“If you tickle the earth with a hoe, she laughs with a harvest.” ~ Douglas Jerrold, English journalist (1803-1857)

Harvest season is an important time for those who truly appreciate their fruits and vegetables, and for many of us it is the autumn flavors that bring a sparkle to our eyes. Our favorite, in case you haven’t guessed already, is the pumpkin, sweet or savory.

Pumpkin pie might be a little too decadent to eat for breakfast (sorry to be the one to break this news), but pumpkin butter is a delicious alternative. Naturally sweetened with apple juice concentrate, and seasoned with harvest spices, this tasty treat also makes a delightful surprise for a family member or friend who tries to eat close to the earth.

A word of warning: While this pumpkin butter is very, very easy to make, it will splatter if left unattended for too long. Stay nearby and stir it every time it begins to bubble to avoid making a mess of the stove.

Pumpkin butter is lovely spread on toast or bread for breakfast, tea, or dessert. It can also be substituted for apple butter in pastry recipes.

Pumpkin Butter
Makes 2 cups
Time 45 minutes

1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin puree
1 (12-ounce) can apple juice concentrate
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
Pinch of ground cloves

Stir all ingredients together in a 3-quart saucepan. Place over medium-low heat and cook, stirring frequently, until reduced down to 2 cups – about 45 minutes. Pour into a clean jar with a tight fitting lid. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until ready to serve.

Hot tea and toast spread with pumpkin butter are the perfect accompaniment to a chilly autumn day, as we watch the Northern Hemisphere slowly drop off to sleep.

“The true harvest of my life is intangible – a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.” ~ Henry David Thoreau, American author and philosopher (1817-1862)

Soupe au Pistou is a French vegetable soup, a lot like Italian Ministrone, served with a little spoonful of pesto on top. The pesto gives it a little splash of color, but it also creates an opportunity to accommodate those who prefer their soup plain to enjoy it their way, while those who crave a little sensationalism can add a some herby sparkle.

Like many of my soups, this one can be assembled from a variety of ingredients that just happen to be laying around at the bottom of the vegetable drawer. If your use of leftovers outpaces their availability, you might want to consider buying some frozen mixed vegetables, as I often do.

The original notes for this recipe from when my kids were small call for alphabet pasta, but the local Kroger seems to not carry them anymore. When forced to choose an alternate, it occurred to me that the stelline pasta, shaped like little stars, was much more fun anyway.

Star Soup

Makes 4 cups
Time: 17 minutes

¼ cup finely chopped onion
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 cup vegetables cut into small cubes
3 cups of your favorite vegetable broth
¼ cup stelline pasta
1 (15-ounce can) cooked great northern beans, rinsed and drained
Pistou/Pesto (see recipe below)

Soften the onion in the olive oil over medium heat, about 3 minutes. Stir in the vegetables and broth. Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, cover, and allow to cook for 4 minutes.

Meanwhile… If you like your soup with a rather thin broth, cook the stelline pasta according to package directions, to add to the soup when it has fully cooked.

While the soup is cooking, prepare the pistou if you are not using a prepared product (read labels carefully if you prefer to avoid cheese).

If you want the broth to be a little thicker, return the soup to a boil and add the dry stelline pasta. Continue to boil until the pasta has cooked, about 7 minutes. Stir in the beans and remove from heat.

Pistou

1 bunch fresh basil leaves (about 2 cups)
¼ cup olive oil
2 teaspoons minced fresh garlic
½ teaspoon salt

Place ingredients in blender or food processor. Spin to puree, stopping to stir down if necessary. That’s it – you’re done! Bet that leaves you wondering why the prepared stuff is so expensive, doesn’t it?

When serving the soup, float a teaspoon of the pistou/pesto on top of the soup in each bowl. To make it extra special, make some star croutons out of bread by cutting shapes with a cookie cutter, spraying with olive oil and lightly grilling on each side.

For those of us living in North America, the Leonid Meteor Shower will be at its peak on November 17th. While you’re waiting to catch a glimpse of a meteor, you can also look for the planet Jupiter and the constellation of stars, Cetus, the Whale.

“Let there be work, bread, water, and salt for all.” ~ Nelson Mandela, first democratically elected president of South Africa and 1993 Nobel Peace Prize recipient (1918 – )

Some might think it is a little absurd to post a recipe for a yeast bread on a web site that is devoted to easy recipes. All that kneading, all those dirty things to wash, and the counter with flour stuck all over it… Bear with me, please! No bread machine is involved in this one, just a single bowl to mix and rise, and a dry pot or casserole dish to bake without sticking. No kneading.

The reasons why people want to bake their own bread are quite understandable – the lovely scent that fills the house, the freshness, the texture, the control of ingredients (have you read a grocery store bread label recently?), the great savings, and the wonderful flavor.

Keep in mind that bread has been baked for about 4000 years, long before thermostatically controlled stoves and electric bread makers.

For this recipe, we’re not talking wood fires or a rock in the sun here, but close. A no-knead bread is what our long-ago ancestors used to make, and in addition to making clean-up a whole lot easier, the flavor is worth the wait. Unfortunately, they do require a lot of waiting time, so we have to start the process the night before. The steps that actually involve effort require mere minutes, so you might consider this as worth it as we do.

The bread from this recipe has a dense, moist interior with a chewy crust. You can replace some or all of the whole wheat flour with refined white flour, if you wish, and still maintain the same textural results, but it will have less nutritional value and a less rustic flavor.

Note that the timing of steps requires that the cook’s availability be thought through. We start our dough while making supper the evening before a day when we plan on being home in the morning.

Kneadless Whole Wheat Bread

Makes 1 (1-pound) loaf
Time: 10 minutes active over the span of 17 hours

1 ½ cups warm water
¼ teaspoon yeast
1 ½ teaspoons salt
3 cups whole wheat flour
¼ cup cornmeal, divided

Measure the warm water into a large bowl. Sprinkle the yeast onto the surface of the water. Allow to activate for 10 minutes before continuing.

Stir in the salt and flour, using a sturdy spoon, until it is uniformly moist and gathers into a very soft ball. (Note that it will not be a firm, smooth ball like conventional recipes yield.) Cover the bowl with a plate, pot lid, or plastic wrap and set in a moderately warm place (around 70°) to rest undisturbed for about 14 hours – and couple of hours more or less won’t hurt it.

At this point, uncover the dough. You will see that there are tiny bubbles on or just under the surface of the dough. Fold the dough over on itself with your hands two times while still in the bowl. Let it rest for 15 minutes to allow the dough’s elasticity to adjust.

Meanwhile, sprinkle a clean tea towel or dish cloth with 2 tablespoons of the corn meal. Gather the bread dough into a ball, rolling the sides down so that the smooth part is on top. Place the ball on the tea towel with the smooth part up and sprinkle it with 1 tablespoon of the corn meal. Cover with a second clean tea towel or dish cloth, and allow to rise for 2 hours.

Now comes the really important part…

Preheat the oven to 475° F, with a 3-quart or larger lidded oven-safe casserole or Dutch oven type iron pot in the oven so that it gets hot, too.

When the oven is up to temperature, remove the pot and take off the lid. Sprinkle the inside of the hot pot with 1 tablespoon of cornmeal, then transfer the dough to the pot as gently as possible. Don’t worry if it collapses a bit or loses its shape a little. Cover the pot and put all back into the oven to bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the cover from the pot and close the oven door again to allow the bread to bake for 15 minutes more.

Remove the pot from the oven and transfer the loaf to a rack so the air can circulate around it freely. Allow the loaf to cool for at least an hour before cutting with a serrated bread knife.

That wasn’t so difficult, was it? After you’ve made it the first time, try adding herbs, orange peel, dried fruit, or sunflower seeds to the dough next time to give it an artisan quality. For more of my favorite bread recipes, check the Mosaic Meals cookbook beginning on page 13.

“This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.” ~ Dorothy Parker, American poet and short story author (1893 – 1967)

Once the peak of fruit season has passed, the berries we find in the grocery store are expensive and often have been shipped great distances, a fact that negatively impacts quality. A pleasant alternative can often be found in the use of dried fruits.

A walk by the dried fruit section in the grocery store will put you in touch with an astonishing variety of dried fruit offerings. You can purchase specific fruit packages or multi-fruit combinations, whole dried fruits or conveniently chopped, and all in assorted sizes. We keep several different kinds in the cupboard, the shelf-life of dried fruits being about a year.

Dried fruits are great in bread or rice pudding, reconstituted in syrup for pancakes, chopped and baked into breads, and even eaten out of hand. They are high in sugar, so need to be eaten with some moderation, but they take time to chew and have no fat in them, so can be a decent snack choice – especially when used to make up the bulk of cookies.

Now, if we’re going to eat cookies, we might as well squeeze as much good stuff into them as we can, right? Whole grains, dried fruit, and nuts provide dietary fiber, minerals, and protein enough to give these beauties a lot of redeeming value. Made with non-dairy milk and canola oil instead of butter, not even a single mg of cholesterol can be found!

This recipe makes a modest two dozen so that there aren’t too many hanging around tempting us beyond the moment they were meant to be shared. For the optional ingredients, we used a combination of whole dried blueberries, chopped dried tart red cherries, and walnuts to create the cookies in the photo. The fact that they are “clean-up friendly” is just a bonus.

Kickoff Cookies
Makes: 24 cookies
Time: 30 minutes

1 cup quick oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup dried fruit, your choice, chopped if necessary
½ cup shredded coconut
½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup canola oil
½ cup So Delicious Coconut Milk Beverage
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350° F and line two cookie sheets with baker’s parchment or lightly grease with a non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening.

In a medium sized bowl, combine the dry ingredients, including the fruits, nuts, and chocolate chips. Make a well in the center and pour the oil, milk, and vanilla into it. Stir the dry ingredients into the liquid with a sturdy spoon until well combined and a sticky dough has formed.

Drop dough by well rounded tablespoons (essentially 2 tablespoons measured) onto the parchment paper and flatten into disks about 2 ¼ inches in diameter.

Bake in the 350° F oven for about 16 minutes, until the edges just begin to brown. Remove from oven and allow to rest on the pan for 5 minutes before moving to a rack to cool completely.

If there are leftovers, store them in a loosely covered container or cookie jar. Hahaha… Like they’re going to get that far! For another treat made with dried fruit, look for the Sugar Plums recipe on page 127 in the Mosaic Meals cookbook.

“A good doctor uses food first, then resorts to medicine.” ~ Ancient Chinese proverb

Many people enjoy a hot bowl of soup served as an appetizer course because it helps diminish our hunger for the main course, which is often heavier in calories and fats. Soups rich in vegetables with immunity building vitamins and minerals further bolster our health, and eating soup also slows us down a bit, allowing us to enjoy our meal more.

Essential to making most soups is a good quality vegetable broth. If you do not make your own (we don’t), this is one area where it is worth having a side-by-side tasting of whatever brands you have easy access to. Some will have stronger flavors than others, some will be saltier or sweeter, and packaging may even be an important aspect to you.

The vegetable broth we use most of the time is made by mixing Better Than Bouillon Vegetable Base with water. It is a paste that dissolves more easily than cubes, but it still doesn’t take up much pantry space; the flavor is very pleasant, with not too much onion or overpowering garlic. The manufacturer also offers a low sodium variety, organic and kosher choices, and in some areas (and online) it is available in vegetarian “No Chicken” and “No Beef” flavors to make more accurate substitutions in recipes.

Every time I’ve tasted a restaurant version of Hot and Sour Soup, it is different in some way. Sometimes this is due to the restaurant’s ethnic focus on added ingredients, sometimes it is the chef’s stylization, and very often it is the flavor of the broth. Use the one you like the most.

Hot and Sour Soup
Makes 6 cups
Time: 15 minutes

4 ounces sliced mushrooms (any variety)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup extra-firm tofu, cubed
4 cups low sodium vegetable broth
1 tablespoon tamari or other soy sauce
Chinese chili garlic sauce – see instructions
1 cup fresh, shredded spinach or canned bamboo shoots
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon agave nectar or sugar

Lightly brown the mushrooms in the vegetable oil over medium-high heat, about 5 minutes. Add the tofu, broth, and tamari. Stir in the chili garlic sauce ¼ teaspoon at a time, tasting the mixture for spiciness, remembering that it will taste a little bit hotter at the table; ½ teaspoon is average and you can always offer additional sauce on the side for those who want extra heat.

Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer for 5 more minutes. Stir in the spinach and allow to simmer just 1 minute more. Stir in the vinegar and agave or sugar, then immediately remove from heat and serve in small bowls.

NOTE: American recipes for Chinese style hot and sour soup usually thicken with cornstarch. If you wish to thicken it slightly, you can do so just before adding the vinegar by stirring in 1 tablespoon of cornstarch mixed with ¼ cup cool water and returning to boil for about 30 seconds. My preference is to leave this soup with a thin broth when we use it as an appetizer course as part of a larger Chinese meal, and the thicken it if serving as a lunch entrée.