Go Local Magazine - October 2016 Issue

The October issue of Go Local Magazine is out! Go Local is a local lifestyle magazine promoting life around the Massachusetts/Connecticut line. The magazine features nearby businesses where you can play, shop and eat, and showcases the citizens who make the region a great place to live. The newest issue is filled with all the things that make this the best time of year, Autumn traditions such as corn mazes, marching bands, fall excursions, and more.  

Of particular interest to our foodie followers might be A Couple in the Kitchen's own recipe for Onyx Moonshine Apple Cake (page 39) and the feature on Foster Hill Farm in Stafford Springs. ACK fans may be interested to know that Amy wrote the article on Sue Muldoon, who is reviving the art of seatweaving in Enfield, CT with her business Redux for You (page 41), and also wrote the article on Ellington High School's Marching Band (page 11), who recently performed at The Big E.

In the October issue are also articles on a special Special Olympics coach in East Longmeadow, stone carving experts from Longmeadow, and a Monson family who is doing cool things with twisted wood. Included in every issue are the Go Local Picks, Local Snapshots, the Local Einstein quiz, and the Final Countdown (this issue's is 7 Places to Watch Football), and as always, so much more.

You can read the current issue online here, or pick up your FREE copy today and Go Local!

Turkey Pot Pie Soup

Behold the day-after-Thanksgiving sandwich. Juicy turkey breast, a layer of stuffing (or dressing, if you're a Southerner) and a touch of cranberry mixed into the mayonnaise recreate the holiday dinner bite after glorious bite. However, you can only have so many turkey sandwiches before the glory subsides and it's just another plate of leftovers.

When you are at that point and you still, somehow, have turkey meat left, it's time to try something new. Soup? Been there. Pot pie? Done that. In the spirit of the "cronut," the "stuffle," and countless other hybrid foods, we give you (the not-so-cleverly-named) Turkey Pot Pie Soup.

A touch of flour and some half-and-half transports this concoction from mere soup to pot pie territory. Otherwise, the ingredients are the same. Why sage? Because it's still thriving in our garden. Dried herbs (parsley, rosemary, thyme) or whatever you have on hand will work just fine. We made a homemade stock from our turkey carcasses, but go ahead and allow yourself to use store-bought turkey or chicken stock or broth.  If you're feeling creative, get out a cookie cutter and bake some puff pastry into festive shapes. Or be lazy like us and serve it with bread or biscuits.

Turkey Pot Pie Soup

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 small yellow onion, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage

2 carrots, peeled and diced

4 cups turkey stock

1 cup half-and-half

1 1/2 cups your favorite (or your leftover) vegetable (we used a can of peas, drained)

3 cups leftover turkey meat, chopped into bite-sized pieces

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Melt butter in a large soup pot. Add onion and celery, and cook until onions are translucent, about 2 minutes. Add flour and cook another 2 minutes. Stir in sage and carrots. Pour in broth and half-and-half, cover, and bring just to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, partially covered, for 10-15 minutes, until carrots begin to soften. Add the peas (or other vegetable) and turkey and cook about 5 more minutes until meat is warmed through. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Culinary "School"

Back-to-school happened over a month ago, but now that it finally feels like fall, that means back-to-cooking, and back-to-cooking-club! The EHS (Amy's school) Cooking Club had its first meeting this week and used this recipe from Allrecipes.com to make hot, fresh, flaky apple turnovers. An autumn classic in about an hour!

And speaking of school, Chris has an excellent culinary program at his. Take a look at this amazing birthday gift the chefs and culinary students gave him today! Can't wait to dig in!

Soft and Chewy Gingersnaps for Secret Recipe Club

It's been a perfect fall weekend - bright and sunny with a slight crispness in the air and leaves falling everywhere. And to top it all off, it's Secret Recipe Club Reveal Day! The blog we were assigned for October was Mommy's Menu, written by Toni, a stay-at-home-mom who has a fantastic recipe index filled with all sorts of delicious delights.

Some of Toni's recipes that sounded particularly good for this weekend included Caramel Apple Marshmallow Dip, Super Duper Hot Chocolate, Smokey Chipotle Chili, and Homemade Pumpkin Puree. But even though we always claim that we are not really into making desserts, it seems that something about the Secret Recipe Club brings out the bakers in us. For some of this year's SRC's, we've made Brownies with a Twist, Strawberry Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake, Meyer Lemon Bars, and Golden Cinnamon Buns, for example. This month, Toni's Soft and Chewy Gingersnaps sounded so easy and so yummy and so perfect for this time of year, we just went for it.

And they were both easy (done in about 1/2 hour, including baking time), and yummy (we got 42 cookies out of them and we each ate 4 or 5 straight out of the oven), and perfect for this time of year (our house smells amazing). We love Toni's suggestion of crumbling them over ice cream topped with caramel sauce. Doesn't that sound fabulous? 

Soft and Chewy Gingersnaps

recipe from Mommy's Menu

Ingredients:

3/4 cup vegetable shortening

1/4 cup molasses

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 1/4 cups flour, sifted

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

pinch ground cloves

1/4 cup granulated sugar 

Preheat oven to 375. Cream together the shortening, molasses, brown sugar and egg. Add the dry ingredients and mix together until well combined. Form into small balls and roll in granulated sugar. Place (staggered, as they will spread) onto a baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

UPDATE: Click here to see what was done with one of our recipes!

Apple Crisp (Secret Recipe Club)

It's that time of year. Time to enjoy the fruits of Johnny Appleseed's labors. We went apple-picking, a friend of our went apple-picking and gave us some of hers, and we have lots and lots of apples to enjoy. We already made one delicious dessert with some of our apples, and thanks to Cara at The Boys Made Me Do It, we have made another!

Yes, it's Secret Recipe Club Reveal Day, and our assigned blog for this month was The Boys Made Me Do It. This blog has lots and lots of easy, fun, family-friendly recipes all blogged by Cara, mother to three boys. God bless her!

Because we were so flush with apples, we chose Cara's Apple Crisp, which she adapted from someone else in Secret Recipe Club. It was an amazingly easy recipe, all made with ingredients from our pantry. It only took about 15 minutes to prepare, plus an hour to bake. The house smelled sooo good while it was baking - apples, cinnamon, and autumn-ness. Love that smell!

The finished product was heavenly - cinnamon-y baked apples topped with a buttery crisp topping. Soft and crunchy, sweet and tart, everything a person could want in a dessert. Chris said he could have eaten the whole pan in one sitting. This one is a keeper!

Apple Crisp

Adapted slightly from Weekend Dessert by The Boys Made Me Do It

For the filling:

6 apples, peeled, cored and sliced

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon apple pie spice

dash kosher salt

For the topping:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup oats

1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon apple pie spice

1/2 stick unsalted butter, chilled

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Place all of the sliced apples into a large mixing bowl and toss with lemon juice. Stir in the flour, sugar, apple pie spice and salt until all fruit is coated. Place the filling in a 9×9 pan or baking dish. In another bowl, mix together the flour, oats, brown sugar, and apple pie spice. Cut in the butter and stir in until the mixture is full of small lumps. Sprinkle the topping over the apples. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour or until the apples are tender and the topping is browned.



CT Wine Trail: The Southeast Corner

A crisp and sunny fall Saturday just begged for a drive around Connecticut's wineries. So we grabbed our passports and headed to the southeast corner of the state to enjoy the scenery, sample a glass or two, and discover a place to grab a bite somewhere on the way home.

Our first stop was Holmberg Orchards and Winery. We made it the first stop so we could do some apple picking as well. The tasting room at Holmberg is quite small and it was crowded since everyone seemed to be copying our idea!!! They produce a few fruity wines, as well as some hard ciders, and for $5 (with a souvenir glass!) we got to taste three of each. Our favorite from the wines was the sweet-tart Apple Cranberry which had a beautfully dry cranberry finish. We also loved the zippy sparkling Cortland hard cider and took home a bottle of it to enjoy on our porch swing while we watch the leaves fall.

Next up was a stop at Dalice Elizabeth Winery, a small winery that imports grapes but do all the pressing, fermenting and aging here in CT. A tasting here costs $10 for 4 - the three wines they had available then a second tasting of your favorite. A glass is usually included, but unfortunately for us they had run out. Still, it was here that we enjoyed what may perhaps be the most unusual (in a good way!) wine we've ever had - a chardonnay with quite noticeable and long-lasting hints of almond flavor. Truly unique and delicious. They have cheese platters and other goodies for purchase, with cute little tables under a trellis and a pretty pond to view.

The third stop we made was to Stonington Vineyards. We had gotten a late start, so it was almost 4:30 when we arrived. They were having some live entertainment starting at 5 and had stopped their tastings, but offered us a glass of our choice of their wines and an invitation to stay for some music for $8 each. Amy went for the cabernet franc while Chris had the rose. Both were good enough but nothing we liked quite enough to buy more.

We had time for one more stop, only because one of the vineyards wisely stays open until 6, and that was our favorite of the day, Maugle Sierra Vineyards. The tasting room was warm and spacious, the server was gracious and welcoming, and the wines ($10 for a tasting of 6 wines - 3 whites, 3 reds - with souvenir glass) were fantastic. Several are made with the St. Croix grape, and the reds (particularly the Ledyard Sunset Red) went wonderfully with chocolate (yes, truffles are available for purchase).

Hungry now, we asked if there was an interesting restaurant nearby, and the fine folks at Maugle Sierra handed us a cork and pointed us in the direction of Valentino's, a casual Italian place that offered us a discount in exchange for the winery's cork - a nice little bonus, we thought! They seemed to specialize in pizza and grinders, but we went all out with a couple of pasta dishes. Satisfied and growing tired, we headed back home, having enjoyed a perfect fall outing.