Autumn Bliss
Tomatoes and Pumpkins and orange leaves
I’m from the Midwest and this is my favorite time of year. I am visiting my parents in Ohio with Hawk and I am taking this time to revel in the turning of the season.
This is an in-between time and as I write this, it is also the day of the Solar Eclipse. The liminality is very palpable accentuated by the Cookie Monster-sized bite taken out of the bottom corner of the sun since the totality is so far south.
I am a firm believer that food is art. There’s definitely high-art food and low-art food same as all of the variations of art of course. But I get the same sense of creation and purpose out of making food as I do when I’m making art.
We had a huge amount of small tomatoes from our two plants this year and I decided to look up what on earth I can do with a large amount of them. They are too small and honestly too delicious for sauces or anything like that so I was looking for something that really highlighted their robust sweetness.
And I found the perfect thing. I have never seen or heard of a Tomato Tart but I knew the moment I saw it I had to try it. Above is the finished product. Here is this incredible recipe: https://honest-food.net/cherry-tomato-tart-recipe/ I didn’t have ricotta so I used goat cheese, which was delicious and added a tartness (no pun intended) to the flavor which was a great compliment to the sweetness of the tomatoes. I also added some bacon and prosciutto, which you can see crumbles on top along with some onions from our garden. OMG, y’all. This was heaven. We ended up having it with salad for dinner and even made a side of eggs when we had it for breakfast the next morning. I can’t recommend trying this enough if you too have a tomato overflow.
Now this crust above is a gluten-free pie crust. The recipe is an America’s Test Kitchen Gluten Free Pie Crust which I will seriously die by. It’s so good. The website needs a membership to access but once I’m back home, I can take a photo of the recipe and send it out later if anyone wants it.
The leaves are just starting to turn in Northeastern Ohio and it’s that pretty mix of full green trees with a dash of red and orange here and there. There’s been a lot of rain recently as well and the mushroom game is strong on my parent’s property. I keep meaning to get more into mushrooms, just enough to learn to ID a few of them, not sure I’m up for a whole foraging thing but I can never learn anything without fully deep-diving. So expect some crazy mushroom nerdery sometime down the line.
We are obsessed with Hawaiian-style Mochi Muffins in our home. I make these black sesame muffins at least every other week. But I have been eyeing the Pumpkin Pie Butter Mochi recipe for awhile now and I took the plunge to make them. It may have been pumpkin and mochi heaven and utterly swoon-worthy. The only thing I changed about the recipe is that I left out all of the sugar. The sweetened condensed milk adds enough sweetness that adding sugar on top of that seemed way too much. But, you can modify to how sweet your tooth is.
Here is the recipe: https://www.mochimommy.com/pumpkin-mochi-recipe/
Do you have a fall recipe that you absolutely love? I would love it if you shared in the comments. I love sharing recipes and love getting them.
Speaking of mushrooms, I am very excited to share progress on these little Mushy paintings I am working on.
They are rainbow colors, each with their own expressions and will have a really cool extra element to them I will only be able to show you once it’s complete. These will be coming soon to my Etsy shop (where I just listed a brand new sticker pack)!
Enjoy these first few stirrings of Fall <3