Despite all the press about salmonella, I have to say it:

I do love me some peanut butter.

To celebrate my salmonella-free jar of peanut butter bliss, I am posting my all-time favorite peanut butter cookie recipe.  It’s all-natural, but it’s not likely to help you lose weight, if that’s what you’re looking for.  It does, however, make a very delicious cookie.

Eat some cookies.  Move your body doing something you love, like cycling, snowshoeing, visiting a rock gym, sledding with the kids, taking the dog out, or shooting hoops.  Call it even, and love your life.  (Simple, right?)

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As I’ve pointed out before, processed and prepackaged foods usually have something in them you’d prefer not to be eating.  In the case of many non-dairy “milks” such as soy, rice, or almond milk, that’s the seaweed-derived thickener carrageenen.  Carrageenen is interesting enough to me that I’ll devote an entire post to it in the near future so you can revel in all the gory details, but for the moment I’ll just say that I have not been favorably impressed with the results of the research on carrageenen.  Because our household attempts to keep dairy consumption as a pretty small part of our diet, that meant that I took some time last weekend to whip up some homemade almond milk.  It’s surprisingly simple, and it does have some side benefits beyond carrageenan avoidance, as you’ll see at the end of the post.

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I don’t really have a good reason for calling these New Moon cookies, except that I personally think they are out of this world.  Oh, and they’re round.  Like the moon.  And they’re brimming with quinoa, which is also orbish.  So, they’re round at several levels.  And tasty.  And that’s what matters.

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Early this morning, awakened by the dulcet tones of one Mr Hippo singing to the sunrise, I got up, got dressed, and headed to the farmers’ market to see what I could scavenge for our Dark Days Challenge meal.  The fridge was a little bare, since our CSA pick-up last week was canceled due to the holiday.  However, the Unicyclist and I had an inkling of what we wanted: kabobs.  Rich and savory kabobs to slather with the leftover muhammara from our Christmas Eve shindig.  Last night over dinner, just as we’d decided this, the Unicyclist was struck with a bolt of inspiration.

“What about dessert kabobs?”

Brilliant.  And timely.  As everyone knows, nothing makes a party like food on a stick, so consider these recipes my belated Christmas gift to you.  Both the savory and the sweet kabobs we made would be a wonderful, healthful addition to any New Year’s Eve fiestas.

Let’s get into it.  First: the ingredients.

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Audience, meet my Darkest Mint Stars:

And have you yet made the acquaintance of my diabetic-friendly, cinnamon-sprinkled, maple-kissed mixed nuts?

Did I mention yet how delicious December was going to be?  Mmmm…

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Apparently last week over at Urban Hennery, some murmurings started sneaking in about how many of the Dark Days Challenge recipes people had been submitting seemed…well…complicated.  It seems some of the folks taking the challenge for the first time were taken aback by the ambitiousness of multi-course dinners and fancy sauces created by those who have been local fooding and cooking from scratch for a good long while.

I’m sure you all know my stance on that.

I dig fancy-pants meals sometimes.  I really do.  But simple is also good.  Very good.  And tasty.

I can do simple.

So, this week, I decided to keep my Dark Days meal extra-simple and use some ingredients that more folks would be able to find without, you know, having to move to the desert.  With the exception of the orange, I think I done good. Basically, I am excited that so many people did sign up at Urban Hennery for the challenge, and I hope they keep it going.  You know, sometimes you have scrambled eggs for dinner  or squash and a salad.  That counts, too!  And so does this week’s project: sweet potato apple bake with a side of wilted winter greens.

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The Challenge: Pull off Christmas dinner for seven in a one-butt kitchen without tripping over any one of the five dogs underfoot

The Menu: Lentil soup, roasted root veggies, green bean casserole, fresh bread, stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, mixed greens salad with goat cheese, cranberries, and pecans, pumpkin and pecan pies, and the requisite turkey and gravy for the omnivores in the group

Mom and I had a pretty elaborate choreography going on in the kitchen.  As mentioned, it’s a one-butt kitchen, and there were two to three human butts in it at most times, never mind the doggie butts…or the extremely hopeful doggie faces.  Despite the occasional butt bump, everything went extremely well.  So, ready for the skinny on a couple of the dishes?  After the jump, find out how I modified some classics for vegetarians and those concerned about blood sugar.

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The holiday season is here.  Cue the food!

Let’s face facts.  The colder months can be great inspiration for some delicious dishes, but they can also be a shortcut to a pie-and-gravy-strewn path of personal destruction.  Specifically, the chill and the short days somehow inspire carbohydrate hoarding, at least for some of us.  (I speak from a purely observational perspective, of course.  You’d be surprised how much you can see from behind the delicious fort of bread I’ve built.) While carbs–especially those slathered in butter–taste great, I always find that a heavy rotation of too many bready or sweet items makes me tired and kind of cranky.  Nobody likes that.

Still, it is a good time to enjoy delicious food, particularly when you can share it with friends and family.  Over the next few weeks, I will be posting some holiday-themed recipes you can use for the myriad shindigs and goings-on that inevitably pop up this time of year.  Some of these recipes will be meant to balance the richer fare found at holiday dinners, while others will be more self-indulgent.  I hope you enjoy them all.

First up is a salad inspired by one my friend Rachel mentioned when I was in Philadelphia.  Apparently, her aunt used to toss melon and pomegranate seeds together into a lovely and delicious treat, one Rachel describes with considerable enthusiasm years later. I decided to see if I could dress up this recipe into something gala-worthy, seeing as how I had gotten a canary melon from our farm CSA last week and some pomegranates from the nearby farmers’ market.  Pomegranates are everywhere here this time of year, growing fat and red and nigh-to-bursting on the neighbors’ trees.  (Pomegranates are, in fact, classified as an exploding fruit, one that bursts to release its seeds.) It’s a good time of year to make friends and beg for fruit.

Anyhow, the cooking gods smiled on me; my experiment turned out to be both tasty and beautiful to look at.  I am confident your guests will be über-impressed by the splash of color on the dinner table.

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Because Miz Valerie has been asking about some rough-and-ready guidelines for granola for the faint of heart, in the interest of research, I riffed on my generic granola recipe and made some extra-nutty honey nut granola yesterday with twice as many nuts as usual, no millet or flax, buckwheat honey thrown in with the sweeteners, and a generous splash of almond extract.  Hello, deliciousness!

What prompted the out-of-season granola fest?  Well, a few things have been weighing on Miz Valerie’s mind about the granola-making process.  Specifically, she wanted some wet-to-dry ratios and the details on how long it would keep.  Miz V, this post is for you.

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Note: Since I am still on my delirious food tour of Philly, frolicking merrily with friends I love and far too busy to update you on the fun I’m having while I’m having it, I penitently offer you a post I wrote before leaving about some very delicious muffins I recently made. See–I planned ahead because I care. (I also knew it was impossible not to have ridiculous amounts of fun with Rachel, Sara, Becca, and Mary.) I leave for New York tomorrow, and I hope to have a little time to tell you all about the amazing places I’ve been so far in Philly–the Italian Market, Reading Terminal Market, Sabrina’s Café, White Dog Café, and Dock Street Brewery. Stay tuned!

One of the best things about the change of the seasons is the coming ready of different crops. Right now, apples are blushing and growing heavy, greens are sprouting tall, and squash are swelling full and bright. Other times of year have other gifts to offer. Last May, the Unicyclist and I took advantage of the first peaches of the year at Schnepf Farms in Queen Creek. The orchards are about a half hour from our home, and they grow several different varieties in pesticide-free orchards. We spent a morning there among the trees, enjoying the evidence of natural pest control–I came across several of the little alligator-like lacewing larvae as we picked, and an assassin bug stowed away in one of our flats of peaches. Both creepy-crawlies are beneficial insects that keep crop-munching pests under control.

We came back with a small mountain of fragrant peaches and apricots that filled the house with a wonderful scent. Then, a friend came by with about 20 pounds of peaches a neighbor had giver her from a tree in their yard. The peaches she brought were even more juicy and sweet. Softly furred, delicate, sunset-colored, we ate a half dozen fresh peaches or more a day. However, a couple days passed and the peach pile still loomed large. It was time to get down to business. Peach crisp. Peach jam. And a whoooooole lot of frozen peaches to enjoy later. All we had to do was wash them, pit them, and cut them in generous slices.

Since fresh peaches are long gone from this neck of the wood, I decided last weekend that it was time to enjoy some of them again. I pulled out a bag of my frozen peaches and chose, after a bit of deliberation, that muffins were the destination. This recipe is loosely based on the blueberry muffin recipe in Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible. They turned out great–dense and moist, sweet and tasting richly of peaches. While you may not have such amazing peaches hiding in your freezer, try it with fruit you do have squirreled away, or experiment with what’s fresh now. Recipes are frameworks, not rules.

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