today is my very last day at the agency i’ve worked at since 2004. and mike’s last day at the company he’s worked at since 2003. and this is our last weekend in santa cruz.
we’re back home after a whirlwind trip up to washington and back. between driving endless hours, visiting a different city every day, spending loads of time with our family, and thinking about the future, i didn’t take many pictures of all the delicious food we ate. what a bad food blogger, huh? will a photo of mt shasta satiate you instead? i hope so, because it’s the prettiest picture on this post!
ok, so let’s get down to business. i bet you’re wondering what the heck muhammara is, right? well, it’s a delicious bell pepper, walnut, and molasses dip. it’s spicy and sweet and incredibly satisfying. what it’s not is lovely to photograph. the photos all turned out sort of blah. but the dip is so amazing that i couldn’t refrain from sharing the recipe with you.
what do you do when someone you love is having a birthday, but can’t eat much sugar? find a dessert that’s low on the glycemic index!
a coworker kindly gave me an enormous zucchini from her garden a few weeks ago, and i spent a few days trying to decide what to do with all that zucchini…besides photograph it for posterity, that is.
there are some cookbooks, like the one i used to make butternut squash risotto, that i go back to over and over, finding new and delicious recipes every time. there are other cookbooks, however, that despite enticingly written concoctions, never quite carry through. sadly, mike and i bought a cookbook like this years ago, entitled the student’s vegetarian cookbook: quick, easy, cheap, and tasty vegetarian recipes, by carole raymond. quite a title, huh? we bought it when we were still students, and i can still remember spending an afternoon in the local bookstore, pouring over all kinds of cookbook options, before finally deciding that this cookbook had the most recipes that we would actually make. unfortunately, every recipe we made was kind of a dud, and we stopped using the cookbook. except for this one recipe, called sunday morning muffins. the recipe was not perfect by any means, but i’ve reworked it a ton over the years (see all my edits below!), and i think it’s finally ready to share with you.
