pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing

Most people have a spare pumpkin sitting around at this time of year, and I've got two.  I never got around to carving a greeting for the hordes of trick-or-treaters who rang our bell this year, from the itty-bitty bumblebee to the six power rangers.  (Does that mean power rangers are cool again?  I'm still recovering from when they were cool the first time.)

I love cooking with pumpkins, but it's a bit of a pain to hack them up and scoop the seeds out.  Luckily, I used to have a steady source for pre-hacked-up, pre-seeded pumpkins: every year, my former landlady (hi, Amy!) would very neatly carve a pumpkin on the morning of Halloween, leave it out for the day, and ask me to dispose of it in the evening.  No problem.  I disposed of them right in my oven.

foolproof roast chicken

Since I just spent a whole post talking about how vegetables are the next cool crowd, I should probably explain that this roast chicken post is not a retraction of that thought--it's just a byproduct of my stubbornness.  I am a stubborn person, and right now I am stubbornly refusing to turn on the heat, be it 64 or 61 or even an obscene 59 degrees in my apartment, because it's October and too early to turn on the heat.  NO.  I will NOT.  But this means that sometimes, the only comfortable place to be is in the kitchen with the oven on full blast.  It's been working out so far.  Plum and flax seed muffins?  Check.  Roasted butternut squash?  Check.  Foolproof roast chicken?  Double check.

This recipe has two ingredients: chicken, and salt.  That's what makes it foolproof.  There's no futzing around with lemon, no rosemary, not even black pepper--those things are scrumptious and I have nothing against them, but the secret to this chicken is that it doesn't need them.  Truly.  It stands on its own, both in deliciousness and in ease.

cardamom milk tea

As one of six people remaining in this country who have not seen a single episode of Breaking Bad, I was completely oblivious to the fact that I have been sitting on fame and fortune this whole time.  Literally sitting.  Apparently, Walter White owns the same couch and chair set that I have in my living room.

Up until I was alerted to this fact, my closest brush with fame was at four years old, when I took first place in a coloring contest.  My "cow in shades of green and purple" was like something straight out of Picasso's sketchbook.  (The prize?  Coupons for ice cream, which to a four-year-old is seriously the best prize ever.)  Anyway, sitting on these couches makes me feel famous by osmosis, like if I saw Julia Roberts getting into a taxi or something: it's nothing to actually brag about, but I still totally would because it makes me feel important.

My apartment mates and I had a discussion about selling our famous furniture as collector's items, until Heidi pointed out that we can't list "Breaking Bad Furniture" on Craigslist because who would click on an ad for some furniture that is bad and breaking?  Fair point, well made.  Also: then we would have to sit on the floor, and the dust bunnies around here can be rabid.

italian-style grilled eggplant "sausages"

You guys, it's okay to eat vegetables again.  Or, rather, it's cool to eat vegetables again. Bon Appetit’s August issue lauded chefs who are "celebrating produce with a reverence formerly reserved for Wagyu beef." Down the newsstand, Food & Wine featured a glowing vegetable-centric article, while its editor-in-chief proclaimed vegetables to be "the new pork, the new cupcake, and the new craft beer all in one.”

If Food & Wine is, like, Vogue for foodies, this means that vegetables are about to become your over-the-top, hipster-friendly imperative—sort of like the edible version of the skinny jean. If you've already been diligently eating your vegetables and enjoying them, like some sort of mouthbreathing weirdo, good news! you're now a trendy weirdo. Because in the same way that pork, cupcakes, and craft beer have all had their fifteen minutes on menus and in specialty stores, here comes the year of the vegetable.

eatable Montreal

Here is one thing we learned in Montreal: a four-croissant-a-day diet is unsustainable.

Or, rather—I learned this, and Merrick did not.

Reporting for writing assignments sometimes takes the form of eating (Cases in point), which is possibly the best form of homework ever.  My latest article in The Boston Globe, about the best places to find croissants in Montreal, took some serious scouting.  And some serious eating.  And some serious butter.

I'm definitely not complaining—I love me some butter.  If I lived in Montreal, I would buy so many croissants every week that I could roll on piles of them like Scrooge McDuck.  But my point is that I saw the amount of butter that goes into these things, and it is only slightly less than the amount of dough involved.  I saw a block of butter equivalent to a mid-size ice sculpture.  I thought it was white chocolate, but then I asked what they use all that white chocolate for, and the very nice pastry chef looked over with a duh expression.  So, that's another thing that I learned—butter does occasionally come in blocks the size of a small Toyota.

basil vinaigrette

A couple of times over the past few months, I've glanced down at my thumbs, hoping they would have turned a deep emerald.  Or at least a nice olive green.  But, as the sorry state of my potted herbs will confess, I am not an instinctual gardener.

Here's the story.  This year I grew some fresh herbs out on the front deck.*  I lovingly potted them in soil, imagining fresh basil pesto, tabbouleh with parsley, and summery potato salad made with thyme.  Now I look back on my two-months-ago self and think—don't waste your time!  (Puns! Groan.)  These herbs were doomed the second they met me.  The parsley bolted (that's a thing, right? bolting?), the rosemary got all thin and spindly, and the rest of them wilted within inches of their lives.  Except the mint, which is totally dead.

(Merrick is kind enough to blame my wilting herbs on the crazy summer heat we've been having.  Have I mentioned the heat wave?  There is a short list of things that I am SO. OVER., and "heat wave" recently moved into the number-one spot, beating out "the copy machine at work" and "accidentally poking myself in the eye with the arm of the cat-eye sunglasses that I bought to look cool in the heat wave.")

sesame cucumber salad

I know it's summer because multiple TSA agents asked to pat down my huge, frizzy hair.  Oof da.  Ninety-percent humidity is not my friend.  In search of a reprieve from the heat wave that's been clutching this part of the country, we made the short trip out to Walden Pond yesterday, and the water was perfect: cool enough to be refreshing, but without that bone-chilling cold that's a signature of our northern Atlantic ocean beaches.