Mummy Juice is one of my favorite new drinks. I am making it for Halloween—though it will definitely outlast this holiday. Perfect for Thanksgiving in fact. The color, the spiciness of the ginger, the citrus notes lent by fresh oranges. This one is a keeper.

When I have dinner parties, I am always excited to offer a special drink before dinner. In fact, some of my friends have come to expect it. If they show up and I am not pouring a new rosemary infused lemon drop or marrying a bunch of rum with fancy new tropical juices or rolling up my sleeves to make the world’s best Christmas Kazi, then they are sorely disappointed. And I hate to disappoint my dinner guests.

So I play bartender once in awhile, most notably around holidays (here I am in the pumpkin patch, gaining my inspiration). Admittedly the ‘ew, gross’ look does cross my face during this drink-creating process. But it is in the adjustments and imagination and ‘what about this’? attitude that will bring together the fun drinks that cross my table. Once the winces have subsided from awful tasting libations, I am often left with an inventive cocktail worthy of the next dinner guest.

This drink has a Halloween name: Mummy’s Juice. To serve it, I plan on wrapping GAUZE around a glass before filling it to the brim. (After Halloween, we will just have to rename it Mommy’s Juice—it does have a nice kick, after all):

Mummy’s Juice
1 small glugg ginger simple syrup (recipe follows)
1 medium glugg fresh orange juice (squeezed or otherwise)
1 small glugg triple sec
1 large glugg light rum
1 medium glugg soda

(I tried to measure, really. But try the gluggs and see what you come up with; perhaps you will measure and send me the recipe?). I use CRUZAN light rum. Pour all ingredients into one glass. Fill second glass with ice, pour contents of first glass into ice-filled second glass. Voila!

Ginger Simple Syrup
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 1/2 inch of ginger, peeled and sliced thin

Place water and sugar over medium heat, stir a few times. In about 5 minutes the sugar should be melted. You never want a boil, but hints of a simmer are fine. As soon as the sugar is melted, plop in all the ginger. Let simmer (or just under a simmer, you don’t want to overcook the sugar, it shouldn’t be amber in color). Off heat and let ginger steep for another 10-15 minutes. Strain out ginger and use syrup!

ALSO for those of you familiar with COTM or Centerpiece of the Month, Sandi at Whistlestop Cafe is hosting this month (click here to find her). You still have until OCT 31 to email your centerpiece photos in her direction. For my centerpiece this month, I inserted small rubber bats into a glass, globe-like tea candle holder that I bought from Crate & Barrel. It is appropriately spooky, don’t you think?

And tomatoes of coarse!

I was browsing through my category of default dinners, and realized that this token fall, hearty and warm recipe was missing. Sure, you can eat it any time of year but truth be told, this is the time when we bring out the blankets, crank up the heat and draw the curtains. We love being warm and cozy inside while it is blustery, wet and dark outside.

This year, my whole family is into it. We turn on some nice jazz music, light a few candles and heat up the stove. When schedules are busy, it is a treat to be at home, together, with a bowl full of pasta… And then you sautee garlic, the aroma sneaks through the whole house, and everyone’s mood is elevated.

Actually, the garlic is optional. When I make this sauce, the ingredient list ranges happily between 4 and 9. The key is to let is simmer long so the flavors marry and develop. Here is the recipe topped out at all 9 ingredients:

Sausage Pasta
2-3 T olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 - 2/3 cup chopped onion (I have used sweet yellow and red onion, both are great)
1 pound sweet Italian sausage, crumbled
1 28 oz can chopped tomatoes, plus (go for the more expensive brand here, with fancy Italian labels. In the end it is only a $4 splurge, and it IS your whole meal)
1/2 cup red wine
2 T balsamic vinegar
2 T tomato paste
Italian herbs

Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium. Add garlic and onions and cook for 6-8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add sausage and cook until browned. Add tomatoes and simmer for 10 minutes. Add wine and vinegar, continue to simmer for another 30 minutes (or longer!). Add tomato paste if you want to thicken the sauce, or skip it. Add herbs, simmer on low another 10-15 minutes. Serve over cooked pasta.

Note: my bare minimum version is: skip the garlic & onions, and just sautee sausage in olive oil, add tomatoes, wine (skip vinegar, paste, herbs). I simmer for 30-45 minutes and serve. BTW if I were inclined to add just 2 more ingredients it would likely be the onions and herbs. Good luck!

Note: this is lovely warmed up for lunch the next day. Just because of that: when I want it to stretch a bit further, I am generous with all the ingredients and add another 1/2 can of tomatoes.

It is that time of year again, and I don’t mean the time for Christmas songs or raking leaves, not the time that the mittens come out or the hot chocolate is stocked. For me, this time of year has quite another flirtatiously nostalgic meaning: Halloween Cocktails. It is this enchanting time of year when I don the imaginary witches’ hat (okay, maybe not so imaginary, since I do own a few…) and begin brewing and stirring and cackling while I drop a bit of this and a splash of that into libations and concoctions of a mysterious kind.

Last year was all about the Purple People Eater, a cocktail that was as sweet as a jolly rancher and went down like kids’ koolaid. Lots of jolliness accompanied that one. Oh and I made a special point to stir a ghost into oblivion; I called this misshapen white cocktail the Liquefied Ghost. Half the fun is naming them, after all. What’s the other half? Brewing them and handing them to suspicious looking guests.

This year I have been working on a special concoction, something spooky and sour, sassy and smart. I imagine a spider hissing and flailing until it wilts into the bottom of my glass. Sunken Spider. Drunken Spider. Smashed Spider. Black Widow. Wilted Widow. What to call this spooky Halloween drink? The jury is out: did the spider sink because it is past its prime or because it primed the pump? Is this scary spider dead or drunk? Either way, with legs dangling over the sides, it leaves much to be desired. And so it goes with haunting libations.

I need your help: what would you call this drink? One of the names listed above or another? Black Widow is a placeholder, a temporary name for this laughably leggy drink:

Black Widow
Cream de Cassis
Vodka
triple sec
fresh lemon juice
Pomegranate juice
licorice strings

For two cocktails (or one cocktail shaker): 2 parts cassis, 3 parts vodka, 1 part triple sec, 1 part lemon juice, 1 part pomegranate. Sorry, even though I bought a little measuring glass for shots, I never seem to use it. I make cocktails with ratios. If I were over my skillet, each ‘part’ would translate to a ‘glugg’ of olive oil. Just think in fractions: for the Black Widow, your shaker is 8 parts. Go from there. Too much of this, too little of that: trust me, the spider really won’t care one way or another.

The truth is, I make a lot of default dinners.

We are a busy family, with school and extracurricular, sports, music and you name it pulling us in a million different directions. Though my pie in the sky would be to cook an elaborate meal with new recipes every evening, it just isn’t practical. Instead, I aim to add maybe 1-2 new recipes in a given week, hoping that one will be a ‘keeper.’

When I am not trying a new recipe, I am grabbing, tossing and otherwise throwing together a meal for my family. My priorities in the midst of fashioning a family meal are 1. well-balanced and 2. quick. So, with no room for thought I start making ‘the usual.’ Though if you know me, I take great pride in my list of usuals and have even given these fall-back recipes the token term Default Dinners. This week I leaned on some old favorites:

• Roasted Fennel
• Roasted Peppers and Sausages
• Sausage Cream Pasta
• Buttermilk Chicken
• …and for the kids’ lunches: Ginger Sugar Pecans

AND I have to admit, when time is screaming in my face, I even reach for meals from my freezer. Battered cod was baked this week; my contribution was tartar sauce. I confess it is hard for me to use jarred tartar sauce (or salad dressing for that matter). So while the oven bakes the ‘it’ll do’ meal in 18 minutes or so, I grab my little blender and make a nice tartar sauce from scratch.

This little recipe has traveled with me for years; I have almost lost it numerous times (which nearly caused me to panic). But alas, it is still lovingly tucked in my semi-organized but adequately disheveled recipe binder. And now, you too can have it to use and to lose:

Tartar Sauce
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tsp dijon mustard
1-2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 T minced shallots
1/4 cup dill pickles
pinch cayenne pepper

I know: lose it? With this short ingredient list, you would think I had this one committed to memory. I figure I will memorize it right around the time my memory begins to slip. Timing is everything, right? The instructions, however, I can remember: place all in blender and blend. And this tartar sauce is also great on a salmon burger with big leaves of basil… yet another easy meal…

I am in heaven. I love fennel. In fact, I wish I had the wherewithal to eat fennel bulbs like apples; perhaps a 2008 New Year resolution?

Instead of eating them raw in my paws, I am finding creative ways to insert them into lunches… dinners… even breakfast.

This post is about ‘what to do when you have 2 fennel bulbs’ because there have been times when I had 2… and they went to waste based solely on my lack of inspiration. Fennel be saved: I now have some quick defaults for fennel: a bonafide back door to inspiration. All you need are 2 fennel bulbs, a few Tablespoons (or ‘gluggs’ of olive oil—that is how my kids and I measure olive oil amounts: “mom, how many gluggs of olive oil?”), and a large pinch of kosher/coarse salt. The last time I roasted fennel, I added a few Tablespoons of diced prosciutto. What? I couldn’t help it:

Roasted Fennel
2 fennel bulbs (stalks and stems removed)
3 T olive oil
1 large pinch kosher salt
optional: a couple grinds coarse pepper

Heat oven to 400. Slice fennel into 1/4-1/2 inch slices. Lube with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast for 25-30 minutes.

Now, if you are getting a tad more creative, and plan ahead with a slightly longer list of ingredients, you can make French Fennel Onion Soup or Potato Fennel Gratin. Both are well worth the effort. Yum.

I don’t know what it is about me and making food taste like ‘candy,’ but for some reason, while I am in the middle of consuming—usually some variation of roasted vegetable—I think of candy. Not candy from the candy shop, necessarily, nor the overwhelm of eye candy that I experience each time at the Farmer’s Market, but rather food candy, veggie candy, or simply the amazing sweetness of nature that is meant to mesmerize us.

Fennel does that to me. I look forward to a bite of fennel the way my kids look forward to a bite of candy. I loved it roasted; and tonight I tried it sauteed and it was equally to die for. And for our family of four, this was just one fennel bulb, 3 small parsnips and a T each of olive oil and butter. Peel parsnips, then mandoline both parsnips and fennel. Toss into skillet with olive oil and butter, sautee over medium low for 10-15 minutes until caramelized. Add big pinch of kosher salt and coarse pepper. Serve.

Simple is good.

More great input on fennel:

• from Fine Cooking (one of my fave magazines)
• Fennel overview from Gilded Fork
• Fennel recipes from Epicurious

And more fennel candy mezmirization on friendly food blogs:

• Elise at Simply Recipes also adores Roasted Fennel
• Alanna from Veggie Venture makes Fennel & Blood Orange Salad
• …and this sounds yummy: The Village Vegetable makes a Sage Fennel Tart