Spice & KissesRecipes reviewed or created by Spice and Kisses
Difficulty level: easy (can be made post-call)
It’s that time of year again… when even a few minutes at the stove can leave you drenched in sweat… and the tomatoes are overrunning my kitchen (admittedly not a bad problem to have).
Hello August!
The AC situation in our home has improved since last summer, so cooking doesn’t leave me as overheated as it used to, but I’m still not super-excited about stirring a pot on the stove top for long periods of time. Enter gazpacho.
Difficulty level: Easy (could manage after overnight call)
Note: I wrote this post back in early November, when it made more sense to talk about pumpkins being in season. Several side projects distracted me from posting. The prospect of trying to rework this blog to fit a holiday theme (it could work! The salad has that red-and-green — if we consider magenta to be a shade of red — look) nearly made me abandon posting it. But as mentioned later, I took far too long to put this up, even though it ought to have been one of my earliest posts. Then I decided that since I’m not a professional blogger, but a hobbyist, that the post could go up as is, since there’s no reason at all that anyone besides myself should be concerned that it’s coming out a few weeks late. And even though it’s December, my grocery store still has pretty good beets, so you haven’t missed out much anyway – find some and make this salad!
With Hurricane Delta bringing cool, rainy weather to North Georgia, it finally feels like summer’s over. Time to retire the gazpacho recipe (saved for next summer) and bust out the warm, spicy soups that go hand-in-hand with autumn.
This weekend, as the rain drizzled on, I wanted to revisit Fine Cooking’s recipe for onion and ale soup with blue cheese croutons, which I linked to in my last post. Somehow, tending to slowly caramelizing onions in the kitchen feels less tedious and more zen during a chill, gray evening spent at home.
I’m super excited about this easy low-carb dessert. It sounds exotic—posset? What the heck is that? And with passion fruit!—tastes rich and luscious—yet comes together in about fifteen minutes (less if you use frozen passion fruit nectar or try the alternate citrus flavors).
It’s been pointed out by my carnivore husband that all the recipes posted to date are vegetarian and mostly feature vegetables, despite my earlier promise of a fish recipe. This reflects my tastes—I adore vegetables and want to make sure that you do, too, by sharing my favorite recipes. But our family does have a cache of go-to recipes for poultry, seafood, and the special occasions where we make lamb or goat. I suppose it’s time to share one….
AKA Part 2 in the How To Eat Your Fall Decor Series
I never used to be a fan of roasted pumpkin seeds. But since Baby Boy convinced me to buy three pumpkins this year, I was forced (okay, not technically forced, but, ya know…can’t waste) to give these crunchy snacks a second chance. Now, after applying this spicy-sour-sweet trifecta of flavorings to my pumpkin seeds, I’ve become a convert. I even saved seeds from other winter squash (such as the funky striped one in the first picture…anyone know what it’s called?) that I would have discarded before, all so I could make and eat more of these.
(AKA: what to do with your leftover fall centerpieces/decorations)
Baby boy and I may have gotten overenthusiastic about pumpkins this year. We left for India in the middle of a hot, humid September—then returned in October to find summer giving way to cool fall days. Our first evening home, we cheered ourselves up about the end of our vacation by walking around the neighborhood and counting all the pumpkins set out on stoops. The next day, of course, Baby Boy insisted we buy pumpkins at the grocery store. If he could carry them himself, he would have carted home a trunkful of the largest carving pumpkins on display. Somehow, I negotiated him down to one large carving pumpkin and two pie pumpkins.
Now that it’s time to swap out the fall décor for holiday decorations, the question arises: what to do with our pumpkins? Since we never carved them, they’re VERY solid. I can’t stand the thought of discarding unspoiled produce, even if used for decoration, but chopping up three large squashes requires a daunting amount of time (and muscle).
La vie en rose:
Lychee rose rosé sangria
This rosé sangria takes me back to rosier times (pun intended).
BC (before children), Karthik and I used to go on happy hour dates. Mostly these were about scoring deals on tasty food, but there was one place we returned to solely for this amazing cocktail. Lychee, rose, and rosé: an unexpectedly unique yet simple combination.