In Search of Friendly Coffee Shops (in Fredericksburg, VA)

So far, this is one of my favorites. The Hyperion, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, is just at the limit of being too far to go to just for a few hours’ work on my day off. 50 miles each way is a little far for a half day. Gotta save this one for the whole-day excursions. When you work from home, however, you realize the value of having a change of scenery. No matter how nice the view from your window (and let’s face it, most views aren’t that great, although I’m lucky that way) it gets a little monotonous after a while. Go to a café, on the other hand, and you can people-watch when you need a break from looking at the screen. Go to one café often enough and you start recognizing the regulars, exchanging nods of greeting with them when you come and go… kind of like when you work in a large office. The other patrons and the staff take the place of the colleagues you’d otherwise exchange a few friendly words with every once in a while. Plus, call me strange if you like, but I sometimes find total silence more distracting than a pleasant background buzz of music and conversation.

Of course, a café has to meet certain prerequisites if one is to comfortably work there. Most importantly, it has to have an atmosphere that’s friendly to patrons who come there to work. In other words, not every café owner wants quiet people with laptops camped out for hours, taking up space and not spending that much money over the course of the day. These types generally make it pretty clear by doing things like not making power outlets available to their customers or not providing free WiFi. It’s understandable and I can’t blame them for it. There should be different kinds of cafés, and some should be more conducive to socializing than working. In some countries there are no cafés where you feel comfortable pulling out a computer. Indeed, that’s one of the things I missed most when I lived in Italy – being able to go someplace and sit for a few hours out of the weather, reading a book, writing or just relaxing. Such a thing is a true boon, especially when you are traveling and need a place other than a hotel room to relax in for a little while.

The Hyperion offers the best of both worlds. The front room is furnished with big, communal tables and full of the noise of conversation and music. Once you go into the back room, however, you discover that the sound system hasn’t even been wired to reach there (I love that!). Even the largest tables there are small enough that you don’t feel rude taking a whole one for yourself, and nearly each one is equipped with its own power outlet. Ah! This is café-writer bliss, indeed. What makes it even better is that the coffee is actually really good. 

I know, despite all that, you may think I’m nuts to make a round trip of a hundred miles just for a quiet day in a coffee shop with a cup of joe. This is why I’ve begun doing some exploratory excursions to find others closer to home. Don’t worry. I’ll be sharing my findings with you.

I’ll meet you back here for a cup of coffee soon.

Meanwhile, thanks for stopping by.

– Jennifer

Here is a link I stumbled across while writing this post. It’s to a post by a blogger in Singapore. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who has made the quest for ideal cafés into an international pursuit.

Related articles

• Cafe Hunt, Begin!

Tea on the Tiber, or, What to Do When It’s Raining (or Snowing) in Ellicott City, Maryland

Having so recently moved from Rome, I was intrigued when, in December, some friends suggested an afternoon outing at a place called Tea on the Tiber… in Ellicott City, Maryland. My curiosity was piqued, not only because of the name, but because the place was billed as a Victorian Tea Room, and I do enjoy a real high tea – when it’s done right. I set out to see what I’d find. The first thing I learned was that Maryland’s Tiber River was a little different from its namesake, as you can see.

The Tiber River, Rome, Italy

The Tiber River, Ellicott City, Maryland

Apples and oranges, really. Pointless comparisons aside, I found Ellicott City, Maryland to be a charming little town. It felt a bit like a time capsule, with giant rocks looming like cliffs over Main Street and its 1950s-style shop signs. Here are some views of the town, snapped as we walked from the riverside towards our destination. It was a busy Sunday afternoon, one of the last before Christmas, and the streets were a little too crowded with parked cars and the sky a little too grey to be as picturesque as it could be. With all the odd boutiques and specialty shops lining the main street, I could see why people would come here for their holiday gift shopping,but it was a little bit too much like rush-hour for my taste. Then, at long last (it was cold enough to feel like we’d been walking for much longer than we had), our destination came into sight. The last time I’d had “high tea” had been at the famous Babington’s tea room at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome. Could this little American town – beautiful and historic, yes, but nestled among encroaching tentacles of suburbia – offer anything that would compare? The entrance was certainly inviting enough… now to see about the inside.

A festive mantel decked for the holiday shoppers

Inside, attention had been paid to every detail. More than walking into café, it felt as though I were entering as a guest into someone’s home (and judging from the florals and pastels, the home of a well-to-do English woman or Austen fan) where every piece of furniture, every painting and decoration had been collected over a lifetime as opposed to chosen, each with a history – as such things are in a true home. The establishment took up an entire old house, and each room had been either furnished with two or three smaller tables or, in the case of the one we were given, one large table to accomodate large groups. Indeed, I believe that you can only attend Tea on the Tiber by reservation. So, the atmosphere was up to snuff. Now it was time to see about the menu. We had come for afternoon tea. That meant we were each able to pick a type we wanted from an extensive list including various black, green and white teas, as well as a variety of herbal blends, coffee and chocolate. Anyone who knows me will know that I generally always go for the coffee. At tea (and I intend that as meal, not the beverage), however , that would be quite the heresy. I picked an almond-flavored black tea blend instead. The service it is served in is charming, and the contents are all I had hoped for. The menu was fixed, which saved me the pain of choosing (I always want to try everything when I’m someplace new). We had been promised a three-course meal divided into three parts. When it came, we realized that division was really quite literal. On the middle tier was the savory, consisting mostly of a variety of finger sandwiches, including the famous (and, in the American mind at least, quintessentially British) cucumber. On the bottom tier were what the menu listed as English Manor scones. These were served with two things I’d never tasted, although I’d read about them in books: clotted cream and lemon curd. All I can say is, despite their less-than-appetizing names, once you taste them, there’s no going back. We had to ask the poor waitress to refill those dishes at least twice. The jam, though lovely, was quite forgotten. There were also sweet breads (not sweetbreads, thank goodness), fruit and cheese and, on the top tier, what we might call the crowning glory: the desserts. I don’t know what was more decadent, the rich chocolate cake or the shortbread (I’ll go for the shortbread every time, if forced to choose, but that’s just me. Any chocolate lover would consider me a madwoman for saying so).

A nice cuppa

Well, I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did. And, I don’t know about you, but I think I’m about ready for a cup of tea after all that, so I’m going to sign off here. Here’s wishing you all a lovely day. Toodle-oo and thanks ever so much for popping by! 😉 Cheers, Jennifer p.s. and if you should feel the need to try out those scones with clotted cream for yourself (and I highly recommend it), here’s all the info you need (of course, you could just clink on this link to Tea on the Tiber’s website if you missed the one at the top of the post, but I thought the business card was classier): 

And for a little something more on the topic of Ellicott City (which I largely neglected in favor of scones, I freely admit):

• Day Trippin’: Ellicott City (theworldisourdistrict.com)

The Great NYC Deli Dichotomy

In a case outside the deli, healthy vegan meals to go. Pick what you like, open the fridge (there’s no attendant and there are no locks) and then take it inside to pay at the register. It’s the healthiest “street” food I’ve ever seen

A closer look…

Once you’ve been lured inside by the prospect of an innocent, guilt-free meal, you’ll find yourself ambushed by the largest variety of chips (that’s crisps for my British friends out there) you’ve ever seen. Temptation! Get thee behind me!

From yellow to blue, from red to purple, from plain potato to sweet potato to corn and more, from salt-‘n’-vinegar to Sriracha and from mesquite to that horrible American imposter called “parmesan,” this aisle had more types, colors and flavors of chips than I’d ever dreamed could exist (not to mention pretzels, popcorn and cheese puffs galore).

Of course, New York City is full of such paradoxical delis. No East Coast city embraced organic food or the vegan movement as early or as whole-heartedly as NYC but, at the same time, ask any Midwesterner what they know about NY cuisine and the first thing that pops into their heads will be the famous New York pizza slice (which no Italian in their right mind would equate with pizza as they know it). Ask most Europeans, and pretty much all they’ll know about eating in New York will boil down to cheesecake and the dubious offerings of those iconic hot dog carts. Anyone who’s spent any amount of time in the Big Apple knows better. In New York you can find pretty much any kind of food imaginable: the very best… and the absolute worst.

For more on this same Lower East Side deli of infinite variety, you can check out my two previous posts about the incredible shelf of Spam and what might be Manhattan’s largest assortment of hot sauces.

More NYC images and adventures coming soon.

Thanks for stopping by!

– Jennifer

Some Like It Hot

I think the contents of these two shelves are not so much inventory as they are arsenal. There’s enough hot sauce here to burn the last taste buds off of a vindaloo addict, to break the fifth alarm on the five-alarm-chili machine, to permanently disable the noses of an entire K9 unit. Looking more closely, I think we could probably find the proper hot sauce to fit any recipe in any ethnic cookbook you could buy in New York City, which is where I found this shelf. Indeed, it is right next door to the shocking-variety-of-Spam shelf you might have seen featured here a couple of days ago.

Not enough spice in your life? Sriracha, Tabasco, Red Devil, Cholula, Chili Sauce… this deli has got it all

Making a quick calculation and figuring that the bottles go back about 3 deep, I estimate there are a minimum of 18 varieties of hot sauce on these two shelves, for a total of approximately 54 bottles. I do believe that such a stock would keep my family happy for at least, say, 3 or 4 generations. That is, if no one accidentally knocked down the shelving in the interim. That might result in the destruction of the world as we know it – which, come to think of it, we might survive. After all, we would have the Spam shelf.

Does that photo look really good to you? If you’re into the heat, then check out these links:

• Here’s the hard science behind why people like hot sauce… and why, once they start, they want it hotter and hotter (and no, it’s not because they burn off all their tastebuds, although there must be some truth to that, too: The Science of Sriracha’s Good Burn (theatlantic.com)
• Did this post make you hungry? Are you in need of a handy recipe? Then try this one out: How to cook the ultimate vindaloo (metro.co.uk)
• “And now for something completely different:” 12 Gifts For The Sriracha Addict (thoughtcatalog.com)

And if you survive all that, we’ll see you next time.

Thanks for dropping by!

Jennifer

Spam, Glorious Spam!

Most people on the Continent have never heard of it. Still, every culture, even the most fine, produces some version of it: pressed meat in a can. Even the Italians have their own version: Simmenthal (which is shredded and encased in aspic rather than pressed, and tastes much better than it sounds). The British, of course, have their famous corned beef, which can be purchased in a can in a tin. Perhaps the French are above such things, but somehow I’m sure they have their own version as well (well, of course they have their tins of fine pâté that go for €50 a pop, but I’m talking about the kind of  tinned (or canned if you’re American) meat that makes the gourmands out there turn up their noses, so we can’t really include pâté in our list). No, I’m talking about the stuff we Americans know as SPAM. It’s the stuff that was used as rations during WWII (and, to this day, remains a kind of regional delicacy in Hawaii as a result… yes, there is such a thing as Spam salad, Spam pizza…). All these years I’ve been under the impression that Spam was, simply, Spam. Au contraire! However, I had to go to an NYC deli on the Lower East Side to discover that this historically  (and often affectionately) maligned American delicacy food item has branched out quite a bit since the 1940s. Who would have guessed? If you’ve been worrying that food might get boring after a hypothetical ice-age/nuclear/zombie/asteroid-provoked apocalypse, you can breathe a sigh of relief. The good old Spam company has ensured that we will not lack for variety for quite a few decades after the end of the world as we know it.

Can man live on Spam alone? Perhaps it’s not so far-fetched of an idea after all (well, provided the man in question isn’t a vegetarian).

Haven’t heard enough yet? Here’s a Spam encore!:

• For those of you who didn’t think America took it’s Spam seriously: Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota: Dedicated to This One Cultural Icon (infolific.com)
• For those of you who aren’t sure you believe me about the Hawaiian Spam fixation: We Made SPAM Sushi (mancave.cbslocal.com)
• For those of you who… well… just check it out. Need I say more?: 21 Sexy Ways To Eat Spam (neatorama.com)

Thanks for coming along to NYC! I saw a whole lot more than Spam on a shelf, but let’s take things one at a time. There will be more NY adventures coming soon.

Until next time, bon appétit!

– Jennifer

Where the Bike Trail Ends (and an Epilogue of Turnip Soup)

On the weekend before Thanksgiving, just before the temperatures dropped to freezing and the rainstorms hit,I braved the first winds of winter to follow my favorite trail farther than before. It was clear from the first that, despite the deceptively bright sun, winter was well on its way.

The stream runs cold under bare boughs, and I follow it down through the woods towards the old mill

Ragged yet radiant refugees of autumn

This time, when I arrive at Cadell’s Mill, I decide to cross over Surrey Road and see where the path leads on the other side. I’ve been leery of crossing on my bike, but the park map shows the trail continuing. My curiosity leads me on.

On the other side of the road, what was a paved path becomes a dirt track ridged with roots and strewn with stones. Remembering the map’s advice, I take the left fork. My trusty steed is no mountain bike, but she gets me as far as Walney Pond, which the map had told me was only a short distance away. There are no cattails or water lilies in this season, but the reflections of the bare-limbed trees on the water have a strange, stark grace.

There are benches, and I’m sure this place will be lovely, come spring, but it’s no place to sit and pull out a book today. The only reason I’m not freezing is because I’m not standing still very long. I get back on the bike and go back to the fork to see where the other trail leads. I come to a bridge…

A tantalizing bridge leads to an unknown forest

…and I am thwarted.

The end of the trail for my trusty steed

Definitely for feet only

A lovely place for a picnic, just not in November

My trusty steed can go no further on this road

It’s been a long, cold ride. Once my bike is safely back in her cozy garage, it’s time to think about how I’m going to warm myself up. What’s in the fridge? Hmmm… turnips. I know just what to do with those.

When peeling turnips, make sure to cut off the darker ring beneath the skin, leaving only the white inner flesh to cook with

Peel and cut turnips and potatoes into rough chunks (I used one potato per turnip as a ratio).

Chop one onion and put it in a soup pot with about 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Simmer onion until transparent.

Then add the turnips and, a few minutes later, add the potato as well as some rosemary. I used about 3 tablespoons worth of fresh rosemary from my herb garden.

I added four cups of water. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a fan of pre-prepared stocks. If you salt and season generously, water is all you need, and this way you never end up covering up the delicate flavors of your own ingredients with the stronger taste of a soup stock.

Bring to a boil and then simmer both the turnips and the potatoes are tender. Once this is done, let the soup cool a little, and then put it in the blender and puree (you’ll probably have to do it in two parts).

Once the soup is pureed and back in the pot, add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste, as well as a generous shake (or four) of ground nutmeg.

Let it sit covered on the stove for a few hours to maximize flavor, then reheat before serving.

Below you can see it on the table, garnished with a sprig of fresh rosemary and served with my new favorite spinach salad on the side (recipe coming soon).

Turnip and potato soup – less humble and much more delicious than one might expect

I really felt like I was bringing out my Slavic peasant roots while preparing this. It seemed like something the infamous Russian witch Baba Yaga might have served to unwary visitors in her hut in the woods. I must say, considering the humble nature of the raw ingredients, the end result was, indeed, magically good.

I can’t take the credit for this one, though. I adapted it from a recipe on the lovely website Tales of a Kitchen. Here’s a link to the original recipe.

Well, this post was scheduled to go up this weekend but I didn’t expect the weather to change so drastically when I was preparing it last week! It’s going up now, even though the first snow is falling. Those last traces of autumn may be gone now, but the turnip soup is as apropos as ever.

See you again soon! Thanks for stopping by. Stay warm and don’t scorn the turnip.

– Jennifer

Related articles

• Saved by a Bowl of Turnip Soup – Weekend Meditation (thekitchn.com)
• The Farm Stand: How To Cook Turnips (thedailysouth.southernliving.com)
• Buttered Turnips (thebyrdfarm.wordpress.com)

A Soup for the Season

Mr. Fuzzy dons his winter finery. All the chic poodle chicks love it.

When it’s cold enough that my faithful pooch has to start wearing his coat, and I come back from my bicycle ride feeling like somebody dipped me in ice-water, I know there is only one thing to do. It’s time to put on a cozy sweater, pick out some music (I usually find myself in a Nick Drake mood come November) and set about making some warm soup to suit the season.

The only way it could look colder outside would be if there were already snow

As my former flatmates in Rome know, I am a big fan of winter soup. On a Sunday they would follow their noses into the kitchen to find me cooking up a couple different kinds at a time – enough to share and then to freeze in one- or two-portion jars for those days when I didn’t have time to cook anything (which was most days, since I happened to have three paying and one non-paying job at the time).

View from the balcony outside my room in Rome on a rare, snowy morning. A good day for soup making.

One of my flatmates, who became a close friend over the nearly four years we shared an apartment, and who also happened to be a psychologist, would wander into the kitchen on those afternoons and sit down at the table for a snack (and a sample). We’d end up talking about our week, our jobs (he had three or four as well) and everything else from romance to society’s ills. As afternoon crept into evening and dinner time rolled around, we’d end up eating together, he sharing my soup, and I sharing the his cheese and cold cuts or the vegetables and fruits he’d brought down from his parents’ land in Tuscany. I forget whether it was he or I who first coined the term compassion soup, but that is what we began to call it.

On a cold Sunday morning I’d come back from the supermarket laden down with grocery bags, shrug off my coat and tap on his bedroom door, behind which I’d find him hunched over his computer, as usual, no matter the day of the week or the time. “Nico,” I’d say, “I’m making compassion soup today. Come in and have some later.” And so he would. Other flatmates would join us sometimes, but he’s the one who started the tradition, and every time I make soup I think of him. Nico, this post is dedicated to you.

Sweet potatoes, carrots and a fennel bulb: the unlikely companions fate tossed my way on soup-making day

There I was, with a kitchen full of seasonal roots, tubers and vegetables and not much of an idea where to start. However, cooking is a bit of a hobby for me, plus, I love to improvise. This was going to be fun. Here’s the seasonal soup recipe I came up with:

Ingredients: 

• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Approximately 4 tbsp. of extra virgin olive oil
• 3 sweet potatoes
• 6 carrots
• 1 fennel bulb
• 1/3 tsp. powdered ginger root (you can use a few slices of fresh ginger root if you’ve got it)
• 1 tbsp. fennel seeds
• 1 tbsp. fresh thyme, removed from woody stem
• 6 cups (1.5 liters) water (the flavors are great without the need for soup stock, believe me)
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Secret ingredient (all will be revealed in good time)

How else to start a winter soup?

Coat the bottom of a large soup pot with extra virgin olive oil. Add a roughly chopped onion and two finely chopped garlic cloves. Cover and cook over medium-to-low heat until onions are transparent. Then, while the onion and garlic are cooking…

Bright orange from beneath the earth

Carrots, rustically chopped

One bulb goes a long way

Wash and peel your carrots and sweet potatoes. Cut the carrots into slices and the sweet potatoes into cubes. Keep in mind, they don’t have to be too fine or too pretty. This is all going into the blender later. Put the sweet potato cubes in a bowl and cover them with water while you finish prepping. This will stop them from oxidizing and going brown from exposure to the air before you’re ready to use them. Now rinse off your fennel bulb. Chop off the leafy bits, slice and dice the bulb and slice the stalks. You can prep these ingredients before starting to cook the garlic and onion, if you think you’ll need more time. Once everything is prepped, check that your onions are ready, and put your chopped sweet potatoes, carrots and fennel in the pot. Make sure the heat is at medium, cover and let simmer. After the mixture’s been cooking for about five minutes, add the ginger and fennel seeds.
And don’t forget the thyme. I nearly lost track of it myself (wink, wink).

Now it’s all in the pot, even the thyme

Brown the vegetables for another five minutes, stirring occasionally, and then add the water. You can use vegetable or chicken stock if you want, but I find that any stock I use tends to overwhelm the distinct tastes of the ingredients I’m using and subtle flavors can be utterly lost. If your ingredients are fresh and you are not adverse to using a little extra salt, water is all you need to make a good and flavorful soup. Once you’ve added water, bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and let the soup simmer until all the vegetables and roots are tender. This should take no more than twenty to thirty minutes. Sometime towards the end of this process, add your salt and pepper to taste. I use the large crystals of sea salt in my soup recipes, as they dissolve quite nicely. I used about a tablespoon of them in this soup, which calls for a liter and a half of water. While the soup is simmering, get out your blender. Then prepare the last, secret ingredient:

What makes this soup special: two apples, one Granny Smith and one Honey Crisp for sweetness

Secret ingredient on top

Peel and core the apples and cut them into chunks. Then put  half the contents of the pot (make sure the glass is heat-safe first!) into the blender, add the apple chunks, and puree until smooth. Put the resulting creme into another heatproof container while you puree the second half of the soup, then pour it all back into the pot. Let it simmer for another five to ten minutes, stirring frequently, and then serve. If you want to let it cool then reheat it later, it will taste even better. The longer it sits, the stronger the flavors get and the better they meld with each other. Serve it with a garnish of fresh thyme.

Now, you may wonder what one could serve as a side dish with this soup. Well, I like my meals to have a unifying thread running through them. In this case, I decided that thread would be apple. I consulted my collection of cookbooks and came up with a spinach and apple salad recipe that I thought would fit the bill quite nicely (recipe coming soon).

Set the table just how you like it. I’m a big fan of presentation. Always remember, you work hard on your food, and every gem needs a setting, right? Your dinner deserves a well-laid table for its debut. Here’s what mine looked like when dinner was served.

The soup, garnished with thyme, takes center stage. The apple theme runs through the whole meal, with apple and spinach salad on the side and a spiced, hard apple cider as the beverage for the evening.

It could just be that it was really cold outside. It could be that the winter vegetables (with a little apple for sweetness) were what everyone was really craving. On the other hand, after a very long week, it could be that maybe we all just really needed some compassion soup. The fact remains that this was one of my most well-received culinary inventions. I hope it will warm you all as well.

Happy cooking and, until next time, buon appetito!

-Jennifer

Related articles

• Spicy root veg soup (thechillipad.wordpress.com)
• Portuguese Chicken and Kale Soup (wwjme.com)
• Soup of the week: Sweet potato soup (simplycalledfood.com)
• The best butternut squash soup recipe ever (the-running-mom.com)
• Not so Dickensian Cabbage Soup (kissingfishies.wordpress.com)
• Amish Preaching Soup (thegreatamericanfeast.wordpress.com)
• Roasted Winter Squash and Sweet Potato Soup with Apple Butter Cream (trianglefarmersmarkets.wordpress.com)
• Warm Up With This Seasonal Sweet Potato, Squash, Fennel & Carrot Soup! (inhabitat.com)
• Butternut Squash w/ Cilantro & Parsley Drizzle (skicountryeats.wordpress.com)

Squash Season

Squash season has arrived. That doesn’t just mean it’s time for a Pumpkin Spice Latte. It means that, here in America, the displays of every supermarket and decorations at the front of every store – as well as the pastry cases in all the cafés – are suddenly, from one day to the next, filled with rows upon rows, mountains upon mountains of all things having to do with squash.

Display cases in front of my local Whole Foods Market at the beginning of squash season

Whole Foods Market presents arriving shoppers with a veritable mountain of gourds.

Living in Europe, this amazing variety of squash was one of the things that I missed most right around this time of year, because it never felt like the arrival of fall (sorry, my British friends, autumn) got the fanfare it deserved without these bright orange and green displays, evoking the color of the changing leaves on the trees.

My autumn table center piece, four fall gourds, complete with matching candle.

For the duration of my stay in Italy, the only members of the squash family I ever saw in supermarkets were green (and the occasional yellow) zucchini squash and the Italian zucca, which, when you see it on sale in a supermarket, is similar to a pumpkin, but not quite. In truth, the Italian word zucca translates as our term squash, and not just pumpkin. Indeed, even a search for the Italian word for gourd will return the same word, zucca, again. I assume that this is one of those cases where the lack of a thing made it unnecessary to have a name for it. (By the way, this is also the case with squirrels and chipmunks. Having no chipmunks, in Italy the word scoiattolo – literally, squirrel – is used to refer to both. Italian zooligists know that the Italian word for chipmunk is tamia, but the layman has never heard that term in his life. Ask any Italian what kind of animal Alvin and his friends are, and they will blithely tell you that they’re squirrels. No joke.)

How many times I wished I could roast a nice butternut squash for my Italian friends! Alas, living in Italy, such a thing was not to be. Acorn squash, spaghetti squash and all the other lovely varieties that we take for granted (butternut is my personal favorite), in Italy no one has ever heard of, unless they’ve spent some time over here in the States.

A pumpkin spice latte cupcake my sister bought for me. She knows me well.

The other thing that shocks most Italians is the use of pumpkin or zucchini in anything sweet. Mention zucchini or pumpkin bread or muffins, pumpkin cookies, cakes or pie and they look at you as though you have gone insane. In Italian cuisine, squash stays firmly ensconced in the land of the savory. As with most Italian food, the recipes are wonderful, as those who have tried ravioli di zucca can attest. Put it in front of them, however, and even Italians will go ga-ga over a good pumpkin muffin (as my former roommates in Rome might confirm).

On the sweeter side, the pumpkin spice latte cupcake you see in the photo here is from Sweet Therapy bakery (their tag line: baked intervention – another example of American advertising with a sense of humor).

Another thing we like to do in America is drink our pumpkin-related beverages. We break them out the first time we wake up to find a chill in the air. I’m not talking just about the by-now-famous Pumpkin Spice Latte, which, thanks to Starbucks, is fairly well known even abroad. I’m talking about the kind you have to be legal age to drink. Now, my Italian friends might cite Rabarbaro Zucca (a rhubarb-squash digestif) as an example of the fact that they do this too. It’s true. But one bitter after-dinner concoction cannot compete with entire shelves in supermarkets stocked overnight with dozens of varieties of pumpkin ales and ciders. There isn’t a self-respecting brewery in the country that can get away with not making some pumpkin offering come fall.

Pumpkin cider, pumpkin ale and – for you teetotalers out there – a pumpkin pie soda. These are just a few of the pumpkin-themed beverages available in America this time of year, and it just wouldn’t feel like autumn without them.

Now, we started out this post with a mention of Pumpkin Spice Latte (for my Italian friends out there, latte, in American café parlance, does not mean plain milk, but caffè latte. We abbreviate. I know, it’s confusing.). We have continued to mention it throughout the post, so I think that you foreigners out there deserve an explanation. Starbucks made the pumpkin-spice flavored coffee beverage famous, but now even McDonalds has one on sale (I have not dared to try it, and I probably never will). You non-Americans out there might be confused by the term “pumpkin spice” . Well, what we mean is  generally not that that these beverages are somehow made from actual pumpkin, but that they are flavored with all of the same spices that go into a pumpkin pie: cinnamon (most importantly) followed by nutmeg, ginger and clove  (that’s my grandma’s famous blend, although I’m sure different families have different recipes).

When I lived in Italy, there would always come a morning in early October when I would wake up pining for pumpkin spice latte. My mom sent me along this recipe:

Spices in the pot, ready to be whisked.

Pumpkin Spice Latte

Ingredients:
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1/8 tsp. allspice
Enough milk to fill your mug (any kind will do, even soy or almond if you are so inclined)
1 shot of espresso coffee (I make mine in a moka stovetop coffee machine, like the one you see in the picture on the left)

Prepare your espresso coffee. When it is ready, measure out your milk and pour it into a small pot. Add spices while milk is heating and whisk until they are no longer clumped together. Heat until milk is steaming but do not boil. Pour the mixture into your mug and add the coffee. Sweeten to taste (I find honey, agave or brown sugar all complement the spices nicely).

Ready to drink!

So, wherever you are, here’s wishing you a fragrant and warming cup of pumpkin spice and a wonderful beginning to your autumn.

Enjoy!

Until next time,
Jennifer

Even our front door knows fall is here. See you all next time!

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• Fall in a Cup: Pumpkin Spice Latte (thecoffeebeanbuzz.wordpress.com)
• Autumn requires one thing-Pumpkin Spice Lattes! Now make it yourself, from scratch. (and2makescrazy.wordpress.com)
• Pumpkin Spice Latte Showdown: Starbucks vs. McDonald’s (drinks.seriouseats.com)

As American as Apple Pie, Indeed

On the left: a bounty of apples, on sale at the Apple Castle, in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. On the right: Mom’s apple pie, made with Apple Castle’s Cameo variety

As American as apple pie, right? That’s how the saying goes. Well, while visiting my grandmother in a very rural part of Pennsylvania last weekend (we’re talking Amish country), my mom and I decided to stop at a store called the Apple Castle, which we have been visiting since I should have been too small to remember it… but I think that wonderful blend of smells that seems unique to it – of cinnamon, cider, honey, maple and butterscotch, doughnuts and beeswax – must have made an impression on me even when I was too young to be aware of very much else, and since then, all my life, and especially when I was growing up in Europe as a kid, those smells have always been associated with those very special annual visits to grandparents’ houses, with magical trips to a land of horse-drawn buggies, red barns, green cornfields and backyards big enough to run in, full of fireflies at dusk. And nowhere but outside of little New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, have I ever found its like.

On the right: Driving through the countryside, we had seen transparent apples advertised on more than one farm driveway. The lady at the Castle told us they are an apple that is ideal for recipes where you would want the cooked apple to be “saucy,” as opposed to holding its shape, as you’d want it to do for a project like pie. On the left: And we came away with all of those delicious things, with the exception of the cider.

It is corn season, and there are few things as American as corn-on-the-cob, boiled and served with salt and butter. This is what the “sugar and butter” variety of sweetcorn we bought at the Apple Castle looked like once we got it served up for dinner. Tender and sweet, it more than lived up to its name.

I wear my serious investigative-journalist face as I sample a maple doughnut. Other varieties, made fresh daily, included cinnamon, cider, honey-wheat, and, of course, the classics like chocolate-glazed and vanilla. We sampled some in-store, then took some more samples home for further study.

Honeybears! Watch out for local wildlife

Snow White wouldn’t have stood a chance in here.

Original Apple Castle shopping bag, on display in the store

While visiting my grandmother, Dorothy, I had the good fortune to meet Ralph Johnston, original owner of the Apple Castle. He was pleased to spend some time with me, telling me some interesting and little-known facts about his store. It’s been 60 years, more or less, since he founded the store, which is still family-owned (their orchards have been there much longer – 150 years in 2011, to be exact), but his eyes are bright and his expression lively. He is still a tall man, but he must have towered as high as some of his fruit trees in his youth, and his big hands look like they could each hold four apples at once and never risk dropping a single one. Today, the orchards he once tended, across the road from the shop he built, produce not only apples in countless varieties, but peaches, and nectarines too, and many other fruits as well. It seems there’s always something in season, freshly harvested, overflowing the display tables at the Apple Castle. And now for a few of those little-known facts, courtesy of Ralph Johnston. The natural stone facing on the front of the store was quarried from Mr. Johnston’s wife’s family farm, in nearby Beavertown, Pennsylvania. Here you can see the shelves, which hold all manner of marvelous jars I could browse through for hours – wonderful jams (some of my personal favorites are the elderberry, the strawberry-rhubarb and the just-plain rhubarb and the “bluegoose” – a mixture of blueberry and gooseberry preserves), homemade apple butter, dark brown with cinnamon and spice, as well as jars of all manner of preserves, from jalapeño-pickled hard-boiled eggs to beets almost too bright a fuchsia to be believed, knowing that everything in those jars is natural. Behind the jars you can see the lovely, golden-brown wood paneling that covers the entire interior of the store. That paneling is made from walnut, cut in Mr. Johnston and his wife’s own woods. Now, take a closer look at the uprights that support the shelves themselves, and you’ll see that they are actually ladders used for fruit-harvesting, which have been cut in half to fit between floor and ceiling. And, of course, you can’t help but notice all those blue-ribbon prizes the Apple Castle has won over the years, strung across the top of the shelving and running nearly from wall to wall.

After he had finished telling me all these things, Mr. Johnston asked if I was interested in antiques, to be so curious about all these architectural details of his shop.

“No,” I replied, shaking his hand and thanking him for his time, “not antiques. It’s history that I love.”

It was a long drive home from Pennsylvania to Virginia, a good nine hours through the Allegheny mountains, on a road that took us from through West Virginia and Maryland before it got us back to Old Dominion (for my foreign readers, that’s Virginia’s nickname). The fact that we had all those wonderful bags full of Apple Castle goodness in the back seat made it seem even longer!

The very next day, my mom got down to the very serious business of making one of her famously delicious apple pies.

On the top left, my mom’s pie waits to go into the oven, on the top right, it’s freshly taken out. In the middle, the excess pie crust is rolled up and filled with cinnamon sugar, to be had as a treat with a cup of tea while waiting for the main project to bake. On the bottom right, our dog Georgie has fallen asleep next to his bowl, worn out from all the waiting and hoping that he’ll get some, too. And, of course, the biggest picture is the finished product, served with some vanilla ice-cream on the side, a few hours later.

So, getting back to the title of this post, why do we always say that something is, “As American as apple pie?”

Well, the point is that a dessert quite like this one doesn’t exist anywhere else. The Germans are famous for their pastries and cakes, and I’ll doff my hat to a lovely German apfelkuchen any day, but it looks and tastes quite different from an American apple pie. Indeed, while living in Germany, my mother and father once invited a German couple who were friends of theirs over for tea. Upon entering the dining room and seeing the pie my mother had made sitting on the table, the German husband began laughing.

“What’s so funny?” my mother asked, a little taken aback, as you can imagine.

“Why, it’s just like the one that Minnie Mouse always made for Mickey!” he exclaimed. Yes, that was the only place he had ever seen such a thing.

I had the same experience years later, in Milan, when I served up the pie I had made to finish off a full American Thanksgiving dinner I had made for a small group of Italian friends.

“But…” said one, pointing incredulously at the dish I was carrying to the table, “that’s just like the ones that always get stolen off of the windowsill in cartoons!”

Well, I can tell you all, my mom’s apple pie is definitely good enough to tempt the most honest squirrels into a little kitchen-windowsill burglary. And those Cameo apples from the Apple Castle made it one of the most special we’ve ever had.

Until next time… here’s wishing you all some wonderful adventures of your own.

– Jennifer

p.s. For those of you who’d like to know more about the Apple Castle or think that you might get out to visit, here’s the link to their website, in case you didn’t catch it at the top:

http://www.applecastle.com