Friday Night Photos: Boston Gravestones for Halloween Night

While I was in Boston visiting Lydia, I saw some interesting historical sights. These gravestones from the Boston cemetary seemed like the perfect Friday Night Photos for Halloween night. There is actually one name you might recognize here if you look closely. Happy Halloween everyone!

Indian Spiced Chickpea (Garbanzo) Salad with Yogurt, Lemon, Scallions, Mint, and Cilantro

We're celebrating the Three Year Anniversary of Weekend Herb Blogging this week, and you have until 10:00 P.M. on Friday to leave a comment voting for your favorite herb, favorite vegetable, or favorite fruit of 2008 for a chance to win some pretty fantastic prizes. Mean while I'm hosting the anniversary edition of WHB before I turn the event over to Haalo, who's taking over as new Herb Goddess-in-Chief.) For the anniversary week people can blog about their favorite herb, favorite vegetable, or favorite fruit, so if you'd like to participate, here's more about how to send an entry.

WHB Giveaway #3: Tell Us Your Favorite Fruit of 2008 You Might Win a Fantastic Prize!

Hopefully you've already taken time to tell us about your favorite herb and your favorite vegetable. Now, leave one more comment on this post telling us about your favorite fruit of 2008, for your final chance to win one of three valuable prizes. The give-aways are just part of our Week-Long Celebration for the three year anniversary of Weekend Herb Blogging. Thanks to New West KnifeWorks and Fissler USA who have donated two wonderful prizes. I'm also is giving away a set of my three favorite cookbooks of 2008, so keep reading to see how to enter.

WHB Giveaway #2: Tell Us Your Favorite Vegetable of 2008 and You Might Win a Fantastic Prize!

We started our three days of giveaways yesterday by asking about your favorite herb of 2008. Now you have a second chance to win one of three amazing prizes by leaving a comment naming your favorite vegetable of 2008. This is all part of our Week-Long Celebration for the three year anniversary of Weekend Herb Blogging. Thanks to New West KnifeWorks and Fissler USA who have donated two amazing prizes. I'm also is giving away a set of my three favorite cookbooks of 2008, so keep reading to see how to enter.

WHB Giveaway #1: Tell Us Your Favorite Herb of 2008 and You Might Win a Fantastic Prize!

Take just a minute to leave a comment on this post telling us what your favorite herb of 2008 is, and you could win one of three amazing prizes, as part of our Week-Long Celebration for the three year anniversary of Weekend Herb Blogging. Thanks to New West KnifeWorks and Fissler USA who have donated two amazing prizes. I'm also is giving away a set of my three favorite cookbooks of 2008. Keep reading to see how to enter.

Exciting Prizes to Celebrate Three Years of Weekend Herb Blogging and Some Future Plans

Three Cheers for three years of Weekend Herb Blogging (and for my creative brother Rand, who designs the icons!) Can you believe the week of October 27 - November 2 we'll celebrate Weekend Herb Blogging's third anniversary? If you're new around here, Weekend Herb Blogging was started by accident in October 2005, and it's been going strong ever since. We had special activities when we reached One Year and Two Years and this week's celebration will include exciting prizes, three days of voting for favorite herb, vegetable, and fruit, and of course, you can send your entries for WHB #156. Read on for more about the prizes, then be sure to read to the end for a big announcement about the future of Weekend Herb Blogging.

Autumn Harvest Soup with Butternut Squash, Kale, and Farro or Brown Rice

Sometimes it seems like my best kitchen creations just come together out of whatever's in the garden or fridge, and that's how this delicious soup was created. I'd just picked my last few Really Big Squash, as well as a healthy bunch of Red Russian Kale, and I'd been craving Farro, an ingredient I've loved ever since I tried it in Farro with Mushrooms last May. The butternut, kale, and farro combination here turned out to be wonderful, but if you wanted a gluten-free version you could make this with brown rice, which would also be very tasty.

Friday Night Photos: Boston Food Experiences

Last Friday night I shared photos of food bloggers I met at BlogHer Boston, including the generous Lydia from The Perfect Pantry. I love meeting new people when I'm traveling, but second on my list of reasons to leave home is trying new foods. I had some great food in Boston, although I didn't take photos of most of it. I actually didn't eat any lobster, but this sign outside a restaurant in the North End seemed to capture the Boston food scene. Keep reading to see some things I did eat.

Recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash with Lemon, Thyme, and Parmesan

I recently shared tips for how to peel and cut up a butternut squash, and this recipe is the successful experiment I made with the squash. I learned to love butternut squash when my Grandmother Denny would roast it in foil, then mash with lots of butter, Vege-Sal, and pepper. Nowdays I love experimenting with ways to make butternut squash taste good without butter, and squash cubes roasted in olive oil are tasty no matter what seasonings you add. This version, roasted with lemon juice and thyme and then tossed with just the tiniest amount of finely grated parmesan, was so good that after I took these photos, I ate most of it with my fingers while the photos downloaded!

Crockpot Recipe for Split Pea Soup with Chicken Sausage and Carrots

Even if you're one of those people who don't like split pea soup, don't run off until I have a chance to tell you about the new Crockpot or Pressure Cooker Recipes section in the recipe archives. Just take a peek over there on the left sidebar and you'll see it. With so many people wanting to maximize food dollars these days, I'm planning to do more recipes using these two budget-friendly cooking methods. Of course, I just got my new pressure cooker, so there are no pressure cooker recipes yet, but stay tuned. This delicious split pea soup could have been a good pressure cooker candidate, but instead I cooked it in the crockpot all day while I was busy doing other things. I used Roasted Garlic Chicken Sausage, but any type of sausage or leftover ham will work. Every ingredient here is inexpensive, making this soup a budget pleaser as well as a delicious tummy warmer.

How to Peel and Cut Up a Butternut Squash

I think roasted butternut squash is one of the best things about autumn. That's why, if you live in the U.S., you'll see those bags of already peeled and cut butternut squash start to appear in stores at this time every year. In the past, I've confessed to buying pre-cut squash myself, even though I knew it couldn't possibly be as good as freshly cut squash. But the days when I'd pay premium prices for substandard squash changed when I discovered the Really Big Squash variety and started growing my own butternut squash. Now I had to master the slightly tricky process of cutting them up, and with practice I've gotten pretty good at it. If you've been a bit daunted by trying to cut up a hefty squash, here are some tips that can help you save money and get that garden-fresh squash flavor.

Friday Night Photos: Meeting Food Bloggers at BlogHer Boston

Before you look at these photos of people I met in Boston, remember that I keep reminding you how Friday Night Photos is about me taking pictures of things other than food so I can practice photography. Well, the big lesson in these shots from BlogHer Boston is about changing the white balance on the camera so you don't have to fix it when you're editing. I never think my photos of people look as good as the people look in real life, but hopefully you'll still enjoy seeing them. The lovelier-in-real-life ladies above are Nika from Nika's Culinaria, Lydia from The Perfect Pantry, and Sarah from Sarah's Cucina Bella, who were my fellow panelists from Social Media Can Save Dinner. (If you click that link you can read how the session was skillfully liveblogged by Andrea from Library Techtonics.)

Vegetarian Lasagna Recipe with Quick-Roasted Tomato, Garlic, and Herb Sauce

Now that tomato season has left the northern hemisphere and not yet arrived in the southern hemisphere, this roasted tomato lasagna seems especially appealing. I was remembering the goodness of slow roasted tomatoes when I made this sauce in early summer using cherry tomatoes from Costco, quickly roasted with olive oil and herbs, but if you're lucky enough to still have some tomatoes in your garden, you could also make this with diced Roma tomatoes. Tomatoes are a common ingredient, but using fresh tomatoes in lasagna sauce was a new idea to me, so hopefully this lasagna with roasted tomatoes and herbs is informative enough to fit the new rules for Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Amy and Jonny from We Are Never Full. Here's more about how to enter WHB if you're cooking with interesting plant ingredients. We're also counting down to a week-long celebration for the Three Year Anniversary of Weekend Herb Blogging coming October 27 - November 2, so stay tuned.

Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Individual Silicone Baking Cups

Earlier this week I shared my latest version of Breakfast Muffins, and showed them fresh from the oven in these individual silicone baking cups. The baking cups are something I've become completely infatuated with. Earlier on this blog I raved about the silicone muffin tins I used when I made regular Egg Muffins, and while they are vastly superior to any kind of metal muffin pan, the individual silicone baking cups are so much better. Not only are they great because they can stay on the muffins until you eat them, making them easier to reheat, but the muffin pans tend to darken on the top when they're used often. I've been so smitten with these since I got them I decided they deserve to be added to Kalyn's Kitchen Picks, where I rave about the products I love and want to recommend to my readers.

Friday Night Photos: Look What Came in the Mail This Week!

Lately I've been interested in pressure cookers, which are becoming trendy again since they're a good green way to save fuel and cook inexpensive foods. After I wrote about pressure cookers at BlogHer, I ordered one, following the advice of my friend Susan V. from the beautiful blog Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, who told me she loved her Kuhn Rikon Pressure Cooker

Crockpot Recipe for Vegetarian Black Bean and Tomatillo Soup with Lime and Cilantro

My Dad loved this Vegetarian Black Bean and Tomatillo Soup!

This is a recipe that I came up with in late August, in anticipation of the possibility that having braces might seriously change my eating habits. Although it's true braces have made some of my favorite foods seem like more trouble than they're worth, this soup is worth making even if you don't have a newly-developed fondness for soft foods. The starring ingredient here, and one that makes this a good candidate for Weekend Herb Blogging, is the tomatillos, which my garden is still producing like crazy. Tomatillos are a member of the nightshade family, along with tomatoes and eggplant. Also called "tomato verde," they're an ingredient in many Southwestern or Mexican dishes. And since the host for this Week's Edition of Weekend Herb Blogging is Susan from The Well Seasoned Cook, and since she has a long-running legume love affair, it seems fitting that there are also black beans in the soup. Here is the new Weekend Herb Blogging index page with all the information you need to participate if you've been cooking with some type of herb or unusual plant ingredient this week.

Gluten-Free Breakfast Muffins with Zucchini, Feta, and Quinoa

After I'd posted three different versions of the fabulous cottage cheese and egg breakfast muffins originally created by Rose Elliot and discovered via 101 Cookbooks, I heard from a reader who wondered if I might try to create a gluten-free version of that recipe. It just so happened I'd recently discovered quinoa flakes, which I thought might be a substitute for the small amount of white whole wheat flour in the original recipe, and this breakfast muffin is the happy result. I also liked it that this turned out to be an unusual way to use up a little of my currently overwhelming crop of zucchini. Definitely this is a breakfast muffin that I'll be making often.

Grilled Chicken Recipe with Sage, Rosemary, and Garlic Dried Herb Rub

This grilled chicken was rubbed with the Sage, Rosemary, and Garlic Dried Herb Rub I made about a month ago, then marinated all day in a mixture of white wine vinegar, olive oil, Dijon mustard, and garlic. When I posted the recipe for the dried herb rub, I promised I'd show how I used it, but if you don't have the rub, you can substitute dried herbs and make this recipe. The rub made the chicken extra flavorful, and the long marinating time kept it moist, even though I got a phone call and grilled it longer than I wanted to! I hope I'll get a chance to make another batch of this sage and rosemary rub before winter, because I can tell it will be perfect on all kinds of roasted vegetables and meats.

Friday Night Links: Tasty Finds From this Week's Blog Reading

Another Friday night when I don't have photos to share, but scroll to the end to see where I'll be taking photos next! Meanwhile, here are some tasty blog posts I found this week that you may enjoy.

Recipe for Chile Rellenos Bake

This recipe, which I'm calling Chili Rellenos Bake, is one I got from my neighbor Brooke, who e-mailed it to me the very day I posted about Block Party Food and mentioned I wanted the recipe. (Thanks Brooke!) I loved this when Brooke made it, and although I changed the recipe just slightly to make it more South Beach Diet friendly, this is still essentially Brooke's recipe. The ingredient of interest here is whole roasted green chiles, the defining ingredient in New Mexico cuisine, and something I love to cook with. This dish is a healthier and easier-to-make version of Chile Rellenos, a Mexican dish of stuffed, battered and deep-fried green chiles. I used roasted green chiles from a can, most likely Anaheim chiles. Of course you can roast your own green chiles for the dish, but even with the canned chiles this was something I can tell will be appearing regularly on the menu around here.

South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-Up: September 2008

Kalyn's favorite phase one recipe for September 2008 was
Grilled Zucchini "Lasagna" with
Italian Sausage, Tomato, and Basil Sauce.

Lately when I post my monthly round-up of South Beach Diet phase one recipes for the previous month, I've been starting with a photo of my favorite phase one recipe from Kalyn's Kitchen that month, and this time it was really hard to choose! There were so many good phase one options I posted in September. Now that school is in session it's harder for me to keep up on other blogs, but I did find some good phase one recipes out on the web too. Sometimes I find things that can be easily made phase one, so those kinds of changes are noted.