Pancake mix with apple cider syrup and candied walnuts: A gift from the kitchen for #SundaySupper

A friend mentioned that Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away (at least here in the United States). I was shocked. And perturbed. Really perturbed. Not panicked. No, not yet, but I won't deny that I am a little annoyed that the holidays crept up on me like that. Again. Every year, I think, "Next year will be different. I will be organized, on top of things, efficient, effective, and stress-free." Ha! Yeah right.

Oh well. Time to start thinking and planning and making it all happen. But I've grown sick and heartweary of stuff. I've hit the mall a few times recently and found myself overwhelmed (and a little depressed) by the choices, the glitter, the tack, the endless push for a more wonderful holiday than anyone else or ever before. Every year, I find myself in a spiral of anxiety in which I seek the perfect holidays, beautifully and completely decorated, with an abundance of perfect gifts. And every year, I wind myself up more and more and spend more, far more, than we should, ending up with a lot of stuff and a lot of regret. I am ready to get off that ride. It's making me a little sick.

One way to make the holidays more meaningful is to make gifts. Homemade gifts may not be as pristine and glittering and cool as storebought gifts, they may be a bit clunky and lumpy, but they feel good to make. Of all the gifts we can make and give, gifts from the kitchen are often most appreciated. The receiver can enjoy them immediately, and they leave little to no clutter. (Speaking of clutter, here's a lovely poem on that topic from Saideh Pakravan, a member of my freelance networking group.)

One of my favorite gifts to give is a special breakfast, in this case homemade pancake mix with apple cider syrup and candied walnuts. None of the components is hard to make (although the apple cider syrup does take a lot of time); the most difficult task will be figuring out a nice way to present them. Here are the ingredients you will need, the instructions, and the instructions you will write down so the recipient can make the pancakes.

Ingredients

FOR THE PANCAKE MIX*

• 2 cups white whole wheat flour (you can substitute with all-purpose flour if you like)
• 1 cup oat flour
• 1 cup corn meal
• 2 Tbsps granulated sugar
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 1 tsp coarse salt

FOR THE APPLE CIDER SYRUP

• 1 gallon fresh apple cider (preferably from the farmers market; I am a big fan of Beechwood Orchards' cider because they use a blend of apples, which means the cider isn't too sweet)

FOR THE CANDIED WALNUTS

• 2 cups walnuts, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Instructions

FOR THE PANCAKE MIX

Part 1: Combine the ingredients in a lidded box. Close the lid and shake the box vigorously. (By the way, you can double, triple, or quadruple this recipe and keep it stashed in your freezer for your own pancake breakfasts.)

Part 2: Write these preparation instructions down for the recipient of your gift:

1. For 3-4 servings, combine 1 cup pancake mix with 1 1/2 cups milk and 1 egg. 
2. Pour about 1/4 cup of batter on a hot, buttered griddle and cook each side until golden brown. 
3. Serve with apple cider syrup and candied walnuts. 

FOR THE APPLE CIDER SYRUP**

1. Pour 2 and 1/2 cups apple cider into a large stockpot. Measure the depth of the liquid with a spoon or something similar. 
2. Add the rest of the apple cider to the pot. Bring it to a boil and then reduce the temperature to a slow simmer. Let it simmer and reduce for 5-7 hours. 
3. In the last hour, start checking on it more frequently, because it's quicker to overreduce when it gets closer to the end. When you've reached the depth you measured, the syrup is done. Let it cool and pour it into jars. It will keep indefinitely in the refrigerator. 

FOR THE CANDIED WALNUTS

1. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silpat (I could use some of those for Christmas, hint, hint).
2. Lightly chop the walnuts, if they aren't chopped already. 
3. Combine the maple syrup, salt, and cinnamon in a thick-bottomed pot and bring to a boil. Stir frequently so that the syrup doesn't burn. Let it thicken a bit (about 5-10 minutes). 
4. Add the chopped walnuts to the syrup mixture. Stir until the nuts are completely coated and heated through. 
5. Spread the nuts out on the baking sheet and break them apart if needed. Let them cool. Don't worry if they don't harden completely, or are a little sticky; they will still make a terrific pancake topping. (These would be a great topping for almost any dessert, actually.)

This week's Sunday Supper is all about gifts from the kitchen. Almost 50 gift ideas are on offer from breads to sweets to soups, so please go ahead and check these out for more ideas for homemade holiday gifts. Also, don't forget to join in the Sunday Supper Twitter chat by following the hashtag #SundaySupper at 7 p.m. EST.

Breads and Breakfast

• Pumpkin Biscoff Bread – Dinners, Dishes, and Dessert
• All-in-One Beer Bread Kit – girlichef
• Carrot Cake Cinnamon Rolls with Pineapple Cream Cheese Frosting – La Cocina de Leslie
• Banana Coconut Coffee Cake with Macadamia Nut Streusel – The Lovely Pantry
• Pancake Mix With Apple Cider Syrup and Candied Walnuts – Tora’s Real Food
• Cranberry Hootycreeks – Baker Street 

Condiments and Ingredients

• Apple Butter – Hezzi D’s Books and Cooks
• Cranberry Strawberry Jam – The Meltaways
• Herb Vinegars – Cindy’s Recipes and Writings
• Harissa – The Wimpy Vegetarian
• Homemade Vanilla Extract – Flour on my Face
• Homemade Cherry Extract – Cravings of a Lunatic
• Nutella Powder – I Run For Wine
• Orange BBQ Sauce – Midlife Road Trip
• Apricot Pineapple Sauce – Vintage Kitchen Notes
• Spiced Cranberry Apricot Almond Chutney – Sue’s Nutrition Buzz
• Pumpkin Butter – Family Foodie

Soup and Snacks

• A Soup For You – Momma’s Meals
• Maple Nut Granola - Girl in the Little Red Kitchen
• Spicy Dill Pickles – Sustainable Dad
• Sweet and Spicy Curried Nuts – Soni’s Food for Thought
• Roasted Spiced Nuts – Mrs Mama Hen 
• Sweet and Spicy Pecans – Supper For a Steal
• Maple Pumpkin Spice Granola Bars – Cupcakes and Kale Chips
• Orange Spiced Chickpeas – Home Cooking Memories
• Turtle Pretzels – The Messy Baker

Sweets

• Rocky Road Candy – Magnolia Days
• Dairyfree Vegan Caramels – Galactosemia in PDX
• Peanut Butter Cookies in a Jar – Mama’s Blissful Bites
• Cookies in a Jar – Damn Delicious
• Monster Cookie Mix in a Jar – What Smells So Good?
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Biscotti – Meal Planning Magic
• Snickerdoodle Snack Mix – Pippi’s in the Kitchen Again
• Butter and Jam Thumbprint Cookies – Crispy Bits & Burnt Ends
• Peppermint Stick Cookie Truffles - The Weekend Gourmet
• Nutella Truffles – Small Wallet Big Appetite
• Peanut Cajetas (Peanut Fudge) – Basic and Delicious
• Cookie Cutter Fudge – Chocolate Moosey
• Pumpkin Roll – Shockingly Delicious
• Homemade Chocolates – My Trials in the Kitchen
• Hot Chocolate on a Stick – Juanita’s Cocina
• Chocolate Toffee “Crack” – Ruffles and Truffles
• Holiday Tree Cake – Noshing with the Nolands
• Salted Caramel Cookies – Mama Mommy Mom
• Fruit and Nut Cookies – In the Kitchen with Audrey

Drinks

• Applepie Moonshine - My Catholic Kitchen
• Holiday Spiced Mocha - Daily Dish Recipes
• Holiday “Spirits” and Some Bottles to Boot - Kudos Kitchen by Renee
• Homemade Peppermint Mocha Mix - In the Kitchen with KP
• Homemade Kahlua - That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• StoliDolskis - The Cookie-A-Day Challenge

Don't forget to share your own recipes for Gifts from the Kitchen on our #SundaySupper Pinterest board.


* The pancake mix recipe is slightly adapted from The Harvest Eating Cookbook by Keith Snow. Do not forget to check out his Harvest Eating website for lots of seasonal eating ideas and recipes. 
** For more ideas for what to use apple cider syrup with and a recipe for boiled cider baked beans, check out the Washington Post recipe. 

Apple gingersnap cookies: Welcome to the #SundaySupper Autumn Apple Party

Fall. My favorite time of year. Rustling leaves. Rich colors. Sunlight that breaks in at an angle. Time to turn slowly inward, to the home, to the hearth, to reading books and poetry.

And of course fall serves up some of my favorite foods: rich stews, soups, roasts, made from and with squashes, pumpkins, root vegetables, brussels sprouts, and of course apples.

Summer apples start to appear in farmers markets in mid-summer, but they don't really start to show in large quantities in the markets with their great variety until mid to late August and then there's a flood of them and apple cider for weeks. So many different varieties, names, colors, textures. So much fun to try different varieties and find new favorites.

Apples are not native to the Americas--they originated around the area of Iran--but they have taken hold well here both agriculturally and culturally. One interesting fact about apples is that they are not true breeding. In other words, you could plant the seeds of an apple you love, and not one of the trees that came from that apple would produce apples like it. Most of the apples produced would, in fact, probably be inedible.

Sadly the vast variety of apples that used to exist is declining, in part because there are very few commercially grown varieties of apples. I hate to see the many varieties of apples and their wonderful names disappearing. So I say, get thee to a farmers market and try some new varieties of apples. Or find a farm where you can spend a day picking apples. Then come home and read Robert Frost's poem, "After Apple Picking" and enjoy the satisfaction of a day in the orchard.

This week's Sunday Supper is all about apples. I wanted to try making a cookie that I imagined a few months ago at the height of summer when I absolutely did not wish to bake: Apple gingersnap cookies. Apple and ginger are fantastic flavors together, and this cookie is no exception.

The cookie dough is easy to make, but you need to plan ahead. The dough should chill for at least 12 hours to let the flavors meld. I used boiled apple cider syrup in this recipe, which I discovered last fall, but you can use maple syrup, molasses, or even honey if you prefer, although doing so will change the flavor and the texture of the cookie a bit. For this cookie, I give the ingredients in milliliters and grams because I started with a gingersnap cookie from my favorite Swedish cookbook, Bonniers Stora Kokbok, and modified the recipe from there. Just about every measuring cup will give you the option of using milliliters, just be aware of the difference.

Ingredients    

• 100 ml water
• 400 ml sugar
• 300 grams unsalted butter
• 100 ml apple cider syrup
• 1 Tbsp ground cloves
• 1 Tbsp ground dried ginger
• 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
• 250 ml coarsely grated apple (from about 1 peeled, cored apple)
• 1,200 ml flour (plus more for flouring the board)
• 2 tsps baking soda

Directions

1. Mix half of the flour (600 ml) with the baking soda and set aside.
2. Heat water, sugar, butter, apple cider syrup, and spices in a pan on medium heat on the stove until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves. Then add the grated apples.
3. In a large bowl, combine the butter-sugar-spice-apple mixture with the flour-baking soda mixture. Then mix in the rest of the flour in bunches. (It's helpful to use a sturdy silicone spatula for this job.) If the dough starts to get too heavy to stir, feel free to get your hands in there and knead like you would a bread dough. (Your hands will smell amazing afterward, by the way.)
4. When the flour has been completely incorporated into the dough, sprinkle some flour on top, cover the bowl with plastic, and refrigerate the dough for 12 hours. 
5. On the day you plan to bake the cookies, pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees (F). Line three cookie sheets with parchment paper (or use silicone mats if you have them). 
6. Liberally flour a baking board and roll out slightly less than a quarter of the dough very thinly. Using cookie cutters, cut out shapes and fill one baking sheet.
7. Working on one baking sheet at a time, bake the cookies for 7 minutes. (Feel free to try to vary the time a few minutes up or down to get the consistency you want.)
8. Let the cookies cool for a few minutes on the sheet, then transfer them to a cooling rack and re-use the baking sheet for another batch. You will probably end making about 100 cookies, depending on the size of the cookie cutters you are using.

Sunday Supper wouldn't be complete without all the wonderful contributions from the rest of the group. This week's batch of apple goodness is particularly wonderful. Check all these out! 

Soups, Salads, Starters, and Breads

Cinnamon Apple Chips- Shockingly Delicious

Apple Celery Salad- In the Kitchen with Audrey and Maurene

Mini Apple Pumpkin Pancakes – The Daily Dish Recipes

Overnight Apple Cinnamon French Toast- In the Kitchen with KP

Curried Apple and Leek Soup-Soni’s Food for Thought

Endive Spears Topped With Apple, Blue Cheese and Hazelnut Salad- The Hand That Rocks the Ladle

Homemade Apple Jam – My Trials in the Kitchen

Caramel Apple Butter Cheesecake Dip- Chocolate Moosey

Caramel Apple Bread – famfriendsfood

Apple Pie Bread Baker Street

Apple, Bacon & Brie Popovers- I Run for Wine

Apple and Almond Brie Puff Pastry- Family Foodie

Apple, Leek and Gruyere Tarts- There and Back Again

Main Meals

Slow Cooker Honey Apple Pork Loin- The Meltaways

Apple-Glazed Meatballs- The Messy Baker

Apples & Buttons (Ham, Apples and Dumplings)- Cindy’s Recipes and Writings

Skillet Pork with Sweet Spiced Apples- Mama Mommy Mom

Chicken Apple Meatloaf with Tarragon Tomato Sauce – Diabetic Foodie

Baked Tilapia Apple Crisp- Daddy Knows Less

Pork Tenderloin with Calvados Cream Sauce Sustainable Dad

#SundaySupper Pulled Pork Sandwich With Pickled Red Onions Kwistin’s Favorites

Sides

Harvest Rice- Webicurean

Wild Rice with Apples, Dried Cranberries, and Walnuts – Ruffles and Truffles

Apple Topped Sweet Potato Mash- Momma’s Meals

Warm Spice Pecan Raisin Apple Chutney- Sue’s Nutrition Buzz

Desserts

Double Apple Pot Pie- What Smells So Good?

Apple Walnut Coffee Cake- The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen

Apple Streusel Cobbler- Big Bear’s Wife

Apple & Moroccan Cinnamon Gooey Sticky Buns- Crispy Bits & Burnt Ends

Spiced Caramel Apple Pie-Chelsea’s Culinary Indulgence

Apple Pear Kuchen for #SundaySupper (Apfel Birnen Kuchen)- Galactosemia in PDX

Apple Strudel - Magnolia Days

Old Fashioned Apple Crisp with Caramel Sauce-Noshing with the Nolands

Apple Cheesecake- Vintage Kitchen

Caramel Apple Crumble Bars- Hezzi D’s Books and Cooks

Apple Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting- From Fast Food to Fresh Food

Cinnamon Apple Dessert Chimichangas- Juanita’s Cocina

Nutella Apple Quesadilla- Dinners, Dishes, and Desserts

Apple Crisp Ice Cream- Cravings of a Lunatic

Bavarian Apple Torte- The Lovely Pantry

Streusel Apple Crumb Pie + Pie Freezer Kits- Meal Planning Magic

French Apple Cobbler with Cinnamon-Maple Whipped Cream Weekend Gourmet

Chunky Apple-Apricot Bread Pudding- Comfy Cuisine

Apple Butter Spice Cake – Home Cooking Memories

Apple Pie and Custard- Happy Baking Days

#GlutenFree Deep Dish Carmel Apple Pie- Cooking Underwriter

Apple Brownies That Skinny Chick Can Bake

Country Apple Dumplings- Mom’s Test Kitchen

Apple-Gingersnap Cookies- Tora’s Real Food

Apple and Cranberry Turnovers- Flour on my Face

Applesauce Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Caramel Glaze- Hip Foodie Mom

Caramel Frosted Apple Cookies- No One Likes Crumbley Cookies

Apple and Pecans Cake- Basic N Delicious

Apple Pull Apart Monkey Bread- Gotta Get Baked

Beverages

Spiced Apple Ale Small Wallet Big Appetite

Apple Chia Tea- Pippi’s in the Kitchen Again

Please be sure you join us on Twitter throughout the day during #SundaySupper. We’ll be meeting up at 7:00 pm (Eastern) for our weekly #SundaySupper live chat where we’ll talk about our favorite apple recipes! All you have to do is follow the #SundaySupper hashtag, or you can follow us through TweetChat! We’d also love to feature your apple recipes on our #SundaySupper Pinterest board and share them with all of our followers!

Ginger-banana bread

Warm and cozy as an open fire, soft and rich as a scrap of golden-brown velvet, exotic and strange as a Byzantine ceiling, a beautiful smell blooms from the oven. The experiment seems to be going well. I open the oven and test the loaves for doneness, not quite yet. I slide them back in and wait five minutes. This time, the toothpick comes out clean. I take them out of the oven. After they cool on a rack for a while, I slice some pieces, warm, dense, moist, rich with spices, slightly sweet from banana, and with a bit of crunch from the walnuts. Perfect. My ginger-banana bread turned out just the way I had hoped it would.

Struggling for the last month with high fevers, bronchitis, and an infected molar, I haven't spent much time in the kitchen. Fever and antibiotics killed my appetite and wasted my energy, so it's been a struggle to eat anything at all, and I mostly let my family eat a lot of takeout. Things are rarely ideal, and sometimes they are less ideal than others.

In the meantime, I've been reading Michael Ruhlman's book Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking and getting more and more excited to get in and work with some of the ratios. For a creative cook (especially a mostly self-taught home cook like myself), the book is a gift. Ruhlman breaks down fundamental kitchen techniques into simple ratios. Once you understand the ratios and how the basic ingredients work together, you can layer on and riff from there. The book teaches you reading and writing; with those basics, you can create poetry. It's exciting stuff.

The opportunity to test one of the ratios came as some of my son's bananas grew dark and unappealing. I didn't want to let them go to waste, but they were no longer fit to eat out of hand. Thus banana bread. So I checked out Ruhlman's ratio for quickbreads: 2/2/1/1. Two parts flour, two parts liquid, one part egg, and one part fat. OK. (Note that these ratios are based on weight, not volume.) And I checked out his basic recipe for quickbread/muffin batter, which is based on the ratios. But I got it into my head that I wanted to include some of the flavors from my mother's gingerbread cookies. And I was off and mixing. I was going to make gingerbread banana bread. (Or, as some friends have suggested, baginger bread, ginanabread, or gingy-nanny bread. If you have ideas for a good name, please fire away in the comments. I think I kind of like baginger bread.)

Anyway, this is one of the easiest possible things you could ever make. You'll need two bowls (one for dry ingredients and one for wet), a scale, and a loaf pan. Note: the recipe that follows makes one loaf; I made two because I had quite a lot of dark bananas. Also, you could probably do a straight swap of banana for pumpkin puree, and it would be delicious too.

Ingredients
Measure by weight on your scale, except where noted in teaspoons.

• 8 oz all-purpose flour
• 4 oz brown sugar (white sugar will do in a pinch)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground dried ginger
• 1 tsp finely chopped orange zest
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup mashed banana (about 2-3 bananas)
• 6 oz milk
• 2 large eggs
• 4 oz unsalted butter, melted 
• 1/4 chopped walnuts (optional)

What to Do

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and butter, oil, or spray a loaf pan. 
2. Place your dry ingredients bowl on the scale and measure flour, sugar, salt, spices, and baking powder. Mix the ingredients with a whisk until everything is uniformly distributed.  
3. Place your wet ingredients bowl on the scale, measure milk, and then add eggs, melted butter, and banana. Mix everything together until the egg is evenly distributed throughout the liquid.
4. Mix your wet and your dry ingredients until they just come together. Scrape the batter out into the greased loaf pan and slide it into the oven. 
5. Check for doneness after 40 minutes by sticking a toothpick into the center of the loaf. If it comes out clean and dry, the loaf is done. If it's still wet, check in five-minute intervals.
6. When you take it out of the oven, let it cool in the pan for a while. Then slide the loaf out of the pan and let it cool on a baking rack. It's good warm, but I think it's best completely cooled. 
7. Watch out for small, thieving hands. Trust me, this bread is not going to last. 

My mother's gingerbread cookies

Like many moms and daughters, my mother and I sometimes have a strained relationship. Although it's far better now than when I was a teen and screaming matches were the norm, the distance between us (about 4,144 miles; she lives just outside Stockholm, Sweden) helps to keep the peace.

And yet, I miss her at times. And I miss the Christmas traditions I grew up with, which I try to re-create but don't always attain. (Of course some of those traditions I don't mind failing to re-create: I can't stand pickled herring, and I dislike lutefisk--I must be a bad Scandinavian.)

One of the traditions I do like is making gingerbread cookies. For years, I tried different recipes, but none of them were "right," and then a couple of years ago, my mother sent me a handwritten note with a recipe and some old cookie cutters.

This most valuable of all gifts held the recipe to my mother's gingerbread cookies, which was also my Finnish grandmother's favorite recipe and came from a 1940's cookbook called Hemhushållningens Grunder (which means the foundations of household care) by Rima Melander. And now I am going to share it with you.

Before you get started, you should be prepared for a few things. First, you will start the dough at least one day before you get to baking so that the flavors have time to mellow and blend and so that the dough has plenty of time to relax. Second, this recipe requires a bit of muscle in the stirring and mixing phase. Third, this recipe makes an enormous batch of cookies as a photo from a few years ago shows. It will take several hours to bake them all. If you don't want to make them all at once, you can cut the dough in half and refrigerate the unused portion for up to a week.

OK, now that caveats are out of the way, let's get to work. You will need:

• 1 Tbsp orange zest (no white part), very finely chopped
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp ground dried ginger
• 2 tsp cloves
• 200 grams syrup (I use Lyle's Golden Syrup, which is made from cane sugar, but you can use corn syrup; for extra flavor, feel free to replace some of the syrup with molasses)
• 400 grams white sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 300 grams butter
• 3 large eggs
• 800 grams all purpose flour

And here's how to put it all together. Mix sugar, syrup, and spices in a pot with a thick bottom:

Over medium heat, bring the sugar and spice (and everything nice) mixture to a gentle simmer:

Here's where it gets exciting. Take the pot off the heat, add the baking soda to the mix, and stir intensely until the mix cools off a bit. It will froth up quite a lot.

When the mix has cooled a bit, stir in the butter (this may take a little while) and then stir in the eggs. Finally, add the flour to the mix in the pot, a few tablespoons at a time. When the mix in the pot gets too stiff to continue stirring, make a mount of the remaining flour on a bread board; make a hole in the middle of the mound of flour; pour in the sugar, spice, and butter mixture; and start mixing it all together. It will make a big mess, but eventually you will be able to combine the flour with the sugar and spices. When you have a nice smooth dough, sprinkle flour in a bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and then sprinkle some flour over the top of the dough. Put it in the refrigerator to rest at least 24 hours.

On the day when you plan to bake the cookies, get the dough out of the refrigerator and let it warm up for at least an hour (or rolling out the dough will just be too difficult). Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

On a floured board, cut the dough into manageable pieces. Watch out for small thieving hands!

Roll out the dough to about a quarter inch thickness and cut shapes with cookie cutters. (Or you can go freehand if you like.) The moose, the squirrel, and the hedgehog are new additions to my cookie cutter collection. I found them at IKEA.

 

Bake them for 5-6 minutes and let them cool on a baking rack (they will be pliable when they first come out of the oven, but will crisp up as they cool). Enjoy!

   

A simple meat sauce with a tiny twist

I swear the pork I am getting from "my" farmer is getting tastier. I don't know what the Haskins family is doing, but lately whenever I make anything with any of their pork products, I am taken aback by how delicious and distinct the meat is. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes his experience of the chicken from Polyface Farm, Joel Salatin's grass-based farm in Staunton, Virginia, as being "chickenier" than any other chicken he had eaten before. That's the experience I have with the Haskins's pork: It's porkier than any other pork I have ever eaten before. And it's utterly wonderful and amazing. It forces you to pull back and think about the food--not take it for granted as some vague substance that will make your stomach feel less empty.

A simple meat sauce is one of the best ways to showcase flavorful meat, and it's also an easy way to get a home-cooked meal on the table. And even though you may not be able to get the scrumptious ground pork I am lucky enough to get, I suggest finding your own farmer who raises animals in humane, ethical ways by letting them live their lives grazing on grass or rooting around in forests. To find grass-fed meats near you, check out eatwild.com or localharvest.com.

Oh yeah, this sauce does have a bit of twist to it: cinnamon. Sounds weird, huh? But it's really quite fantastic. Your sauce will not come out tasting like some Frankensteinian hybrid of a meat sauce and a cinnamon bun. Instead, the small addition of cinnamon adds just a bit of complexity to the sauce that will leave everyone wondering what that amazing flavor is. Trust me on this. But be careful with it, add just a small amount.

Meat sauce served with pasta, but you could also top bread with it and make sloppy joes, fill bread dough and bake to make pierogies, stuff peppers with it, stuff and bake squash--try something crazy or keep it simple!

A simple meat sauce

• 1 lb ground pork (or beef or lamb)
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced (or pressed through a garlic press)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 16-ounce can of tomatoes (organic is good, homemade is even better!), slightly buzzed in a food processor to get a chunky puree
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar (brown sugar is always nice)
• 1/8 teaspoon ground pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground dried mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1. Heat the oil in a deep saute pan over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the onions and let them get soft and a bit brown. Stir from time to time so they don't stick or burn. 
2. Add the ground pork (or whatever meat you are using). Cook until the meat is nicely browned, and you see no more pink.
3. Add the minced garlic and stir quickly for a few seconds (just enough to get the smell to rise, but not long enough to in any way burn the garlic; burnt garlic is the kiss of death for a dish). Then add the tomatoes, salt, sugar, and spices plus about a cup of water.
4. Let the sauce simmer over medium-low heat for at least 30 minutes and up to an hour to meld the flavors and get a nice consistency. Add more water if the sauce starts to stick to the bottom of the pan before your time is up.  
5. Done. Serve it any way you like. This sauce also doubles and freezes well, so you could have home-cooked food even on nights when you get home late from work and are too tired to cook. And doesn't that sound nice?

Some interesting links

When I am not cooking, writing about food, or working, I am usually scoping out food blogs and reading food-related articles. I thought I would share some interesting stuff that I recently came across.

• Tanya Denckla Cobb, a professor at the University of Virginia, recently published an article in the Virginia News Letter that highlights Virginia's role in the local food movement. This well-researched article describes the motivation behind and benefits of the movement.
• In last Sunday's New York Times, Mark Bittman discusses the so-called cheapness of junk food. He dismisses the notion that junk food really is cheaper than real, homemade food. Even though I feel as though he's a bit too dismissive of buying organic and farmer's market foods (calling them "trendy"), he raises a lot of good points about the reasons that people tend to buy junk food in favor of homecooked meals, such as the fact that most people are simply too tired to cook at the end of a long day.
• An exciting scientific discovery reported in The Scientist: Magazine of the Life Sciences suggests that what we eat may have more of an impact on our bodies than we ever imagined. Not only do we process food as nutrients, but food may also have an effect on how our DNA is regulated. 
• Takepart.com reported on a study that revealed family dinners are not just good for your physical health, but can also help keep teens from partaking in risky behaviors like drugs and alcohol and generally lead healthier, happier lives.