The Dark Days Challenge

I’m very pleased to announce I'm helping with the 5th Annual Dark Days Challenge. Along with my fellow writers at Not Dabbling in Normal we'll be working with (not so) Urban Hennery to manage it this year.

What’s the Challenge?
Cook one meal each week featuring SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients, write about it on your blog (or in the comments here, on Not Dabbling or at Urban Hennery) and email your happy recapper a link to your post.  There's more details in the post and in the right sidebar at the Urban Hennery blog.

We’re still finalizing all the details, but there are likely to be THEME WEEKS and PRIZES and a whole lot of other reasons that this will be the best challenge ever. I'll be recapping participants in the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes region, since I share your challenges.

To sign up, head over here and fill in the form at the bottom of the page.  You need to sign up by December 4, although if you miss the deadline you can still follow along; you just won't be part of the recap.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up! Join in! Cook the winter blahs away with fabulous local food all winter! But seriously, I hope you’ll join us in eating locally, sustainably and fantastically well this year!

The challenge runs from Sunday, November 27th, 2011 to Saturday, March 31st, 2012; check out the Dark Days post (here it is again, in case I haven't linked it enough) for answers to questions on what constitutes "local," how to participate if you don't have a blog, etc.

How do I sign up?
Use the form here (okay, that's 5 copies of the link, if you haven't managed to find it by now, I give up) to join; and make sure to include your location so you get put into the right geographic group!

And finally, remember that pumpkin maple bread I was bragging about? Here it is--made with home-grown pumpkin, local flour and local maple syrup.


Pumpkin Maple Quick Bread

1 cup evaporated, raw, or granulated sugar
1/2 cup maple sugar ($16 a pound. Substitute regular sugar to save money)
1 cup canola oil (if you know that no one with a nut allergy will be eating it, use walnut or hazelnut oil)
1/2 cup maple syrup
½ teaspoon maple extract
3 eggs
2 cups pumpkin puree

3 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg (or 1 teaspoon pre-ground)
½ teaspoon allspice

Optional: 1 cup chopped, toasted walnuts or hazelnuts and/or plumped raisins

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter and flour two 9x5 inch Pyrex loaf pans. Tap off excess flour from the pans.

Combine the dry ingredients and set aside. Beat together the sugar, oil, maple syrup, and maple extract until smooth and completely combined. Add the eggs and beat until combined. Add the pumpkin and mix until combined. Then add the flour and mix on low speed until just combined. To plump raisins, cover them with water, then microwave for one minute. Drain thoroughly, then add to batter.

Divide the batter equally among two pans. (I made a double recipe, and used mini pans because I had them.) Bake for 60 to 65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Place in the pans on a cooling rack, and allow to cool about 10 minutes before removing the loaves from the pans.

Serve with maple butter:
1/2 cup softened butter
1/4 cup maple syrup
pinch of salt

whip until completely combined

What if you're already unprocessed?

One of the things I've been hearing alot in talking about October Unprocessed, is "oh, we already eat really healthy."

This statement is not just hubris--I work in food activism and I live and work in a crunchy-granola urban neighborhood, so a lot of the people I know eat only seasonal, local, organic and whole. They know how to make their own yeast. They have root cellars, in the city. They haven't set foot in a grocery store in 5 years.

I'm one myself. I started with Not Dabbling in Normal's Real Food Challenge in 2009 and never looked back. Except.

I gave myself a pass on candy bars. I like flavored teas. I eat out.

I'm probably not going to stop doing any of those things in the long haul. But I can do it for a month. And maybe I'll find, like I did with the Real Food Challenge, that there are things I can live without. And things that are easy, I mean easy, to replace, like getting local farmer-made raw-milk cheese and plain yogurt, or bread from the family-owned bakery, instead of Sara Lee's "healthy" line. And things that are absurdly easy to make, like jam, and mayonnaise, and flat breads-pita or nan.

Don't talk to me about "I have no time." I don't have kids at home, but I work full time and then some. I just spend all day Sunday cooking, and then the rest of the week I get to hang out on line looking for challenges.

So if you're as green as you think you can get, think again. Look through your cupboard and your larder and take an extra step. Think of creative ways to approach the challenge--go vegetarian if you're not already, or vegan, for one day. (Meat being one of the most highly processed foods we know.) Get really unprocessed and try incorporating more raw foods into your weekly diet. Think ahead and put something up for the winter.

As Andrew says in the Eating Rules blog that "runs" the challenge, October Unprocessed is not just about eating real food. It's about eating mindfully. Read a label, or better yet, a recipe. Eat a carrot for snack.

You'll be surprised how basic you can get.

Apple-maple oatmeal
1/2 cup apple cider (buy it at the farmers market, or read the label. It should say "ingredients: apples")
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup oats
pinch of salt
1 T maple syrup
1/2 apple, cubed.

Boil the apple cider and water, then slowly add the oats, stirring constantly. Boil about 5 minutes or until the oats start to soften. Add the salt and maple syrup, continue cooking until it's the consistency you like. For a sweeter oatmeal, increase the apple cider to a full cup (and skip the water), and/or add more maple syrup.

Add the cut-up apple and serve.

The carpenter loved them

I was going to wait for some topic to pontificate on, but these are too good not to share immediately. You can thank "Kiki" for these; she was telling me sad stories and I felt compelled to ply her with sweets.

That's Sherri testing them, all unknowing that I made up the recipe. Fortunately, they're delicious.

So far, no one who's eaten them can believe they have no sugar.

Pumpkin-maple cookies with white chocolate chips

14 T ( 1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup molasses
1 large egg plus 1 egg yoke
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup pumpkin puree
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
10 oz. bag white chocolate chips (Sun Spire makes an all-natural one)

Heat the oven to 350F/175C. Line acookie sheet with parchment paper.

Beat the butter until smooth, then beat in the syrup and molasses, a little at a time. Beat the eggs then add to mixture, one half at a time. Mix in the vanilla and pumpkin puree. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg (if you grate your own, this is about 1/3 of a nut), and cloves. Slowly beat the flour mixture into the batter in thirds. Stir in the chips. Scoop the cookie dough by heaping teaspoons onto the prepared cookie sheet and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the cookies are browned around the edges. Cool on wire racks.

For an alternate, less sweet taste, and a truly sugar-free snack, substitute dried apples or pears for the chips.

Unprocessed readers: All spices also purchased whole and ground by me. To grind your own spices, you can use that old coffee grinder that's hiding away somewhere from your hipster days. To clean it, run some white rice through it after each spice, then wipe down with a rag. See, a use for the white rice you're not eating this month!

Makes about 4 dozen 2" cookies.

If I get an apple corer for Christmas, I'm going to be pissed

My sister-in-law makes a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner every year, although she confessed this year that preparing these meals makes her terribly anxious. Which is amazing, because she is such a rock in my life, and such a wonderful cook (in fact, more or less wonderful at everything).

I rather enjoy conceptualizing, planning and making these big meals. I love to plan them and to execute them, for the full sensory onslaught-- taste, and smell, and sight. I got the idea to do a maple-themed meal from a recipe on that insomniac's savior, the show Cultivating Life. Their recipe for maple scones will be on the menu for Friday.

I have the luxury of spreading out the cooking over several days (plus I cheated and got a ham this year, which means no main dish worries), so I'll be making the meal in stages. Today I started with the things that will keep the best.

Apple sauce
4-12 large Granny Smith apples
1T light brown sugar for each 2 apples
1/4 c. pure maple syrup
1 cup water
small handful to 1/2 c. dried cranberries (depending on how much applesauce you've made)

Peel and core the apples. Cut the apples into smallish chunks, conserve the peels and cores in a pot of cold water (or two pots if you're making a larger batch).

Dissolve the sugar in the water in a small saucepan, and simmer until the water is clear. This will prevent the sugar from burning in the apples. You can also just leave the sugar out entirely, although use a sweeter apple like a Gala, Mac, or Red Delicious if you don't use sugar. The Grannies are quite tart.

Put the sugar syrup, maple syrup and apples in a large pot or dutch oven and bring to a light simmer, stirring constantly. Continue simmer and stirring until the apples are a uniform chunky mush, then blend in the pot using a hand-held immersible blender (my best new toy of 2009).

Simmer the cranberries in a little bit of water just until they plump up, then mix them into the applesauce. Serve warm, cold, or room temp. Delicious no matter what.


Apple-Maple syrup
a TorXani original!

Apple cores and peels
1 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup maple sugar (or, since it's hideously expensive, 1 cup granulated sugar)
2 cups water, plus water for the apples

Put the conserved apple cores and peels in enough water to completely cover them, and simmer until the skins are soft (about 20 minutes). Since I used 12 apples for the applesauce, I ended up with two 2-quart pots of water and peels.

Combine the sugar, maple syrup, and 2 cups water and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Run the apples and their water through the food mill, scraping the pulp into a separate bowl (it's applesauce) and discarded the pips, skins and cores. You should now have an apply juice; pour this into the maple syrup mixture.

Boil the whole thing down to 2 1/2 or 3 cups (3 cups makes a thinner syrup). Strain it through a fine seive and cheesecloth. You can use this as an ice cream or waffle syrup, or add it to club soda for homemade apple soda.

I used the strained pulp as a glaze for a pan-fried catfish. Very nice.

By the way, these recipes are not for the faint of heart: