Spicy Apple Squash Soup: let the ingredients speak for themselves...

I love making soup. I dearly love it. There are so many variations, I can't imagine I'll ever get sick of soup, BUT, I have worn out a few soup strains as of late. Brothy, full of stewed tomatoes, with a noticeable splash of red wine vinegar (sorry if I'm gearing your taste buds up for tomatoes, cause that's not the direction we're going today...). Well, it's time for something different. I'm talking complex, creamy, and autumnal. Here's what I came up with:

You'll Need
2 large apples, pealed and cored
2 medium squash, baked and scraped out (pumpkin, acorn, butternut, they'll all do the trick)
2 serrano peppers
2-3 cups broth (veggie or chicken, your choice!)
4 onions
butter
olive oil
salt

You Should
Caramelize the onions in (un)healthy amount of butter, and a touch of olive oil. Once the onions are translucent and browned, add the apples, serranos, and a little bit of broth. Let that boil for a few minutes, and add the squash. After it's boiled for a few more minutes, turn off the heat, puree the mixture, and taste. Add salt till it's just right, and let it cool. The longer it sits, the more the subtle flavors will come out, especially the apples and the spice. Try to resist adding a bunch of herbs and spices to this one, the natural flavors make it surprisingly flavorpacked!

*Right before serving, I'd suggest toasting a piece of bread with goat cheese on top, and floating that in the soup, almost like the way french onion soup has the crusty baguette floating on top...

AND ENJOY!

Commander Tool Belt, meet Captain Bag

Whether you call it corn hole, baggo, bean bag toss, or simply bags, you've gotta appreciate the craftsmanship that went into this set.  

Maple, mahogany, and walnut. Sanded, stained, measured and cut to perfection, this set is certainly top of the line. It's what you get when you put true craftsmen on the project.  Though I wish I could take credit for this creation, it was the handiwork of Colter Sonneville and Ryan Heneise, hat's off to these gentleman.

We'll have to wait and see how it performs this weekend, when it'll be unveiled in all its tailgating glory.

Cauliflower Au Gratin: Nutritional (If not exactly healthy) Comfort Food

With colder weather moving in, and Thanksgiving approaching, it's turning into comfort food season. I love comfort food. Boy oh boy do I love comfort food. I also love my health. It can be quite the challenge to turn comfort foods into a healthy snack, but it's not impossible. When it comes to creamy cheesy concoctions though, lets be frank, "healthy" isn't really going to be accurate. What we can do, however, is increase the nutritional content of what we're eating. Substituting cauliflower for pasta surely bumps up the number of vitamins and nutrients being consumed, at least that's how I'm justifying it. If you don't need any justifications, good for you! Here's how you get started:

YOU'LL NEED:
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons flour
2.5 cups gruyere
large head of cauliflower
salt to taste

First, break the cauliflower into bite sized chunks, and boil for about 10 minutes; until tender. In a separate sauce pan, slowly heat the milk. Once it's warm, but before it begins to boil, whisk in the flour, and add 1.5 cups of cheese. Stir it all together until it's all one creamy mixture. Pre-heat the oven to 450. When the florets are sufficiently tender, spread them evenly around a glass baking dish. Make sure they're not piled too high, I needed to use two 9x9 pans. Pour the milk/cheese/flour mixture over the cauliflower, it should cover roughly the bottom 1/3rd of the florets. Sprinkle the remaining cup of cheese on the cauliflower, and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the top begins to brown ad bubble. Let cool, (though it is particularly good when it's hot and gooey) and ENJOY!

ButterBeer! Our Halloween Cocktail

Hopefully I'm not catching you off guard with this, but it's Halloween weekend! Whether you're passing out candy or partying like there's no tomorrow, you are going to love this drink. Familiar to Harry Potter fans, this one is a hit among young and old alike. For those of you who don't have a house-elf to whip up your cocktails, here's a simple version that turned out well for me:




YOU'LL NEED:
1 cup of cream soda (or club soda)
1 cup of butterscotch syrup (common ice cream topping)
1 tablespoon butter

In a microwavable mug, melt butterscotch syrup and butter on high for about a minute (in the microwave).
Slowly mix in soda (it bubbles a lot, be careful). Enjoy! It's that simple, and you can keep making them fresh all night long!

Next, you can kick it up a notch with a shot of bourbon, butterscotch schnapps, or dark rum,. Pick your poison, and get into the spirit! Just make sure you remember which one's the "adult" version...

*modified from www.mugglenet.com*

Spiced, and Spiked, Cider: because it's important to stay warm

With halloween approaching, and thanksgiving on the horizon, my thoughts are spinning towards leaf piles, pumpkin patches, and the inevitable first morning when I can see my breath. As much as I dread the bitter cold of winter months, there is a lot to look forward to, and there ARE ways to mitigate the chill. One of my favorite, is Spiked Cider.


YOU'LL NEED:
Apple cider
cloves
cinnamon
anise
dark rum


A tea-strainer really simplifies this recipe. Three cinnamon stick, broken into smaller pieces, a teaspoon of cloves, and 1-2 anise stars should be plenty. Slowly heat 4-6 cups of apple cider in a sauce pan, with the tea bag full of spices. Once boiling, turn off the heat and let it steep for a few minutes. Mix between half a cup, or a cup of dark rum into each glass and fill them the rest of the way up with the spiced cider. Make sure not to burn your tunge, but you've got to enjoy this one warm, that's the whole point!

*recipe modified from www.thekitchn.com

Keepin' It Simple

In science, the idea of parsimony carries a lot of influence. The simpler explanation is often the correct one. It's not always true, but it's a nice rule of thumb. The same can be said of food. Sure, sometimes your meats and veggies are just a vehicle for the spices you're using. But often enough, good food can speak for itself. Sometimes, you're actually doing yourself a disservice by masking the freshness and quality, especially at this time of the year. Some might even say grilling veggies is too much. I think it was just right. 

The main point is, we grilled walleye in the cage, and salmon on the plank (because that's how pirates do things, it's either the cage or the plank). Both turned out well, but the walleye was a little dry and was definitely better when eaten before the salmon. 

Walleye: 

raw walleye, descaled

salt and pepper to taste

**a squirt or two of lemon might have been a good idea... 

The salmon was marinated in a mixture of soy sauce and brown sugar, with a little lemon juice to add some acidity. It was fantastic! We mixed about two table spoons of brown sugar into half a cup of soy sauce, and half a lemon's worth of juice. Feel free to adjust these ratio's to taste, but they worked well here. 

salmon:

large fresh salmon steak

1/2 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1/2 a lemon, juiced

It's sunny! Too sunny for photography...

We went out the other day to shoot some new photos of our Fish Face For Her line, and wowzas, I was super excited to see how the pictures turned out. We had some great friend-models and an absolutely beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky. Not a chill in the air. It was certainly t-shirt weather.

We decided on an often seen but never visited site, the bloomingdale trail in Chicago. An abandoned train line that will one day be converted into a bicycle and pedestrian walk way. For now, the trail remains closed to the public, which makes it extra exciting and mysterious. It's full of graffiti in areas, overlooking the Chicago skyline and various old industrial factories, while other sections feel remote, an urban secret garden, elevated and out of sight. It promised to be a great day of exploration, of nature in the city, and fantastic photo shoot to boot.

well, at this point you can probably sense, and see, that something went awry. Yup, while light is an important part of photography, too much light makes it difficult to take great photo's. I think the composition is right for these pics, but the lighting is all wrong, and I while I should have guessed given the intense sun that afternoon, I didn't realize just how bad the lighting was until I got these off the camera and onto the computer. You live, you learn, and you get to go on more adventures to take better photo's!