Cold weather = warm kitchen

At the recent wine tasting Mark and I attended, the food was a veritable harvest feast including a number of beautiful and tasty vegetable dishes. I was inspired to hit the west side farmer's market and load up on veggies and apples (and a triple ginger scone from a bakery whose name I forgot to note!). Spent last week trying new recipes and generally feasting on the results.

Monday: Red beet and apple soup (Gourmet magazine, Nov. 2000), Lentils with Fraboni's Italian sausage, roasted carrots and garlicky dressing (my standby combo pictured below), and roasted Acorn squash drizzled with olive oil and late-harvest Riesling vinegar (a suggestion from the great cooks/employees at Orange Tree Imports where I used to work and where I bought the vinegar). Since Mark is not a huge fan of creamy soups or squash, I left the soup chunky and served the squash separately.

Wednesday: A late dinner sitting on the couch in the midst of books and laptops. I filled low soup bowls with more lentils and a salad of Arugula, spiced yellow beets (Donna Hay magazine, pictured at the top), toasted walnuts, Carr Valley blue cheese and balsamic dressing. Love it when you just throw some things together and it looks great and tastes even better.

Ended the week with Fennel-rubbed pork tenderloin with roasted fennel (Gourmet, Feb. 2009), more of the beet salad and roasted sweet potato with onion. The pork and fennel dish was good but not memorable enough to add to my repetoire, unlike both beet dishes. 

On Saturday I made a double batch of my cousin Barbara's granola and Daikon and red radish pickles. I spent the weekend going through old magazines which I gave to friends and donated to the library swap cart. I also pulled out a lot of good sounding recipes so maybe I will continue to do more experimenting this week — or maybe I'll try handing a stack of recipes to Mark and see what happens!

Comments

[Lisa at Greenbow]

It is that time of year when food seems to taste better. Soup is the go to lunch to warm the tummy. While I am not a gourmet I do love the winter because I usually have more time to experiment and a hunger to appreciate the results.

[LINDA from EACH LITTLE WORLD]

Lisa — ​Definitely more time to spend in the garden in winter since we're not in the garden. And I am much hungrier when it's cold out than when it's hot.