Appetizer!

The company Halloween Potluck, complete with a costume contest, is happening tomorrow. I signed up for appetizers and am extremely pleased with how these turned out. They are, obviously enough, tiny pizzas! With olives! And real tomato slices!

What's not to love?!

There is nothing spooky about them, but having to survive the barrage of chili-dogs should be scary enough....

A Study in Burnt Asparagus

A plan to make stuffed baked potatoes had taken root, and led to this mysterious gathering of vegetables, spices, and cheese. It had baked potato, lobster bouillon, an adorable whole tomato, and mozzarella. The asparagus were left to fend for themselves in the blustering winds of the oven desert.

This dinner was something to love; too-much-time spent meandering about the kitchen with small-talk, kisses, and a new discovery: the glory of a whole roasted tomato. I like the pictures.

Still Snuffly.

Another soup concoction to cure the bitter-taste of a slight cold.

Chowder(ish)

Another day of the sniffles. Bean wanted a dinner unsuited to my fancy. While perusing the grocery aisles we saw lobster bouillon. Hello? Suddenly I was excited about dinner again! I bought also one lil' potato, mushrooms, and tomatoes.

Start with three vegetables who seem to be brethren; but like brothers, they are very different upon close inspection. Potato, tomato, radish!

I had every intention of using the tomato in the concoction, but despite its being my absolute favorite vegetable, it retired sullenly to the recesses of the counter.

It is fair to say I didn't know quite what I had in mind. I stuck two cups of water and some lobster bouillon into a pot, and let it boil. I added the potatoes, to let them soften, and then moseyed about packing a lunch for tomorrow. Bean and I are starting a night-time pottery class!!

One period of unestimated time (and one White Russian) later, I added some chopped broccoli and a few mushrooms, and the radish...and subsequently forgot about these for a while.

When dinner was again remembered, I noted that the broth was very clear, as water tends to be. Consulting dear Mam's Fanny Farmer's cookbook, I combined a series of methods to thicken the concoction. First, I drained most of the broth out of the soup, and then replaced it back on the low-burning burner. To it, I added:

1/3 c. whole milk

~2 tbsp cornstarch

~1/4 c. flour

and after stirring for a while, and letting it slowly reheat, a wonderful thing occurred; the soup was now a chowder! Fully creamy, beautifully thick, and piping hot.

So I plopped it in a bowl and whisked it upstairs to begin consummation.

And sweet dreams, says Mushroom Man...

Anchovy Pizza

A pizza that was not mushroom for once! Bean was wary of having an anchovy even touch his part of the pizza, so he cut off a hunk of the dough and we did our own thang. Mine had a lil' can of anchovies, some broccoli, and a chopped radish, with mozzarella cheese and a bit o' sauce.

Man, this thing tasted like a salt lick! But still good. But still not as good as mushroom! But then again, what could hope to win that prize...

A Bean Soup

In the doldrums of a cold, how wonderful it is to have a boy concoct a hearty soup for dinner, filled with spices and nutrients for the soul that does not feel ready to consume.

Scones of Good Intent

My dearest Nana and Pup's 60th freakin' wedding anniversary is coming up, and it so happened I had arranged to meet her for a rare lunch at work. In preparation, I made these scones with some scrumptious fresh raspberries.

But I regret to inform you, when I bit into one at breakfast the next morning.....

Simply nauseating. I am still unsure what went wrong. Just look at that lil' blob!

FALL IS HERE

The day dawned bright and clear, and autumn was in the air. Bean and I abandoned our mall-shopping plans when we were halfway there, and drove straight home to hop on the moped. Layered up and grinning from ear to ear, we pootled around and after a while arrived at Hayward's, my beautiful ice cream stand. They have pumpkin ice cream now. Pumpkin ice cream, waffle cone, and chocolate jimmies; good company and high spirits and smiling people all around? One could scarcely ask for a better day.

And to boot, there was a farm stand in the parking lot! We bought tomatoes, cucumber, and some tiny pumpkins. They are barely more than fist-sized, but I am determined to carve one anyway.

The remainder of the evening was spent, radio and lumpy sweater on, in the kitchen, singing and dancing and pumpkin-preparing. I cut out the bottom, put the seeds (oiled and salted) in the oven; forgot about them well past burning, and threw them out. The flesh that was scraped out in the process, I put in a blender with:

cinnamon

nutmeg

almond extract

to produce a very glorious-smelling paste. This I made into pumpkin wontons, using some wrappers that finally had a purpose. I have not tried them yet; hopefully tomorrow's lunch finds them willing to please:

(that blob on top is a mushroom.)

Tomato Pie

So!

Nick fixed Simon's car just as we were mixing up some pizza dough, and decided that a share of the yeasty bounty would be a fitting enough payment for his service. Since Bean and I usually make a whole pizza for ourselves, I embarked on a separate project: same ingredients in a different shape.

I took a quarter of our thick-crust pizza dough and let it to rest, stripped of the companionship of its flour-and-oil brethren.

Then I rolled it out and flopped it into a ramekin with some:

chopped tomatoes (from lovely Dani)

spinach

grated mozzarella and Parmesan

and brushed the top with olive oil and sprinkled on some more cheese for a delightfully delicious looking pizza kin. I left it in the oven for as long as the brothers' pizza did...probably ten minutes.

And even better was the fact that I was whisked away to fill up the moped's gas tank, and came back years later to find I had forgotten half of it, just as I was feeling as if I were missing something. My body (frighteningly often) neglects to tell me how it is feeling, and I was glad that tonight was a time when hunger would not go unnoticed by this stupidly stubborn brain o' mine.

New Hampshire Cake

Bean told me he'd make me a cake the day I became an official New Hampshire resident.

It was flourless chocolate, and I added some baked pears that we harvested from a beautiful old house in Nashua. Damn, that's good.