Smells like Fall at our House

The squirrels are still enjoying the acorn buffet in our front yard. 

Besides squirrel watching, John and I have been up to a few other things around London.

We went to our first London Knights hockey game, and we sat  almost high enough to see the Northern Lights (j/k, it just felt scary while we were climbing to our seats). Before the elementary school kids sang the national anthem, they announced that Wayne Gretzky's dad, "THE FATHER OF THE GREAT ONE!" was in attendance. John and I watched the Knights beat the crap out of the Plymouth Whalers while we ate too much pop corn and cherry slushees. 

Our friend's daughter turned two, and we all celebrated with a potluck. John and I brought chocolate zucchini muffins (more on those in a minute), and a small collection of children's books we bought at Goodwill. The birthday girl is really into books - when they come over to our house, she always shows me her new books, and she looks at the two we happen to have (in French and German - we are nerds). 

The chocolate zucchini muffins are oil free, from Oh She Glows.

They are unbelievably moist and taste more like cupcakes than muffins. You can't even find a strand of zucchini in them! I love these muffins. They are a dream come true. Several people asked me for the recipe. 

All the leaves have peaked, I think. John and I stared at them from our bedroom window, since we both spent almost all of last week sick in bed. We watched about 6 seasons of the Office, and John watched Lawrence of Arabia on his own, while I graded assignments and midterms. 

Before we got sick, we had some squash! 

No recipe here, just roasted halves of acorn squash, filled with caramelized onions, lentils, and thyme with a little olive oil. I think adding goat cheese and/or mushrooms would crank these up a notch.

We also made this loaf, which may be the main dish at our American Thanksgiving dinner this year:

Glazed Lentil Walnut Apple Loaf, also from Oh She Glows. We made a loaf once before, but this one was hands down better. It held together so well that we could take it out of the pan and slice it for left overs. Even better, the glaze is amazing. We made a second batch of it to add to the left over pieces and I wanted to lick the leftover spots off my plate. It would be a great vegan entree for any holiday meal (or any other fall dinner).

These are the final harvest from my tomato plant:

It produced about 1 tomato per month for June and July, and then it went crazy near the end of August. Unfortunately (for the plant), we've had a very wet and cold September and October, so these toms didn't get enough sunlight and warmth to ripen on the vine. When I told my mom, she offered two suggestions: 

1) Cellar them in newspaper and they will very slowly ripen. Apparently my Grandma Madge does this. My priest seconded this recommendation and said she does the same thing with a paper bag for her tomatoes. I feel like my mom is full of random gardening advice that I didn't know she had. I need to get some more advice from her next year, as I plan to expand the tomato plant to 2-3 tomato plants, including one cherry or grape tomato plant. 

2) She also told me to just slice the green ones and fry them, and have fried green tomatoes. I'm not from a big city, and I often feel like a country mouse compared to my friends and relatives in places like Chicago and Toronto, but seriously - I did not know that unripe tomatoes and "green" tomatoes were the same thing. I thought it was some special variety of tomato that never got red! Color me ignorant. 

So we've fried a few and cellared the rest.

These were part of a recreation of the Amazing BLT from the FARM cookbook we made earlier in the summer. We used almost all the same ingredients, except the basil, and made BLTs with these fried dudes and some fake bacon (fakon). Their batter is simple - flour, egg, cornmeal with seasonings. They're best with some chicken seasoning. and a pretty fun fried appetizer all on their own. 

Other upcoming highlights this fall: the Halloween Haunting 10k/5k, then we're off to NOLA for the AMS/SEM/SMT Triumvirate.  It's hard to believe we're already at the end of October!

FARMFood

When we went to Memphis in June, John's mom gave me a cookbook she'd recently bought. It's by Daniel Orr, the chef who owns FARM, a very popular, upscale restaurant in Bloomington that focuses on local ingredients. Though FARM is highly regarded, I somehow have yet to make it there. So I was excited when Julie offered the cookbook to me and John to take home.

 

So far we've made a few of the recipes, and I thought I would share some thoughts here. 

 Let's start with the bad: 

- The layout is strange. For instance: we wanted to make a veggie pizza. The recipe for the dough was on the same page as the toppings, so that works well. But the suggested sauce is a hummus recipe from the "Snacks" section - flip back about 10 pages. To make the hummus, you need a spice blend from the "Spice Blend" section - flip back another 20 or so pages. That much flipping to make a pizza is a little annoying, but I get it - he just wanted to print each recipe once. And he's adamant that you can sub anything you like for the recipes. 

I'll also say that this book is not for beginners. The ingredients can get slightly difficult to find (unless you have Bulk Barn, of course), and they can also be a bit complicated. While we loved the pizza we made, it took a LONG TIME to make, in order to let the dough rise, to make the hummus, to let the dough rise again, to grill the veggies, etc. It's kind involved for pizza. But it was damn tasty.

Speaking of exotic ingredients: one other complaint, and then I'll stop being a Negative Nancy: the chef suggests subbing anything you'd like for any of the recipes, and I believe in the intro he stresses that these recipes should be accessible. Ok, so far so good. But the very first recipe in the book is for Cattail Pollen Muffins. Oh yes, just stroll down to the local pond and pull the pollen out of some cattails! 

It doesn't exactly sound hard, but it's a little specific. And what do you sub for cattail pollen? Honey? Nothing? I have no idea. In fairness, if you do live within reach of pond (and I'd venture that almost everyone in Bloomington does), then this would very simple to make. But I found it a bit off-putting.

The good: 

Generally, I feel like it's an amazing book. The photos are beautiful, it's well written, and there are tons of options for veg people and omnivores alike. We've made some fabulous food with this book, and I'm looking forward to trying more of the recipes.

Let's look at some examples.

Here's the hummas recipe we used for the pizza.

This hummus has a TON of ingredients before you even make the spice blend, but we suffered through. It was fun to make hummus with white beans, instead of chick peas, and it's extremely flavorful. Making the spice blend took some time, and truly, we didn't do it right because we don't have a spice grinder (or coffee grinder that's designated for spices). John and I agree that it's not our favorite hummus to eat by itself, like we normally eat it. But it's a good base for the pizza. It also made me want to try making a simpler hummus with white beans, garlic, and rosemary.

Here's the pizza itself: hummas, grilled eggplant, grilled zucchini and red peppers, tomato, and kalamata olives.

The dough recipe was excellent and made enough for two nights of this fabulous pizza. It would go perfectly with a spicy red wine, like a Shiraz. I'd say the crust was the tastiest part, and that's how I like my pizza to be. You can get away with a lot if you have a good crust.

Next, we made a much simpler recipe: the BLT. For this, we used tempeh bacon, nicknamed faux-bacon,  "facon," "fakin,' etc. We bought special heirloom tomatoes for this sandwich, since tomatoes are sort of the main event, and then took a bunch of pictures of them, because we're weird.

I love heirloom tomatoes. They're so funky looking, and so flavorful.

Here's the sandwich in its finished form:
grainy bread, tomato, avocado, herbed mayo (we chopped some basil and garlic for the mayo), tempeh bacon (amazing!), basil leaves, lettuce, and goat cheese. This is a life changing sandwich.

Seriously, I would eat this all the time if possible. Tempeh bacon is one of the better faux-meats I've had, and I can't wait to make this again. Heaven!

All in all, we like the FARMFood book, and we'll keep using it. I'm interested in trying some of the brunch recipes, since FARM is known for an outstanding brunch.