yep, it’s officially fall, dear readers. and with the seasonal change, i decided to attempt to cook my first soup from scratch to keep us warm on the crisp fall nights. soup is a dish that i have had made for me from scratch by my parents, but something i’ve never attempted to make from scratch on my own because the stuff from the can usually fulfills any soup desire i might have
this weekend, we headed up to san francisco to celebrate laura’s birthday. we began by dining at millennium, an upscale vegan restaurant. i always get a little overwhelmed when we eat somewhere that offers vegetarian or vegan fare, because i can pick anything off the menu! after munching on delightful hummus and bread, we decided to start with roasted beets and hazelnuts. unfortunately, none made it into our iphone snapshot – they were too amazingly tantalizing!
one year ago today, mike and i celebrated our wedding with our friends and family at pajaro dunes. most of you know the story, but just in case you don’t – we started dating on september 20, 1999, and decided to get married on the saturday closest to our 8 year anniversary. we sweated over details, made lists, spent lots of money, and involved our family and friends in all kinds of projects to get to the day of the wedding.
ever since mike and i began avidly cooking and subscribing to vegetarian times to obtain new, delicious recipes, we rarely repeat a recipe. if we do repeat a recipe, it’s usually over a span of a month or two, while the produce it utilizes is fresh and available – but that recipe rarely makes it to the next year when the season rolls around again. this recipe, for honey tofu and couscous, is one of the rare exceptions to our constant desire to try new recipes and experience new flavor combinations. we stumbled across this recipe shortly after thanksgiving, when nothing sounded good to eat because we were still reeling from our veggie tday feast. we made it once, then the next week, then the next one after that. and before we knew it, we were both making it for our respective family’s christmas celebrations.
i love polenta. it is one of my all time favorite foods — if, and only if, it is made from scratch. the first time i spied tubes of polenta at trader joe’s i literally squealed with delight and threw a package into my cart, imagining all sorts of possible delightful dinners. but when i got home and opened said tube, i was thoroughly disappointed. the polenta did not have a good texture, taste, or consistency, so i made the decision never to buy the tubed stuff again. the from-scratch-kind of polenta tastes like fresh corn, is creamy and smooth, and can be eaten porridge-like or allowed to congeal (sorry, k, know you hate that word!) into a smooth base for toppings. the latter is the way i prefer polenta, and even though it is a little time consuming, it’s a fantastic treat and quite simple to make.
