single-crust plum and apple pie

Early fall is a ridiculous time to get cooking block. Inspiration is everywhere as nearly everything that could possibly be in season currently is. The markets are flooded with great stuff; summer tomatoes, eggplant, corn and peppers fight for space on tables with apples, pears, greens and winter squash. But somehow — when I’m not playing SuperMom or Good Football Wife or gushing over tiny fall outfits — I’ve been at an impasse. The summer stuff is waning; the last tomatoes I brought home were… rough, to put it nicely. And given that the butternut squash and collards are the last bits of fresh produce we’ll see until asparagus spears pop up in May 2011, seven very long months from now, I’m sure you understand why I put off cooking with them for as long as possible.

Recipe

beef chili + sour cream and cheddar biscuits

Abruptly, and likely surprising nobody more than my husband, I have decided to be a Good Football Wife this year. Finding it impossible to summon any actual enthusiasm for the game but refusing to fulfill the sitcom wife-cliché of grumbling about my husband’s Sunday afternoon routines, in the past, I’ve mostly tolerated it. But with months of cold and/or wet Sundays ahead of us, I finally came to the realization that football season is the perfect excuse to embrace some much-needed Lazy Sundays. A morning bagel, park and farmers market run routine segues nicely into an afternoon of bumming around, or you know, however the person at hand defines it. For Alex, football, with the requisite pre- and post-game Sports Shouting episodes. For Jacob, removing books from the bookcases one by one, then attempting to stand on them to reach higher shelves, so he can remove them too. He naps, we replace the books, he wakes up and starts again. Ah, Sundays.

Recipe

finger foods

I’m pretty sure it happened overnight. One day, the baby was happily slurping down every and anything I could run through a blender and the next day, all he wanted was That. What You’re Eating. Give It To Me Or I Will Make Terrible Yelping Noises Until You Figure Out That Babies Need Lattes Too.

[I’m sorry baby, but the last thing ~~you~~ we the neighbors need is something to keep you up at night.]

And we haven’t eaten them same since. From that day on, I literally could not walk into the room eating an apple unless I also carried a dish of apple chunks for the baby to… what? I mean, he had like two teeth at that point and not very effective ones at that, but he wanted that food in his mouth and once he got it in his mouth, even if he hadn’t figured out how to “process” it, good luck getting it back. Suddenly, those teeth were daggers. Occasionally, two hours later we’d find the half-eaten chunk of apple deep in his shag play rug. Babies, man. Good thing they are cute.

Recipe

monkey cake

I’m pretty serious about birthday cakes. When I think of someone being presented with some shortening spackled quarter sheet cake from a discount grocery chain on their birthday — a day they only get to celebrate once a year! Which is like forever if you’re a kid or perhaps the sort of grownup who didn’t get the memo that at the age of 34, birthdays are really not supposed to be a big deal anymore — it makes me sad. Not judgmental-sad, because lord knows I could barely eke out this cake on Saturday, and it’s supposed to be, like, my calling, but empathetic-sad because I totally blame lousy, intimidating recipes for making the two-layer + frosting task seem not worth it to go it at home. I hope to make it as easy as possible for everyone to get the fluffy, towering, butter-laden imperfectly frosted, slightly crooked homemade cake they deserve for making it through another year. Or, perhaps, one’s entire life to date, for the first birthday set.

Recipe

skirt steak salad with blue cheese

In case you were wondering what it is like to be the Smitten Kitchen Baby, it turns out that you get steak and (sweet) potatoes for dinner on the eve of your first birthday, and then pancakes for lunch (or you will when mama stops talking to the internet and makes them for you). You can sleep as little as you want, wake as irate as you please and you will still be zerberted on your ample belly once the sun comes up, hours later (sigh). When your nose starts running, you can wipe it on mama’s nightgown (as usual) and she won’t even suggest that if you had licked fewer fence posts and swing chains and let fewer little girls pull your hair and give you kisses at the park, that maybe you wouldn’t have caught another cold. When you sneeze, someone will say “Aw, gesundheit, little boo boo!” And when you refuse to nap at the Strongly Encouraged Nap Time, your ~~humble servants~~ parents will sigh, shrug and present you with your first gift.

Recipe

linguine with tomato-almond pesto

We are dragging this summer out. Maybe it’s because as far as I am concerned, it didn’t really start until August, when the bulk of the heat wave was behind us and we willingly ventured outside of our air-conditioned caves again, and when we finally took a little family vacation. Maybe it’s because if it is still summer, the baby is still a baby and not a one year-old toddler as he will be after this weekend. But it is most likely because we headed down the Garden State Parkway to Exit 0 last weekend for a belated 5 year anniversary mini-vacation without said baby and somehow, well into September, still got sun, sand and freckles. Summer in September? I’ll take it.

Recipe

grape focaccia with rosemary

It was a 87 perfect degrees in New York City today and I spied an actual pumpkin at the farmers market. I love this time of year, when you expect it to feel like fall but it decidedly does not; it’s like Bonus Summer: cool enough to bust out cardigans at night but warm enough it feels too soon to audition any of the heavier dishes to come this winter. I’ve been gushing over what Sam Sifton called “valedictory meals” in The New York Times Sunday Magazine — “fall dinners pretending to be summer ones” — and I imagine that wedges of focaccia baked with a grape you can only find this time of year, a roasted tomato salad, many formats of cheese and a lush glass of pink wine would nicely fit the bill.

Recipe

moroccan-ish carrots and yams

Friends, I didn’t mean to abandon you. But since I suspect you are here because you also have a little rugrat underfoot, I probably don’t need to tell you that the only thing — seriously, only — thing I have done since we last spoke nearly two months is blink. Maybe twice. The baby, however, started crawling, then pulling himself up, then cruising, then climbing, then he started chewing on carpets and shoes and taking rooms apart and then he stopped sleeping because why would you sleep if you could be awake at 4 a.m. (for the day) and practicing your standing? And yelling? Oof. Like I said, I only just blinked.

Recipe

fresh tomato sauce

Around this time every summer, I see the best signs at the markets: “Ugly but tasty!” “Pretty on the inside!” “Don’t judge a tomato by its cover!” Beneath them are usually buckets of craggly misshapen tomato beasts, with coarse seams like they’d been stitched back together after some rough past and distinctly un-heirloom colors. At prices like a dollar a pound, obviously, they were destined for sauce.