Flavors of Fall

Oh, food. I love food. It is a wonderful necessity that is wrapped up in every part of my life, and forever linked with my mood and emotions. I'm sorry; did that just get weird? It's true, though.

The changing seasons also affect my food choices, and this fall all I've been craving is macaroni and cheese, and tomato soup with grilled cheese. Seeing a pattern? Cheese.....warm, gooey, tangy cheese! Unfortunately, that's on my no-good list, so I can only enjoy the thought of it!

But, I have been making some very autumnal foods to help fill the void. In fact, as I write I have tomatoes, onions, peppers, and garlic roasting in the oven to make tomato soup; it smells so good and I am so hungry that I hardly know how I'll survive the next 30 minutes. I hope you're glad to know that you're acting as a distraction while I wait for dinner.

Anyways, here are a few of my favorite autumnal inspired foods!

First, a breakfast recipe. Since going grain-free, I've really missed oatmeal, because it used to be a staple breakfast food. I've experimented with several recipes for "n'otmeal" and porridge, and this Pumpkin Porridge is definitely a good option. I tweaked the recipe a little bit, doubling everything except the pumpkin (using only 3/4 cup of that), using coconut milk instead of almond milk, and using maple syrup instead of stevia. Actually, a few times I didn't put any sweetener in it at all, and it was still good. I topped mine with apples and walnuts, but raisins, pecans, or a whole host of other things would be good on top. It's definitely still not oatmeal, but it gives you that same warm, creamy goodness feel.

Second was a recipe that I concocted on my own. It's based off a basic chicken salad recipe, but instead of grapes and celery, I used roasted butternut squash, pears, and walnuts. I used leftover grapefruit vinigrette for my binder, and a little dash of apple cider vinegar. The only thing I think I'd change would be adding a creamier binder - something mayonaise based. I served it with Irish Soda biscuits. Super yummy, and really similar to the wheat version. Only problem was that they got stale really quickly.

Lastly is a chowder that was half recipe, half made up. Last year I made potato corn chowder a lot in the fall, sometimes with sausage and sometimes with bacon. It was so wonderfully creamy and flavorful and delicious, and I was really craving it when the cool weather started coming. Of course, I can't do the traditional milk and flour based chowders, and I also can't do corn, so I started looking around for other options. I stumbled upon this cauliflower soup recipe, and although very skeptical, decided to give it a try. I then added some pre-cooked Italian sausage and potatoes to mimic my old chowder. Wow, did it turn out well! I seriously think that if someone wasn't told they were eating cauliflower, they'd never know. It was the perfect, creamy base to highlight the flavors of the sausage and potatoes. And, super fast to make! I'll definitely be returning to this recipe as a base for many chowders to come.

There you have it - three cheese-less recipes to satisfy your craving for fall foods. Now, please excuse me while I go finish cooking my tomato soup and devour it whole-heartedly.

Beat the Beets

I'm sorry for my recent silence. I was storing up photos in preparation for several posts, and as soon as I got them all collected my internet stopped working. A week and a half later, I'm back up and running, and all ready for several blog posts!

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine gave me a bag full of beets, and mealtimes suddenly became a race to use as many beets as quickly as possible, before they went bad. I've often heard beets referred to as the "candy of the veggie world". Personally, I think roasted broccoli is the vegetable candy (seriously, even my I-don't-like-veggies friend is in love with roasted broccoli!), but beets aren't half-bad. Pickled beets are always a good option, but I wanted to experiment with other ways of cooking them.

The first recipe I tried was from the Whole30 book. It's basically just roasted beets mixed with slivered almonds, served over arugala with a grapefruit-thyme vinagrette. The vinagrette is made from olive oil, grapefruit juice, garlic, mustard powder, salt, pepper, and fresh thyme. The first night I ate them hot, and the second night I ate them cold as the recipe suggested. I actually liked the beets better hot, but the fact that they were acceptable cold makes them a great take-to-work leftover.

I served the beets with a lemon-rosemary chicken. I had an actual recipe to try for it, but I was cooking with a tight time-limit and little attention, so I just made it up on my own. It turned out okay, but I still need to try that recipe sometime.

My next recipe was also a concoction of my own, after a little Pinterest searching. One hot morning I was looking for a smoothie to supplement my meager breakfast, and used what I had on hand - beets, strawberries, and apple juice. Now, if you hate beets, don't get your hopes up; this is full of earthy beet flavor and is NOT a good way to hide beets. But if you're like me and have a love-hate relationship with beets (as in, they don't rank in your top five favorite veggies, but you don't gag at the sight of them), then this IS a good way to mellow out the beet flavor and get more of them into your diet. The nice thing about using beets this way is that you don't have to cook them first - just peel, chop, and blend away!

The last recipe really is a good one for hiding beets! Beet brownies....yum yum! Any time you can get a serving of vegetables while also eating chocolate is a win. Unfortunately, this doesn't *really* count as a serving of veggies, since there's not much beet in them, but it still counts for something, right? You can still taste the beets in these, but it wasn't BEET with chocolate, it was CHOCOLATE with beets. I topped them with this frosting - good, but I'll keep experimenting. Still, though, these were good enough that after taking them to a movie night (which only four people were at), this was all that was left!