Fall flavors

From NPR: Chicken sauteed with cider and almonds, with farmers' market broccoli (above) and pasta with roasted butternut squash and greens (below):

Pesto, pesto!

One of the things I miss most about Princeton is my friend Hannah's homemade pesto. (And I miss Hannah, too!) But I found myself with all of this beautiful basil, some from the farmers' market and some from our garden:

So I made pesto, and tossed it with our favorite semi-local frozen pasta and local grape tomatoes.

With the leftover pesto, I topped a pizza:

I make our own crust in the bread maker. A batch makes enough for three pizzas, so I'll usually bake one right away and freeze the other two balls of dough. My secret ingredient is extra sugar in the dough -- thanks to Lee H. for that idea!

Today at the Market

It was just a quick trip to the farmers' market today ... huge blackberries, bunches of basil, and some cookies for dessert. But raspberries were back and sweet corn is in season. So I'll be making a big trip next week!

Fresh and local

We were homesick for Orcas from the moment we left. While we were there, just about everything we ate was fresh and local -- the fish, the meat, the vegetables, the fruit. The colors and flavors were unbelievable. So we've been trying to recreate it at home, which means lots of (expensive) trips here and here. We also wanted to try to recreate a fabulous dinner Brent had at the Inn at Ship Bay. So we present, "Bad-ass Pasta Primavera":

I splurged on fresh, local pasta (though next time, I'll go back to the regular stuff). The veggies -- grape tomatoes and a couple of kinds of squash -- are from local farms. The "sauce" is a citrus vinaigrette (lemon juice, lime juice, zest, olive oil, sugar, and salt) and lots and lots of goat cheese.

Tonight, we went with an old stand-by, Broiled Salmon with Marmalade-Dijon Glaze:


We used wild Coho salmon -- get it while it's in season! It made the dish. I have been using low sugar (but no artificial ingredients!) marmalade for my orange recipes lately, and it's great. On the side, I sauteed local (of course!) chard with garlic and oil and warmed some leftover homemade wheat dinner rolls. The mix of salty-bittery chard and sweet salmon was perfect!