A present and a cheesecake.

This year for my birthday, Micah gave me a food processor, something that I've been wanting for a while. I had talked about buying one for over a year, but had always found a reason not too. Good thing I have someone that is willing to indulge me. And, really, sometimes the best presents are presents that you've written off buying for yourself.

Of course with any new kitchen gadget or electronic, it had to be christened with a great recipe. I chose this Spicy Pumpkin Cheesecake. Boy, am I glad I did. It was decadent to say the least. I pretty much followed the recipe to a "t," so I'm not going to repost it here. But, I will be honest and tell you that this cheesecake almost came to a fatal end.

I made a ridiculously tragic mistake when I read the directions and pressed the yummy crust into my springform pan. Because instead of pressing the buttery, nutty, gingery crust into the pan itself, I somehow read that the whole pan needed to be covered in foil (Let's not go into the details of what had to be going on for me to have come to this decision).

Suffice it to say, I didn't read the directions carefully or thoughtfully enough

and I baked that beautiful crust in a foil lined pan.

And, oh the drama that commenced when I realized this fatal mistake of mine. This poor, innocent cheesecake filling almost got poured down the drain because I was up in arms that I had ruined the whole thing. Good thing I had Micah to talk me away from the edge and convince me to just re-make and re-bake a new crust. And you know what, it all worked out.

(Here I am fake smiling for the camera.)

After letting it cool in the refrigerator for 8 hours,

it was ready to be decked out with maple caramel sauce and topped with toasted pecans.

This really was great cheesecake. Very flavorful. Incredibly rich. And super creamy.

I'm not sure whether or not Micah would say it was worth all the trouble,

but it definitely was a worthy recipe to christen my new food processor.

It's a Woodstock Thanksgiving, Part II.

Seriously, where does the time go? I swear I just got back from thanksgiving break, and yet the plethora of christmas parties would dictate that the holiday season is in full swing. Sometimes the days just blur together and then all of a sudden two weeks have passed and it's hard to believe.

Well, since I already left you (two readers out there) hanging in suspense over the end of my thanksgiving, I suppose I'll finish that up before moving on to anything more recent.

Thanksgiving day started with a 5k run/walk. The whole family participated. It was cold, as evidenced by our facial expressions in the picture below. Micah and I finished in somewhere around 35 minutes, not too shabby for not training beforehand.

We were all pretty hungry when we got back, so it was a good thing that we didn't have to wait long for the snacking to commence. (If you want a full account of our menu for the day, see the post my sister wrote on it).

Our appetizers:

This year was my first vegan thanksgiving and it was darn good. We even veganized my grandmother's sweet potato casserole, which is an all-time holiday favorite of mine.

We also made this pretty and amazing cocktail: The Floating Star

After dinner, came the desserts.

And after desserts, there was thanksgiving dance offs via the kinect. Unfortunately, there is no photographic proof, but trust me when I say there's is nothing more wonderful than watching family members battle it out through mimicking some killer dance moves.

Lastly, I just want to give a shout out to these cupcakes fully decked out in their houndstooth finest for this year's Iron Bowl. We stayed in Woodstock for most of Saturday so we could all watch the game together. It was definitely worth it given that Alabama won and that these cupcakes were fantastic!

lazy sunday.

Yesterday was P.E.R.F.E.C.T.I.O.N.

It started with a whole bunch of pumpkin.

Homemade pumpkin spiced coffee.

And pumpkin cinnamon streusel pancakes.

Then it continued with a walk in Golden Gate Park to enjoy the WARM weather.

Followed by my new favorite!

Nutella yogurt dip (yes, dip is in the title, but if you're like me, you just eat it by the spoonful)

Seriously this stuff is incredible. I used the recipe link above, but I simplified/adjusted it a little. You need one small container greek yogurt (I used Fage, which is by far the most superior greek yogurt) and 2 heaping spoonfuls of nutella. Just combine the two in a bowl and grab a spoon serve with some fruit.

I love lazy days.

Strawberry and Blackberry Tart

I have been on a baking/blogging frenzy (I think you can call it that, when an absent blogger posts 4 days in a row). I think unemployment is getting to me, because I've been baking/cooking to take my mind off of it. Not really sure if that is working in my favor, given that time spent on making food and looking at food blogs would probably be better spent looking for a job. But, you gotta give yourself some outlet, right? At least that's my reasoning.

Anyway, onward to the tart. Recipe and inspiration came from here.

First off, buy yourself the following ingredients:

1. Frozen Puff Pastry, 1 sheet, de-thawed

2. Egg, 1

3. Sugar, just enough for sprinkling outer rim

4. Cream Cheese, 4 oz

5. Heavy Cream, 1/4 cup

6. Lemon zest, 1/2 tsp

7. Powdered Sugar, 3 tbsp

8. Berries, whatever combination you want: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, enough to cover your tart. I used about 1/2 small package of blackberries and about 7 strawberries, sliced.

First thing you want to do is de-thaw your puff pastry, this takes about 40 minutes, according to the directions on the packaging I bought. Once thawed, preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Carefully roll out your puff pastry onto a lightly floured surface, then transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet.

Score the pastry with a knife at about a 1 in thickness, careful not to cut all the way through. Prick the middle section with a fork.

Brush outer edge with beaten egg and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

Bake until puffy and golden brown. The recipe said for 18-22 minutes, but mine only took about 15

While the pastry crust cools, mix up the cream cheese filling.

First, beat the cream cheese (which should be slightly softened) until smooth. Then add 1/4 cream, 2 tbsp powdered sugar, and 1/2 tsp lemon zest. I also added a touch of vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy, and fully combined.

When the crust is fully cooled, scoop the cream cheese filling onto the middle.

and evenly spread it out.

Then top with your berries, in any design that you'd like.

Here's a close up.

And finally, use that last tbsp of powdered sugar to sprinkle over your tart. This step would look prettier if I had a sifter, but fingers or a spoon will do. Serve at room temperature, and refrigerate leftovers.

Update on Farm Fresh: I used up those turnips I picked! I was a little worried that I wouldn't, because turnips don't really sound all the appetizing. But, I found a recipe for Turnip and Potato Fritters that I thought looked pretty good. I wasn't quite sure what to serve them with, so I just made scrambled eggs for a breakfast for dinner type meal. As you can see from the picture, I had a glass of wine to go with it. Wine goes with breakfast, right?

the best pancakes I've ever made.

Sweet Potato Pancakes with Spiced Pecans and Peach Butter

The best part about this recipe is that, although there are a lot of different components, they can all be prepared ahead of time. That means an amazing, and quite simple, weekend breakfast without all the hassle.

Ok, so there are 3 parts to this recipe: the pancake, the butter, and the pecans.

I started with the butter (halving the recipe was plenty).

Ingredients:

1/2 cup peaches, diced (I still used the full amount of peaches, but if you wanted to stick true to the recipe, just 1/4 cup)--Another adjustment I would make for next time would be to mash them up just a little.

1 stick butter, softened

2 tbsp brown sugar

itty bitty pinch of sea salt

Directions:

Beat butter, sugar, and salt until light, then add peaches and beat until combined.

Scoop butter into individual portions and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Then I did the pecans.

Ingredients:

1 cup pecans, chopped

1/2 tbsp butter

1/2 tbsp honey

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (I might have sprinkled a little too much of this on...)

1/4 tsp sea salt

Directions:

Heat skillet over medium heat and add all the ingredients to pan. Cook until lightly brown and caramelized, about 8 minutes. I stirred pretty consistently because I was worried about the pecans burning. Cool and then store in an airtight container.

Last up the pancake.

(even though now that I'm thinking about it, I started the whole process with baking the sweet potato!)

(Again, the following is the halved recipe which could comfortably serve 4)

Ingredients:

1 small sweet potato, or 1/2 a large one

1 & 1/4 cup, plus 2 tbsp flour

1/2 tsp salt

3 tbsp sugar

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tbsp baking powder

1 & 1/2 cups buttermilk

1 & 1/2 egg (yes, I know, this one was a little hard to portion)

1 tbsp butter, melted

1 tbsp honey

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

Directions:

Prick sweet potato with fork and bake at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes. Let cool.

(this is the point in the story that I stopped for the day and I finished the rest of the batter in the morning, but you could do it all the night before if you wanted.)

Mix together flour, salt, sugar, baking soda, and baking powder in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together buttermilk, eggs, and melted butter, then add to dry mix. Peel and mash the sweet potato, adding to it the honey, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add to batter and let stand for at least one hour. When you're ready, just prepare pancakes like usual. Heat griddle or skillet (over medium-high heat) and ladle batter in batches. Flip when bubbles begin to form and cook the other side for a bit.

Serve topped with peach butter and spiced pecans.

Seriously, if you can't make these for tomorrow, make 'em this weekend. These pancakes are d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s!

Farm Fresh.

This past Saturday I picked my own produce from the ground!

Micah and I went with some friends to their friends' farm in Petaluma, which is about an hour north of SF. They were having a cookout/campfire. And sometimes it's just a nice change of scenery to get out of the city. Plus, we were told we could pick our own produce, who passes that up?

By the way, this is our newest addition, a kitchen cart.

As I was picking green beans with this other girl, we talked about our simultaneous feelings of connection and disconnection. Seeing the farm. Pulling and picking the produce. Feeling the dirt. I was connected to where my food was coming from. I was connected because I was harvesting it. And, yet, I had done none of the work to get the plants to that point. In fact, in some cases, I did not even know how to pick the produce. Is there a special way to pull green beans off a plant? Am I doing it wrong? I am disconnected from the process of how food is grown.

It was great to be out there on the farm, but it also has caused me to think again about the complexities of food production, both local and not. How do you support smaller entities on a tight budget? How do you encourage the local food movement, while realizing that this might come at a cost to small, "local" farmers in the international market? Farmers that have been forced to produce food not for their own local market, but for the U.S. How do you mobilize for provision laws for farmers, knowing that these also bolster large, factory productions that do damage, socially and environmentally?

Lots and lots of questions...

Wish I had some answers.

On a positive note, Micah and I sure brought home some farm fresh loot. We got green beans, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, squash, radishes, kale, beet greens, chard, and turnips.

First up on the farm fresh menu was kale chips. Now, I had never made, or even had, kale chips before, but given all the rage around them I thought they'd be a fun experiment. I read a number of different recipes and decided to keep things simple. I washed and dried the kale, then torn it into "chip size" pieces. Put them in a bowl and tossed with olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt. Spread onto a baking sheet (don't over crowd the chips) and baked for 7 minutes (or until crisp) at 350 degrees.

And, I'm happy to report that I really liked kale chips!

For dinner, I wanted to use some of the squash Micah picked. And when I saw this recipe for Flatbread Pizza with Sausage and Squash, I couldn't pass it up.

We also made a salad to go with it. Unfortunately, I hated the taste of the beet greens. They tasted really salty to me, so we ended up with an abbreviated version of a greek salad. But, oh my word, this garden cucumber was the absolute best. SO crunchy. SO tasty.

I'll keep you posted on whatever else we make this week from our farm fresh produce.

A Chambers & A Peach-Blueberry Cobbler.

This is my stove. It's a Chambers. Which if you don't know what that is, you're normal. It's basically the oldest stove ever. Do you see all those knobs!?! It's definitely unique. Not many people have the pleasure of lighting their burners and oven every time they want to cook or bake, but I do! I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture, but there are a few features seemingly specific to a Chambers stove. One is that there is a built-in griddle on the left hand side, unfortunately I have not figured out how this works as of yet. And second, in the back on the right hand side there is a well, instead of a burner. This would be nice addition if I actually had the kettle that is designed to fit in the well, but alas that did not come with the apartment. So in sum, both of the special Chambers' features are useless to me. Oh well, at least I have 3 burners.

I've been getting more and more accustomed to my Chambers. And, given that peaches were the most recent farmers market purchase, I decided to make a cobbler. Yum, cobbler! I had also frozen some blueberries from the farmers market a few weeks ago, so I threw them in too.

Peach-Blueberry Cobbler

recipe from Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, 14th edition

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

2 tbsp sugar

1 & 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup butter

5 cups peaches, sliced

1 cup blueberries

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

1 tbsp cornstarch

1 egg

1/4 cup milk

whipped cream or ice cream for topping!

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Combine flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a bowl. Cut in butter, making mixture into course crumbs.

3. In a saucepan, add fruit, 1/3 (or a little more) cup sugar, 1/4 cup water, and cornstarch. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens and is bubbly. Set aside.

4. In a small bowl, stir together egg and milk, then add to flour crumb mixture. Stirring until just moistened (don't over mix). It will be very thick.

5. Transfer fruit to a square baking dish. Using a spoon, drop topping into large mounds on top of filling.

6. Bake for 20-25 minutes (mine took 20 minutes, that's how awesome the Chambers oven is). Let cool and then serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

It All Ends.

Happy Harry Potter 7.2 Day!

Perhaps you should celebrate with a little butterbeer?

I found this recipe through foodgawker, and I thought the slushy aspect of it was quite refreshing.

It's easy to make and tastes amazing, I didn't make any changes to the original recipe.

We are going to a 9pm show of the movie tonight with some friends. It's probably slightly pathetic how excited I am about seeing it, but I will remain strong in my fan dedication. I'm also a little sad about the series coming to a true end...am I alone in my feelings? Anyone, anyone?

The Super Bowl.

Can you guess what team I was cheering for?

It's not that I'm really a Packer's fan, it's more so that I'm just not a fan of rapists (in fact, I despise them), therefore cheering for Ben Roethlisberger was NOT an option. I'm so very, very glad that his team lost!

So, in support of the Packers, M and I made some cupcakes, Green Bay cupcakes to be exact.

They were pretty easy, just a little added step of some food coloring, and then I drew & cut out the letter G and we used it when dousing on green sprinkles.

The remnants of which were kinda pretty.

In other Super Bowl news, I would also like to take this opportunity to publicly slam Groupon for winner of the worst, most offensive commercial. If you haven't seen them, you can watch the Tibetan one here. I must have missed the other two that aired, but I was appalled enough at this one. I mean, really. Really, Groupon? More than one million Tibetans have died as a result of Chinese occupation, and you're going to dare make the comment that at least they still no how to make fish curry and at least you got it half price from a coupon! Unbelievable!

Homemade Potstickers.

Last week I must have been on a new recipe kick (again, all fault is due to Foodgawker...) Anyway, I stumbled across this recipe for potstickers. This was actually the first recipe I found that needed red cabbage and which prompted me to look up another and find the one for cilantro-cabbage slaw.

Even with a few changes (didn't use ground turkey and didn't make a sauce to go with it-who needs to when there's Yoshida sauce around?), it was fantastic. And, it made enough for multiple meals (another plus). In fact, I had this for lunch two days in a row and it tasted great until the bitter end. One complaint is that the recipe makes a ton of filling, so much that we had almost double what was needed. If I were to make it again (which I probably will), I would lessen the filling proportions (perhaps even cut them in half, at least the amount of cabbage).