Nourishing Pumpkin Bread

pumpkin bread

I feel pretty proud of this pumpkin bread. It has a wonderful tender crumb, is moist without being gummy, and the crust is crunchy without being obnoxious. It’s just sweet enough, and is full of healthy fats, not to mention sprouted flour (which digests as a vegetable).

The pumpkin is a puree I made over the winter, from an heirloom pumpkin that I roasted and processed through a ricer, then froze for a future use. While cleaning out my freezer last week, I found it in there and decided to defrost it and use it for… something (I wasn’t sure what exactly at the time). A day later it came to me: I could create a pumpkin bread recipe! One that had all the ingredients I wanted in it, and none that I didn’t.

Back around the holidays, I participated in a “secret santa” gift exchange, and received the Ratio book by Michael Ruhlman (my request). At the time, I wanted to start creating recipes – especially recipes that use unrefined sweeteners. I have found some recipes that I like but not that many. So, I thought the solution would be to create some of my own.

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September Queens Swap Success

As I have mentioned before, I’m one of the organizers of the Queens Swap, a food swap based in the borough of Queens. We are one of two organized food swaps in NYC. Another one is coming, though, focused on traditional foods (called the Traditional Food Swap), which is very exciting. You better believe I’ll be participating!

I am happy that Queens Swap got to welcome another organizer on the team: AJ Simone, my friend and fellow food fanatic (and super crafter) from the blog Handjobs (For the Home). He really helped make this event a success.

Anyway, we held our second food swap on Saturday, at Fresh Start Market in Astoria. We used their back patio, which is where we do our Hellgate CSA distributions, so it was a really familiar space for us. It turned out to be a perfect amount of space for our group, with enough room to spread out all the swappable items, along with space for refreshments (lemonade, cookies, olive chips and wasabi popcorn) and room for socializing.

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5 Spoke Creamery Redmond Cheddar

5 Spoke creamery redmond cheddar

While shopping at one of my local produce markets (Greenline Organic aka “The Tiki Hut” because of the thatched overhang), I checked their cheese section and found they carry this 5 Spoke Creamery raw cheddar from Port Chester, NY (that’s near the Connecticut border). I saw that it is raw, and decided to check it out. It is delicious!

I was particularly impressed with how the Redmond Cheddar melted in the quesadillas I had for lunch (raw cheddar and CSA tomato between two Tortilleria Nixtamal corn tortillas, fried in pasture butter) today. I also snacked on it a bit and found it very satisfying. It has a wonderful texture.

I’m really happy that a delicious raw cheddar is so close at hand!

Hellgate CSA Week 14

CSA Week 14

This week we definitely got a glimpse of fall – enter the winter squash! Exciting, to say the least – I am a huge fan of winter squashes. Additionally, we got:

1 bunch carrots
1 pound green beans
1 head escarole
1 pound sweet peppers
1 pint mini tomatoes (not shown)
(1 acorn squash)
2 pounds apples
2 pounds pears
2 pound concord grapes

The carrots will be fermented; the green beans turned into dilly beans. The tomatoes have just been eaten out of hand pretty much. The escarole is quite bitter, so I’ll likely braise it somehow, perhaps with bacon!

I plan to pickle the grapes.

Apart from these fruits and vegetables, I received a tomato canning share – 20-25 pounds of plum tomatoes.

tomato share from hepworth farm

They look and feel great so far, and I plan to make crushed tomatoes with them. If they do as well as I expect they will, I’ll order another box for next week! Slow roasted tomatoes, yum.

This week was a meat & dairy week, so it was great to replenish my stock of ground beef and turkey sausage. I also ordered two cheese from Nettle Meadow Farm – Kunik and Three Sisters. Both are excellent, but Kunik is out of this world! A very luxurious cheese.

Also, I ordered a batch of “Battenkill Brittle,” which is a kind of crunchy, sweet, seedy brittle. It’s sweetened with brown rice syrup and maple syrup, though it’s not super sweet at all.

Quite a week this week!

Plum Shrub Update

plum shrub september 2011

I thought I’d update you a on my plum shrub syrup. It certainly has changed over the past couple of months. It’s gotten sweeter and less vinegary – that tang is still there, though, but it’s certainly mellower.

I really like how it’s changed – I think it’s much more balanced and actually more syrupy. It goes great in sparkling water; I haven’t tried it with alcohol. When I use it in sparkling water, I find that these days I want to use  more syrup than I did at the beginning of its life. When it was younger, a little went quite a long way.

I would say to those who experiment with the shrub and find it way strong for their taste, just wait longer and the syrup will mellow out. And become more delicious, of course.

I’ll definitely be making shrubs again for many summers to come.

Nourishing Nectarine Crisp

nectarine crisp

I love fruit crisps. They are a perfect alternative to the more complicated fruit pie – there’s still warm sweet fruit and spices involved, just with a delicious sweet topping instead of a more neutral pastry underneath.

I’ve been making fruit crisps for a long time. Usually I rely on the fruit crisp recipe from my favorite cookbook, Fields of Greens, by Annie Somerville. Somerville opened one of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco, Greens. I first ate there when I was a practicing vegetarian – the food is amazing and the views are spectacular, looking out the big windows toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

Even meat-eating friends at that time loved Greens. No one felt like anything was missing.

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Garden by Gardenfreude

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the garden of new friends in the neighborhood, WT and Erich; I met them at our last WHA blogger social. They are the forces behind Gardenfreude, a terrific Astoria blog about food, health, gardening, design, and knitting. I hear they are excellent knitters and make some amazing sweaters and things over the winters (I, on the other hand, can make a scarf and a hat, but that’s about it). They are also passionate gardeners, and we three connected over gardening and food especially.

Their garden is quite large, especially for NYC standards. They have an arrangement with their neighbors to use their yard, which gives them a lot of land to work with. In face, they currently only use half the yard, but have gotten the green light to use the rest of the space, so they have plans to expand next spring.

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