesterday morning, someone told me about Katie's peach upside-down cake  and naturally I thought about it all day and had to bake some for myself when finally I got home at 8:00.  It was absolutely worth the wait.  The fresh peaches were yummy and the butter, flour, and sugar made them that much better. I'm not sure why the photos are that blurry. Every photo I've taken in the past few days has been blurry (see photo of new railing on facebook) so I'm guessing my arms are just tired (wimpy).

Recipe: http://e-quilterscorner.danemcoweb.com/recipes/

Speaking of fresh local fruit, I just signed-up for a winter fruit CSA. Every Thursday for twelve weeks, we'll get an assortment of local apples, frozen fruit, jams, cider, and honey DELIVERED TO OUR HOUSE!  This is the second coolest thing that has happened in my life this week (#1 being the new railing).

"Coconut milk cures all!"

In an attempt to make a Jamaican jerk seasoning for a tofu stir-fry, I realized that, once again, I had no idea what I was doing. There are three main ingredients for the seasoning - allspice, thyme, and some fancy hot pepper name. I used cinnamon, thyme, and a fresh serrano and jalapeno pepper from the garden. And so the adventure began, improvising every step of the way. I should mention that I looked up other ingredients people have tried adding. Anyway, I started out with diluting molasses with water, adding the main pseudo-ingredients, and then tasted. Not bad, but how about adding some lemon juice, salt, tomato paste, which made it even better. Something was still missing, we needed something fatty to make it into a creamy sauce for a stir-fry and the coconut milk on the shelf spoke to me, in Jamaican! Pouring the Jerk sauce over the cubed tofu and baked for a half hour I thought, this meal seemed easy enough, right? Sure enough, the dish was delicious. We served it over basmati fried rice with onions, greens, and tomatoes, and ate it all. I highly recommend coconut milk for any recipe that needs a little extra something, it's just like dairy cream, only better.

the city of buttery love

Baltimore - The City of Buttery Love
The entire inner harbor smells like lobster and crab drowning in butter.  Or maybe it was just the smell of butter oozing from my pores. Either way, it was worth it.  These photos don't really do justice to the lobster and crab boil for two we devoured on Friday night.  The pot was filled with crab, clams, mussels, potatoes, corn, and did I mention...lobster?  Guess how much of it we were not able to finish?  Only one potato (of 4) because of course I needed to leave room for bread pudding.
Speaking of lobster, I felt like I had struck gold when I realized I was in town for the Baltimore Book Festival!  In addition to talking with local authors and scoring 7 used books for $5.50, the timing was just right for me to watch two chefs from McCormick and Schmick's produce lobster thermidor in the cooking tent.  The samples were amazingly creamy and confirmed that I should not attempt this at home until I'm ready for bigger pants.
I did make it to the Saturday Farmer's Market on the Harbor and it was possibly the smallest farmer's market I've been to, but certainly sufficient.  I believe there were five stands: baked goods, fruits, veggies, jerky, and meals to go.  I bought bison jerky for Kyle and bison dog snacks for Elle.
My recommendations for your next visit to baltimore: McCormick and Scmick's, Phillips Seafood (for the bucket 'o seafood), Sofi's Crepes, and the Walter's Art Museum (free).

Went to Kennywood on Saturday! It was a rainy day with no lines to wait in. Well, I may have exaggerated just a little. Sometimes we would have to wait for the cars to pull back up. I had a blast and Tim got home just in time to ride all the rides before we left at 8. In the meantime I was lucky enough to enjoy some potato patch fries! You can't go to Kennywood without having the famous potato patch fries!

julia & julia

Although I’m inspired by Julia Child’s zest for life and spunky determination for cooking, I’m left pondering whether I’m at all interested in mastering the art of French cooking. There is the obvious meat issue, but I also prefer a more simplistic style of cooking than Child seems to be known for, one that focuses on local seasonal food and doesn’t involve so much precision. Of course, there is probably still a lot to be learned from her and I should probably spend some time with MtAoFC to determine which recipes and techniques to incorporate into my repertoire. I’ll gain a bit of exposure when we attempt a few recipes next Monday at book club.
I must say that I also respect both Julia Child and Julie Powell for taking a cooking challenge so seriously. It’s always nice to see others who appreciate food and cooking so much. Personally, I would love to work my way through 524 dessert recipes in a year, but with my lack of self-control, I’m likely to have a heart attack before the year’s end and on top of that, a new wardrobe to cover the accompanying enlarged bottom is simply not in the budget right now.
Nonetheless, I highly recommend both the movie and the book.
Next up: My Life in France by J. Child.

Pierogies

I have been craving piergoies and it is more of a saturday or sunday food I would make because it is time consuming. I haven't had any free weekends lately but when I find the time, I can't wait to make some! Can anyone think of some interesting but good fillings? I have only tried sausage, corn, steak and mashed potato w/cheese.

danger

I just found a recipe for homemade thin mints!  Yikes!
http://bakingbites.com/2005/10/thin-minties/

Except for bikes and shoes, most things I have to borrow, and a camera happens to be one of those things. So, no pictures for now.

The morning began with oatmeal, consisting of apples and walnuts. Throw in some cinnamon, sugar, vanilla, and a half-pinch of salt, you have oatmeal that didn't come from the Quaker. Instead, we got to taste the tart baking apple that we picked up from the Farmer's Market in East Park of Pittsburgh (which will, ironically, be the camping grounds for protesters of the G-20). For me, the morning was continued with a home-roasted, hand-ground, Kauai-grown, moka pot brewed espresso, that gave me hints of mint at one point. Mint?! And, for whatever it's worth, I've never believed in the "notes" that winos and espresso junkies claim to be in their drink. So maybe I'm becoming a believer after all. All it took was making everything from scratch and fresh, that's all.

Ithaca "garden" pizza

All summer I dreamt of walking out the front door and harvesting tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, cauliflower, butternut squash, and pumpkin from my garden.  Now it's the end of summer and thanks to the blight, my garden pizza consists of one green pepper from my garden and a lone leftover roasted red pepper.  Fortunately, I had some good local cheddar and I put enough spices into the sauce that it even received compliments from Kyle.

pumpkin run

Ok, so it wasn't a pumpkin run, so much as an evaporated milk run, but pumpkin run sounds better. Every morning I wake up pondering the following: Should I bake or should I run? Usually, I need to rush off to work, but I've been known to whip up a vegan chocolate cake, some Irish soda bread, or some apple muffins before heading out. The weekends however leave me in a state of conflict. I was pondering what to do this morning when Kyle suggested that I run to the market. Brilliant! I grabbed a small pack and headed out. FYI: Two cans of evaporated milk, a bag of organic sugar, and some bananas on your lower back make for a pretty solid workout. Now for the fun part - turning the farm stand pumpkins into pie.