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!)

Back from the Dead! Plus Summer Squash & Carrot Casserole with Goat Cheese

As I'm typing this, I'm realizing it's been almost 4 months since my last post. FOUR months! The spring and summer have been so packed full of events and activities in between a busy work schedule that it's been hard to find time to sit down and write. I've still been cooking a lot and stockpiling recipes though, so I'm hoping to have more time to devote to blogging now that fall is (almost) here.

If you follow me on Instagram you probably already have a good idea of what we've been up to the last few months, but here's a snapshot:

My sister's bridesmaids and I surprised Amanda with a bachelorette party weekend in Fort Lauderdale back in May.

Then she got married! It was a beautiful wedding, and a great weekend in Philly with family and friends. I'm so happy for the two of them and so glad to have Justyn be a part of our family now.

I also helped throw a baby shower for my sister-in-law Missy in early June. Our niece Lianna was born soon after!

At the end of June Matt got out of work for the summer, and in between a few other weddings and showers, the next few months were filled with all things summertime. Crabbing, beaching, pool day-ing, BBQing, berry picking, all that good stuff. We packed in as many day trips, ice cream cones, park visits, days at the fair, boardwalk and amusement parks, and water fun as we could. We snuck in a few "adult days" as well, including a golfing/wine tasting day and a grown-ups only trip to Six Flags. I even eked out time to can a bunch of pickles and blueberry jam so we have plenty of jars for the winter. As you can tell, it was a busy summer!

In August my best friend from home came to visit, I had a work trip to Chicago, and then Matt and I packed up our babies and flew to Florida for 12 days to visit my parents and vacation in Orlando, Venice Beach and Key West. We had an amazing time.

My parents even watched the kids for a few days so Matt and I could go to Key West just the two of us - a belated 7th anniversary weekend - and it was a fantastic getaway. We took a 3.5 hour boat ride from where my parents live down to the Keys, and had 3 days of bicycle riding, leisurely dinners, cocktails and live music, snorkeling and museums. What a great town.

And all the sudden it's Labor Day weekend. Although we did a million things and made many memories, it still feels like the summer went too fast. We had one last big beach day with a bunch of friends yesterday, but other than that we're trying to relax, get the kids back on a schedule and gear up for Matt's first official day of school tomorrow - which means back to 5:30 am wake-up calls for both of us for the next 9 months, blech. Good thing fall is one of my favorite seasons; I'm sad to send the babes back to daycare and go back to early mornings (no more coffee on the patio before work), but I'm also looking forward to fall foliage, boots, crisp air, apple picking, football and decorating the house with hay bales, pumpkins and cornstalks.

Before fall officially hits, though, maybe you have a bunch of end-of-summer squash that needs to get used up? If so, I have just the recipe for you. My garden yielded a good amount of squash this year, and I got sick of eating grilled squash, sauted squash, and "zoodles" every other day, so I finally made a few summer squash casseroles with my remaining ones. We ate one already at a beach picnic, and everyone loved it. The other one is sitting in my freezer for a rainy day.

Note: You can use summer squash or zucchini for this - either works. The carrots may seem like an unusual addition, but it's something I grew up with in Vermont and I love the slight sweetness they add.

Enjoy the last day of summer!

Summer Squash & Carrot Casserole with Goat Cheese

Serves 4-6 as a side dish

Ingredients
1 Tbsp. ghee or butter
4 cups sliced squash
1/2 onion, minced
1 tsp. salt
2 carrots, shredded
1 clove garlic, minced
4 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 oz. goat cheese
1 egg
1/2 cup whole milk
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 cup whole wheat breadcrumbs

Pre-heat oven to 350 (if eating immediately; if freezing, don't bake it first).

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the ghee or butter. Add the squash, onion and salt, and saute until tender, about 10 minutes. Add the carrots and garlic, and cook for about 5 minutes more, until the garlic is fragrant but not browned.

In a bowl, whisk together half the cheddar cheese, goat cheese, egg, milk, cayenne pepper and remaining salt and pepper.

Grease a medium-sized (1.5 - 2 qts) casserole dish, and spoon in the cooked squash. Pour over the cheese & milk mixture. Top with the remaining cheddar cheese and the breadcrumbs. At this point, either bake it or wrap it and freeze it for another day.

Bake for 15-25 minutes, until bubbly and brown (if baking frozen, it will take about 45 minutes).