Happy Halloween!

www.pillsbury.com

Since when does Halloween require a special meal?  If you look at any magazine or (God forbid) Pinterest, you will see slew of Halloween meal ideas.  Ghost grilled cheese, spider pizzas, monster mash.  Friends have posted pictures on Facebook of all the amazing Halloween meals they have created.  Why are we working so hard on a meal no one wants to eat anyway?  The kids would rather make a meal of Halloween candy, with a few granola bars or bags of pretzels thrown in for variety, and the adults just want to go to bed.  

I never made a special dinner for Halloween.  It was always what I could manage between getting Sarah ready for trick-or-treating and answering the door.  A favorite is a bowl of soup after walking the neighborhood - it gets cold out there!  I have serve eggs a couple of times, and leftovers.  Sarah asked for mummy dogs once - hot dogs wrapped in strips of dough like a mummy.  I made her help me so that was the last time she asked.  Those things take forever to wrap!

I compromised this year.  I made sweet potato black bean chili (which I don't even like, but that is another story).  It is orange and black, and it is warm, and best of all it is already made and easy to warm up whenever anyone gets hungry.  

Of course, they may just raid the candy bowl instead.   I won't know because I am going to bed.

New Order

In an effort to shake things up, I have been trying lots of new recipes.  I have gotten all my fall issues of my cooking magazines.  Lots of seasonal ingredients, lots of warm, cozy foods for the colder weather.  Only problem - once I finish cooking, I don't want to eat any of it.

I tried a "taste of autumn soup."  It involved roasted apples, carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes and then blending them all into a bisque.  Sounds great right?  Only problem - I don't like sweet potatoes or parsnips.  Why would I want a soup that has those flavors?  I made a new variation on vegetarian chili.  But I really like the recipe I used last year for vegetarian chili and this one was much too spicy.  I don't know what I thinking when I picked out butternut squash panzanella.  I'm not a fan of butternut squash!  I hate all the effort in cutting and cooking it, not to mention it tastes like soap to me.

In my attempts to keep things interesting, I am forgetting the most basic fact - I am cooking a meal to eat.  Sure we need variety in our meals, and it is always a good idea to try new things.  But there is nothing wrong with sticking to a few familiar choices.  Familiar is not bad; comfort food is comforting because you know what to expect.  I don't need to try every exotic ingredient or fad flavor.  Concentrate on what we like and keep it nutritious.  Don't be afraid of new recipes but don't expect to get a new tongue.

Tonight?  Pasta and beans.  Everyone likes that.

O Canada - Happy Thanksgiving!

The second Monday in October may be Columbus Day to us, but in Canada, it is Thanksgiving.  From what I understand, Thanksgiving in Canada is a lot like Thanksgiving in the United States - get stuck in traffic, eat so much you feel sick and spend so much time with your family that you hate them.  The menu is even similar - turkey, pumpkin everything, au gratin as much as possible.

Other than maple syrup and Tim Horton's, I know nothing about Canadian food.  Is there even such a thing?  I am a big fan of the theme meal, so I thought I could make a little something Canadian for dinner yesterday.  I did some research.

And discovered poutine.

Never heard of it?  French fries, brown gravy and cheese curds.  To be good, the cheese curds have to squeak.  I am frightened by food that squeaks.  This is not the same things as cheese fries, not only because of the gravy, but because melty, shredded cheese is some sort of sacrilege to good poutine.

But then again, poutine sounds like some kind of sacrilege to good eating.

Supposedly, the saying goes that the best time to eat poutine is at 3:00 am, which I can understand.  It sounds like something that would taste delicious after a night of being out way too late.

I think I will stick to syrup and those doughnuts with the maple leaf shaped sprinkles.

You Say It's Your Birthday

My birthday is this week.  Growing up, we had a tradition.  The birthday girl got to choose either the dinner my mother would cook or the restaurant we would go to.  I have continued this tradition with my family.  Sarah and Matt love going out to eat, so for their birthdays we have fun dinners out.  I much prefer eating at home, but here is where this system breaks down.

I am the primary cook for the family, so I end up cooking my own birthday dinner.  I don't mind cooking dinner; I do it nearly every night.  But somehow cooking my own birthday dinner takes some of the charm out of the tradition.  Matt can cook and has cooked many a dinner, but his repertoire is all meat-based (meatballs, chili, ribs) and while all that stuff is delicious, it is not how I want to eat now.  On top of that, my birthday fell in the middle of the week.  Matt works crazy hours, so unless I wanted to eat at 10 pm, I was cooking dinner.

I made pancakes.  I decided it only made sense to continue one childhood tradition with another - breakfast for dinner!

Food Porn

I have a subscription to Entertainment Weekly (please don't judge).  I enjoy all the silly pop-culture news and reviews for movies I will never go see.  The only section I take seriously is the book review.  I may not get around to reading the books they write about for years, but I like knowing about the zeitgeist of the literary world.

In the October 10 issue, EW included a round-up of the latest and greatest cookbooks.  The article is entitled "Food Porn."  Food porn?  When did writing about and talking about and reading about and loving food become pornographic?  Why should food be associated with something sinful or dirty?

Okay, yes, I know all about the sin of gluttony.  And yes, there are lots of correlations to be made between food and sex.  Food can and should be a sensual experience.  But connecting that with porn undercuts the beauty of food and the wonderful emotional connections we have with it.  There is nothing pornographic about good food, prepared well and shared with the people we care about.  That is most wonderful and deep kind of relationship we can have.

But then again - "art house food" just isn't as catchy.

How 'Bout Them Apples

Fall, autumn, autumn, fall - a season so nice, they named it twice.  Everyone is all excited about pumpkin flavored things, but to me, the taste of fall will always be apple.

Is there any fruit more associated with myth and superstition?  The forbidden fruit, an apple for the teacher, an apple a day keeps the doctor away.  And is that new phone you bought named after a persimmon?

Growing up, apples meant red delicious, with an occasional golden thrown in.  Red delicious are fine, but they can get mealy (is that a real word?) and nothing feels worse in your mouth than biting into an apple and feeling like you are eating mushy sand.  I mostly eat gala apples now.  This season, I am trying to expand my horizons.  So far, I have sampled fuji and honeycrisp (both delicious, and by delicious I mean tastes good; they are nothing like red delicious.  Oh, you know what I mean).  I don't want to anything fancy.  I don't need to make a pie or cook up apple sauce.  I don't even want to cut it up.  Just give me a whole apple and a napkin and I'm good.

Want to know everything about apples?  Check out the U.S. Apple Association website.  Yes, there really is such a thing.