Not to toot my own horn, but I make a really good chili (toot! toot!). But I never gave it any additions – no noodles, especially no beans. It just wasn’t my preference.
To me, basically chili is a good sauce and some ground beef. From there you can add whatever you would like to the top – sour cream, onions, crackers, cheese, the lists go on and on. But I’ve always wanted to enhance those flavors.
A healthy, three ingredient soft serve “ice cream” that is perfect to celebrate the Fall season even if it doesn’t feel like Fall yet,
As much as I want it to, it just doesn’t feel like Fall here yet.
The high on Thursday was 91°… yep, October 2nd and it’s 91°
So while I’d love to be making big batches of soup and turning on my oven to bake casseroles and doughnut holes and what not, I just can’t bear it yet.
Not until it gets under 75° do I really start to get into the Fall season foods.
It’s the peak of summer harvest here in the Pacific Northwest. Gardens are over-flowing with the bounty. Local farmers markets are saturated with the vivacious tastes, smells, and colors of the season. Co-workers bring in boxes full of produce, letting the bright colors seep into the office, laying out the summer bounty in the break room, making the donuts seem sad and desperate. Neighbors drop off baskets overflowing with greens, yellows, oranges, reds, and purples so deep and rich you can hardly believe it.
Your mind starts to race as you think of all the recipes to be explored. Your heart quickens as you dream of the canning to be done; to capture the tastes to be savored on a cold winter day as you open summer captured in a jar. You start to salivate as you think of sitting down to a meal, oh the cooking to be done! But instead of turning on the stove and tying the apron strings on, you slice a tomato and sprinkle it with salt, taking a bite of it raw. It is perfection on the tongue, so sweet and juicy; it makes you wonder what piece of plastic has been posing as a “tomato” the rest of the year in your grocery store. Yes, it’s time to enjoy the splendor of what the good earth has to offer.
I’ve never paid much attention to buying foods within the season that they are the freshest. Call me crazy, but I never even knew that was a thing. Actually, you can call me an American, because this is one part of the world where we have that type of convenience. Though I appreciate the ease American grocery stores bring, there really is something to cherishing food in it’s time.
