Fri_Feb_22_02:01:23_PST_2019

In my corner of the world, October saw a fall in temperatures and a rise in festivities
Halloween is in the air with pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere and creepy decorations on lawns up and down the street. V and I were laughing at ourselves because the neighbors have strung up fake cobwebs but we've been shirking yard work for so long that we have real cobwebs stretched across the front of our house- really!

Eating

Jasmine rice! All these years, I've resisted buying this fragrant Thai rice because with 4 or 5 types of rice already sitting in the pantry, I did not want to add one more. Well, this month I finally bought some and can I just say that I'm smitten with jasmine rice now. It cooks up soft and flavorful- wonderful in East Asian dishes, of course, but equally tasty in pulao. Do you cook with jasmine rice regularly?

Enchiladas! I love enchilada platters in Mexican restaurants- the typical ones with fiery looking red sauce and a heap of lettuce and tomato on the side. Well, this week I made red enchilada sauce from scratch using some assorted dried Mexican chiles that I've had in the pantry for ages...and while the sauce was tasty, it was also 5 times hotter than I wanted it to be. Oops. Well, V won't eat spicy food so I'm working my way solo through this huge tray on enchiladas, and quite enjoying it too. This sauce, once I've tweaked it, will be completely blog-worthy so please stay tuned for a authentic(ish) red enchilada sauce coming soon to your friendly neighborhood Indian food blog.

Baking

Impossible Coconut Pie, pinned from here. Impossible pies get the name because a little flour is mixed right into the batter, but separates into a thin crust while baking (same principle as for the mini quiches I posted last week). Well, this particular recipe couldn't be easier, in fact I just gave the ingredients a whirl in the blender making it even easier. But the results, while tasty, were not mind-blowing. I made this as a birthday treat for my quilting teacher who loves coconut. Next time, I'll try another recipe for coconut cake or something. By the way, the picture shows the souffle-like pie billowing as it came out of the oven, when cooled, it deflated a good deal.

Oh, and I continued the apple baking fest by making apple cake and apple muffins. The cake was good but a little too dense and eggy for my taste. The apple muffins were wonderful- I cut the sugar way down. And the recipe said it would make 12 muffins