Carrot Ginger Soup

It's been a really fun and festive weekend, filled with costumes, parties and of course treats. My brother- and sister-in-law throw an annual Trick or Treat party at their house, which happened on Friday. Our town always does trick-or-treat the day before Halloween because the fire department hosts a big parade on Halloween day.

I love the Trick or Treat party because it makes Halloween feel like a real event. We eat, we drink, we sit by a fire in the front yard, and we tour the rest of the neighborhood to see all the festivities. And their neighborhood takes it very seriously. The whole area is filled with decorations, haunted houses you can walk through, spooky pumpkin patches, music, smoke machines, fog horns, lights - you name it. Missy and Corey's contribution to the fun is a Halloween Photo Booth, where the kids can get their pictures taken in their costumes. The theme changes every year, and this year was a "Forbidden Forest". They are so artistic - I love how creative the photo booth is!

Riker wanted to be Spiderman, and Carson and our niece Lianna were "Mary Had a Little Lamb." I can't stand how cute they all are.

P.S. If you're looking for ways to curb the insane amount of candy eating that goes on around Halloween, we use the "Switch Witch". Riker is allowed to eat as much candy as he wants on trick-or-treat day, but then when he goes to bed, he leaves the candy for the Switch Witch, who takes the candy and leaves him a small present instead. It works great. I will say that we didn't even need to do it this year, because he only wanted to go to about 5 houses before calling it quits. No complaints here! :)

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Since trick-or-treat happened on Friday, we were free to do some home celebrating on Saturday. Dinner, a family walk, and scary movies on the couch sounded perfect. I knew that I would want to make a mostly healthy dinner on Halloween since we'd be eating lots of snacks and treats at the party on Friday, so I had planned to make a Carrot Ginger Soup (healthy, yet festively orange) and see if I could draw some spiderwebs on them with sour cream. I had never tried it before, but it actually worked pretty well!

And bonus, I didn't even have to buy carrots. Matt pulled a huge bunch of them out of the garden yesterday, and they tasted sweeter and fresher than any carrots I could've bought. Having a fall garden is awesome.

I served the soup with "Spider Pizzas" that I made on Ezekiel English muffins with Muir Glen Organic tomato sauce (my homemade sauce, which I keep in the freezer, is just too thin for pizza), Organic Valley mozzarella cheese and sliced up black olives. These are so fun and always a hit.

I'd say we might just have our annual Halloween dinner figured out. And of course this soup does not have to wait for Halloween night. It's incredibly easy to make, really budget friendly (only a few inexpensive ingredients), healthy, and has great flavor. It's smooth, sweet, a bit spicy from the ginger and has a nice herby finish. I ate a bowl of it for lunch today with a kale salad on the side, and I'm sure it would be a good dipper for a grilled cheese. It's a good basic fall/winter soup, especially when you have a bunch of carrots to use up.

 

Carrot Ginger Soup

Serves 4-6 as a meal

Adapted from this recipe

Ingredients

2 Tbsp. ghee (can substitute butter or olive oil)

1 yellow onion, chopped

6 cups vegetable broth (I use Organic Better Than Bouillon) 

2 pounds carrots, peeled and cut in large chunks

2 Tbsp. freshly grated ginger

1/2 cup half & half

1 Tbsp. sea salt

1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1 tsp. ground ginger

1 tsp. dried thyme

Sour cream (optional)

In a large pot over medium high heat, add ghee or butter. When melted, add onions and cook until translucent. Add broth, carrots, and ginger. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until carrots are tender - about 20 minutes.

Once carrots are cooked, use an immersion blender to blend the soup until smooth. (If you don't have an immersion blender, transfer the soup to a blender and blend until smooth, then return to the pot). Add the half & half, salt, pepper, ground ginger and thyme. Stir until combined, and simmer 3-5 minutes more.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream, or make sour cream spiderwebs:

Sour Cream Spiderwebs

To make the spiderwebs, put about 1/4 cup sour cream into a Ziploc bag, then snip the corner. Draw a small circle in the center of the bowl, then a larger circle around that. Draw 5 diagonal lines across the circles. Then use a butter knife to pull sour cream from the center outward, all around the circle, until a "web" forms.

Fall Sangria

This past weekend we had our annual Fall Fest. I'm pretty sure fall is my favorite season, and this party is definitely one of my favorite nights of the year.

Not only do I love decorating the house with all things rustic and pumpkin, cooking up a storm of seasonal foods, lighting candles to make the house feel cozy, and putting on a new sweater and tall brown boots for the evening. What I really love is that it gets all our friends together after a few months of post-summer semi-hibernation. It's been a while since we've all gotten together as a group. And even longer since we all got together as adults only. We all love spending time with each others' children of course, but sometimes you just need to sip on a cocktail and nibble on a crostini chatting with your friends - or maybe even dancing in the living room to 90s hip hop? - without a toddler tugging at your pant leg.

While the event is not a "cocktail party" per se since the only real cocktail I serve is sangria, I do all the food cocktail party style. It encourages mingling rather than sitting and eating, makes the night feel a little different and special, and bonus - I get to make lots of fun little hors' d'ouvres.

There are a few must-haves, like the Jalapeno Corn Dip that everyone seems to love, and then there are new recipes I try every year. It's a learning experience figuring out what things go really fast and what things people don't seem to care for, so I keep a list of the menu each year with notes on each item, so next year I can look back and make adjustments based on what worked well and what didn't.

Among the favorites this year were the French Onion Soup Crostini, cheese fondue, these Spinach Artichoke Bites, and my sister's Blueberry & Peach Brie Bites. Matt also made homemade pretzels filled with home-smoked brisket and his spicy pickled garden peppers, which seemed to go over pretty well too.

The Butternut Squash Bruschetta (based on this recipe by Food Network's GZ) held much promise, but were a bit of a letdown. The filling tasted great when it was warm, but it got cold quickly and lost its luster. Maybe it's just me, but cold squash isn't very appetizing. I'd probably only make this again for a small dinner party of 6-8 people, where it would get eaten quickly while still warm.

I also made mini salad cups filled with mesclun greens, cranberries and candied walnuts because I felt the table needed something green amongst the sea of cheeses and breads. The salads looked nice, but only a few people ate them. People seemed to prefer grabbing finger foods as they walked by the table vs. eating something with a fork while balancing a drink in the other hand.

My sisters and a few close friends also brought some desserts and bar snacks, as well as garlic pull-apart bread, deviled eggs decorated as pumpkins, and fall-themed Jell-O shots. I don't like people to feel like they have to bring something to a party, but I'm not afraid to accept a dish from my family and bestest of friends - it's a big help.

Drinks included a plethora of pumpkin beers, of course, as well as a few new Baratta homebrews. Matt brewed a Black IPA with a ton of hops grown at our friend Forrest's house, as well as a Farmhouse Hard Cider. I'm not usually a fan of ciders, but the farmhouse yeast he used kept it tart and drinkable versus overly sweet. I actually loved it and ended up drinking a few glasses. 

My contribution to the libations was a Fall Sangria. Like the ciders, I'm not a big fan of most "fall sangrias". Most of the recipes I find call for very sweet ingredients like caramel vodka, ginger ale or Sprite, juice, and then sugar, honey and other sweeteners on top of all that. To me that spells a big fat ick. Last year I made a Caramel Apple Pie Punch that went mostly untouched because of the sweetness level, so this year I wanted to tone it way back and just serve a drink that offered the subtle flavors of fall without tasting like a dessert.

If you're looking for a less sweet but still festive cocktail or sangria this fall, I have the solution for you.

Fall Sangria

Ingredients
2 apples, sliced thin (I used Red Delicious)
2 pears, sliced thin
Juice of one lemon
1 Tbsp. honey
1 cup bourbon or whiskey
3 cups apple cider
2 bottles dry white wine (I used pinot grigio), chilled

Place apples and pears in a large bowl or pitcher, and squeeze the lemon juice over top of the fruit. Add honey, whiskey and apple cider. Stir to combine, cover and refrigerate for at least 2-3 hours (overnight is best). When ready to serve, add white wine and stir to combine.

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Fall, I'm so glad you're here.

(Special thanks to my brother-in-law Corey Howell for taking all the photos of the evening!)

How to Host an Easy Brunch

And the winner of the Tuttorosso and Inspiralized giveaway is...greenmtngirl!

Congrats! Please email your address to SomeSugarAdded@Gmail.com so we can get the prize pack out to you.

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So today we're going to talk about brunch. And how to deal with hosting it at the very last minute with virtually no time to prep.

Have you ever ended up having people over for a spur of the moment meal, and had a minor panic attack that you didn't have time to plan and have no idea what you're going to do? This weekend the only plans I thought I had were doing some shopping for my sister's upcoming bachelorette party in Florida and a long-awaited get together with my girlfriends on Saturday night. Buttt my husband apparently had other plans.

On Friday evening, while sitting in the driveway leisurely drinking an IPA and watching Riker ride bikes with his new neighborhood friends, he informed me that we had plans with his family to go to the boardwalk all Saturday afternoon (after Riker's first soccer game at 8:00 in the morning), and also that he had invited a bunch of friends and their children over for Sunday brunch. Um...ok. For me, the "plan every last detail and everything must be perfect Type A dinner host", this was way stressful. I had no time to really plan anything and not much time to cook since we'd be out all day/night on Saturday. I had a little freakout, and then decided to just go with it. And I ended up having a really great weekend. I loved seeing all our friends and family, enjoying the beautiful weather and seeing our kids having fun running around together. I'm really going to try working on not getting so worked up about impromptu plans and be more spur of the moment, because a lot of times those days end up being the best days.

But that said, if you find yourself in a situation where your significant other informs you that you're having people over for brunch (or any meal) at the last minute, here are 4 tips to get you through it.

1. Don't Stress Out
I plan everything to the nth degree. But sometimes all that planning makes it way more tiring that it needs to be. A few months ago I read this blog post called "Friday Night Meatballs: How to Change Your Life with Pasta", and it really made me think about how every meal and gathering of friends does not have to be "special." What's special is that we're getting together. We all just want to see each other (okay and have some food and drinks most likely), but no one is going to judge if the table isn't perfectly set or the house is a little (a lot) messy. If you haven't read that article, I highly suggest it. Let's all be more impromptu about getting together with our friends and not worry about all the details. Who cares about place settings and crumbs on the floor when you're sipping a mimosa with your best friends watching these joyful little babes run around with glee?

2. Make it a Potluck
With #1 in mind, making a gathering a potluck makes things way easier on the host. When people offer to bring something to my house, my first instinct is to say, "Nope, just come, we've got it." I like people to just come and relax. I enjoy being a host. But it doesn't have to be that way every single time. This was a casual spring brunch and all our friends offered to bring a dish, so we let them. It made me way less stressed, and I think everyone actually liked bringing something. People brought their A game to this potluck.

For brunch it's nice to have a mix of breakfast and lunch / sweet & savory items, so we coordinated accordingly. And by "coordinated" I mean there was a text chain where everyone threw out ideas. One friend brought a gorgeous fruit & yogurt parfait bar and some roasted breakfast potatoes, and another friend brought flatbreads with fig jam, prosciutto, arugula, goat cheese and balsamic glaze (vegetarian ones for me and Heather).

3. Make Only One "Wow Factor"Dish
Another issue I have is over-thinking the menu. I go down the Pinterest rabbit hole and make a mile-long list of things to cook. But lately I've been trying to just make one or two complicated items and keep everything else simple.

For brunch I feel you have to have something egg-based and some kind of bread, as well as a salad. It's a classic combo. I had my heart set on making a homemade bread bar, so that was my one "wow factor" item. Everything else looked nice but was super simple to make.

The Bread 
I used this recipe for whole wheat bread because you don't have to knead it or let the yeast bloom. It takes time, but not much effort. And it came out great - less dense and crumbly than other whole wheat recipes I've tried. I made the dough first thing when I woke up so it was ready to go by brunch time.

For toppings, I made a few compound butters, a cream cheese spread and then some straight-from-the-jar organic strawberry jam.

Topping 1: Herb Butter using unsalted butter with fresh parsley and basil, dried thyme, lemon zest, sea salt and cracked pepper.

Topping 2: Sweet Orange Butter using unsalted butter, a few teaspoons of organic cane sugar, orange zest and a squeeze of orange juice. (Look at that color! It's all from the orange zest since the butter was white.)

Topping 3: Sundried Tomato Pesto Cream Cheese (unpictured) using homemade pesto I had in the freezer and the stash of sundried tomatoes I always have in the fridge.

Topping 4: Strawberry Jam. An old standby.

I put the "bread bar" on the kitchen island so people could snack on it right when they came in, while other things were cooking. It was something a bit unexpected and fun, and everyone seemed to like it. I also think homemade bread makes people feel like you made something special, but it's made from just a few simple ingredients that are always in the pantry, so it's a win win. Bonus: It makes your whole house smell amazingly yeasty, comforting and warm.

The Frittata
I like to make quiche for any special breakfast or brunch. But quiche meant I also had to make crust, and since I was already making the bread, I forced myself to quit the crust and opt for a frittata instead. Frittata reminds me of my grandmother; when I was in college she used to make it quite often and serve it with a simple green salad. This one included kale, caramelized onions and Vermont sharp cheddar; it had a great fluffy texture and nice salty bite from the cheese.

To make it, I  caramelized onions in some ghee (you can use oil or butter), then removed them from the pan. In the same pan I cooked a bunch of chopped kale with some sea salt and pepper. Once it was done, I added the onions back in. Then I whisked together 10 eggs with a splash of milk, salt, pepper and about 5 oz. of shredded cheddar cheese. I poured the egg mixture over the veggies and cooked it on the stove over medium heat for a few minutes until it start to set. Then I popped it in the oven at 450 for about 10 minutes until it was golden brown on top. Once it came out of the oven, I turned it over onto a wooden board and topped it with fresh parsley and Parmesan cheese.

Frittata is great for brunch because you can toss in literally whatever veggies, meats or cheeses you have on hand, you cook everything in one pan, and although it only takes about 30 minutes and very little effort to make, it has a really nice presentation.

The Sides
Lox is also a breakfast favorite of mine, and these little cucumber rounds with cream cheese, lox and dill took all of 10 minutes to make. These are also nice because lox is pricey - especially when you buy wild caught - but I only needed one 6 oz. package to fill a whole platter of cucumbers. A little goes a long way when you use it as an appetizer.

I also threw together a spinach & arugula salad with dried cranberries, orange segments, toasted walnuts and goat cheese, tossed with a homemade balsamic & raw honey dressing. Spinach and goat cheese salads are a no brainer in our group of friends - they're always gone in a flash.

{It looks so much prettier before it gets doused with cheese and dressing, doesn't it?}

Other Stuff
Matt still has some steaks in the freezer from our annual Vermont Natural Beef cow purchase, so he marinated a big steak in the morning and then threw it on the grill when everyone arrived. One steak cut into strips was plenty given all the other food around (we actually had a bunch leftover), but it's nice to have some kind of meat for the carnivorous crew.

I really debated making something sweet, like muffins or a lemon bread, but forced myself to cross it off the list. Not needed! There was plenty of food, and the sweet stuff probably would've barely been touched and then it'd be sitting at our house all week.

All in all, this menu was pretty simple to make and took about 3 hours total - even with a toddler and 10-month old running around between our feet all morning, even with trying to do a quick vacuum and toy pick-up, even with Matt very ambitiously doing some yard work before everyone arrived, and even with everyone getting showers (though I'll admit, I didn't make it to blowdrying my hair). If it weren't for all the distractions, I probably could've cooked everything in less than two hours.

4. Use What You Have
I based the menu almost entirely around what I already had in the house. I didn't want to have to make a big grocery list and spend an hour at the store. Instead, I just thought about what I had on hand that I could easily turn into a few dishes. I did have to run to the store early Sunday morning to grab lox (simply because I really wanted it) and some strawberry jam (I was low on jam and figured the kids might want it for the bread, but honestly, I could've made do with what I had). That made things much easier.

5. Ask Someone to Bring the Bubbly
My last tip is to have someone bring some bubbly. My friend Heather kept asking what she could bring, and really there was plenty of food already coming, so she offered to bring mimosas. They were the perfect addition. Mimosas make it a party. They feel a little special and fun, and sipping them sitting around the farm table while watching the kids play in the playroom made for a very relaxing Sunday morning. ;)

Note: Champagne actually gives me a bad headache and makes me extremely tired so I rarely drink it, but Heather used Prosecco, which has a lighter carbonation and doesn't seem as sweet to me, and it didn't make me tired or headachy at all. So if champagne goes straight to your head, try Prosecco.

Happy spring brunching!