In the Mood of the Season

This picture was taken in the Yummy House – a small Asian place at 1725 Haggerty Rd, Commerce Township, MI 48390. It came as a little pleasant surprise to us and our friends.

The food tasted as good as it looks, if not better. The nicest thing about it was freshness of everything we tried and a really light feeling in our stomachs after the meal. Please notice that their pickled ginger (bottom right) is not dyed artificial red as it is done practically everywhere else. And of course, presentation! It seems that being recently open their owners make a real effort to offer good-quality Asian food for a moderate price. We just hope they stay this way in spite of all the challenges of the business. They are really small: 3 booths, one larger table and a bar.

And here is another picture taken recently by our friend Marina Holkin http://www.facebook.com/yacht.delma#. I think it is very much in the mood of the season.

Organic Apple Cider to celebrate the season

 

Enjoy!

Almost Raw Pumpkin

Currently we have 2 old friends all the way from Russia visiting with us. It just happened that they are also into vegetarian and organic food. So here is the pumpkin recipe that we half-checked on the Internet and half-improvised.

We bought 4 small pie pumpkins, because they are the cutest of them all. We cut them around the stem to make lids and scraped out all the seeds from inside to make 4 little edible pots. We actually scraped some more flesh from inside to make the walls thinner. Whatever pumpkin flesh we got, was cut in smaller pieces and started our stuffing.

I think that stuffing can be made of all sorts of things (vegetables, grain, even meat). Ours included cabbage thinly sliced (arpx. 1/4 of a small head), 1 sweet pepper, 3 celery stalks, 1 large yellow onion, a cup of frozen corn, 2-3 table spoons of olive oil, 4-5 generous drops of apple cider vinegar, allspice, salt, pepper and whatever other spice you like. Our choice was a Mediterranean mix that included cumin. Oh, and we put some fennel seeds as well.

We then stirred the stuffing with our bare hands (a habit that I quite forgot lately) and then stuffed our orange jolly pots by pressing the stuffing in as hard as we could. A little-bit of stuffing that was left we just ate as it was. This gives me the right to say that it can be eaten raw. It seems that all the range of cooking fits this recipe and depends entirely on your taste and convictions.

We baked our pumpkins with lids on at 450 F (just keep in mind that my stove is old and might not heat too well). It was ready in 45 min, or we just were too curious to let it stay in the oven for more.

This is the result

It tasted great - hot, though stuffing was still crunchy. I tried it with goat yogurt and chopped dill, my friends preferred sour cream instead. I think preparation time is about 30 min. If you like to make a use of the seeds, you will need additional time to rinse them and spread on a paper towel to dry.
From our husbands we've received rave reviews.
 
And I wish all my friends to have a wonderful season!