By Brianna Bain
San Diego, CA – Winter in California has been pretty mild. With the frequency of 77 degree days lately, a “cool winter” salad seemed most appropriate. Motive came easy after receiving Sarah’s recipe: Winter Chopped Salad with Beans, Beets and Apples. A combination of wintery goodness that digitally excited my senses! Winter in Southern CA is quite different than in Sunnyside NY but the craving for colorful crunchy and fresh chopped style salad is all the same. Weather the winter is “warm” or cool in your Winter in the Northern hemisphere of the globe, cool crops are going to be available. Things like cabbage, kohlrabi, broccoli, kale … all great beginnings to a crunchy winter salad.
CLICK HERE for the full post and recipe.
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- Peeled and sliced Kohlrabi
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- Granny smith and Gala apples
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- Sliced apples
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- Dressing ingredients
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- Dressing prep in jar
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- Dressing on frsh chopped slaw
By Sarah A. Maine
Sunnyside, NY – Winter, ice edged and wind studded, has been slow to arrive in the Northeast this year. But this week the mercury finally made up its mind and started its first real shift downward.
Some people are invigorated by winter. Not me. I can appreciate a beautiful snow fall, and a clear crisp day, but after a week of serious cold, I’m ready for the return of summer. The cold does more than prick my skin, it dampens my spirit – even in the kitchen. A day of trudging around the city in the cold leaves me drained of the will to do almost anything. While others may find themselves cooking more in winter, I have to invent plans and schemes that will make cooking faster and simpler so that I won’t abandon it completely.
The first part of my winter cooking strategy involves front loading the work: roasting then freezing an array of winter squash all at once, soaking and boiling enough beans to last a week or more, expanding recipes to cover at least two meals. I do what I can to make it easy to walk in the door and assemble a dish from pre-cooked ingredients to be served cold or heated up quickly.
Part two of my winter cooking strategy is to keep as much color in my food as possible. Eating a bowl of bright colors cheers and comforts me, so for this, the first Seasons’ Eatings recipe of 2012 I’ll be drawing inspiration from the bursts of color woven through the first recipe of 2011 – Brianna’s Pomegranate, Pear and Persimmon Salad. Pomegranates and persimmons I have none, so I’ll find some wintry fruits and vegetables to fulfill my chromatic requirements.
CLICK HERE for the full post and recipe.
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- Cameo Apples at Samascott Orchards Farm Stand
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- Kohlrabi at Migliorelli Farm Stand
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- Finnish Ruis Bread
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- Dried Yellow Eye Beans
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- Yellow Eye Beans Soaked Overnight
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- Dicing Fennel
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- Peeling Purple Kohlrabi
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- Diced Apples and Chioggia Beets
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- Garlic Sage and Shallot Dressing
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- Chopped and Ready to Mix
Happy New Year Relayers!
We have missed you all and hope that you missed us as well. We would like to extend a huge thank you to all our contributors and readers who helped make 2011 such an exciting year for RecipeRelay. We are back in the saddle after a few much needed weeks of rest and rejuvenation – a little radio silence can do wonders to focus the mind and the stomach! But our little breather wasn’t all fun and games, we also took advantage of this time to evaluate the happenings on RecipeRelay over the course of 2011 and to think about how we can keep things spicy for the year ahead.
Post-holiday inertia can sometimes be hard to break out of, but it must be done! Sarah Maine will be leading the way in 2012 – look for the first recipe of the year on Thursday January 19th. In the mean time, here are some new things to look forward to:
- New posting schedule – in order to ease some of the work load on ourselves and our contributors we’ll be consolidating the two food posts into one weekly post – complete with seasonal food stimuli and the usual delicious recipe. Our tasty Relay results will go live every Thursday.
- Local Libations – our seasonal drink Relay will switch to a bi-weekly publishing schedule. Every other Friday we’ll post another one of our all too drinkable seasonal cocktails.
- Special Community Events – our mission at RecipeRelay is to share seasonal recipes and the stories behind them, so far we have done this mostly online, an activity that has been rewarding in countless ways. This year, in addition to our flagship online Relay, we are going to experiment with applying the Relay format in some off-line situations, such as at farmers markets and dinner parties. Stay tuned for news of how you can participate in a RecipeRelay Community Event!
- RecipeRelay Newsletter – we know that you love getting RecipeRelay delivered straight to your inbox so we’ve hatched a plan to streamline our subscription system. A weekly newsletter will re-cap all the news from the week before, and let you know what is coming down the pike. Don’t worry – if you are already a subscriber you don’t have to do anything, starting next week you’ll automatically receive the RecipeRelay newsletter every Monday. You can just sit back and wait for the good food news to arrive.
As always we love to hear from readers so don’t hold back – if there’s something you think is missing from RecipeRelay just tell us! You can leave a comment or send an using the contact form.
We can’t wait to get started and make this a delectable and fun year for everyone, so without further ado let’s get Relaying!
Brianna & Sarah
Hi everybody! Welcome to our last post of 2011! It has been a great year for us, and we have so enjoyed working with all our wonderful contributors and fielding comments and questions from our thoughtful and curious RecipeRelay readers. Everyone needs a little time off, and as we barrel towards the holidays juggling jobs and other life obligations, we realized that we needed a break ourselves. So, we’ll be back in January with more Relay food and drinks, but don’t worry – we’re not leaving you empty handed! Be sure to read on for our 2011 Eats & Treats Gift Guide and for a roundup of RecipeRelay Holiday Ready Dishes.
See you in 2012, Happy Holidays!
Sarah & Brianna
RecipeRelay’s 2011 Eats & Treats Gift Guide
If you’ve got cheese lovers in your life (there’s got to be at least one right?), then check out Saxelby Cheesemongers’ Mailorder Holiday gift boxes. Filled with delicious American Farmstead cheeses and customizable with other tasty snacks (lavash crackers, caramels, charcuterie, need we say more…), Saxelby has an array of gift boxes, you’re sure to be able to find one to suit your tastes. Basically it’s a cheese party in a box, who could say no to that?
RecipeRelay friend and contributor Marissa Guggiana recently celebrated the release of her newest cookbook: Off The Menu, a journey through the staff meals of America’s top restaurants. It’s been getting a lot of love lately from the likes of USA Network and the San Fransisco Chronicle, we thought we’d give it some of our own. Off the Menu is just the thing to satiate the curiosity of anyone hungering to peek inside the family style meals of restaurant kitchens.
CLICK HERE for the full Eats & Treats Gift Guide.
By Kat Durant
San Diego CA – Inspiration was easy this time around on the Relay, Brianna’s American Cold Hard Toddy (which I can’t wait to try) and Sarah’s Inside Out Squash Pie. Why not try a little of both! This time year calls for some spicy seasonal liquor to keep the chill away even here in Southern CA and the best way to keep up with the holiday madness is to make a large batch to share. This infusion can be enjoyed several ways, the best is straight up so you can savor every spice. It’s also a great substitution in an old fashion and is the perfect liquor for a hot toddy.
CLICK HERE for the full post and recipe.
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- butternut on grill
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- cutting it into chunks
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- macerating butternut with whiskey over low heat
