Working at a food company means that I often get to eat really delectable lunches. A few weeks ago, one of my bosses put together some crusty bread with homemade mayonnaise, heirloom tomatoes and basil while my other boss took pictures of us eating it. Let's hope a picture of me stuffing lunch in my face does not surface. I decided to borrow that combination of flavors for a late summer bruschetta using some heirloom tomatoes from my trip to Long Island this past weekend. 
I recently tried this farro salad from Bklyn Larder, a cheese and provisions shop in Brooklyn, and I’ve been itching to recreate it at home for many weeks. As I ate it, I tried to note all the flavors to make sure I got as close to the real thing as possible. I typed up what I like to call a guess-cipe, a guessed recipe that I can test and tweak in the kitchen. I’m happy to report that I did a pretty good job matching the flavors. The creaminess of the mayo adds a nice fat factor, the lemon juice brightens it up, the farro’s nutty texture is super fun and the vegetables bring some crunch to the party. There are two months of picnic weather left and this is a crowd-pleasing salad to have on your gingham blanket. 
Last week's candied cranberries didn't go over as well as I'd hoped. My brother
seemed to like them, but he's a fan of insanely tart flavors just like me. When we
were little, we used to soak pieces of sliced white bread in red wine
vinegar and eat them in from the TV, our lips turning white from the
acidic burn. Other people might not have the same tolerance for zing as
we do. 
This tomato salad is so good. I’m currently on the hunt for some green tomatoes so I can make more of it. I never knew that anything else could be done with green tomatoes besides frying them, but this is a crisp, refreshing way to use these underripe tomatoes in the fall, right after the warmth of summer has died off and the chill of winter is approaching, but it’s not quite cold enough for soups and stews. 
This salad was inspired by Chop’t Creative Salad Company’s Mexican Caesar salad. It’s very similar to the original, except I wasn’t sure how to make their dressing so I invented my own. For some reason, whenever I buy a jalapeno, I lose it. I bought a nice glossy jalapeno for this recipe, made the salad and ate it all before realizing that the jalapeno wasn’t in it. It wasn’t in the fridge either, or on the floor, or behind the chopping block or in the fruit bowl. 
I was flipping through Rachael Ray Magazine a few weeks ago at the nail salon and stopped dead in my tracks on her kale pesto recipe. I took a picture of it on my phone and would not rest until I tried it. And why not make homemade pappardelle while I’m at it, I thought? When I was little, I often made pasta with my mom and my nonna. We laid
strings of spaghetti on blue and white striped kitchen towels draped
over every surface of the kitchen. If I remember correctly, we had a
pasta machine. I don’t have one now; I don't have the space and
I don’t make pasta often enough.
My goals for October are to go apple picking, bake a pie, take a hike and carve a pumpkin. I also have to figure out what I’m going to be for Halloween. Some thoughts are Paula Deen, bacon or Carrie from Homeland. I’m excited for squash, trench coats and leather boots, but very sad that I have no sunlight when I get home. Now if I want to photograph my dinner after work, I need to pull the photo lights out of the closet to fake the sun. I’ll miss trimming the basil on the porch while drinking club soda and Campari. 
Alan’s brother and sister-in-law always visit bearing gifts like a jumbo bottle of Cholula hot sauce or some delectable pastries. A while back, they brought us some Tajin Classico Seasoning which they promised would be great on anything. It really is. 
You reach for a fried onion ring at a bar or a late night diner. Your eyes are drawn to the perfectly tubular golden crusts. You grab a ring off the pile, drag it through a heap of ketchup and take a bite. As you pull the remainder of the ring away from your teeth, the scalding hot onion fails to break and the entire slippery snake slides out of the perfect crust and slaps your chin. Now you’re left with a fried crust, a slimy string of onion and a burnt chin. After a few helpings, you’re sick from grease overload. 
I stood over a half a head of cabbage which seemed to triple in size once I thinly sliced it. Would I be forced to make a bucket of coleslaw or an endless supply of sauerkraut? No, there had to be a better way to use all this cabbage! I don’t remember how I came up with this recipe. I think I was craving soy sauce, so I started sautéing the cabbage shreds in a pan and adding in dashes of this and spoonfuls of that. I ended up with an irresistible dish that reminded me of creamy noodles covered in peanut sauce, minus the carbs. Add in shredded chicken or strips of tofu for an entree or make this as a side dish. You might want to garnish it with thinly sliced scallions and crushed peanuts too.
“Raw power honey just won't quit, raw power I can feel it, raw power honey can't be beat, get down baby and a kiss my feet.” Perhaps rock-star Iggy Pop knew about the power of a raw asparagus salad, how it pleasantly surprises people who thought asparagus could only be eaten cooked. I was skeptical when I saw Anne Burrell’s recipe for raw asparagus salad in her cookbook, Cook Like A Rockstar, but her headnote promised that it would be a unique crowd-pleaser. 
If you’re like me, you let last weekend's gloomy New York skies discourage you from kickboxing, going jean shopping and doing laundry. Instead, you watched episodes of Lost that you’ve already seen, suffered through a good chunk of the Miss America pageant, flipped through US Weekly and waited for your homemade pickled carrots to pickle. You’re excited because they pickled nicely with a perfect balance of astringency and sweetness. You might have also eaten way too much pizza and a few too many slices of last week’s date cake. Oh wait, that was my weekend.
