Charles

Pumpkin Pie with Pumpkin Seed Crust

October 28, 2009 by Charles 3 Comments

Pumpkin isn’t just a scary face anymore.

Carving pumpkins seem to dominate the Fall season, their faces appearing on plastic buckets and billboards, their representatives occupying porch steps and window sills. When we think of pumpkin patches and Halloween, we have carving pumpkins in mind. And that’s sad. Pumpkins have become one of the few vegetables – if not the only one – that has been turned from a food into a decorative device to be discarded. Etching and cutting a design into a vegetable should not be intuitive.

Instead, we should look away from the beasts and monsters, and turn our sights towards sweeter pursuits. Pie pumpkins, unlike the carving pumpkins, are …

Spanakopita

October 20, 2009 by Charles 19 Comments

During my senior year of high school, I got my first laptop. By today’s standards, it was slow and it was heavy. It hardly had any memory and it couldn’t even play a movie. But it had an ethernet port, and so, it had potential.

When I got to college, Firestone library was only a few hundred yards from my dorm room. But on a cold, wind-swept winter day, its collection and online database couldn’t have seemed farther. Fortunately, with a few keystrokes, and mouse clicks, its newspaper articles and scholarly journals were within reach. From the university network, I could also stream my Russian language files and download my French politics assignment. Early into freshman year, my laptop had become the epicenter of my college education.

Ten years later, …

Pumpkin-Ginger Souffle

October 13, 2009 by Charles 4 Comments

Nothing says Fall like the bright orange and reds that surround the season.

The glow of flickering candles set in hollowed-out pumpkins. Crimson leaves swept aside by an errant football. Classroom displays of construction-paper cornucopias and scissor-cut turkey feathers. A scarecrow, straw tumbling from his furrowed brow, as he patrols a lonely field. Thoughts of the harvest and a Thanksgiving meal.

What evokes Fall for you?…

Apple Pie

October 6, 2009 by Charles 4 Comments

This weekend, Caitlin and I went apple picking in nearby Belleville, Illinois. Armed with our plastic bags, we each set off to collect the perfect apples. Careful not to overload on the apples, we each filled our respective bag to the half-way point. Yet, when we made it to the scale, we had collectively picked over sixteen pounds of Red and Golden Deliciousness.

Faced with the prospect of an overflowing fruit drawer, …

Ina Garten’s Perfect Pie Crust

October 6, 2009 by Charles 4 Comments

As with any recipe by Ina Garten, the question is not whether the dish will be great: it will be. Rather, the question usually is: “How much butter can I leave out, and still have a great dish?”

In this case, Ina called for twelve tablespoons of butter, which struck me as a bit much. I consulted my Cooking Light Dessert book, and found a nearly identical recipe, calling for six tablespoons. Being my judicious self, I simply…