Wordless Wednesday: Fall in the City

Pumpkin Pie Smoothie

I'm going through a pumpkin phase. I seem to want to make a pumpkin version of everything. Soup, breakfast, ice cream...and why not? Pumpkin is delicious. Pumpkin pie is delicious. Only it involves a lot of butter - at least if you want to do pie right. Not that butter is a bad thing. I love butter. All people should love butter. But pie for breakfast isn't always the greatest idea. It may look like a great idea if you are hungover or have spent the entire night writing a paper and it's five a.m. and you need motivation to live. But it's still not a good idea. Trust me.

Not that I've eaten pie for breakfast. I may have...eaten cake for breakfast. (I had to prevent it from going to waste!) Although then there was that time with the cookie dough...and the marmalade...which I ate with a fork, because toast seemed like an unnecessary accessory. Yeah, I've made poor breakfast choices in my life. I admit it.

But here is a version of Pie For Breakfast that doesn't involve guilt or send you into a sugar coma. So get excited. Pie for breakfast! It's win-win.

Whole Grain Apple Muffins

These muffins came about because of a promise made to friends while drinking. Please note, however, that I say "drinking" and not "drunk." Because, while in the past I may have consumed certain amounts of alcohol and then proceeded to make use of electrical appliances, in this case I was perfectly sober. If completely exhausted. But I promised my perhaps slightly inebriated friends that I would make them muffins and have them over for tea. Because I'm cool like that.

This also served a practical purpose for me, as there is nothing like the prospect of company to send one into a cleaning frenzy, which my apartment sorely need.

And oh, did I frenzy clean. I am already a neat-freak by nature, but I'm also incorrigibly lazy. Except for the kitchen, which I neaten and wipe down obsessively, other rooms tend to be neglected. Until, that is, I am struck by the Cleaning Urge and Everything Must Be Cleaned and there is no stopping until order and cleanliness reign once again. And then I fall over, but glorify in the new-found cleanliness of my surroundings.

So Friday I cleaned. I cleaned so hard I had to turn on the AC. Full blast. I mopped vigorously. I found rotting things. I was horrified. I dealt with them. I vacuumed the stairs with violence. I probably strained my muscles. And I sweated. It was not pretty. I had all the horrible kinds of sweat - the neck sweat, the back sweat, the...well, I won't go on. But the apartment was clean, and so I was filled with joy.

And then I made these muffins, which I then fed to my now not-drunk friends. You should too.

Apple Celery Salad

The other week, I got together with some friends for a potluck. And ate. So much food. I know, I should be speaking of the massive overeating that is Thanksgiving, but it's actually been several years since I've experienced an authentic Thanksgiving meal. This year I went out for Indian instead. I highly recommend it.

But anyways, to return to the over-eating incident. We went from eating vegetable chips and quinoa salad to devouring banana bread, brownie cake, and peanut butter cookies. And alcohol. There was some of that involved as well. It resulted in the kind of fullness that makes you understand the plight of beached whales. The kind where you go to bed and can't sleep properly because your pajamas don't want to accommodate the extra five pounds you've brought to bed with you, without an invitation. The kind of sensation that tends to follow Christmas dinners and leads you to make a New Year's Resolution to only eat broccoli and cucumber for a month.

Well, suffice to say I didn't make any resolutions regarding cucumber diets or lemon juice fasts. I'm not totally crazy. Or so I tell myself.

What I did do - the day after, mind you, when I no longer felt the need to lie down and die, and I could walk with ease, instead of lumbering around on all fours like a poorly coordinated child - was make this salad. It's crunchy, refreshing, and full of green things, and doesn't reduce your mobility to that of a sloth's.

Spicy Corn Salad

I've been obsessed with creating the perfect corn salad for the past month, so it's somewhat bittersweet to finally succeed in creating one just as the corn season is ending. I have to confess that, just being able to have in-season corn available for longer than three weeks in August has been a bit of a new experience for me. I've been supremely lucky to have a green-thumbed father (whose passion for his garden sometimes borders on obsession) who has always - or at least as long as I can recall - had a corner of the garden set aside for corn.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, however, Red Lake is not exactly the Fertile Crescent. In fact, it's more of a Hostile Crescent, and the things that do grow in it are either things that will kill you, things that never die, and a few edible things that die almost instantly. Basically, Red Lake is good for blueberries (abundant for about two seconds in August) and deformed Christmas trees. Oh, and moss. There's a lot of that around too. And clover, which I ate once. When I was five. Kind of like the poor man's arugula.