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I've been cooking a lot lately, some weeks trying out multiple new recipes. To remind myself, I'm just going to start listing them here...

To start a few things:

Grilled Lamb and Fig Skewers with Mint-Pepper Glaze- outrageous!

Fresh Corn Pancakes- best breakfast for dinner with bacon of course!

Chilled Zucchini Soup with Lemon-Cumin Shrimp and Cilantro Cream- this is just lovely, be sure to add a little shrimp marinade into the soup as well.

Lemon Cornmeal Cake with Lemon Glaze and Crushed-Blueberry Sauce- blueberry sauce is quite nice, and the cornmeal gives the cake such a lovely texture. A delicious breakfast!

Carrot Cupcakes with Orange Icing- I didn't make the icing, but I loved the denseness of these cupcakes, they traveled well on our fishing/ camping trip and I frosted them with the lemon cream from the cookies below.

Ginger-Spice Sandwich Cookies with Lemon Cream- yum. A spice sandwich cookie with lemon cream cheese icing inside. What's not to love? These also traveled well, and softened up nicely.

Brined Grilled Chicken Breasts with Red Chile Oil- simple and lovely

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad With Black Beans and Chili Dressing- amazing, so much more than it's parts. I served for a weeknight dinner party and it was such a hit. Next night I warmed it and had it on a taco salad.

Seasons Change

So my last post was in the spring, and now, here we are, in fall. I love fall- the colors, the smells, the new way the sun passes through the sky. There is something so distinctive about the color of the sky in the evenings that make it feel like fall. The crispness and clearness of the air is dreamy. It makes me want soup, all day every day.

Yesterday's soup was salmon chowder. I am very fussy about chowder. I like creamy but not too creamy, thick but not floury, briny with good sized chunks of vegetables. Well, I found the perfect salmon chowder for me.

Adapted from Gourmet 2004, original recipe here.

Salmon Chowder with Dill

• 3 turkey bacon slices chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 medium onion, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 2 celery ribs, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 pound Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup clam broth
• 1 cup whole milk
• 3/4 pound skinless salmon fillet, trimmed of dark flesh, then cut into 1-inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
• 
  
• Cook bacon with a bit of olive oil in a saucepan until crisp, then transfer to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons fat from saucepan, then add onion, celery, potatoes, cayenne, and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in water and clam juice and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, until potatoes are almost tender, about 8 minutes. Add milk and simmer, uncovered, until potatoes are tender, 4 to 5 minutes. DO NOT BOIL. Stir in salmon and dill and simmer gently until salmon is just cooked through, 3 to 4 minutes. Add salt as needed. Serve sprinkled with bacon.

I adapted the recipe a bit- used turkey bacon, less salmon, only half the milk and substituted in clam broth, which made it nice and briny. Oh, and I skipped butter at the end, it just didn't seem necessary to me. In the end this was light but thick and hearty and delicious. The perfect way to enjoy the new tilt to the sky and crispness in the air.

uhhh....

Well, really. This is kind of awkward. Hello Blog, it's been a while. What have you been up to? I've done some traveling, taken a Spanish class, thrown a few dinner parties, gotten a new favorite band- fascinating, busy stuff. And no blogging about it at all. Boo. 

I've been cooking a lot lately, and since my last post (waaay back in January), I've made lots and lots of things.... Here's a quick rundown of some of the best-

• Caldo Verde with collard greens. I adapted this recipe, sometimes searing sausages seperately deglazing with the soup broth and adding that back into the soup. Then I follow the recipe and top with the slices of sausage. Such a perfect dinner during the cold wet months. 
  
• Veggie-Chicken Koftas- These are amazing chicken and eggplant patties that are studded with pistachios. They are perfect with hummus and tzatziki. I can't lay any claim to them, other than the fact that I've made them about five times since January and not only are they easy and delicious, but they freeze like champs! I pre-form the patties and freeze in a single layer in freezer bags. In general I make them the day before I cook them so all the flavors have time to meld. These are also great as an appetizer formed into tiny 1" meatballs and served with tzatziki. Photos to come!
• Jerk Chicken- This is a simple and classic jerk. There's a lot of ingredients, but the preparation is pure ease. I usually save some of the marinade to make a mojo sauce by adding the juice of a couple limes, some cilantro, a minced clove of garlic and a bit of olive oil. This becomes a dip for fried plantains for the side. 
• Sonoma Chicken Salad from Whole Foods- so simple and delicious. This tastes unbelievably clean. 

I know I've cooked other things recently, but can't think of them right now off the top of my head. I should really write this stuff down. Or just use this here bloggy. hmmm....

Arts, Crafts and other stuff

Really? I haven't posted in over a month. Well, it's official, I am terrible at this! 

This weekend I hosted another party, this time at home. It was a baby shower for my wonderful friend Miss Dottie, who inspires me in many ways. In fact she is a blogger as well (though for real, not just randomly once a month)- and I'm going to "borrow" some of her topics for my posts on here (read: plagiarize). Last year she kicked off the new year with a list of the new recipes she had tried during the course of 2007, and I found it monumentally inspiring. I've made my list, still checking it twice, but will be posting it up shortly. 

Besides being incredibly smart, creative and fun; another way Miss Dottie inspires is with her genuine ability to make you feel like the most important person in the world, be you a near stranger or an old friend. She has a quality to her kindness that is pure and immeasurable. Therefore, it was an honor for me to be able to host her baby shower and gather up her closest lady friends for a day of bestowing love onto her. 

Because Miss Dottie is so darn crafty, I knew from the get go that this would need to be a sophisticated but homemade affair. And because Miss D is so humble, it had to also be unfussy. 

So firstly, the food- I kept it very, very simple- 2 kinds of seasoned nuts- coconut curry macadamias, and ginger scented pecans- both tried and true Martha recipes. Then an assortment of aram style sandwiches- smoked salmon cream cheese with cucumber, sun dried tomato tapenade, and turkey with hummus and more tapenade. Finally finished out the menu with some dips- a warm spinach artichoke dip that was cheesy but not out of control, green goddess dip with assorted veggies, and my famous coconut curry cheese ball served with rice crackers and cucumber for dipping. A friend of Miss D's made the world's cutest cake (see above. I wish I could lay claim to that bit of adorable, but no.)

Next, the decor- the baby's room is going to be white with red trim, so I decided to create a long banner of flags that Miss D could keep and use in the baby room should she so decide. To begin, I found my supplies at the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse. If you live in the Bay area and don't know this place, ACQUAINT yourself. Really. Do it. 

                                                     

In any case, when I went in last time they had an

amazing amount of rubber stamps with ribbon motifs. So of course I bought up a bunch of them (ricrack, gingham, dots, lace, ruffles...), I also got some great red and white themed fabric, and some white fabric as well. Oh, and some 2" red and white checked bias tape, like a billion yards of it. So flags it is, that trip to the store cemented it for me. On the white fabric I stamped out some different designs. Then I cut out the fabric into diamond patterns, folded it over a clothesline, pined the bias tape ov

er it and straight stitched it all the way down. Yeah, I need more photos. 

Here's the end result:

So super cute and is going to be so adorable in little miss sugarsnap cupcake's bedroom! 

I'll pull together a better post about this later, just wanted to get something out while it was still fresh.