The Warmths of Fall

Last night I came home to the delicious aroma of apple crisp baking in the oven. My mother had decided to make apple crisp, a heavenly fall dessert. The smells of apples, brown sugar, and cinnamon filled the house, and the crisp itself, piping hot from the oven, certainly warmed me up. Apple crisp is one of those special Fall dishes that just speaks of home. I really appreciated the apple crisp yesterday, as I know it can be quite tedious. All of the apples have to be washed, peeled, cored, and sliced, which is a monotonous task. The rest of the assembly is quite quick and easy. The problem is, in this family, one apple crisp really only lasts two days at most, and a whole dish of it only yields about six moderate servings. I know I have featured mom's apple crisp on here before, but it deserves another mention. I don't know if it was because we hadn't had it in a while or what, but it seemed to be extra tasty last night. This post wasn't only to boast about the apple crisp though, but really about Fall delights like this in general. Fall will be coming to an end soon, and then winter dishes will take its place. For now however, we will enjoy warm, fruit desserts, using apples and pears and cranberries rather than summer fruits and berries. Warm puddings and pies and bread puddings are also welcome. Roasted Fall squash and pork tenderloin and turkey dinners also pop into mind. As much as summer is my favorite season of the year, the dishes of Fall tend to be my favorite, as they are often warm, rich, and hearty.

Garden Season Closes

It is hard to believe, but the last cucumbers were just picked from our garden last week. We have had a few frosty nights, but these cucumbers were able to survive. Any beans, tomatoes, and other vegetables we had are long gone, but the cucumbers, who grew the best all summer long, still held on. In fact, we had an overabundance of cucumbers throughout the summer. We recently picked three more good sized ones, and I am pretty sure that is it for this year. They still taste pretty good too. They aren't quite as sweet as cucumbers from midsummer, but they are crisp and fresh nonetheless. They also last pretty well in the cooler weather and do not get soggy as fast. It is pretty good that we have had cucumbers from July all the way through to November. Some people tend to plant their gardens earlier and reap harvests earlier, but our plants never seem to do as well that early. That is, if we actually manage to plant them early. This way though, we still get vegetables later in the season. I think it is wonderful, however I am a little disappointed that this is the end now. I'll have to wait until next year to enjoy some fresh cucumber unless I want to try some imported. Here is a picture of some of our cucumbers (and a green pepper) at the peak of the season.

Indoor Cooking Season

Tonight we had hamburgers for supper. these hamburgers were baked indoors in the oven, and not on the barbecue. I guess this is a sign that barbecue season has officially come to an end, and all cooking will be done indoors now until next spring. I suppose the burgers could have been cooked on the barbecue, as we do not have any snow yet, but it was cold, and rainy at times today, and not very nice weather for barbecuing. I do like barbecued hamburgers a bit better than baked. I find they have a bit more flavor and texture and seem a bit moister. And they just have that "grilled" taste, you know? Oh well, I will just have to put up with indoor cooking methods such as baking, broiling, frying, and steaming for the next few months. That isn't a terrible thing, as it's not like we have barbecue everyday in the summer, and now we can enjoy many warm comfort foods that cannot be cooked on the barbecue anyway and are too hot and heavy to enjoy in the summer months. We did bake some salmon the other week, and although we usually grill it on maple planks on the barbecue, it tasted very well just coming from the oven as well.

Fall Comfort Dishes

The days are becoming much shorter, the the weather is turning colder, and the sun is not as common of a sight as it used to be. This is the perfect time of year for hearty, warm comfort foods that heat up the house and adorn it with wonderful smells as they cook. Then they fill you up and warm you when they are eaten. I am talking about the kinds of dishes that are just too hot and filling to enjoy during the summertime. Such dishes include comfort food such as Shepherd's pie, lasagna, turkey tettrazini, spaghetti and meatballs, pizza, ribs, soups, stews, beef stroganoff, meatloaf, waffles, tacos, ravioli, roast turkey dinners, macaroni and cheese, and more. It also includes comfort desserts, such as molten chocolate cakes, brownies puddings, hot chocolate fondues, and apple crisp. I have already enjoyed several of these dishes, and I am looking forward to enjoying more soon!

PHOTO CREDIT:"comfort-food-recipes"http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/healthy/news/comfortfoodrecipes. Epicurious, n.d. Saturday, November 10, 2012.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Like many families this weekend, our family enjoyed a hearty Thanksgiving dinner. We had the traditional turkey dinner with all of the trimmings. Our meal included: a whole roasted turkey, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, and baugette. For dessert, we did not have a pumpkin pie, or any type of pie at all for that matter. We did not have a pumpkin cheesecake or pumpkin cake either. Actually, none of us really had room for dessert after our meal, but we did have room for sweets as a snack later on. My mother made pumpkin chocolate chip loaf, and a few days later she also made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. They are basically the same thing, but muffins bake quicker. Both are moist, have a nice pumpkin flavor, and are chocolatey enough for us! We also had two types of chocolate squares, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and a chocolate cake shaped like a turkey (I'll feature that tomorrow) around at some point this weekend. Now we will have a turkey noodle soup to use up the leftover turkey and vegetables, and enjoy it with homemade biscuits!

Be Thankful

This Thanksgiving weekend, I have plenty to be thankful for. Since this is a blog about food, I will likely end up focusing primarily on food in this post, but I must keep in mind that I have many other things to be thankful of as well. I feel lucky enough having enough to eat to keep me sustained, but yet I am fortunate enough to have the access to a wide variety of ingredients I can use to create almost any dish I can imagine! I always come home to a house well stocked with food: cupboards, pantry, fridge, and freezer are always full. There is always plenty of variety of food in the house to choose from. There is an abundance of nutritious foods, including fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, milk, eggs, peanut butter, bread, cheese, pasta, and more, as well as a few treats such as cookies, chips, and chocolate. I always have plenty of ingredients on hand to whip up a batch of whatever I desire. We always have flour, oats, sugar, chocolate chips, butter, baking powder, cocoa, and more on hand. I cannot remember a time when I arrived home to find there were no fresh baked goods in our house. Whether there are cookies, muffins, cake, or all three, we always have something baked in this house. I can purchase most of my ingredients at a local grocery store, unless I need something really exotic. Baking supplies can get pretty expensive, especially when you insist on using real vanilla and pure butter. But I am lucky enough to have the tools and ingredients to create many wonderful treats to share with family and friends.

When you go through the same routines every day, it is easy to forget how fortunate you really are. I may be grumbling because we only have semi-sweet chocolate chips and not milk, or because I used the last can of sweetened condensed milk last week to make squares, and I'll forget that many people don't have these things at all. They barely have enough to eat, and survive on just the basics, meanwhile I am complaining because I can't make triple chocolate chip cookies, or seven layer bars. Thanksgiving is a time to appreciate all that you have, and we often celebrate with a large feast.

I must also include that I am greatly thankful for my family, my friends, my shelter, my freedom, my health, all of my belongings, and much much more. I am also thankful that I have the time, internet access, and commitment needed to keep a daily blog. Here's to many more posts!

Fall Foods

The change in seasons can become quite prevalent with a quick trip to a grocery store. In season produce, seasonal baked goods, and seasonal decor can be seen in every aisle. Right now the stores seem to be focused on Fall, Halloween, and Thanksgiving decor, but once these are over they will soon move on to Christmas and winter displays. The Christmas season seems to extend much further than any other season.
Upon my last trip to the grocery store, I saw some new fruits and vegetables in the produce section. Pumpkins, including pie pumpkins, were there, along with squash, sweet potatoes, and a new apple harvest. However, the bakery section was the biggest reminder of the changes in season. The cake display case is now sporting cute turkey and pumpkin cupcakes. There are also some autumn themed cakes with deep yellows, oranges, yellows, and browns, with leave decor and fall sprinkles. Pumpkin pies are being shelved, along with an abundance of apples, which are around all season, but seem to multiply once fall comes around.  Stuffing and stuffing breads are around. And although Fall is just beginning, holiday Christmas items are popping up too. Fruit cakes, plum puddings, and hot cross buns have found their way into the bakery section already.

PHOTO CREDIT:"fall" hhttp://www.dietsinreview.com/diet_column/09/falls-10-most-friendly-and-frightening-foods/. Diets In Review, n.d. Monday, October 1, 2012.

Last Barbecue Of The Season?

The other day we had a big barbecue. I am beginning to think this could possibly be our last barbecue of the season. As the sun sets earlier, and the days get colder, and life gets busier, it may be time to pack up the barbecue for the season. I am certainly hoping we will have another one, and knowing my family, we probably will. My mother will kindly ask my father to barbecue a quick batch of hamburgers, and my father will definitely agree. Or maybe steak or salmon will go on sale for an amazing price, and we will have to send my father out to barbecue, even if it pours rain (or so help me, snows). My father is the grill master here, and we certainly appreciate every time he ventures out to barbecue for us. We may help prepare foods, or suggest foods, but he is always the one who cooks them, and does a great job. Pictured here, clockwise, are salmon fillets (back right), steak, pork chops, and sausages. My favorite is the salmon, followed by the pork. I don't really like steak or sausage, but others in the house certainly do. This selection is a bit different from our usual barbecue choice, often we do burgers and/or chicken. Sometimes  ribs too. We usually stick to meat and fish on the barbecue, although we could easily through some vegetable on there too. I have made a cake and a few other odd things on the barbecue too. I guess we like to have plenty of room for our meat on the barbecue, and we prepare the vegetables separately. We rarely barbecue just for one night, we almost always purposely cook extras for leftovers. Sometimes we freeze barbecue too, that way, when barbecue season really is over, we will have some for the dead of winter.

Summer Lovin'

I love summertime for many reasons; the warmth, the sunshine, the vacations, the freedom and relaxation, but most importantly, the food. With summertime comes an abundance of fresh, great tasting produce. A great number of fresh fruits and vegetables are in season some time in the summer. It is even better if you have your own garden. Then you can just walk outside, pick something and eat it. It doesn't get much fresher or tastier than that! We have a very small vegetable garden and a little rhubarb plant in our backyard. It isn't much, but we already have more cucumbers than we know what to do with, and they certainly taste better than any you would buy at the store, no matter how local or fresh they claim to be. We also have some tomatoes and green peppers. Our other vegetables aren't quite ready yet, but hopefully they will be soon. We are also lucky enough to have neighbors and friends with gardens who are willing to share and trade their vegetables with us. I also look forward to the fresh fruits of the summer, even if I can't find them in my backyard. There are Farmer's Market's and local grocery stores that carry these fresh, local fruits at reasonable prices. We had an excellent strawberry season, with a few batches of strawberries still coming in. Blueberry season just began, and I have already taken advantage of it and baked a few blueberry items. Fresh cherries can still be found around, which are best for eating just as is, in my opinion. And peaches and plums are still around too. Aside from fresh fruits and vegetables, there are some other tastes of summer too. Fruit smoothies, any grilled food, corn on the cob, hamburgers and hotdogs, lemon meringue pie, and of course, ice cream, all remind me of summer. I may not get a chance to enjoy every summertime food now, but I'll be sure to have a taste of one of these in the wintertime to bring me back.

PHOTO CREDIT:"758icecream" http://www.photo-dictionary.com/phrase/391/ice-cream.html#b .Photo Dictionary, n.d. Wednesday, August 22, 2012. 

Blueberry Season

August is the month when one of my favorite fruits is ripe any ready to pick: blueberries! Blueberry season always brings back memories of picking blueberries in a blueberry field near my grandparent's house with all of my family when we would go down to visit in late August. We don't really get to do that anymore, now we rely on our local Farmer's Market for large boxes of fresh blueberries. Blueberries are a bit of a pain to pick anyway, because they are so small, and often small leaves, twigs, and grass end up in your collection as well, or too many blueberries end up in your mouth. I love baking with blueberries. My mother and I have a few go-to blueberry items we bake every year, which include her special blueberry muffins, and the recipe for blueberry yogurt cake we discovered in our newspaper a few years ago. I also like to try new blueberry recipes each year. Last year I tried Brown Butter Blueberry Muffins and Blueberry & Brown Butter Squares, a bit of a coincidence that they both used brown butter, but that flavor seems to pair very well with blueberries. I still have new recipes using blueberries on my list of baked goods I would like to try, so I will be sure to get to some of them. We keep some blueberries out to use for baking within a few days, and freeze the rest for baking with later on. Blueberries freeze very well, and frozen blueberries are almost interchangeable with fresh in baked items. I tend to use blueberries mostly in breads and muffins and loaves, but they are also good in squares, cakes, and even some savory dishes. And of course they make excellent jam!

PHOTO CREDIT:J-11.jpg" http://gardenofeaden.blogspot.ca/2012/04/how-to-grow-blueberries.html .The Garden of Eaden, n.d. Tuesday, August 14, 2012.

Strawberry Season

We are well into strawberry season now! I love strawberries, but they just aren't the same unless they are freshly picked, local strawberries. I do not really care for the imported strawberries that show up in supermarkets in the off-season, even in the dead of winter. They just don't taste as fresh, sweet, and juicy as in-season, local strawberries. That is why I enjoy strawberry season so much. I eat them fresh everyday, and bake as many things as I can with them, use the ones that get a little too ripe for jam, and still never get tired of strawberries. I guess it is because strawberry season is relatively short. Strawberries go well with so many different foods: chocolate, rhubarb, banana, cream, cheese, oats, ice cream, etc. Strawberries are probably my favorite berry, although that might change again once blueberry season rolls around. These days, strawberries seem to have evolved so much, you can find strawberries the size of apples! They used to be much closer in size to grapes, but now they can be huge. I prefer the smaller ones, the smaller, the sweeter, as they say. I will definitely be baking more with strawberries sometime soon. Here is a basket of delicious-looking strawberries from the local farmer's market.

Lobster

It is now officially lobster season, with fresh lobster being brought in everyday from the nearby ocean! We enjoyed some fresh lobster for supper tonight. I am nowhere near a lobster expert, in fact, I only recently began liking lobster (I used to not like any fish at all, now I absolutely love most kinds of fish!) I guess there aren't too many different ways to enjoy fresh, cooked lobster - plain and simple is best. Lobster meat is so tasty (and expensive) it really only needs a little adornment for flavor. Of course, lobster meat can also be used in a variety of dishes. It makes a delicious addition to hors d'oeuvres sandwiches, and chowders if you can afford it, but it is also nice to enjoy lobster just as is. We usually eat our lobster cold, as my father will cook them in a large pot of boiling water, cool them, painstakingly shell them, then put the meat in the fridge for later. Shelling lobster is by far the most difficult, time-consuming, and annoying part of all, and I am glad I never have to end up doing it. Lobster is definitely worth all the trouble though. I find that this one small crustacean has several different flavors. The big claw meat is my favorite part, I find the tails taste good but are a bit too chewy for my liking. The little claws are also fairly good, but a bit of a hassle to open for the amount of meat you get from them. I am not really a fan of the tomalley, which many people consider the best part. Lobster is a flavorful and filling fish, and is best enjoyed with just a few light side dishes. Coleslaw, potato salad, macaroni salad, garden salad, mashed potatoes, and rolls are all good choices. Lobster meat doesn't really need any seasoning at all, but a touch of salt, ground black pepper, lemon juice, or tarter sauce can all add a little flavor.

Squash

Well, we are getting into the fall weather, and that means the squash are coming out. Summer squash, also known as zucchini are tapering to an end, and winter squash are appearing. There is a wide variety of deifferent winter squashes available, each with its own wide variety of uses. Sqquash is actually quite versatile, and easy to prepare and store, although often squash is not given a second though.

COMMON TYPES OF SQUASH: Acorn, butternut, spaghetti, pepper, hubbard, buttercup, pumpkin, and turban squash. You can also find: banana, carnival, sweet dumpling, and golden nugget squash.

My personal favourite type is pumpkin, for its availability and versatility in many baked goods. I also really like buttercup, and spaghetti as an alternative to the pasta.

USES FOR SQUASH: Most types of squash can be used in a variety of baked goods, such as loaves, mufffins, and pies.
Every squash can also be prepared in almost all of the following ways: baked, broiled, steamed, mashed, microwaved, boiled, pureed, roasted, fried, and grilled.
In particular.........

• Pumpkin is great for pie, muffins, loaves, breads, and even cookies. It is also good for stews, casseroles, and sauces.
• Spaghetti squash actually can replace spaghetti in dishes.
• Acorn squash is best alone with a Thankagiving meal (in my opinion).
• Buttercup squash is delicious on its own, but a dash of brown sugar, honey, or maple syrup really enhances its sweetness.

Do not fear the squash. I encourage you to try a new kind this season!


- Squash.” http://www.kraftcanada.com/en/cooking-tips/Ingredients101/Vegetables/Squash.aspx. Kraft, n.d. Tuesday, September 20, 2011  PHOTO CREDIT: "Big Market Squash." http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=.jpg Start Cooking, n.d. Tuesday, September 20, 2011