Pie High

Tags

baking, butternut squash, fall, NaBloPoMo, pie, pumpkin, Thanksgiving

Usually for holidays, I bake a couple of desserts. I’m not sure if it’s more for variety or to avoid the whole eggs/basket situation, but it’s probably a little of both. This year, I just made one because there is always too much dessert (yes, possible), and it sounded like we’d have less people.

Oddly enough, I decided to make a classic pumpkin pie, which is odd because I don’t really care for it that much. I mean, I’ll eat it, but it would never be near my first pick in a pie line-up. So, why? The recently-posted pumpkin pie recipe on Smitten Kitchen. There’s something so reassuring about Deb that she makes you feel like she’s posting something that’s going to be better than all of the other recipes because she’s done the dirty work and already tried them all for you. But if you’re reading this food blog, then you know this because hers is one of the best and that is partly why.

Um, not that I intended to wax poetic about Deb when I haven’t even talked about this pie. But no surprises here: it was fantastic. I have some truly depressing pie experiences behind me, but this came out pretty perfectly, crust(!) and all.

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Wordless Wednesday: Pie Mode

Tags

baking, butternut, fall, NaBloPoMo, pie, pumpkin, Thanksgiving, Wordless Wednesday

I’ll post about the finished pie tomorrow. :)

Wordless Wednesday: Last Harvest

Tags

fall, farm, JBG Organic, Johnson's Backyard Garden, NaBloPoMo, tomatoes, Wordless Wednesday

This morning at Johnson’s Backyard Garden, Hergotz Lane.

Turnip Return

Tags

blogging, cooking, fall, NaBloPoMo, soup, turnips, vegetables, vegetarian, winter

So we’re one week into December, and I have to say that while it’s been nice not making myself post every day for NaBloPoMo, it’s also been weird. More often than not, I feel like I’ve been in a bit of a funk, though not entirely because of not blogging. NaBloPoMo did often feel like a struggle, but having the daily purpose/accomplishment made up for it, which was something I noticed last year. I did need the breather, though. Last weekend I washed an absurd amount of dishes due to baking for Austin Bakes, so there wasn’t any real cooking or baking for the next few days to write about anyway.

I’m not sure what led to this realization, but it occurred to me the other day that I had never (knowingly) had a turnip. How had this not happened? I am 31 years old. Turnips are pretty basic, right? I seem to think of them as “northern” vegetables, along with the somewhat equally foreign parsnips and rutabagas. They are all available here, so I guess it’s more that my family never ate them. In my quest to try pretty much anything once (and to also pull myself out of mopey-ness), turnip soup needed to be made.

A Thanksgiving Anecdote

Tags

eels, fall, NaBloPoMo, pie, Thanksgiving

I was listening to The Splendid Table while driving to San Antonio this morning. They were having their annual Turkey Confidential show for listeners to call in with Thanksgiving or Hanukkah cooking queries.

There was one caller who I’d really like to be friends with, but I can’t remember her name, just that she was from Portland. Lisa? Let’s call her Lisa. Apparently, eels were served at the first Thanksgiving. (What.) Since Lisa was to bring something to a non-traditional friendsgiving, she decided that eel seemed appropriate. If you guessed that she was calling in about how to prepare eel, and you are correct. Get this: she had a bag of eels and they were ALIVE. Gah.

Persimmon Kolaches

Tags

Austin Food Blogger Alliance, baking, Czech, fall, jam, kolaches, NaBloPoMo, persimmon, Texas

Having grown up in Texas, I can’t remember the first time that I had a kolache. The filled, yeasty buns were introduced by Czech immigrants and can be found at many roadside stops, such as the Czech Stop in West, Texas. If you had never heard of kolaches, you can read more about them and their history in this recently-published NY Times article.

Kolaches weren’t part of any family traditions despite having Czech roots on my mom’s side. I mainly remember my grandpa making cabbage rolls as well as a flat bread that was essentially mashed potatoes and cheese baked between dough from a hot roll mix. No idea if the bread was a “thing” or just a (brilliant) cheesy carb fest, but I miss it and need to try to recreate it.

While I don’t have a family recipe for kolaches, fellow AFBA member Dawn Orsak of Svačina Project does. She focuses on the Czech heritage in Central Texas, so it’s no surprise that she was interviewed for the aforementioned Times article. You can find her recipe in the gorgeous Austin Food Blogger Alliance Cookbook. I went to the cookbook potluck last year and of all the things that I tried, the kolaches were my favorite.

Jam Sesh

Tags

autumn, fall, fruit, fuyu, jam, NaBloPoMo, persimmon

Preserving has always freaked me out even though everyone says it’s easy and there’s nothing to worry about. Does putting glass jars in boiling water on the stove make anyone else uneasy? What if I kill everyone because I didn’t properly can these tomatoes?

Aside from my paranoia, I know that the food prep isn’t difficult, or at least, it seems easy enough. I decided to make some jam yesterday and went with a “freezer jam” recipe. Of course I’m no expert on all the jam and jelly terms, but…this kind ends up in the freezer.

Pumpkin Mochi Bundt

Tags

baking, bundt, cake, easy, egg-free, fall, gluten-free, mochi, mochiko, NaBloPoMo, pumpkin

Happy National Bundt Day!

I’m not one to observe food holidays, but the fact that Mary the Food Librarian celebrates this one so ardently makes it hard to resist joining in. This is her fourth year of I Like Big Bundts and my third time participating.

The bundt cake is pretty great. Don’t like frosting? Not a fan of decorating cakes? Bundt cake for you! (Incidentally, I am one of those people.) Really, they look pretty enough as-is, thanks to those bodacious curves.

Apple Cake for Grandma

Tags

apples, baking, bundt, cake, fall, family, NaBloPoMo

NaBloPoMo has a funny way of purging and transforming old ideas for posts that never made it to the other side. All of a sudden, everything becomes potential blogging material, even if it’s a cake that you made almost a year ago.

Dining Down Under

Tags

Auckland, autumn, fall, food, food photography, NaBloPoMo, New Zealand, NZ, travel, Wellington

Picnic pit stop heading back from Northland.

Remember how I’d mentioned that I went to New Zealand again in April? It’s currently the same season here as it was when I was there! Does that make it sound like I actually planned to write about it now?

While the first trip a few years ago was solo, this time around I went mostly to visit my friends Julie and Andrew who are back in San Antonio now. Andrew took a sabbatical last year and they decided to spend it based in Auckland since he is from there.

I took a lot of photos of the things I ate (surprise), so here are some highlights. (The rest are uploaded here.)

Pancakes with mixed berry compote and lemon mascarpone

First meal in NZ was appropriately my second breakfast. (The first was on the plane.)