Walnut Cupcakes with Maple Meringue Frosting

It's been a busy week at the grey cottage. Our church holiday fair is fast approaching and I have been a busy little seamstress. The big project has been a baby quilt that will go up for auction.

Carrots in Cream

A food processor makes really short work of the slicing of  'coins' ...

When my son Eric was a fourth grader, his teachers taught a unit on the westward movement - Manifest Destiny and all that. Of course, the kids looked at it as a great adventure because they learned about the covered wagons, homesteaders, making soddies, and the beginnings of the clash between cultures that happened out on the North American prairies. It was pretty sugar-coated for their young minds and sensibilities - the culminating event was a dinner that the teachers had with the children at which basic farm foods - root vegetables, cabbages, chickens, eggs, cornmeal, buffalo were used to make a meal for the kids. My job was to come up with a vegetable dish using carrots ... so I dug around in the 'Little House ' books and found references to Ma's meals for Laura,her sisters and Pa Ingalls. Later, I found that someone had published a cookbook of recipes from the Little House on the Prairie books ...

Amanda Hesser's Pumpkin Soup with Leeks and White Wine

Amanda Hesser ... trained chef, New York Times food editor/writer noted for her books, The Cook and the Gardener, Cooking For Mr. Latte - A Food Lover's Courtship with Recipes and The Essential New York Times Cookbook, Gourmet Live's #22 of 50 Woman Game-Changers, one half of the team that has given us Food52 - a comprehensive food website/blog that gives readers everything from video 'how-tos' to cooking contests, to recipe archives, to articles on issues within the food industry to spotlight interviews with foodie members of the website, to, to, to ...

Braised Red Cabbage with Apples

I've begun a new sewing project so my time today was spent on my hands and knees, laying out four inch quilt squares ... pushing Penny, the inquisitive kitty and Mimi, the naughty Corgi away from the quilt lay-out and talking them to calm lumps of fur beside me on the floor while I figured out the best color scheme. It's a miracle that they behaved so well  AND that I managed to get the rows of quilt squares laid out and then picked up and arranged in a small piles that are ready to sewn together tomorrow ... much easier than keeping them away from that Challah dough last week!

 Regardless ... I needed an easy dinner strategy after all that 'up-and-down', place and replace tedium, check and double check to make sure pattern is correctly laid out ...

Chicken Cacciatore ...

This dish goes way back with me ... it was one of the first dishes that I made as a young newlywed ... candle light, wine, and this meal for the man I love. I still think about that first time I made it for Hiel (who is really Silent Bob!) every time I make it ... and it still always brings back a wonderful memory of our candle lit dinner at the dining room table in the very first house that we bought right after we were married in 1980. It's amazing what a little chicken can do, huh?

Random Recipe - Chocolate Sabayon Torte

This month's Random Recipe challenge teamed up participants and had them make a recipe that a team member randomly chose ... a neat trick! Well, I got the treat when Lyndsey from Vanilla Clouds and Lemon Drops chose this recipe for me! I'm making it for a Halloween treat; it's small enough that it will be gone by the end of the evening. I intend to offer our neighbor's a dessert and coffee 'trick or treat' as they bring their children by for their more traditional candy treats. This treat involves chocolate ... a lot of chocolate!

Ree Drummond's Beef Noodles Salad

I imagine Ree Drummond has infused a bit of controversy into the 50 Woman list discussion. She seems to raise the dander of as many folk as Rachael Ray ... perhaps because she is as much a media upstart as RR. Ree has marketed her lifestyle with as much savvy as Martha Stewart, in my opinion. She likes where she's at on her 'ranch' in the heartland, has a raft of kids, a handsome husband who ranches, a 'state of the art kitchen and convention center' guest house on the property, and boundless imagination for spinning her romantic take on her courtship with Marlboro Man, her family life, her home-schooling ideas, her food adventures. It all comes out in a folksy stream of consciousness on her food blog - The Pioneer Woman. She also takes damn fine photos of eveything from beaten eggs to the family dog, vistas on the ranch to Marlboro Man's backside. It all works to entice a lot of people to her site, to her cookbook signings, to her occasional blogging events/parties, and to her Food Network cooking show.

" ... it's all about cows and butter." - Ree Drummond

Babies and Bread Dough ...

Look at these pretty little Challah loaves ... they remind me of babies I've known and loved ... little bundles of round puffy softness. Smooth round ankles and chubby round bottoms ... soft plump chins and cheeks to snuggle against.  In my family, we liken newborn babies to bread dough. They require a warm soft space, a bit of kneading and patting, covering up and rest and everytime you see them, they seem to be plumping up and growing bigger and bigger!