How did I survive without you?

Oh Immersion Blender, how did I ever make soup without you? Why did I think that blending in batches in a blender was a solid way to go. How silly I was. Now that you are with me I am a one pot soup maker. Because of you I blended that pot of soup in 2 minutes flat. Let us never part again.

Sincerely,

Veronica

P.S. My sweet potato soup is delicious. ;)

Johnny Appleseed has nothing on me!

Saturday was rainy and seriously cold, but plans had been made and there was no way that I or my friends were going to back out of them.  So off into the Virginia countryside we went. By 10:30 am we had found the pick your own apple farm and let me tell you the proprietors were quite surprised to see city girls willing to brave the rain and pick some apples.  Despite the cold it was so much fin.  I have never gone apple picking as it is not a very common thing to do in SoCal, so I was amped up.  Rome, golden delicious, and red delicious were scattered all over the place and their colors were so vivid under the grey sky.  I honestly hadn't really thought about how one apple picked, but I had imagined ladders and reaching up into the branches.  Yesterday I found myself crawling on hand and knee to get under all the branches and checking out what was strewn on the ground.  Although there were some great apples still hanging above, I was not feeling the climbing tree idea as I envisioned my ungraceful self falling down.

I wish it had been less dreary as I would have loved to enjoy all the other produce they had at this little farm.  30 minutes picking enough apples to last 2 weeks was enough and we went on to do some wine tasting.  Yummmm......

And boozing did happen and the rest of my day consisted of cheese and wine and I would not have had it any other way.  But today I woke up determined to put these apples to use.  I mean there is no way I would be apple to eat all these bad boys in a week.  As I do not have pie plates, which is probably a good thing, and I wanted to do more than a few baked apples I decided to try my hand at apple sauce.  The recipe has cranberries, apples, maple syrup, sugar, water, and cinnamon and it tuned out awesome.  So now I am swimming in apple sauce heaven over here and am super excited to have a new snack for my lunch bag.  Yeah, you should be jealous.

Okay I know it doesn't look super appetizing, but you have to trust me.  It tastes awesome and I feel like I am making some headway in this whole "learning how to cook things besides grilled chicken on a George Foreman".  

Hope everyone has a wonderful week and I will try to think of other fun things to talk about.

Once upon a time there was a pumpkin.....

A pumpkin that was small, round, and ready to show off her stuff.  But alas she was always passed over for her other fall friends, butternut and spaghetti squash.  Not only that, she found to her dismay that people only seemed to want to bring home large pumpkins to carve faces in and keep outside their homes.  Didn't they realize that I am edible as well?, she wondered.  Till one day a young beautiful girl* who wanted to bring new adventures to her kitchen decided to give her a chance.

So off they went together.  But what to do?  Pumpkin pie, bread, muffins?  No, said the young beautiful girl, pumpkin doesn't just have to be sweet.  She reminisced of some of her favorite dishes she had in Australia where pumpkin was used in savory chicken curry pies, ravioli, and salads.  It was not something she had seen before as all of her previous experiences had been in pie form (granted it's her favorite pie to have), but she wanted to make something for an entree rather than dessert.  So off came the little pumpkin's top, and her seeds as well, and after a rub down of olive oil and Moroccan spice mix into the toaster oven she went.

20 minutes later she was done and ready to see how the young, beautiful, aspiring cook** would dress her for tonight's event.  With her Moroccan spice mix in mind she added couscous, dried cranberries, and shrimp.  The effect was a gorgeous and tasty*** marriage of sweet and savory.

The little pumpkin was happy to have achieved more than just becoming a Fall decoration piece and the girl thought that Fall is going to be a fun season to experiment.****

(*author may take liberties in describing herself. You don't like that, well too bad!)

(**cook is a definite exaggeration on the author's part, but you should give her an "A" for effort!)

(***author admits that pumpkin needed a bit more salt, but was otherwise perfectly cooked and quite good.)

(****author did not major in creative writing and realizes that her attempt to write in story format is sub par at best.)