cabbage, apple and walnut salad at Smitten Kitchen

Fee Brothers Bitters at Uncrate

Kellogg's Saves Mother's Cookies at Serious Eats

Cocktail grapefruit, not to be confused with the Oroblanco. I've sought both and the cocktail grapefruit tastes like mild Mandarin orange while the Oroblanco tastes like pomelo. I still prefer regular grapefruit to either.

Licorice Search in NYC? at Ask Metafilter, with explanations to the various kinds of hard core licorice.

gonzo garbanzos at Shutterbean

How to Freeze Spinach, Kale, Swiss Chard. Collards and Other Greens. I did a whole huge batch of kale this way and it's so very nice to be able to get prepped kale out of the freezer and dump it into a pan to heat up with a little garlic.

We've been invited to party where everyone brings a dish based on food from a children's book. Does anyone have any good suggestions and, better yet, recipes? at Ask Metafilter

When the breakfast menu says, "Two Eggs (Any Style)", realistically, what are the different styles available? at Ask Metafilter

snow ice cream at Seattle Tall Poppy

popcorn:

Parmigiano–Black Pepper Popcorn and Black Sesame and Mustard Popcorn at Chow

Black & White Sesame Popcorn at Cook & Eat

Spiced sesame popcorn recipe at Kidzee Corner

Sesame Cheese Popcorn Recipe at Group Recipes

This is my favorite cookie this year. They are easy enough to make to qualify as something to make for cookie swaps, especially if you've, um, waited to long to make them to allow a roll of dough chill long enough to do slice and bake varieties. I modified this recipe ever so slightly from the Chewy Molasses-Spice Cookies at MarthaStewart.com.

I used sanding sugar to coat the balls of dough because it adds a nice bit of crunch. I didn't have white sanding sugar in the house so I used demerara sugar, which is a light brown sugar. I suspect a white sanding sugar would be prettier, but I do like the extra molasses boost the demerara gives.

Here are some balls of dough before being plunked down on a baking sheet:



Sparkling Chewy Molasses Cookies

• 2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled, or 10 ounces)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup molasses, blackstrap works well here
• about 1/2 cup chunky sanding sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a medium sized mixing bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
3. Put butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer until combined. Beat in the egg, and then the molasses until just combined. Put mixer on low and slowly add the flour mixture just until dough forms.
4. Spoon 1 tablespoon of dough at a time, roll into a ball between your palms, then roll in sanding sugar to cover all sides.
5. Place on cookie sheets spaced three inches apart (cookies will spread while baking).
6. Bake one sheet at a time until edges of cookies are just firming up, 10 to 15 minutes. I found 11 minutes to be perfect in my oven which runs slightly too hot no matter what you do.
7. Allow to cool on baking sheet for a moment then transfer cookies to racks to cool down.
8. Will keep for four days in an airtight container.

Makes three dozen cookies, more or less.

I was lucky enough to get some salt samples that Seattle Tall Poppy had brought to a gathering. These salts are from Secret Stash Sea Salts. I sprinkled a little of the Vanilla on top of some homemade peanut butter ice cream and it was delicious. Their site has recipes for each of the salts I have, and I'm especially looking forward to trying the Coconut Garam Masala Roasted Lamb Sirloin. I'm afraid fancy salts are entirely too much for my limited ability to cook so if you've got suggestions for what to do with flavored salts I'd love to hear them.

Hungarian Paprika Chicken at Joy The Baker

Moist Yellow Cake at Bakerella (oh my god those pictures are gorgeous).

beef and cheese noodle bake at Shelterrific, yay for comfort food

Caramelized Shallots at Pink of Perfection

Turkey Pad See Ew at Chow

Royal Dilemma: Why is the Princess Cake Green? at Cakespy

Upon discovering there is a Trader Joe's that isn't too difficult for us to get to we've started shopping there again. So, Trader Joe's Fans and Tracking Trader Joe's might come in handy.

mushroom and barley pie at Smitten Kitchen, that is so darn pretty

searching for the elusive one-hold single-cup drip-filter, and finding a solution, at Super Eggplant

Triple Chocolate Mousse Cakes, oh my goddness, at Erica Mulherin

Cookstr, a new online food thing, via Cool Hunting

I have a few couple holiday parties coming up and I'd like a great dish to bring. I'd like it to be not to difficult, not too expensive, possible to make/assemble ahead, and travel well. at Ask Metafilter

When asked for dessert recommendations, my friend’s 8-year-old son suggested “chocolate chip cookies with chunks of chocolate chip cookie dough in them.” How on earth can I pull off this fantastic treat? at Ask Metafilter. Brilliant kid.

pie crust 103: rolling and crimping at Smitten Kitchen

pumpkin cupcakes with links for how to make icing roses, at Smitten Kitchen

Fall’s Modern Cocktail at Modern Cottage

Wine or cider mulling spice bags, using a wine cork to float it, smart. At Eating Well Anywhere.

OMG, homemade Bacon Magic Shell, at Cooking With Tits. Via Brownie Points.

delicious, delicious pies, all for your viewing pleasure with links to the recipes, at The Bedlam of Beefy

pie crust 102: all butter, really flaky pie dough at Smitten Kitchen

The Dry Brine for your turkey, at The Food Section

the best jarred chestnuts, via The Food Section

Thanksgiving Recipe: Deep-Fried Stuffing On a Stick at The Stranger

Mama Stamberg's Cranberry Relish Recipe at NPR

Pumpkin Curry at Chow

Make Your Own Digestifs at Chow, you'll probably need these

If you want to feel extra-cozy-good about your baked goods this holiday season and you happen to live in the Pacific Northwest you should keep an eye out for Stone-Buhr Northwest-Grown All-Purpose Flour. All of the wheat is grown by Northwest family farmers, milled in Spokane, Washington and certified sustainable by the Food Alliance. And, as somebody told me, "they can damn near trace every 5lb bag back to the farmer." A five pound bag is $3.99, the low price is because less fuel is needed to get the product to you. Neat huh? You have my permission to let your smug Prius-driving cousin know this.

You can find the flour at QFC, HagGen Foods and even some WalMarts, and online at Chef Tools.

Little bit of trivia, the company was originally local to Seattle: "Charles E. Young opened the Young-Stone Buhr Milling Co in 1914, then located in the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle, WA."

A few local chefs have created recipes to help promote the flour which I've been given permission (thank you!) to include here. Below the fold you'll find a Holiday Tart from Leslie Mackey of the Macrina Bakery and a bunch of lovely cookies from Thierry Rautureau of Rovers. Also, Orangette recommended seeking the flour, she talked about it in her entry on the big, famous, NY Times chocolate chip cookies.

(more...)

Two books I'm very excited to see out:



Stitched in Time: Memory-Keeping Projects to Sew and Share by Alicia Paulson of Posie Gets Cozy. It's been so great to read about the process of making the book on her site and I'm so happy it's here. I don't have this book yet but I cannot wait. Congratulations Alicia!




Delicious Days by Nicole Stich, whose website Delicious Days you most likely already know well for it's incredible recipes. I have this book and the pages are filled with images that are nostalgic, inspirational and (I as a bumbling cook need this) instructional. Tonight I'm hoping to make the Basil Gnocchi with Pine Nut Butter. Yum. Congratulations Nicole!

cabbage and mushroom galeete at Smitten Kitchen

on aperitifs, at Seattle Weekly

Thai Green Curry Chicken at Posie Gets Cozy

quinoa, a good set of cooking instructions, at the NY Times. I like regular quinoa but simply cannot stand red quinoa.

Vanilla Poached Quince at Chocolate & Zucchini

How To Improve No-Knead Bread, includes the Cook's Illustrated updated recipe

french herbed at popcorn at Everybody Likes Sandwiches

how to cook beans, thank goodness for detailed and clear instructions, every time I look this up I get "just simmer them, it's easy" instructions which I just call not helpful seeing as I can mess up the cooking of anything. via Eating Well Anywhere.

Great Pumpkin Pasta at Posie Gets Cozy

Scott had a rare day of working from home yesterday so I used some dough leftover from my earlier leaf shaped pie adventures to make simple crackers to go with our soup at lunch. These are just one layer of basic pie dough, egg wash, sprinkled with salt and poppy or sesame seeds. I made some smaller leaves from the dough scraps to float on top.



Almost better than oyster crackers.

I was craving gingerbread the other night so I made some in cupcake form. I didn't have the light molasses that the recipe called for so I used dark instead and, well, the results were not so good. They were bad, there, just bad. It did make the house smell nice though.

Only slightly related - I'm looking for the best recipe for making the stiff gingerbread you use to make a house. Something that you can roll fairly thin but is very strong after baking, something that won't puff too much while cooking. It doesn't have to taste good, I won't be eating the house, but something nice smelling would be great. Any good recipes you'd recommend?

Last week I saw these Aut-yum Leaves cookies in FamilyFun magazine:



They rang a distant tinny bell in the back of my head that meant I'd seen something similar before and I found these in the Martha Stewart Living Halloween book, Savory Autumn Leaf Pies:





In searching I also found these Savory Autumn Leaf Pies that are in the Vegan Lunch Box book:



It was suddenly imperative that I make some stuffed Autumn leaves myself so I headed to Cookies in Ballard, a store specializing in cookies cutters, sanding sugars and baking supplies. They had three different 5" maple leaf cookie cutters for me to choose from, as well as the Fox Run set of 5. Gosh I love Cookies. That night I made Autumn Leaf cookies stuffed with a cinnamon sugar mixture:





And on Sunday I made the Martha Stewart Savory Autumn Leaf Pies, they were served next to a bowl of potato leek soup. It was the perfect meal after a day spent lost in a corn maze:







These are absolutely perfect served along side a bowl of soup. I have a feeling a lot more Autumn leaf shaped dough will be consumed in this house in the upcoming months. You can find a very similar recipe for Autumn Leaf Pies at The Pepper Mill, it's slightly changed from the recipe in the book. I'll post the original recipe here when I have the chance to type it out.

I got the chance to see Christopher Kimball speak at a small event at our public television station, KCTS, this week. He was touring to promote a new book, The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book, and the new show Cook's Country TV. One of the things that made this a little more special than a book tour event is that they passed out three samples of dark chocolate and gave us the forms that America's Test Kitchen taste testers get. Apparently I like Scharfenberger better than Ghirardelli. I kept some notes:

- He said the vodka pie dough recipe was the best recipe the magazine had ever produced.

- They really are focused on what readers are cooking at home. He read a letter from somebody describing how she tried to tenderize a tough pork loin using boots, then by running over it with her car. He said their most accessed and reviewed recipe is green bean casserole.

- He told us about the time he managed to burn rice krispies while making them on The Today Show. After that was a segment on how to make apple dumplings and he moved over to the other part of the counter only to discover that there was no food set out, so he just had to describe how to make them. The Today Show told him it was one of the best food segments they had ever done. Sadly, I couldn't find it on YouTube.

- That is his own farmhouse on the logo and in the pictures for Cook's Country TV. He rennovated it and after buying it discovered all the wood on the lower floor as rotten so it had to be raised and a new foundation poured before it could be used.

- During a tasting of bottled lemon juice he went on and on about how terrible one of the choices was, it was too sweet and he said it tasted like lemon aid. Turns out? That one was a freshly squeezed lemon.

- They film America's Test Kitchen over three weeks They produce six segments a day, including taste testings so they managed to get about 2 and a half shows on film in a day. They start planning in November for an April shoot.

- They like to play practical jokes. One involved an animatronic rat under a producers desk, for another they replaced somebody's finished osso bucco with a prop shrunken head for her to discover on camera. One played on him involved hiding chili pepper under some butter and replacing his nearby glass of water with vodka for a one two punch.

- The best way to cook an inexpensive steak is to cook in in a 250 degree oven until the interior is 180 degrees, then finish it in a skillet.

- Once while visiting a friend at The Food Network he was told he wasn't Food Network material, which he took as a compliment.

- As he was signing books he added a stamp for Two Pigs Farm where Cook's Country TV is filmed, you can rent the guest houses.

- He has a iPhone 3G.

- And yes, he was wearing a bowtie.