October '21: Newsletter
Early morning in September, overlooking one of my favorite swimming coves.
Hello! Welcome to our little cooking circle.
I’m so thrilled to have you here. I’ve had the desire to create a body of work that teaches people about my favorite kind of cooking, intuitive and seasonal home cooking, for quite a few years. This summer, the call became very loud, and I finally felt ready to start pouring it all out into the world.
I love developing and sharing recipes, but the way that I cook and navigate the kitchen daily is very different from the somewhat rigid structure of recipe-forward cooking. I’m guided more by what produce is in season, the weather, and day-to-day cravings. I might have some recipes planned, but I rarely let them completely dictate what I end up cooking. Instead, I treat cooking as a small, daily act of creativity, self-nourishment, and connection. And if you’re thinking that you’re too busy for all that, I can confidently say that this kind of cooking is often much simpler and more liberating than following and shopping for exact recipes. It’s what really made me fall in love with cooking in the first place. Cooking daily with a quiet, background sense of freedom and wonder has also helped me grow my self-reliance and abilities in the kitchen like nothing else has. I hope to help gently guide you to a similar relationship with cooking within the format of this membership.
Of course, intuitive cooking requires some basic skills and general knowledge, but that’s what we’ll be focusing on here, in the monthly video cooking classes. In addition to the monthly class, I’ll be publishing three (or more!) new recipes every month. These recipes will always be guided by the seasons, whether the current season’s produce or overall mood, they’ll also be plant-based and whole food-focused. To tie the recipes in with our ultimate goal of intuitive cooking, each one will have what I’m calling intuitive cooking takeaways. These little notes will point out teachable moments within the recipes, and how you can apply them when cooking other dishes in the future. Or they’ll touch on ingredients that can be replaced or omitted, or how the leftovers can be transformed. Personally, I’m so excited to create recipes that are guided by the seasons, rather than algorithms, with no ads surrounding them (there will be no ads, ever). I never stop learning when it comes to preparing food, and I hope that we can grow together as home cooks. Please feel welcome to leave comments or email me through the contact form with any questions, requests, or ideas. I’m here to serve and be as helpful as I can.
This month’s class introduces intuitive cooking and illustrates some of the key points through a demo for vinaigrette, which we then use to marinate some lentils. Vinaigrette is such a universal sauce (and dressing, and marinade!), that knowing how to make it instantly takes your cooking game up a few levels.
This month’s recipes, Tomato Confit with Mozz Sauce, Twice Baked Squash with Fennel Seed and Pumpkin Seed Crisp, Kohlrabi Caesar, and Seeded Buckwheat Bread are all about embracing and grounding into this quieter, more introspective time in nature. The tomato confit offers one good way to preserve late summer bounty a little longer, if you, like me, have the last bits of tomatoes still hanging around your sphere. And I’m very excited for you to try the mozzarella sauce, which is nut free! The twice baked squash was developed as a celebration of all the starchy, orange, and warming produce of fall and winter, and I think you’ll really love the fennel seed crisp. The Caesar highlights a lovely vegetable that doesn’t get enough attention - the kohlrabi - and the hemp heart dressing that it comes with is a true flavor bomb. And finally, the hearty, seeded buckwheat bread offers a fulfilling baking project for any crisp, fall day.
October in New England, where I live, is beautiful and bittersweet.
It’s when fall truly makes itself known, and getting out of a warm bed in the morning becomes a bit of a challenge due to the crisp air. The weather oscillates between grey/chilly and what we call the velvet season in Russian. It’s that ideal kind of weather, when the sun’s warmth feels friendly and not at all hot, when the humidity is low, and the skies are bright blue and crystal clear. On those days, you might be lucky enough to get in a beach day, but you’ll need to bring something to bundle up in. Wearing a sweater on the beach is one of my favorite things about fall. The farmers market is in a state of transition. Summer produce is slowly fading away, though there are still some tomatoes and melons to be had, and making way for an insane variety of winter squash, root vegetables, greens of all kinds, grapes, apples, and pears. It’s a magical time, with a hint of melancholy.
Seasonal Pleasures
⁕ For immunity and myriad other benefits, I make lots of chaga (mushroom) chai in the fall and winter. I still have some gifted chaga from friends, who harvested it on their dreamy property in Maine, but otherwise I buy it from Myco-Biome. To make the tea, I toast lots of whole, chai spices in a dry skillet: cardamom, coriander, black peppercorns, cloves, star anise, cinnamon sticks, until golden and fragrant. I then combine the spices with some fresh ginger, 50 g of chaga, and 5-6 cups purified water in a pot. I set the pot over the lowest heat possible, so low that the mixture never even comes to a full simmer. I let the tea steep like this for a whole day, then turn off the heat and let it infuse further overnight. I strain out the chaga chunks and spices, freeze them, and reuse them up to 3-4 times, or until the chaga stops infusing a deep, dark color into the water. I keep the chai concentrate refrigerated and enjoy it by diluting it with some hot water, with a splash of foamed plant milk, and maybe some extra cinnamon on top. You can sweeten it, add other spices of choice, or even add cacao powder for a chaga mocha situation. Yum!
⁕ October is the month for apple picking where I live. We journey to an organic orchard located in a small, beach community and really go to town. I mostly eat the apples raw for breakfast, but some of them make it into our famous apple pie, as well as apple sauce. Apple sauce is the easiest thing to make! Just core and chop the apples (I don’t even peel them), add to a pot with a splash of water, and bring to a simmer. Let stew, covered, until the apples are very soft and juicy. Transfer to a blender and blend until smooth. You can add all kinds of warm spices to the stewing apples, if you wish. Here’s a link to an IG reel I made of the whole process.
⁕ Besides making twice baked squash and taking out my favorite sweater, the thing that gets me most excited for fall is reading a cozy book by candlelight (I love the glow and scent of a beeswax candle in particular). I recently got my act together and applied for a library card. There’s a library walking distance from my place, and the thought of all the unlimited reading I can do for free is incredibly exciting. So here’s a little nudge to get a library card if you’ve been thinking about it :) A book that I often revisit in the fall is An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. Have you read it? It goes really well with our whole intuitive cooking theme, and gets me so excited to cook if I’m ever in a rut. And I’m currently reading Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza and finding it fascinating. I’ve cultivated a daily meditation practice over the last two years, and this book puts words and reasoning to many of the things I do during meditation.
⁕ The Truffle Hunters is a movie I thoroughly enjoyed recently. It’s got a nice combination of rich cinematography, real life stories, and poeticism. Perfect fall viewing.
⁕ I’m hoping to do some hiking in Vermont this fall and have my eye on these hiking boots. What colorway would you choose?
⁕ And lastly, a product I’m really loving right now is the Inner Eco Coconut Probiotic. It’s a liquid probiotic made with young coconut water and kefir cultures, and it makes anything you add it to taste like coconut yogurt. So much more fun to take than a capsule!
Wishing you a beautiful October, golden and glowy like the skin of a winter squash, chai scented, and as ripe with small pleasures and joyful moments as a freshly picked, juicy apple :)
More early fall cove magic. Look familiar?