Creamy Harvest Soup

If there's one thing that screams "Autumn" to me, it's pumpkins. As soon as I see them, I know it's time to start making preserves and cooking up some nice hearty soups to be frozen. So here is my fall season's first hearty soup that is sure to keep me warm throughout the cold season.

What I used:

1 pound sweet potato (washed, peeled and diced)

5 carrots (w, p, d)

1 small pumpkin (w, p, d)

1 green onion

1 litre chicken stock

2 splashes of Keith's IPA

Salt and pepper to taste

How to make it:

In a large, heavy pot, boil the sweet potato, carrots and pumpkin chunks  in water with a pinch of salt until all of them are tender and sweet. This should take about 10-15 minutes Drain and set them aside. Rinse the pot and put it back on the heat, with a fine drizzle of olive oil in the bottom. Finely dice the green onion and add it to he oil. Stir constantly until it is cooked. Add the already cooked vegetables back into the pot, and add the chicken stock on top. Bring all this to a boil, then take it down to a simmer for about 30-45 minutes. Take the pot off the heat, and run the whole soup through a food processor or blender. When serving, finish it with a little bit of cream and a little bit of fresh grated nutmeg. Om nom nom.

Berry Lemonade!

It's finally summer in Halifax! The rain is gone, for the most part, the tourists are getting off the giant cruise ships and the mist is burnt off by mid-morning! I'm currently writing from my sun-drenched balcony, listening to OK GO and enjoying the sunshine, sipping on some fancy lemonade. Going to the market this weekend was a great treat, because of the great weather and the fresh berries in season! All this great weather and sunshine calls for a lemonade recipe to help keep yourself cool so I'll share with the you the recipe for the one I'm drinking at this very minute!

What I used:

Trinity Gold homemade lemonade concentrate

Millens Farm frozen blueberries

Noggins Corner Farm strawberries

How I did it:

Filled a pitcher with with one part Trinity Gold and four parts cold water. Thought about replacing the water with iced tea, for a tasty Arnold Palmer, then got too impatient to make iced tea. Poured the mixed lemonade into tall glasses, replacing ice cubes with frozen blueberries (an awesome trick I borrowed from my mom) and garnished with slit strawberries. Drank it in the sun with Stu and a sense of well-being and happiness. Om nom nom.

Pink Brie Scramble

A few weeks ago at the market, Stu and I came across a man who sold not only whole chickens and turkeys, but also chicken and turkey eggs. He showed us the oversized freckled eggs (being sold at the same price as the chicken eggs) so we had to buy some to see what they were like. Apart from being fairly hard to crack and huge, they were very like chicken eggs, but with a faint turkey taste. This discovery of turkey eggs got us on such an egg kick that we ended up having eggs every day, making elaborate breakfast dishes revolving around eggs. I am a huge fan of omelettes, but sometimes they are hard to flip if they have lots of ingredients in them, so a lot of the time I just end up making a scrambled egg with lots of tasty ingredients to make things more interesting. This week, we had a lot of fresh beet greens left over by Friday, as well as some nice local brie, so I decided to throw them into the mix. To my delight, this resulted in a gooey, creamy, pink omelette with lots of flavour and definitely an interesting look

What you need:

4 eggs (turkey or chicken, but you could even use ostrich eggs if that floats your boat)

A large handful of beet greens

As much brie as you want (can there ever be too much brie?)

Olive oil

Sprig of rosemary

How I did it:

Start by washing and trimming the roots off the beet greens. Chop them into bite-length pieces. Heat a little oil on medium in a pan, and throw the greens in, stirring frequently. When the leaves are wilted and they start giving off a pink juice, add the brie in, in small chunks. Melt the brie in with the leaves and watch it all turn pink. Put your eggs in and cook as dry as you like, stirring often until it's all cooked. You should have a lovely pink scramble, that you can top with chopped rosemary. Om nom nom.

Multipurpose Applesauce!

Hello! I just want to say that applesauce is one of my favourite foods in the whole world. There are many reasons I love it so much, but my top reason is because of its versatility. It's great as a condiment, as a substitute for butter (for all the vegans and lactose-intolerant people out there) and just as a snack on its own. Luckily, living in Halifax provides me with plenty of opportunities and lots of choice in terms of local apple supply, so I make applesauce all the time and use it in everything I bake. Here's my recipe, so you can also get your applesauce fix.

Prep time: 10 min. Cook time: about 20 min.

What you need:
5 pounds of apples (Cortland have yielded the best results so far. Try for an apple that doesn't brown quickly)
1 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
Cinnamon to taste

How to make it:
Peel, core and roughly chop all the apples. I recommend doing this with a friend because it's pretty tedious on your own. Put enough water in a large pot so that all the apple pieces boil. Pour the apple chunks into the water and bring to a boil. Try to resist munching on the apples. Sprinkle your pinch of salt and the sugar over the chunks. Cover your pot partially and let it boil until the apples are soft enough to mush with a potato masher. Check frequently, stir every once in a while. Once the apple chunks are nice and soft, pour your cinnamon in the pot and start mushing. If you're short on time, you can use a food processor, but the manual mushing has always been my favourite part. Let it cool a little and enjoy! Om nom nom.

Potato Pancakes!

One of the easiest and tastiest local meals to date have been some crunchy-on-the-outside soft-on-the-inside potato pancakes with green onion. I first saw a variation of this on a Food Network special about left-overs, and have been making them ever since, changing the recipe and toppings according to what's available at any given time. Basically, It's a pan-fried hash-brown with some tasty vegetables cooked right into it. I really love this because they're perfect for when you have leftover potatoes and odds and ends of vegetables left that you don't know what to do with. I call them portable potato pancakes because they can easily become ideal picnic food, if you pack them chilled and bring toppings. Here's how I made them this time:

Start with: 

Potatoes (pre-cooked and cooled or raw) 

One green onion (finely chopped)

Olive or canola oil

From there:

Roughly grate your peeled potatoes into a bowl, and mix in the onions with your hands, being careful not to smush the potatoes too much. Heat a little oil in a pan at about medium, or a little higher. Next, you're going to want to make a potato-ball in your hand, about the size of your palm (but, once again, try not to smush it too tight. You want it to be a fairly loose ball). Now place the potato ball in the hot oil and press down with a spatula so that it becomes flatter, but leave it so it's about half an inch to an inch thick. If you're doing this with cooked potatoes, then you're  just going to have the watch the colour forming around the bottom edge of the pancake. When The edges have turned nice and brown, you'll want to check it. You can do this by flipping and checking to make sure that the colour is even. When the one side looks nice and brown and crispy, it's time to cook the other side, so flip it over so the not-browned side is on the pan. For people using raw potatoes, you'll have to watch the colour changing throughout the pancake. So watch for the brownness creeping up the side of the pancake, because even though the flat of the pancake might be brown, the inside might still be raw potato. When the pancake has cooked about halfway up, flip the pancake and watch it until it's cooked through. It's important to have a plate ready with paper towel to absorb the extra oil, because the pancakes will initially be pretty greasy when you take them out of the pan. So before you serve them, lay them on the paper towel and allow the grease to get absorbed. From there, you can top it with almost anything. Two of my personal favourites are topping it with sour cream, chives and smoked salmon or a simple soft-poached egg on top, with salt and pepper. Eating local is so good to me. Om nom nom.

Ludicrously Easy Pickled Lettuce

Hello again! Still don't have internet in the apartment, so I'm writing from the Wired Monk cafe and sipping some matcha (tea was one of the things we absolutely could not give up while eating local, along with salt, pepper and olive oil) So, last week Stu and I had our friends Torin and Anna over for dinner, and we decided to wow them with our mad culinary skills. So we got some fresh trout from the market, some arugula, some spinach, some rainbow carrots, some lettuce and some onions to make a tasty trout-topped salad. We were feeling pretty adventurous though, so we decided to step the salad up by pickling the lettuce! This seemed like a daunting task at first, pickling being somewhat foreign to Stu and I, but after a little brainstorming and experimenting, we found a seriously easy and delicious formula for perfectly sweet and tart pickled lettuce. Here's how we did it:

Start with:

A head of lettuce (we used iceberg, but other kinds would probably work as well)

A cup of water

Two tablespoons salt

Two tablespoons unpasteurized honey

Six tablespoons vinegar (we used apple vinegar for the sweetness, but balsamic or just plain white can also be used)

From there: Wash, drain and rip lettuce into desired size of pieces, and set aside in separate bowl. Mix all other ingredients in a pot and boil very briefly to make sure all the ingredients combine nicely. Allow the mixture to cool, then pour it onto the lettuce, mixing it all together with your hands, making sure every leaf is bathed in the mixture. Let it sit for about half an hour, then pour it into a jar or whatever closable container you have lying around. Stick it in the fridge. Optimally, you want to let it sit in the fridge for a day or two, because then the lettuce has time to really absorb the pickling juice. From there, use it on salads, in sandwhiches or really wherever you would ordinarily use pickles! My favourite part of this recipe is that once the lettuce is gone, the pickling juice makes a ready-to-use salad dressing. Om nom nom.