Whiteley Creek Homestead

My daughter, Lisa, gave me money for my birthday. I had the greatest fun deciding how I would spend her gift. After careful consideration, I chose this pair of "midsummer black" gardening clogs. I love the autumn colors. 

 
The price on sloggers.com was $34.99, but I found them on amazon.com for $20.98. The savings left me with additional money to spend… enough to order two cookbooks that I have had my eye on… which qualified my order for Amazon's free shipping.

When NYC unexpectedly lost its power during a two-day multi-state blackout in August 2003, Louisa Shafia, author of Lucid Food: Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life, was preparing to depart on the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan when everything suddenly shut down. Shafia discovered that "something truly magical emerges when we slow down, turn off our gadgets, and approach the shared rituals of food – procuring, preparing, cooking, and even cleaning up – with an appreciation for its timeless role in our daily lives." Neighbors, who had scarcely acknowledged each other previously, gathered for spontaneous street parties during the power outage. Restaurants set up grills on the sidewalk outside their businesses and lit candles to invite patrons to gather inside. "The modern world of bright lights, cable TV, and fast food took a backseat to genuine face-to-face interaction, simple pleasures, rediscovery of true community spirit." Shafia organizes her healthful recipes by the seasons to synchronize our cooking with the earth's rhythm. She stresses the use of locally grown products because they are in-season, fresher, less processed to keep fresh, require less packaging, less fuel is needed to transport, and it supports the local economy. I have made Creamy Red Kuri Squash Soup from Lucid Food and it is very good on a cool autumn day.      

 
The recipes in Good to the Grain Baking with Whole-Grain Flours by Kim Boyce use a variety of twelve whole grain flours from amaranth to teff. I chose this cookbook to expand my repertoire of flours. I have already made Boyce's Fig Buckwheat Scones and they are a definite keeper. 

My milk packaging took on a new look that I absolutely love! Same company but a new name and a label makeover.

This milk that I purchase from Kalona Super Natural (formerly Farmers' All Natural Creamery) that is processed in Kalona, a town in southeastern Iowa, has the qualities I look for… The company "believes in doing less-not more", so the milk is non-homogenized and low-temperature pasteurized to retain "its most natural state." The milk "comes from small, sustainable (organic) family farms with average herds of 35 (grass fed) cows (raised with no hormones) on just 90 acres."

  
…and it simply tastes wonderfully rich and creamy!

The scents of autumn… Pear Spice Cake from my October 2010 Clean Eating E-Newsletter. It's light, moist, and lowfat. The cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves permeate the house with the most wonderful aroma as it bakes.

Pear Spice Cake

1 egg + 1 egg white

¼ cup unsweetened applesauce

2 tbsp oil

½ cup nonfat plain Greek yogurt

1 tsp vanilla

½ cup sucanat (a free-flowing brown sugar that has a molasses flavor and can be found in the grocery’s natural foods section)

1 pear, peeled, cored and diced

1 tsp lemon juice

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp ginger

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp cloves

¼ tsp sea salt

Preheat oven to 350°. Line an 8-inch round cake pan with natural parchment paper. One with removable sides is ideal. Beat first six ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk dry ingredients. Mix together wet and dry ingredients. Fold in half of the pears. Pour batter into baking pan. Sprinkle remaining half of pear evenly over top. Bake for 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in cake comes out clean. I served with a dollop of honey flavored Greek yogurt on top of each slice. A perfect complement…

The colors of autumn… a red kuri squash that I purchased at the North Wind Organic Farm in Bayfield, Wisconsin this past weekend.

The flavors of autumn… Creamy Red Kuri Squash Soup is a recipe from Louisa Shafia's Lucid Food: Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life. Her cookbook is divided into seasons making it easy to find recipes using foods that are at their peak ripeness and available locally. I learned of her cookbook from a web search for "red kuri squash soup" that brought me to janespice.com. It's a definite must-make-again.

Creamy Red Kuri Squash Soup

Serves 4 to 6.

4 heaping cups coarsely diced kuri squash (2-3 lb squash)

1 quart vegetable stock available in grocery’s natural foods section (I used low-sodium.)

3 tbsp olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, diced

1 sweet unpeeled apple, cored and sliced

1 tsp cinnamon

pinch of cayenne pepper

1 – 2 tsp salt (I omitted.)

½ tsp pepper (I provided at serving time as an individual option.)

Remove squash seeds, peel skin with a vegetable peeler, and coarsely dice. Place the squash in a soup pot with the stock. Simmer covered until firm tender, about 15 minutes. While squash simmers, add 2 tbsp olive oil to a sauté pan. Heat briefly over high low heat then add onion, apple slices, cinnamon, and cayenne and sauté until onions and apple slices are soft. Add to squash and stock, stirring until combined. In batches, if necessary, puree in a blender until smooth adding the remaining tablespoon of olive oil as it blends. Add a little extra stock or water if the soup is too thick.