Autumnal Gifts - and favorite pumpkin recipes

Catherine, with eggs from hens Fiona, Molly and Mona.

My Best Gluten-Free Pumpkin Recipes

From the archives, with a dash of autumnal pumpkin love... The bittersweet, textured beauty of Autumn has always gripped my heartstrings, pulling me in deeper, connecting with some invisible part of me, so much more so than Spring. Much more so than summer's flirtatious pleasures. And Winter, well. She is a dark and icy mistress. That relationship has always been complicated. So unlike my truly, madly deeply love of Fall.

And here am I. In L.A... Where Fall is just a pumpkin spice latte.

Los Angeles is without an Autumn. I know apologists who claim there is seasonal change (deciduous leaves do transform here- from dry green to crispy brown, sometime before Thanksgiving). But there is no Yankee eruption of brilliance- no reds, golds and coppery oranges. There is no softened, morning skyline heavy with balsam scented mist. Ardent Angelenos do not seem to bristle with three digit heat in October (it was 106ºF yesterday). They do not seem to crave L.L. Bean flannel shirts and cotton turtlenecks, like I do. Flip flops and tank tops are year round fashion choices. Along with hair dye, tanning lotions and injectables that promise eternal Spring. Los Angeles is a town of perpetual 21. In platform heels.

There are weeks (months?) on end I do not see a single woman sporting natural gray hair like mine. Never mind a natural neck- or- well. You know. That's another story. You get the picture. Not only do I feel invisible in sexualized So-Cal culture, I feel irrelevant, and bored. Restless. And unconnected. Year-round summer feels shockingly dull. Artificial. And uninspiring.

So I took my husband on a trip.

We spent a week on Cape Cod (my old stomping grounds, for decades). And I ate up every minute with a spoon. I spent entire days outside, wandering, hiking, drinking in the sea air, the peace and solitude, the creativity of the community (artists and writers, gardeners, crafters, gentlewomen farmers and furniture makers). Strong, independent women with silver streaked hair, and natural beauty that had never known a dermatologist's needle. Women not focused on a mirror. But focused on their curiosity. On creating something with their hands. Their spirit. It was grounding. And enlightening.

And it felt like home.

New Englander Ralph Waldo Emerson said, What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.

Not to wax too geo-pious, but New England does infuse your blood by birth. It roots you to its culture, its distinct sensibility. Its Yankee eye for simple elegance. An appreciation for patina. For thoughtfulness.

For me, my rural New England beginning fostered a life-long love of books. Music. Antiques. Landscape painting. Simple nourishing food. Walking in the woods. Quiet rather than noise.

Show rather than tell.


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Karina's Roasted Hatch Chile Stew

Karina's Santa Fe Inspired Stew

If you are lucky enough to live in enchanted New Mexico (as we were- a few years back), chances are you worship at the Sacred Temple of the Holy Chile Pepper. During the all-too-short chile harvest season you can smell the intoxicating smoky-sweet scent of roasting chiles everywhere you go. Teasing. Tantalizing. Infusing your daydreams with green chile fantasies.

The devotion to roasted chile runs deep in these parts and yes, it's with an e never with an i; if you call chile chili in these parts you may as well kiss your white bread tuchas good-bye, pendajo, because you'll be laughed out of the state. Shunned. Scorned. These folks get very serious about their autumn roasted chile. Don't mess with 'em. It's harvest time.

If you're up to roasting your own chiles, you can do it on the grill or even over an open flame like Elise does at Simply Recipes; here's her How to Roast Chile Peppers Over a Gas Flame. After roasting, cool and peel; then stem, seed and chop.

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Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bread

Karina's awesome new pumpkin bread recipe. Gluten-free.

Autumn in Portland, Oregon, is soft and rainy. Foggy. And slow to frost. The scents of Ponderosa pine and red cedar infuse our morning walk with a woodsy familiarity my New England soul craves, as yellow willow leaves flutter earthward, dreamlike, cinematic.

Time to pull on sweaters. Dig out a favorite scarf. Stack kindling and firewood. Choose a new book to love (I am reading Mink River by Brian Doyle- a lovely, lyrical, michievous book infused with Irish-American sensibility and Salish stories).

And best of all, it is finally time- for pumpkin lovers everywhere- to fill the pantry shelves with tins of our favorite curcurbit. Because, Dear Reader... it's time to bake. And I have a fabulous, flavorful, autumn-worthy gluten-free pumpkin bread recipe for you.

A huge, gorgeous pumpkin loaf.

Enjoy warm from the oven, with butter or cream cheese. Or make it ahead: Bake it. Wrap it. Freeze it.

And Babycakes, it will feed a crowd.


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Gluten-Free Applesauce Crumb Cake with Cinnamon

Coffee Cake to the Rescue

I decided to bake a cake. Because trying to wrestle gluten-free pie dough for an apple pie just seemed too fussy. Too complicated. Though in all honesty, that isn't the whole, unvarnished truth. The whole, unvarnished truth is, Yours Truly is more of a cake person than a pie person. It's true- pies have their charm. I've been known to inhale a slice or two of apple pie in my day. But here's the thing. And I'm going to be blunt.

Gluten-free pastry crust is simply not as flaky and tender and melt-in-your-mouth wonderful as wheat pastry crust. There. I said it. Fighting words, to some. And if you are among those true believers feel free to disagree. And go eat your gluten-free pie. I bless you with a thousand sprinkles of pie fairy dust. With love. And kisses. And pink ponies.

Respectfully.

Gluten, you see, is more than a pesky protein with a bad rep. Gluten is what makes pastry dough soft, flaky and tender. Gluten is what inspired bakers to bake all those years ago, firing up their hand-hewn brick-lined ovens. Gluten was their muse. Their seductive mistress. Gluten took them beyond three ingredient pancakes and palm-tossed flatbreads. Gluten fed their imagination. Inspired tarts, baklava, cupcakes. Napoleons. And yes. Apple pie. Because gluten is a magical ingredient (despite its bad press these days). We have to admit it. She's not an easy paramour to replace.

Perhaps some day soon I'll be tempted to experiment with a gluten-free wheat-free pastry dough. I'll be lured into believing I can recreate such delicate, fragile beauty. But not today. I'll bake this 'no apology necessary' Apple Crisp or this amazing Pumpkin Pie with Coconut-Pecan Crust.

For breakfast, I'll eat Applesauce cake.

Right now, I can live with that.

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Gorgeous Quinoa Side Dish

A dazilious red quinoa salad with fruit and vegetable jewels.

Today's recipe is perfect for Fall. It's a beautiful red quinoa recipe I tossed together one weeknight, featuring roasted butternut squash, cranberries and pecans.

Classic Autumn flavors.

Gorgeous color.

Serve this as a colorful vegan side dish.

Or stuff a vegetable (it would be fab and hip served in roasted bell pepper halves).

Red quinoa has a milder taste than the standard quinoa.

So if you think you don't like quinoa, try the Inca red.

I suspect you'll convert to quinoa love.

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Pumpkin Bread Pudding - Gluten-Free

Pumpkin Inspired : Bread Pudding

Don't ask me where the craving came from. Because I honestly couldn't tell you. I haven't a clue. I rarely even think about food these days (I seem to have returned to my art school habits of running on fuel comprised of coffee, painting, and music). I don't daydream of desserts or breakfast, or intricate candlelit suppers. I do not spend much time at all on the Internet lately.

I am hungry instead for inspiration. For autumn's burnished light and shadow. Rusted jewel colors and texture. Pattern. And rhythm. I am walking the local woods and creeks, listening, breathing in. Fed by the foggy morning softness and water sounds, and leafy, wet wood smoke. Gathering images and emotions for markmaking and paint slinging. Food- for better or worse (I'm not a judger)- is simply not on my radar these days.

But this weekend I woke with a curiously strong hankering for old fashioned pumpkin bread pudding. And gluten-free goodness ensued.



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Pumpkin Polenta Recipe with Tomatillo-Avocado Salsa

Vegetarian pumpkin polenta with salsa fresco.

The first gifts of Fall have arrived. Time to dig out the Crock Pot and your favorite flannel shirt. If you can find it, that is. It's got to be around here somewhere, right? You used it wore it to death last year. Or was that the year before?

The harvest moon is playing tricks with your memory again. The crows outside in the oak trees caw like the crows in tomorrow's dream. Days turn into weeks and lunch turns into next month's breakfast. Hours spill through worm holes of time like so many episodes of Lost. And the Buddha imagines the universe.

And gets it close to right.

We're talking atoms, people. Particles of teeny tiny specks of even tinier teenier fragments of a single point of something so small the naked eye perceives it as invisible. Yet the Buddha perceived this. In 528 BC.

I ponder this as I walk in a stream of brittle bronze oak leaves.

The succession of days that adds up to a life is only a blink. The moment when you started reading this sentence is already the past. You think about this stuff as you get older. When you squint into your future you see a shorter slope than the path that winds behind you. It can cause a slippery sense of vertigo. A tipping sideways melancholy that infuses every lost opportunity with meaning, bittersweet.

I remember a West Hollywood walk to the market past ninety-pound skateboarders and a gaggle of thin actors smoking outside the Lee Strasberg Institute. I think about the Russian speaking men with impossibly sad eyes brushing past me, their impeccably groomed wheat-blonde wives carrying shopping bags of kale. I smile at the memory of my brown-eyed neighbor sitting on his front wall listening to Miles Davis on a transistor radio.  

Great music, I tell him, feeling myself altering my cadence to the beat. It's JAZZ, Baby! he shouts, laughing as I pass by. I feel his joy in my chest. And I know he is exactly right. This whole life thing? This whole circuitous method of survival called living?

It's jazz, Baby.

And you just gotta go with it.


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Gluten-Free Pumpkin Cheesecake

Gluten-Free vegan pumpkin cheesecake- creamy and dairy-free.

Gluten-Free Pumpkin Cheesecake, Darling

Quick question. It is officially October. The annual Pumpkin Love Fest has begun in earnest. So. I ask you. Is this the time to shun dessert in favor of green kale chia fiber smoothies and ginger laced cabbage detox soup?

I can answer that.

The answer is no.

As in N. As in O. NO. Nope. Nada. Not gonna happen.

Because I, my darling, am a temptress. I am not going to write about healthy Fall desserts today, or some virtuous fat-free bean brownie with chicory fiber, or three-bean dirt-brown chili that will keep you tooting fumes for a week. Instead, Dearest Gluten-Sensitive One, I am going to tease you. I am going to lure you- with a silver fork-worthy dessert recipe totally worth baking this all-too-soon-to-be-upon-us holiday season 2014.

This is a silky, creamy pumpkin cheesecake that begs for a party. Or a family rumpus. One of many last hurrahs as daylight dwindles darkly toward the Winter Solstice low point, flickering her last sigh Northward before the pale glare of January dawns in all her cold and sober glory (and I step- ever so gingerly- on the reality check scale). And maybe sigh. A little hint of a sigh.

Because even though it is pre-Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas, pre-Hannukah (and all that pre-winter holiday jazz) I can already see that the annual jean shrinkage has begun. You know- that time of year when (mysteriously!) my favorite jeans come damp-dry out of the dryer a size too small. And that familiar jolly pie roll affectionately known as Doris is itching to start rolling her merry way up and out of my favorite black leggings. It's rather comical. And honestly, she makes me smile. I pat her affectionately.

Like a pet bunny.

Because the truth is I am not about to start counting calories.

Though I admit I may possibly probably definitely feel the need to cleanse my palette in the bright new year that lurks and leers around the post-holiday corner. Detox mulligatawny is surely in my future, come 2015.

If for nothing else, for the sheer love of shedding old stuck energy. A fresh start feels good.

If you do it with a big dash of humor.

And humility.

I know from experience that January will ignite the urge to clean out closets, chase those dust bunnies and walk off our collective Doris's. Or would that be Dori, for plural? We'll have ample time, come 2015, for detoxing and courting virtue with ginger laced green soup, and recipes that will encourage our lovely pinchable pie rolls to skedaddle. I promise. I'll be first second third in line with fresh whipped smoothies and cleansing soup recipes come January.

But this month? Nah.

There's a vegan pumpkin cheesecake recipe to share.



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