October is Foodie Month

I don't know why, but I am practically addicted to cooking in the month of October. Perhaps it's the coolness of the air that persuades me to go indoors for something warm, or perhaps it's the feeling that since Autumn is finally here that I can cook roasts and things that smell like cinnamon.

Being pregnant is definitely raining on my parade. :( However, I have managed to make some very hearty chicken quesadillas and a rather disappointing peanutty Thai noodle dish that almost made me throw up.

I'm looking forward to apple pies, Harvest Pork and sweet potato casserole.

Dip

So two of the girls in Amanda's (my sister's) ward threw her a baby shower (thanks, Melissas!), and one of them made the following VERY VERY good dip:

2 cans artichoke hearts in water
Drain, Squeeze, chop up
1 tsp minced garlic (I actually use a little less and just go with the powdered kind)
2 C Parmesan cheese
1 C mayo
8 oz cream cheese

mix together well, bake 15 minutes at 375 degrees.

Look! No "cream-of x's"!

Soup!

We had a cool rainy day yesterday, and, as James loves soup, I gave NBR's tortilla soup a try. Oh wow it's good. You take chicken broth,infuse it with cilantro, onion, and garlic, add shredded chicken, some pepper jack, some sour cream, and some avocado, and some home-made tortilla strips. Good stuff.
Did you know we have an entire crisper drawer dedicated to cheese? I think having a variety of cheeses handy is essential for seriously killer cooking. Kinda like frosting a cake-- you can eat a cake sans frosting, and it's still good, but it's FANTASTIC if you frost it. Our standard stock:
Sharp cheddar
EXTRA sharp cheddar (usually beechers)
Parmesan
Romano
No Woman
A jack of some sort
Havarti
Mozzarella
Cream cheese
Bergenost
Feta

We don't have all these all the time, but they're pretty familiar friends around here.

Crazy About Basil

I came home from our trip and my garden is overflowing, especially my basil plants! So, I've been eating tons of basil on everything and I'm not getting tired of it at all. I finally understand why people are always lauding the virtues of fresh herbs!

For lunch today, I had a bowl of grape tomatoes with whole leaves of basil tossed with a drizzle of olive oil, a couple gratings of parmesan cheese and a dash of salt and pepper. Oh. my. goodness. The girls sat with their nasty PB&Js and I savored the tastes of summer. It was a delectable paradise.

And tonight for dinner we're having pizza. In the sauce I have some freshly picked oregano and thyme, and for toppings we're going plain cheese with mounds of sliced sweet baby onions and then I'll top it with more whole leaves of basil when it comes out of the oven. Oh, this is going to be so good.

I'm growing three different varieties of basil this year--Lime, Genovese and Queen Siam/Thai. I'm not a fan of the lime variety, it's just a little weird...until I find what it goes well with, right? The Genovese is my plain leaf favorite and I've yet to sample the Thai because I want to showcase it in Thai food.

I have definitely got to get cuttings and keep them going over the winter.

Breakfast (again)

Waffles out of the New Best Recipe-- involves a whipped egg white and cream of tartar and MAN they come out good. Probably even better with buttermilk, but as I didn't have any... it's nice that they put variations in there. And James invented this raspberry/blueberry/cherry sauce to go on top of it (my Mom's Jamesian request is stuffed french toast with a raspberry sauce, so he's experimenting). I'm still waiting for it to get cool enough to make that onion balsamic marmalade...

Garlic Mayonnaise

I meant to write about it in last night's post--the recipe for garlic mayonnaise in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is utterly fantastic! I'm NOT a mayonnaise fan, but I love having that garlic mayonnaise on so many things!

(We had breakfast at Carl's Jr. this morning, as per our Pioneer Day parade-watching tradition...Michael would never let me put feta cheese anywhere near the eggs...I think I'm battling a losing battle in that my kids don't like good food and neither does my husband.)

Breakfast this morning

Was eggs scrambled with a little grilled chicken, feta, and mild salsa. I was going to include some spinach, but:

spinach = gone bad = very yes

so no vegetables, which disappointed me, believe it or not. I've discovered I have a serious infatuation with vegetables as long as they're not raw. If they're raw they all taste faintly like grass to me, but cooked.... aaaaaaaahhh. Yet another bonus point for Vegetarian Cooking for Everybody is that it doesn't just do the trendy raw food/minimal intervention bit. Deborah Madison cooks. Oh so good.

Side note: Did I ever tell you about Ah Sa Wan? It was this Chinese restaurant up in Fairbanks (I have no idea if it's still there). And their commercials always used to end the same way: Ah Sa Wan, Ah So Good. I have the HARDEST time not tacking that on every time I say "oh so good". Which is unfortunate, as only interior Alaskans know what the heck I'm talking about.

As Promised: Balsamic Onion Marmalade

This is what I was cooking when I phoned you yesterday.

I found the recipe here.

I plan to use it atop a lovely roast beef panini...when I remember to buy roast beef at the grocery store. (I went today...and bought ham.)

I am loving your sandwich ideas. I'm not really a sandwich person, which I blame upon the years of brownbag school lunches that consisted of a PB&J every. single. day. It was so nice to move to the States and eat in a cafeteria at lunch! I still feel a little nauseated at the idea of a packed lunch...weird, huh?

We did have PB&J for lunch today...it is rather good with my homemade blueberry jam. (I really need to find some wild blueberries though...blueberry jam is so much better with wild blueberrires.)

The blueberry jam and the onion marmalade look very similar to each other...I hope Michael doesn't accidentally use one in place of the other. ("Here's a nice PB&O sandwich...")

Starting with

sammiches.
I LOVE sandwiches in the summer. At the moment, it's too hot around here to be doing real cooking. But I'm out of sandwich ideas, and I need some new ones. Here are my standbys, though:

Salami sandwiches:
French bread with Genoa salami, a little ham, VERY good cheddar (I'm gonna have to send you home with some Beecher's cheese. Holy Hannah it's good), and a bit of olive oil.

Italian roast beef:
Italian roast beef (obviously), mayo, dijon, lettuce (Costco six pack of artisan lettuces, how I love thee!) and medium cheddar on onion buns.

PBJ (sometimes the kids get it right!)

Grilled chicken, Bergenost cheese, roasted red peppers and sundried tomatoes on French bread...

Something occurs to me looking at these. I seriously need to work on my sauces/condiments. And that lovely vegetarian cookbook you gave me has LOADS. I think I'm gonna start making one or two of those a week, just to try. And they should keep nearly forever in the fridge, or at least a lot of them should.

Hrm.

I'm all for posting pictures and recipes for the totally awesome things we make (and eat, in my case. James' stuff has improved in the past couple months, which I frankly didn't think was possible). Starting with that onion balsamic stuff you were telling me about yesterday! And the weird stuff our toddlers eat (Will snarfed down a ten inch bratwurst yesterday). And stuff we want to try, and kitchen disasters, and anything else that strikes our respective fancies:). What about you?

Dear Denise:

Alright, let's get cooking...how do we want to run things around here?