Autumn Apples and Foodie Fun on the Farm

Last Sunday, the composite aroma from light dustings of cinnamon mingling with warm, buttery caramel and natural sugars from the interplay of cooked down Melrose, Rome, and Suncrisp apples filled my kitchen as I took out my first attempt at tarte tain out of the oven. A few weeks prior, in the midst of midterms, I joined some of my anthro friends at Lynd Fruit Farm (Pataskala, OH) to pick apples, get through a superhero-themed maize maze, and select a pumpkin for last Saturday's pumpkin carving party hosted by Erin and Tim. (Unfortunately, the original pumpkin I picked didn't make it to the party.) With about 12 pounds of apples, a few more than I knew what to do with, I settled on trying my hand at creating my own rendition of the aforementioned "accidental" [1,2] dessert for Bluescreek Farm Meat's ox roast and potluck on their Marysville farm.

A New Recipe Experiment: Cinnamon and Cayenne Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip Salted Cookies

It's not often I present a stand-alone recipe on this blog, but here's a pretty good one for you. Yesterday, I went back to Columbus for a combined Arrested Development premiere party and birthday celebration for Phillip, an OSU cultural anthro grad student who I had met during my campus visit back in March. Among his confirmed guest list were Lisa (a fellow blogger and cultural anthropologist.. as noted at one point, we outnumbered the non-cultural anthro folks, an apparent rarity) who was baking this delicious cake (I especially loved the mango jam) and Abby (a bioarchaeologist who was bringing chocolate covered frozen bananas). All I knew until Sunday morning was that I was also bringing a bottle of red wine. Eventually, I settled on baking cookies that needed to include chocolate (to match the red and because I love chocolate), spice (to complement the wine notes) and salt (to enhance the chocolate). A winning combination, no? Well, that was yet to be determined; I could only hope that these theoretically classic pairings would work together. Here we go with trial test #1.