Club Horizon Tapenade

Last night I got to volunteer and contribute a dish to Club Horizon's Wine Tasting and Food Pairing event!  It was a ton of fun for a good cause, and I had a great time fixing up my dish.  Everyone seemed to be delighted with all the food and wine offerings from various restaurants in the area.


I had originally decided to do a fig and green olive tapenade, but the fates conspired against me as the market in Neomonde, my favorite Mediterranean place here, was out of dried figs temporarily.  Dates seemed like the next best option, and I decided to use Kalamata olives to go with the slightly earthier character of dates.  Apparently baking dates come puréed in ultra-convenient pouches, so there was no peeling or mashing to be done!  I imagine if I looked harder, I could have found pitted olives, but I did it by hand, perfecting the score-and-squeeze method.  





Small side note about convenience.  Usually when I make things that require very small pieces, I end up chopping by hand.  I don't own a food processor, and my blender is nonfunctional.  I've used cheap food processors before and thought chopping by hand was actually easier and produced cleaner results, BUT!  I borrowed my sister's awesome brand new food processor and it was amazing!  My next big purchase will be one.  It took all of a few seconds to get the olive bits to the right size, whereas I probably would have been chopping for at least half an hour.  


As for seasoning, I decided to go for subtle but interesting flavor.  There's only a tiny bit of Garam Masala (premixed from Penzey's), garlic powder, and black pepper.  Oh, and a touch of excellent extra virgin-olive oil.  Squish it all up and you've got yourself some tapenade!





Club Horizon Tapenade
Need:
1/2 package of baking dates (around 6 oz.)
1 (11 oz) jar Kalamata olives (in brine, pre-pit them)
1/4 tsp heaping Garam Masala
1/4 tsp garlic powder
drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
chopped flat-leaf parsley for garnish


Do:
Pulse olives in food processor until minced.  Combine with the rest of ingredients!  Spread on crackers and top with parsley.  Pair with Vigneron de Saumur's rosé or any other Cabernet Franc rosé!  

Healthy(ish) Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

My most recent day off, I woke up and absolutely did not want my normal breakfast of eggs and greens.  What I really wanted was muffins from a store-bought mix, but I had no mix!  Then I realized that making them from scratch would be even more gratifying.  I also remembered I had a few small baggies of frozen puréed sugar pumpkin from the farmer's market in fall, so pumpkin muffins it was! I wanted to emulate the delicious Pumpkin Chocolate Chip muffins Spring Garden Bakery in Greensboro distributes to Tate Street Coffee, just not in gigantor form.  I think I did pretty awesome!  Very moist, quite sweet, but with a satisfying crunch from the oats and flaxseed.  It might seem kind of complicated with a lot of ingredients, but it didn't really take long to put together.

This recipe is a hybrid from one of Deb's at Smitten Kitchen and a random one on AllRecipes.  Great picture, right?  I clearly didn't imagine I would be posting it on a blog.

Really Good Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
(makes 12)

Preheat oven to 350°. Line 12 muffin cups with liners, or just grease them.

In a 1/2 cup measuring cup, put 2 tablespoons rolled oats, 1 tablespoon whole flax seeds, 2 tablespoons wheat or oat bran, and fill the rest of the measuring cup up with whole wheat flour.  Spoon, don't scoop! Blend in food processor to make oats smaller and hopefully semi-grind flax seeds.

Combine this 1/2 cup mixture in a large bowl with:
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

In another bowl, whisk together until well-combined:
1 cup pumpkin purée
3/4 cup packed brown sugar (or some combination involving honey)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (use good cinnamon!)
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 tablespoon molasses
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Stir the flour mixture into the wet mixture until just combined, and stir in 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips.  Fill the muffin cups about 3/4 full.  I recommend topping each muffin cup with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar.  It makes the most delicious crust.  Bake 20 minutes or until toothpick (inserted into the center, as usual) comes out clean.

New Experimental Blog!

Hooray!  I am now the proud owner of a knitting and baking blog, not to mention cooking, gardening, and whatever else I happen to have pictures of.  I can't wait to start writing up recipes and descriptions about knits I have completed!  I think for a while I will be going through old pictures and doing brief posts about past successes and failures before I get to any really new content.  (And it looks like I just learned that you have to hit "Publish" to actually publish a post.  I'm learning already!)