Local exploring

Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to since my last post in early September:

Trying out the VRE station that's five minutes from our house for a day of commuting to meetings in DC - infinitely preferable to navigating traffic!

The VRE doesn't run on weekends, so the station does double duty as the home of our local farmers' market - great local produce and flowers.

Unpacking and renovating continue - at a slower pace now that we're nearing completion on both. Here's a shot of my very old slow cooker (a wedding present) cooking its first-ever batch of Disruptive Bolognese using a mix of farmers' market ground beef and turkey (a resounding hit!). In the background is the recently installed backsplash, the last major piece of work in the (now-complete) kitchen.

Thoroughly enjoying my first proper North American autumn in a very long time with some festive front-door decoration...

...as well as the view from our new window seat - Miss B and I agree this lamppost is like a bit of Narnia on our doorstep...

...and having this view a few steps from our front door is pretty nice too!

When we can tear ourselves away from nesting, we're enjoying having DC close by for fun as well as work - it's kind of amazing to see these iconic buildings pop up in the distance as you wander the city.

And, last but not least - a new recipe to share as I re-deploy a time-honored strategy suggested many years ago by my English friend E: "make friends with cake". In this instance a batch of cinnamon sugar scones, which I brought to share at a coffee morning recruiting parent volunteers at Miss B's new school. I met a few people, and signed myself up for a few things - another rootlet put forward into our new community.

Seasonal flavors

I missed posting last night for the first time in 40 days. D’oh! I’m blaming it on the head cold that arrived a couple of days ago. Or the whirlwind road trip to Wichita (a mere 3-hour drive each way) for a family party with my in-laws. Or tacking the Vintage Homes Tour (where all that bread was for sale) on to the end of it.

Seeing the bread (or what was left of it by the time we got there = not much) reminded me that I hadn’t posted all the recipes yet. And that I’d mentioned on the labels that people could find them here. So I thought I’d better buckle down and get to it.

Cranberry walnut bread
This used some of the huge amount of cranberry sauce I had left over from Thanksgiving. Adding in a scattering of toasted walnuts makes for an excellent combination of late autumn/early winter flavors.

8 oz/240 g all-purpose/plain flour
2 oz/60 g granulated/caster sugar
2 oz/60 g brown sugar
1 tsp/5 g kosher salt
2 tsp/10 g baking powder
8 oz/240 ml whole milk
2 large eggs
4oz/120 g/1 stick unsalted butter, melted and browned
½ cup cranberry sauce
½ cup walnuts, chopped and toasted

Preheat oven to 350F/180C and grease a 9 in/23 cm loaf pan.

Measure dry ingredients in a large bowl and stir or whisk to combine. Measure wet ingredients in a large measuring cup, jug, or similar, and whisk thoroughly until eggs are beaten in completely and liquid is of a uniform consistency.

Pour wet ingredients into dry, and mix until nearly combined. Add walnuts and fold through batter until evenly distributed. Scatter lumps of cranberry sauce on top of batter, and use a knife to swirl through.

Scrape the batter into loaf pan and bake for 45-50 minutes or until browned on top and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool for at least 20 minutes in pan before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

Makes 1 loaf.

Autumn birthdays

Having an autumn birthday seems kind of awesome, if only for the seasonal food themes that spill over into dessert. Particularly pumpkin, to which I am a recent convert. After failing to see the point of pumpkin desserts most of my life, I made these chocolate-pumpkin tartlets and have had to rethink my whole position on this matter. Seeking to explore the combination further, I volunteered to follow up my first-time catering gig with a November birthday cake for SP's husband without revealing my agenda.

"He'd love something with pumpkin," she suggested.

You don't say.

Pumpkin spice cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting
I made the cake using a double batch of my favorite Victoria sponge recipe, adding about a cup of pumpkin and a healthy teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. I baked it in four layers, and filled and frosted it with an adaptation of my standard chocolate frosting recipe. The slight tang of the cream cheese helps to cut through the rich sweetness of the pumpkin, and the combination is pretty sensational. Could be a great Thanksgiving dessert, as well as a perfect autumn birthday cake.

4 blocks/4 oz/120 g unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 block/8 oz/240 g cream cheese, softened
1 lb/450 g powdered/icing sugar, sifted if necessary to remove any lumps
~2 Tbsp/30 ml milk

Using a hand mixer, beat together the chocolate and cream cheese until well combined, then gradually add the sugar, beating in until the mixture achieves a smooth, glossy consistency. Add milk as needed until the frosting reaches a consistency that is suitable for spreading, but will still hold its shape.

Makes enough to generously fill and frost one two- or four-layer cake.

Final harvest

Last Saturday was the last local farmers’ market of the season, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the last of my own garden’s produce as well. There should be enough to can one more batch of tomato sauce, and I’m thinking of roasting some of the sweet peppers and stashing them somewhere to use over the winter. Freezer? In glass jars in olive oil? Must do some research on that. (Opinions welcome also.) I’m going to dry the chili peppers; that’s only about a quarter of my yield (from one plant, no less!), so I should be well equipped to make any amount of spicy stuff for months to come.

I will miss the farmers’ market, but on the other hand it will be nice to sleep later than 6am on Saturday for a change. Silver lining yadda yadda.

Applefest weekend

Autumn is festival season here in the lower Midwest; everyone comes out of summer hibernation, turns off the central air conditioning, and enjoys spending some time outside. Winter and summer are harsh and extreme, and spring is fickle and unreliable (you never know when a thunderstorm might brew up and send forth a twister), but autumn is placid, sunny, and beautiful. You could probably hit a different festival every weekend in September and October without going too far from home; our town’s big one is the annual Apple Festival, which was last weekend.

I really don’t like the summer hibernation, and autumn is my favorite season anyway, so I get a little hoopy when it starts to cool off. I certainly have this year, probably because this summer was even more intolerable than last summer. Or maybe it just seemed that way because this year I had patio furniture which I couldn’t use without getting a) melted or b) devoured by mosquitoes.
In any case, when last weekend rolled around I suddenly realized that I had invited a rather large number of people to a) park on our street, b) wander downtown with us to Applefest, or c) eat a meal at our house in conjunction with said wandering. In many cases, all of the above. And as the weekend shaped up to be bright, sunny, and mild, it became apparent that all of them were going to take me up on it.

Apple festival

One of the nicest things about the weather finally cooling off around here is being able to enjoy getting outside and doing stuff. Everyone has spent the last 3-4 months taking full advantage of their central air conditioning, giving the impression that there had been a temporary mass evacuation from our new hometown. Every time I ventured out of doors to do anything other than scurry to my car, I got funny looks from people driving past with all the windows rolled up. But now everyone’s out and about, enjoying the beautiful weather and the numerous festivals that take place at this time of year to make the most of the respite between the brutal extremes of Midwestern summer and winter.