Roasted Sweet Potato Salad

A good fall salad.

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad

*2 pounds sweet potatoes (equaled 4 small for me)
*1 large red onion
*2 tbl olive oil
*mesclun greens
*toasted walnuts
*dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Peel the sweet potatoes and chop them into roughly one inch chunks. Peel and quarter the onion, then cut each quarter in half.

Toss the potatoes & onions in a bowl with the olive oil, then spread them out on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast in the oven about 40 minutes, or until potatoes are soft and somewhat browned. Let cool.

While the oven is still on, toast the walnuts on a baking sheet for a few minutes.

Layer the mesclun greens, then sweet potatoes and onions and a bowl. Sprinkle with cranberries, toasted walnuts and tahini dressing (below).

Tahini dressing:

*1/3 cup water
*1/4 cup tahini
*2 cloves garlic, pressed
*2 tablespoons barley miso paste

Whisk all ingredients together. Should keep in the fridge for several days.

Vegan Danishes

My first attempt at making vegan pastries! "Cream cheese" filled on the left and pain au chocolat on the right. Used this and this website to make the pastry dough and this recipe for the cream cheese filling.

Blueberry Pie

Originally I wanted to make a cherry pie, but I had a lot of trouble finding sour cherries, and the ones i did find were really expensive. I bought 7 dollars worth at the farmer's market and it ended up being enough for about half a pie (!), so I put them in the freezer for a special occasion. Blueberries are in season and pretty cheap in the farmer's market recently so I decided to try that instead.

Blueberry Pie

Crust (recipe from mom):

* 2 cups sifted flour
* 1 tsp salt
* 3/4 cup shortening
* 1/4 cup ice water

Filling:

* 5 cups of fresh blueberries, rinsed and stems removed
* 3 tbsp cornstarch
* 2 tbsp lemon juice
* 1/2 cup granulated sugar



Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

To make the crust, mix the flour and salt in a bowl. Cut in the shortening with 2 knives until mixture is grainy, about the size of small peas. Combine 1/3 cup of this mixture with water and add to remaining shortening/flour mixture. Mix with fork just until dough sticks together. (Don't over mix, the dough will get tough.) Divide in half and roll out on lightly floured board or between 2 sheets of wax paper. Fit one half into a 9 inch pie pan and trim the overhanging dough. Chill the other half while making filling. (I actually ended up having enough crust and filling to make one regular pie and one little individual pie.)

To make the filling, stir together the blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Pour into the pie shell.

Take the other half of the pie crust out of the refrigerator and make the pie top, either by making shapes with a cookie cutter, making a lattice top, or a single covering with steam vents.

Bake at 425° for 30 minutes, reduce oven temperature to 350°, and bake for another 25 to 35 minutes, until juices are bubbling and crust is lightly browned. (It's a good idea to place a bakigng sheet under your pie to catch what bubbles over, i didn't and now i have blueberry goo all over the bottom of my oven.)Let cool on a wire rack.

Makes 8 servings.

Kathryn Goetz Scrapbook

I found this amazing scrapbook at a thrift store awhile ago & couldn't believe someone had actually gotten rid of it. Seems to be the scrapbook of a Dayton highschool girl from the 1920s. Makes me wonder about her life and how her scrapbook ended up at the Village Discount...maybe she never got married and never had a family? Or maybe they just aren't sentimental?



It's full of really great ephemera- old dance cards (she had a romance with someone named Basil), soda fountain menus, playbills, party favors..she must have been pretty wealthy to have been so well entertained in the 20s.



It's way too full of treasures for me to keep to myself so I thought I'd post up some shots of it on Flickr. The rest of the pictures are here.

World's Longest Yard Sale

A few pictures from the World's Longest Yard Sale. Treasures, country roads, blue skies, friendly people. Best weekend of the summer, always. More pictures here.

Trail Mix Cookies

Making these was a result of having too ripe bananas and a whole lot of quick cooking oats because I always by them accidentally instead of the old fashioned kind. Now they're my favorite cookies and Ive made them three times in like 2 weeks. They're good for breakfast because they have lots of carbohydrates and protein for energy in the morning. I also like that they don't have any white sugar and are just the right amount of sweet. When my roommate saw me taking this picture he asked "are you taking pictures of your vomit?" Right after he said that he ate 4 of them.

Trail Mix Cookies

*1/3 cup chunky peanut butter
*2 ripe bananas
*1 tsp vanilla
*2 tbsp vanilla soy milk
*2 tbsp maple syrup
*2 1/2 cups quick oats
*1/2 tsp cinnamon
*1/4 cup flour
*handful of each: sunflower seeds, raisins, chocolate chips



Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mash the bananas until they're mostly smooth, a little chunky is ok. Add the vanilla, soymilk, peanut butter, and maple syrup and combine. Add the oats, flour, and cinnamon, and stir again. Then mix in the raisins, sunflower seeds, and chocolate chips.

Place by teaspoon on an ungreased baking sheet and bake 12-15 minutes.

Nickolas Muray

Just came across this photographer on flickr. I love the vibrant colors and the idyllic quality of his photographs. Apparently Nickolas Muray did quite a bit of work for Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and Ladies Home Journal, so I'll be keeping an eye out for his pictures in old magazines. His archive at the George Eastman collection includes over 25,000 images! See more here.