Et la pièce de résistance... an apple-cranberry galette with custard, in pâte brisée. Happy Monday!

Soup!

Quinoa with roasted vegetables and cranberry sauce

I've been lucky enough to make two great soups this week, with all the lovely root vegetables and squashes I've kept lying around. One, a curry pumpkin soup topped with toasted pumpkin seeds, really shone because of the home-ground curry powder.

The other, a potato-onion-parsnip-apple mystery, just tastes healthy and warm and is exactly what I needed with this cold I've been coming down with.

You can find all the recipes--as soon as I write them down--on the Recipes page. But I wanted to sneak some photos in here.

Ginger-Cranberry-Dark Chocolate Biscotti

Chai custard pie

Cornbread muffins

Quinoa (close up, with feta)

One final picture

I think, in the case of Sunday brunch, it's worth at least a thousand words.

Still "pudding" things off...

Re: post title: Sorry. Seriously, I'm sorry. But I had to.

Coming home late last week, I realized that I had a lot of leftover rice. Like, a ton. So I made a trip to the grocery for some extra milk, and dug around for a suitable rice pudding recipe. In the end, I came up with something that I think will need some tweaking, but which is nonetheless pretty delicious and not too difficult.

Here's the final photo, when I moved some of it into ramekins to take to a girlfriend's house for dinner. Keep in mind, there was easily half the recipe left over.

Procrasti-baking, Pt. 2

Yes, I know I'm recycling this post name. But in all honesty, there's just not another way of describing it. It's the time of semester where, even if the immediate projects are taken care of, you can feel the term papers looming in the distance. This year, it's compounded not only by job search deadlines, but by writing and grading term papers. There may be a lot of elaborate desserts in my future... or a lot of rice-cooker recipes.

But for now, I took some time to myself this weekend to bake a pumpkin that's been sitting around lonely for a few weeks now. I stole the recipe from NPR, and tweaked it just enough to reflect what I had lying around and what was on sale at the farmer's market. Except for the bacon, which I gave in and bought at Sparrow, from a very cute butcher.

My proudest find was the biggest bunch of kale EVER, which I bought at the end of the day for $1.50:

Isn't it pretty?

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos that do the pumpkin justice. Because the cool thing is, once it's cooked, even with everything scraped out, it still looks like a pumpkin. Genius, and saves you a serving dish. I think it worked particularly well with this one which, since a bit older, had very firm skin that was a nightmare to pierce in the beginning, but held up really well in the oven. Also, I love that you can work with the pumpkin seeds too, reducing waste.

Maybe more pictures later--this will make another appearance for Thanksgiving, I'm sure of it.

One of those weeks

There's a commercial I've seen for frozen food: "Food myth 101: Chopping vegetables at the end of a long day is fun!" Well...um.... yes, it is. It's one thing I know I can come home to. And it does wonders for stress levels. Crying at the end of a frustrating day? Nope, just chopping some onions.

I hadn't time to post recipes or pictures this past week, but I came up with some pretty delicious things to do in 20 minutes, late night. You'll notice that I still haven't gotten rid of my apples--I'm working on it--but thre are some other yummy things in the fridge. Also, I've found that there are reasonably priced dried mushrooms on sale at Whole Foods. Shiitake, cremini, portabello, oyster... and more! These are super handy to keep around the spice cabinet because they do double work--after reconstituting, they can be sauteed like fresh mushrooms, but they also give a great stock.

Coming soon: mystery dessert. I think with coconut milk?