The cool air goes to my head and my stomach!

Last weekend welcomed fall as the temperatures were in the 50's, with the sun shining and a crispness to the air. The noticeable change in seasons motivated me to make some autumn-friendly foods. An additional motivational factor was I had a whole lot of apples and needed to find some ways to eat them all.

I decided to make some recipes from the Moosewood Cookbook. For dinner I made the Stuffed Squash recipe (which called for apples in the stuffing), along with some grilled chicken, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables. I have to say I was very disppointed with the squash. It wasn't horrible, but it did not meet my expectations for all of the work that went into it. (I always hold my breath when cutting thick squash, I inherited terrible cutting skills from my mother. Both of us often draw blood in these circumstances. No blood this time though.)




The highlight of the dinner ended up being the apple crisp I made for dessert! This was also from the Moosewood Cookbook. I made a smaller batch then called for because it turned out half of my apples were rotten inside (ewww!). But the ones that were good made a totally delicious dessert. It consisted mostly of an apple-cinnamin-sugar-lemon juice mixture beneath a topping of oats, flour, brown sugar, butter and spices. Delicious!

With my dinner and wonderful dessert I enjoyed a glass (or two) of a Cabernet Franc I got from a winery a few hours upstate. The apples, the wine, I was trying to keep it local!

Recipe of the week: Burrito Bar Options

You may have a noticed a brief absence of posts last week. I did not post a food of the week or a wine of choice. Forgive me, I had family in town and was having way too much fun to stop and blog! The good thing is that, out of all of my family fun, comes some yummy recipes for the blog this week!

My mom, sister and I decided one night while they were here to cook at home. With no shortage of activities in NYC, a quiet night at home was a nice break. We considered many options for dinner, including a tasty turkey meatloaf, but ultimately decided on having a burrito bar! (Yes, admittedly I got the idea from Rachel Ray, but we didn't end up using any of her recipes). So here's what we made.

Chicken with taco seasoning

Refried Black Beans

AvoSalsa (see recipe below)

Mango Salso (see recipe below)

Apple Ginger Salsa (see recipe below)

Lettuce

Sour Cream

Shredded Cheese

That's a lot of fillings to choose from! We felt that we needed some avocado, so we used this recipe from Avocado.org.

AvoSalsa
2 ripe medium California avocados, peeled, pitted and diced
1 large ripe tomato, diced
¼ Cup finely chopped red onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
Juice of 1 large lime
½ tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
¼ tsp salt

Mix all ingredients together and enjoy!

I then got two salsa recipes from my friend, Elizabeth. The first was a tasty mango salsa, that I mentioned in a previous post. The second, was a peach and ginger salsa. When I asked Elizabeth for the recipes to her salsas, this was her reply:

HAHAHAHA. Recipe?????

I think it was a pull things out of my fridge sort of deal, as usual. Chopped mango, bell pepper, red onions or sweet white onions....something like that. You can also do it with tomatoes, but they make it more watery--I think mine was without because there were tomatoes in the taco filling already.

My other favorite is ginger peach salsa--you can do it with nectarines, too--cube peaches, and stir in finely chopped ginger, chili, and sweet red onion (you can leave that out as well)...add a dash of cinnamon, voila! And if you have mealy peaches that don't ripen, you can cook them down and then add the other ingredients at the end.

We ended up making an apple and ginger salsa instead, because a) we forgot to buy peaches at the grocery store and b) we had gone apple picking and had TONS of apples. I would like to try the 2nd slasa with peaches. Both salsas were great, but the apple and ginger had a bit of a kick to it.

Of course, I couldn't decide between the salsas for my burrito, so I piled them all on. Each bite of the burrito had a different flavor. Now that's how a burrito should be done!