Enjoyed this cheese during the trek with red wine, crackers, bread, tomatoes and chorizo sausage.

Me after buying my cheese

The bounty that fall brings is certainly one of the many reasons why it is my favourite season. Although some of the fresh summer fruits and vegetables are gone or if you were smart preserved in your freezer the colourful pumpkins, squashes, beets and more available all for nice warm hearty dishes to be made.

In the past few years I have really enjoyed making soup. Something about a bowl or cup of soup is so comforting and homey. Maybe it reminds me of my own mom making her famous homemade soup, and smelling it as it simmered on the stove for hours. After all the soup recipes I have made I figured it was time to try making my own. The first thing i settled on was a theme – fall root vegetables. I combined my vegetables to potatoes, parsnips, carrots, celery root and onions and added my favourite spice – CUMIN and some heat – CAYENNE. A few more spices also found there way into the soup.

Cream of Root Vegetable Soup

2 T butter
1 large white onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 T ginger freshly grated
1 ½ tsp curry powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp thyme
¼ tsp cayenne
½ tsp cinnamon
2 cups sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped (2)
2 cups yellow potatoes, peeled and chopped (2)
1 large parsnip, peeled and chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
2 cups celery or celery root, chopped
8 cups chicken stock (low sodium)
1 cup cream or 2% milk
Salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot heat the butter over medium high heat and sauté the onions until soft. Add the garlic and all the spices and stir. Add the vegetables and coat with spices.

Add the broth. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour, vegetables should be soft.

Working in batches puree the soup using a blender or food processor. Once all the soup is blended return to the pot and add the cream or milk, stir and add pepper to taste.

Friday night we picked up some pumpkins and carved them for Halloween. While carving the pumpkins we watched Halloween by Rob Zombie and sipped a seasonal Pumpkin beer.

This autumn ale is brewed by Great lakes Brewery. The ale has an assortment of specialty malts and hops, with generous amounts of pumpkin added into the brew. You can taste a hint of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and allspice.

A perfect Halloween sky.

I am ecstatic that it is a long weekend for me and for the first time in what seems like about 6 months I have nothing to run around and do. Well there are always offers to go places and do things, but after an exhausting few months and weeks I am dedicating this weekend to ME. That does not mean I will be sitting around pampering myself. It means I can finally get the things done that I have planned for so long. First will be renovating my bathroom....somehow as a first time house owner this seems fun.

Even so I will certainly leave room for some fun things like pumpkin carving, cooking, and doing whatever it is I feel like. It also means that I may get around to blogging a few more recipes and about the stages of the Alps hike that have yet to be posted over at uberfit. One recipe I have wanted to post was a recipe I made last Sunday. It seemed perfect for the rainy fall day we had. Not to mention it was great to be able to eat the very bowl the food was served in.

This dish can be rustic or elegant looking depending on how you want to dress it up. But one thing is for sure the nostril opening aroma of the baking sausage, the feeling of the fresh corn kernels as they burst in your mouth and the smooth warm goat cheese melting on your tongue will keep you eating more portions then you probably should. Not only is this dish appetizing, the bright colors of the peppers (reds, yellows, oranges) are appeasing to the eye. I love to eat these as a meal, but you could easily serve them as a side dish. As a side I’d tend to go more of the vegetarian route.

3 large bell peppers (red, yellow or orange), halved and seeded

2 T olive oil

2 spicy italian sausages

5 garlic cloves, miniced

1 medium onion, diced

1 cup corn kernels

2 cups cooked rice

chipotle powder

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp paprila

ground pepper

goat cheese

spicy salsa

In a large pan cook the sausages over med high heat until browned. Remove and let cool (enough to be able to touch and crumble sausage up into small pieces). Add them back to the pan with a bit of olive oil and add the garlic, onion, corn and heat.

Add the cooked rice and mix. Add the spices and adjust flavors to your liking.

Now spoon mixture into the halved peppers and pressing mixture in to get as much in as possible.

Place peppers in a baking dish with about 1" water at the bottom. Cover the dish with tin foil and place in a preheated oven at 375F. Bake for 35 to 4o min. The peppers should be tender to a fork when pierced.

Serve with goat cheese and salsa. The goat cheese will melt into the mixture adding so much flavor. You can also choose to bake it with the goat cheese and salsa already on it, however I like to add mine at the end.

Having recently been to Italy, I have been craving veal scaloppini with porcini mushrooms. I had this dish a few times while in Rome and Venice and it was so delicious - light, tender and served with a nice silky wine and mushroom sauce. I was going to make this same dish and eventually we get around to doing that. However I decided to try something different and went with a Veal Piccata recipe from Cooking Light Italian.

To celebrate the fact that fall is here I served it with some colourful pumpkin polenta. I have always found polenta to be dry and not overly flavourful. The addition of the pumpkin really enhanced the flavour and texture, that I have new found hope for polenta.