happy birthday to me

Today I am 26 years old. My husband surprised me one day early--I came downstairs yesterday morning and found this lovely thing sitting on my kitchen counter. Oh, the possibilities it holds! As I get acquainted with this new member of my kitchen family, I'll be posting on how it works and what delicious things I can make with it. I've heard rave reviews from everyone on how easy it is to use and how quickly it produces yummy things to eat. My husband found this particular mixer refurbished online, which made it a lot more reasonably priced.

harvest time

I love fall. I love the food it brings to the table: squash, pumpkins, apples, pears, grapes. I especially love my family's tradition of going grape and apple picking late in September. We went yesterday and enjoyed again the bounty the earth gives: we got almost 50 pounds of apples (Cortlands and Empires) and over 30 pounds of grapes (mostly purple Concords, with a few whites and reds thrown in for good measure). I'm hoping to make grape juice, apple butter and applesauce, and of course eat my fill of the fruit just plain.

the great pastry awakening

It was a pleasure for me to witness, in the past week, my husband get bitten by the pastry bug. He has made three free-form tarts in one week (peach, plum, and pear). A week ago he had never made any kind of pastry. Now, behold the glory above! There are still a few glitches to work out--particularly figuring out how to keep all the juice from leaking out all over the baking pan and hardening into an impenetrable black glaze. The only other drawback is that his cooking urges strike later in the evening so the final product emerges from the oven after my bedtime. Which means I wake up to a messy kitchen. But it's worth it to enjoy such a treat!

two recent epicurious meals

We had this delicious soup for supper tonight. I finally found something good to use up the swiss chard that has been accumulating in our fridge for the past two weeks from our CSA. The recipe is Barley and Lentil Soup with Swiss Chard. The carrot, onion, garlic, basil and chard are all from our CSA (I substituted purple basil for dill in the recipe). I'm glad the weather is getting cooler and I can start making good hearty soups again.

This is a meal in progress--my husband found the ingredients on the cutting board to be so beautiful, he had to stop and take a picture before continuing. The recipe was Linguine with Pears and Gorgonzola Cheese, and he made it for his parents who were visiting us this past weekend. It was a big hit. With a sauce that includes butter, heavy cream, Gorgonzola and Parmesan, how can you go wrong? The pears we bought at the Rochester Public Market that morning, and the Gorgonzola from the wonderful cheese shop also at the market.