Tennessee Locavore

Winning over Pear Haters with Red Cabbage, Pear, and Cranberry Slaw with Maple-Yogurt Dressing

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My husband has a severe aversion to pears.  I've tried feeding him the most delectable, melting specimens of pears in order to woo him over to the pear side.  How can you not like a fruit that gets so juicy when it's dead ripe that there is no way to eat one without juice running down your arm?  I've tried impressing him with how sensual of a treat they are.  I mean - this is a fruit with lady curves.  How can you not get behind a fruit this sexy?  What the hell is wrong with him?

All of this has been to no avail.  The man does not like pears. And despite all my ways to tempt him (or torture him - just ask him about the time I slipped him some pear Jelly Bellies), he's not been swayed.  The taste and the texture do not appeal to him.  Since he's not much of a picky eater, I just avoid cooking with them.  However I'm not averse to eating a pear in front of him with as many disgusting noises of ecstasy as I can muster.  Don't feel sorry for him - he knew what he was getting into when he married me.  He walked into this eyes wide open.

So, when it came to this week's Fall Fest ingredient, I overlooked all the recipes that involved large quantities of butter.  Because, clearly I would be the only one eating this and my hips and thighs have enough fat stored for the winter.  I made this delectable slaw and my husband came in and scooped up a mouthful while I watched with bated breath.  He chewed it thoughtfully and said "This has pears in it, right? It's not bad. I'd eat this."  People - if the pope himself swept in and canonized this slaw, it couldn't be higher praise than my husband's words.

This is one of the easiest slaws I've ever made and I couldn't stop eating it.  The dressing is addictive - it's such a simple combination but it's pure win.  I even used fat-free yogurt in it.  I'm still not sure how a fat-free item made it into our house but it needed to be used up so there you go.  Even with fat-free yogurt, this dressing was delicious enough to make me scrape the bowl with my finger.  Although, if I made it again, I'd make it with yogurt that had a higher fat content.

Red Cabbage, Pear, and Cranberry Slaw with Maple-Yogurt Dressing
Adapted from Cooking with Shelburne Farms

1 small shallot, minced
1/2 cup pure maple syrup (I used grade B)
2 tablespoons cider vinegar 
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
1 medium head red cabbage (around 1 1/2 pounds), cored & thinly sliced
1 cup fresh cranberries, coarsely chopped, or 1/2 cup whole dried sweetened cranberries (I used dried)
1 large ripe but firm pear, unpeeled and cut into matchsticks

Whisk together the shallot, maple syrup, cider vinegar, yogurt and salt together in a large bowl.

Toss together the cabbage, cranberries and pear with the dressing. Adjust seasonings to taste and let sit for at least 30 minutes.  I thought this was best when it had sat for several hours. 

 

Please click here for a printable recipe!  

Please join us by participating in Fall Fest 2010!  Post on your blog or in the comments or join us on Twitter by using #fallfest.

 

Apple Loaf Cake - A Sweet Slice of Fall

 

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Let me put my biases & handicaps up front.  I am not a fan of most low-fat, "healthy" baked goods.  I think they're usually one note as far as flavor goes and are crammed with so much sugar that you risk putting yourself into an insulin coma after eating them.  They're usually not much lower in calories than regular baked goods (again - because of all the sugar) and they don't satisfy me which seems to be a common problem with most low-fat baked goods.

I also am not that much of a baker.  Oh, I can make cookies, brownies, quick breads and even make a good pie crust.  But baking is not my strength so the idea of tinkering with a recipe is a bit scary for me.  But I'm determined to get out of my comfort zone - the only thing I'm risking is that a recipe won't turn out and that's not that big of a deal, is it?  

With that being said, when I was looking for a recipe that used apples I kept coming back to a recipe I had marked at one point in my favorite cookbook, Passionate Vegetarian.  I had found several other recipes from other sources I thought would be tasty but something about this simple loaf cake intrigued me.  The other recipes I was contemplating trying all sounded delicious but they all seemed to be drowning in fat with sour cream, cream and/or butter being used in such liberal quantities that the apples seemed almost an afterthought.  Apples are so delicious and so in season now that I wanted a recipe that celebrated apples.  I wanted a recipe that stressed that pure apple flavor, rather than smothering it.

Even so, I was a bit hesitant to use the whole wheat pastry flour that the author, Crescent Dragonwagon, suggested using instead of regular all-purpose flour.  I didn't want the cake to be too heavy and even though I've had very good results using whole wheat pastry flour, I felt a bit reluctant to add another "healthy" substitution to an already fairly low-fat cake.

I don't know why I ever doubted Crescent.  I'm sorry and it won't happen again.  This is a seriously delicious cake.  I made my husband hide it from me because during the course of two hours, I ate a third of it by myself, sliver by sliver, using the excuse that I had to neaten out the ends.  This cake tastes like fall - redolent with spices and with such a strong apple flavor.  It's got substance but it's in no way heavy.  I loved it so much as is that I never even thought to try to make it with regular flour.  Everyone I've served it to has enjoyed it and asked for the recipe.  It's going in our regular rotation.

I'm not a huge fan of raisins or nuts in baked goods.  Instead of using raisins, I substituted dried cranberries in for the raisins and left the nuts out.  I think the cranberries went very well with this cake and I wouldn't hesitate to use them again, even if I was making this cake for devoted raisin lovers.  I also decided to substitute butter in for the canola oil in the recipe.  If you'd rather use canola oil, go ahead.  Use 1/4 cup and increase the applesauce to 1 1/4 cups.  It's delicious both ways but I'm a devoted user of butter in all things baked so I tinkered and found that I liked it with the butter just a little bit more so that's the recipe I'm posting.  The recipe suggests sprinkling with powdered sugar for serving but I love it as is.

Please make sure you use high quality spices in this recipe.  Don't use the canister of cinnamon that's  been sitting in your pantry since 2004.  My local food co-op sells bulk spices so you can buy very small quantities of whatever spices you need.  You can also purchase wonderful spices online from Penzeys. I am in love with their Vietnamese Cinnamon.  I also consider their double strength vanilla a necessity in my kitchen.

 

Sweet Harvest Applesauce Breakfast Bundt Cake
Adapted from Passionate Vegetarian
Makes one 9-inch bundt cake, one 8-inch loaf cake or three 5-inch loaf cakes

Cooking spray
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour, plus a little extra for the pan
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
8-10 vigorous gratings of nutmeg
Dash of ground cloves
Dash of ground allspice
1/2 cup dried & sweetened cranberries
2-4 tablespoons walnuts, toasted and chopped (optional)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons applesauce
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Equipment: 9 inch bundt pan, 8x4 inch loaf pan or three 5x2 inch loaf pans. (I used the 8-inch loaf pan) 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Prepare your baking pan. Spray pan with cooking spray.  Dust the inside of the pan with a little flour, knocking out the excess.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice. Reserve 1 tablespoon of this mixture and place in small bowl, along with the cranberries & nuts (if using). Toss this mixture well and set both bowls aside.

Combine the sugars with the egg, applesauce, melted butter and vanilla.  Using a wooden spoon, gently mix the flour mixture into the applesauce mixture.  Stir until combined and stir in cranberries (and nuts if using). 

Spoon the batter into your prepared pan.  Bake for 30-35 minutes(My pan took 40 minutes). Test for doneness by inserting a toothpick into loaf to see if it comes out clean. Remove pan from oven and let cool on a wire rack for ten minutes.  Run a knife around the edges of pan and turn over onto the rack and rap sharply on the bottom of the pan to remove cake from pan. Let cool completely(if you have more will power than me!).

Please click here for a printable recipe!  

Please join us by participating in Fall Fest 2010!  Post on your blog or in the comments or join us on Twitter by using #fallfest.

 

 

Pretending Caramelized Onion, Peach & Brie Quesadillas Are Diet Food

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I spent this past weekend with a group of the loveliest women imaginable at a spectacular food event called IFBC (recap coming soon).  Let me quickly say that it was an amazing weekend full of fun, laughter & spectacular food.  We managed to pack the last few days with so much awesomeness that it made coming home a bit of a buzz kill, even if snuggling with my husband helped make up for it.  Walking into our construction zone of a house and finding out that one of our affiliate networks decided to change 500+ of their links without warning - well, let's just say that I was brought back to reality pretty damn quick.

After stuffing myself all weekend and risking a blowout with my Spanx, I swore to myself that I would subsist on cardboard & grass for the next couple of weeks.  But after realizing that I had wonderful truffles from Theo chocolates to eat, bread, cheese & salami to finish off, it seemed kind of silly to shock my system with too much healthy food.  Far better for me to ease into it, you see.  Plus I had some brie & peaches to use up.  I mean, it's a sin to waste food, right?

Whenever I need to make caramelized onions for a recipe, I make extra.  They're one of my favorite leftovers to have.  They freeze well and they make just about anything that's savory better, including these quesadillas.  These make a quick meal when time is tight and the way the onions, Brie & peaches taste together is sublime.

Caramelized Onion, Brie and Peach Quesadillas
Serves 2

1 medium peach, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 ounce Brie, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup caramelized onions (See note)
2 1-inch flour tortillas

Mix peaches with sugar and set aside for five minutes.  Put a nonstick skillet over medium heat.  Over one half of a tortilla, spread a thin layer of peaches (you'll use about half), a couple of tablespoons of onions and half the Brie.  Fold tortilla in half and slide into skillet.  We usually don't use oil but if you'd rather use some, you can melt a little bit of butter or use a little bit of cooking spray.  It takes about 2-5 minutes per side - you want the tortillas to get nice and brown.  Cut into wedges and serve.

Caramelized Onions

1 large onion, thinly sliced.
1/2 tablespoon butter

Melt butter in a medium skillet.  Add onions and cook about 45 minutes, until onions and nice and brown.  You don't want them to get crispy brown.  Make sure to stir about every five minutes.  I usually double or triple this recipe and either use the onions in other dishes or freeze for later use.

Please click here for a printable recipe!

Keeping cool with Watermelon Margaritas

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Like a lot of the rest of the country, we're melting here in Knoxville.  It's been a miserable summer with dry, hot weather and since we live in an old house with only a few window units, we try to keep cooking to the minimum when it gets hot out.  In fact, it's been so bad this past week, we haven't felt much like eating at all.  Add in the fact that we're currently in the middle of some major demolition work and a minor disaster that allowed plaster dust to rain into our kitchen and I hope you can understand why I'm having trouble getting motivated to turn a stove on.

What I can get motivated about is cool drinks, preferably with a little booze in them to take the edge off.  These are easy to make, refreshing and strangely addictive.  In fact, I recently made them for a get together and an avowed beer drinker came back for seconds and thirds.

I've made them several times and it wasn't until last night that I thought that freezing the watermelon might make them even better.  Unfortunately, I was not able to test this theory out as I had just finished making a batch and didn't want to drink myself under the table.

Using tequila around the rim of glasses is a tip I picked up from Alton Brown.  It works much better than lime juice and it's what I use whenever I make margaritas.

 

If any of you have a surefire way to keep cool in the kitchen, I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Watermelon Margaritas
Adapted from Cooking Light
Yield:  6 servings

2 teaspoons sugar
3 1/2 cups cubed & seeded watermelon
1/2 cup tequila plus 1 tablespoon extra
2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon Triple Sec

Place 2 teaspoons of sugar in a saucer.  Place 1 tablespoon tequila in a saucer.  Wet the rim of your glass by placing it in the saucer of tequila and then place in the saucer of sugar so that the rim of the glass is coated with sugar. Set aside.

Combine watermelon, 1/2 cup tequila, 2 tablespoons sugar, the lime juice and Triple Sec in a blender.  Blend until smooth.  Fill each prepared glass with 1/2 cup crushed ice.  Fill glasses and drink.  Feel cooler already!

Please click here for a printable recipe!

 

 

I Get By With a Little Help from my Friends, and some Peach Basil Sangria!

Thanks for visiting my blog.  Please come visit me at my new site, Mouth From The South!

 Pardon the glass - it's the only one not packed up or covered in plaster dust right now!

The past few months have been some of the most stressful my family has ever dealt with.  I've mentioned before that I can be an irritatingly positive person and I can usually roll with the punches.  Lately, it's just felt like the hits keep on coming.  I refuse to be beaten but I do feel a little battered at this point.

I've been doing a lot of soul searching about my life and this blog.  I miss blogging but I oftentimes allow things I love to become a huge stressor in my life.  I've let that happen with this blog and I hate it because there are so many things I enjoy about food blogging.  Cooking soothes my soul & I get so much joy cooking for my loved ones or hearing that someone tried a recipe I posted and loved it.  I've also rediscovered my love for writing.  I've gotten to the point where writing for the sake of writing has become very fulfilling.  I'm also so grateful at the relationships I've formed because of this blog.  Some of the nicest people I've met have been because of this blog.  And I absolutely hate it that this blog has become another thing that I feel guilty about not getting done.

I'm an expert at perfectionistic procrastination - there are so many times in my life where I feel like I live by a quote from Voltaire  "The perfect is the enemy of the good".  I'm hesitant to post any post when it doesn't live up to my impossible standards.  So what happens is I don't post. Which is a completely moronic way of dealing with it, but there you go.

I'm making things way too complicated <sarcasm>which comes as a HUGE shock to my husband </sarcasm>  A lot of times I'll try 5 or 6 different recipes for a particular dish in order to get the best one.  I also like posting original recipes but between running my own business, renovating a 100 year-old house and dealing with the latest events in our lives, I don't have time to do this very often right now.

I'm also hesitant to post the simpler dishes that my husband and I eat on a regular basis because I usually assume that everyone knows about them already.  Every summer my husband and I live on watermelon and feta salad - I figured that everyone knew about this dish until I mentioned it to a few of my friends and they had never heard of it and were intrigued.

I also like posting more than just recipes - my favorite blogs are those that tell the story behind the recipe or those that share their lives along with their recipes. So many of my favorite blogs are favorites because of the writing behind them.  And that gets into my biggest fear - my fear of writing poorly.  To say I'm insecure about my writing would be putting it mildly.  I know that the only way to get better is to write but there are so many times I feel like banging my head against the wall because what I want to write just doesn't get executed the way I want it to.

So the solution to all of this?  I'm going to suck it up and just post.  I may cringe before I publish something but the only way to get over my fear of writing poorly is to just freaking write. So that's what I'm going to do. 

I've been drinking Sangria since my college days.  I remember one memorable evening when I was in college in DC.  Finals were over and I went out with a bunch of friends to celebrate at one of our favorite open patio restaurants.  I learned a very important lesson that night - it's never a good idea to eat all the fruit out of a pitcher of sangria! Otherwise you end up in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue with your friends taking pictures of you looking like this:

I've also learned that I'm not a fan of boozy sangrias for other reasons - sangria seems like such a summery drink to me and lots of alcohol in it just seems to weigh it down.  One of the reasons I love this Peach Basil Sangria so much is that it's so refreshing and light.  It also celebrates summer without being cloying - don't leave the basil out.  The basil is what makes this drink so delicious.

This recipe is dedicated to all of my friends who've laughed with me, cried with me and just let me be me over the last few months.  When life handed me lemons, you all squeezed lemons and drank sangria with me - both virtually and in real life.  You all are the best.  

Basil Peach Sangria

I've had this recipe on my computer for years now and I have no idea where it came from.  Thanks to wobbely at the message board I run, I think I may have found where it originally came from.

Note: Do not use a white wine that's overly sweet.  It makes the sangria way too cloying.

1 1/2 cups loosely packed basil leaves
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice(make sure to use freshly squeezed juice)
2 cans peach nectar (23 fluid ounces total)
1 (750-ml) bottle chilled dry white wine
2 peaches, peeled & diced

In a small saucepan, add basil, sugar and lemon juice.  Mix together, bruising the leaves with a wooden spoon as much as possible to let out all the essential oils in the basil.  Add one can of peach nectar and bring to a simmer.  Stir until all the sugar is dissolved.  Remove from heat and let sit for at least five minutes.  Pour mixture through a sieve into a heatproof container.  Discard basil leaves.  Stir in wine, peaches and other can of peach nectar.  Chill for at least one hour and up to 24 hours.  Serve with friends.  Laugh lots.

Please click here for a printable recipe!

For a different take on this drink, check out EatWisconsin's version!