Weekend Cooking: Guest-Hosting (and Hurricane / Storm Watching)

Aloha Weekend Cooking Participants. I hope you are all doing well. I am guest-hosting this week again as Beth Fish Reads continues her travels. I planned on making and posting a Eric Ripert dessert recipe and combining my Weekend Cooking and I Heart Cooking Clubs efforts, but between my new job and prepping for the impending Hurricane Lane (poised to strike Oahu sometime tonight), real life got in the way. So once again, I bring you a few foodie links I found interesting this week for this pre-scheduled (in case I lose power tonight) post, as I sit here Friday afternoon, waiting and watching. 

Hope you join in the Weekend Cooking fun by linking up a food-related post. Directions are at the bottom of the post.

I will confess to intensely disliking pumpkin spice anything--including the original pumpkin-spiced dish, pumpkin pie, but I found this article from Cooking Light about the history behind the phenomenon of pumpkin-spiced EVERYTHING to be pretty interesting.
How Did Pumpkin Spice Become So Popular? And Why Do We Hate to Love It So Much?

Are you a fan of all the pumpkin-spiced food out there, or a foe? 

Stacey Ballis is a favorite foodie fiction author of mine and I also like the creative recipes she posts for Extra Crispy. (I totally will be making her Stuffing Butter again for Thanksgiving this  year.) I am completely drawn to this Eggplant Parmedict--her mash-up of Eggplant Parm and Eggs Benedict. I could happily devour this for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Photo by Stacey Ballis

Do you ever stand in front of the chile peppers at Whole Foods or the farmers market and try to remember which ones are mild, versus the fire-engine hot ones? I do.;-) Your Guide to the 10 Chile Peppers Most Likely to Show Up in a Recipe from MyRecipes is a helpful article I pinned to my Cooking Tips, Tricks, Ideas board.

Cathy Scola/ Getty Images

Finally in case I lose my electricity tonight and can't link my post up for a bit, I'll mention it here. A book review of a mystery-thriller and food-wise, since eggs were mentioned in the book, I tried the Ziploc bag method of omelets for a tasty Thyme-Mushroom Omelet. A little science in the kitchen can be fun and although I don't think I would boil my eggs in plastic bags often, it turned out well and would be great if cooking for a crowd. Here's the link to the recipe and review post.

Well my friends, I am setting this post up to go and hopefully will not lose power or lose it for long. (The Friday 2:00 PM update is Hurricane Lane is now down to a Category 1 and we hope it goes down more and turns to the west before it gets close. And the Friday 5:00 PM update has Lane downgraded to a tropical storm but since we still have heavy rains and wind gusts in the forecast, I'll leave this as scheduled in case the power still goes out.) I'll get around to comment on your posts once I am able. (Note: If you are a Souper Sundays participant, it may be on hold for this week based on what happens.)
 
Link Up Note: I use a different link-up than Beth Fish Reads and it is a picture link. I think it is fairly easy to use, but if you have any trouble or questions, please let me know.

Please leave a comment after linking. Mahalo!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

An InLinkz Link-up

 

Weekend Cooking: Guest-Hosting with a Little Foodie MishMash

While our fearless Weekend Cooking hostess with the mostess is out having adventures, making gorgeous lace, and eating her way through Belgium, she has asked me to hold down the fort and host this fun weekly event this weekend and the next. I hope that if you have a food-related post of any sort, you'll join us. (See the instructions at the bottom of the post.)

I fully intended to have a great food-related post ready to go but after I said I would host, I accepted a job back in the working world and I started Monday. My week has been insane from trying to adjust to not working for myself from home each day, getting into a routine with a not-so-great commute, and being both physically tired and mentally drained from all of the changes. So please bear with me this weekend while I share a few foodie things I have been interested in lately. Next week I will try to get the post up a few hours earlier.

My new job is Corporate Trainer for a food distribution company that just celebrated its 105th year in business. Locally owned, it services restaurants throughout the state. I love the culture and it even operates a cash and carry style outlet for smaller restaurants and the general public, full of food service products and ingredients (employees get a small discount at on top of the lower prices). I had fun going through it incognito the other day before I started and there are some cool ingredients to play with, including some herb crystals like these. Although not every item is applicable to the home cook without a lot of mouths to feed, there are lots of things that are. Also, when I got to my desk Monday, there were balloons, a welcome sign and some local cookbooks there to greet me--a sure way to my heart. They are three books I don't own and so I'm enjoying looking through them.

Speaking of cookbooks, I have so many that I strive to check new ones out of the library, rather than buying them--unless it is one that I really *need* to have. Vegetarian, vegan, and Middle Eastern  cookbooks are all passions of mine and so I grabbed The Middle Eastern Vegetarian Cookbook by Salma Hage off the cookbook shelves the other day and brought it home to try. Unfortunately, I did not get around to making any of the recipes yet, but I tagged several including a Lebanese 7-Spice Seasoning and a Za'atar spice mix recipe, Za'atar Spiced Nuts, Almond Hummus, Avocado Tahini Dip, Halloumi with Sumac and Mint, Minted Cucumber Salad, Mushroom Soup with Toasted Sumac Pine Nuts, Green Lentil Tabbouleh, Chickpea and Cauliflower Patties, Honeydew-Orange Flower Sorbet, and Sesame Seed Bars. I jotted down a few to make soon. The book's photos are gorgeous (see some examples below) and the recipes seem easy enough. This one may just go into my "buy, eventually" list.

Photos from The Middle Eastern Vegetarian Cookbook

Finally, here are two links to explore:

I adore trying different spices from all over the world in my cooking. This Epicurious.com article talks about some great fair-trade, direct to consumer spice companies that support spice growers and farmers and cut out the multiple layers and hand changing of spices before they get to the supermarket. The photo from the article has me tempted to buy some of these spices due to their packaging alone. ;-)

Photo by Chelsea Kyle for Epicurious.com

And I'd use those Fair-Trade spices in a Spaghetti Squash Shakshuka from Cooking Light. I love a good shakshuka, a North African dish of sautéed bell pepper, onions and tomatoes with herbs and spices and runny-yolked eggs nestled in the veggies. (I make a version of Yotam Ottolenghi's recipe regularly.) I am going to try this recipe, adding Harissa paste to the cumin and chilies listed. I think cooking it in a spaghetti squash boat would be a good twist and make it a fabulous healthy breakfast or dinner.

Photo by Sara Tane at cooking Light

Link Up:

I am linking two food-related posts this week myself and look forward to seeing your Weekend Cooking links!

Note: I use a different link-up than Beth Fish Reads and it is a picture link. I think it is fairly easy to use, but if you have any trouble or questions, please let me know.

Please leave a comment after linking. Mahalo!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.
 

An InLinkz Link-up