Every spring, when Little League games begin, three little words strike terror into the hearts of health-conscious parents all over the country: post game snacks. When I hear the phrase, visions of neon colored sugar water and Costco valu-paks brimming with sodium and artificial colors fill my head.

I try to advocate balance as my son’s chief dietician. As my mom says, one bag of junk won’t ruin your body. As a result, I don’t forbid Thor from taking a bag of Doritos or a bottle of Gatorade but instead let him decide for himself. Fortunately, he usually politely declines knowing that healthier and tastier alternatives await at home (Greater Than coconut water and Tia tortilla chips are delicious natural alternatives to these chemically enhanced treats).

This year, however, is different. My husband, our team’s coach, and I paid for Purple Asparagus to sponsor the team. Forgoing the folksy tone, I’d adopted for past emails as snack mom, I drove straight to the heart of the matter. From my email:

“Some of you may have seen a recent article in the Trib suggesting that kids who play organized sports eat more junk food because of the treat culture pervasive in youth leagues. I’d like us not to be that team. To encourage that, I want to give a few guidelines.

• The post game nosh is a snack, not a treat. If our team track record persists, they’ll be plenty of time for those (both of the kid and adult variety) towards the end of the season – the White Sox like a good party. But after a game, the kids need something to replenish their energy, not send them into sugar shock.
• Please be conscious of allergy concerns. If any of your kids has a food allergy, please let me know. I know we all want our kids to be safe and will accommodate any food allergies.
• Let’s try to avoid foods with artificial colors, high fructose corn syrup, and lots of loaded sugar and salt. I promise I won’t bring your kid kale chips if you don’t bring mine Cheetos.”

You know what? Thus far, we’ve had awesome snacks ranging from a banana and a bottle of water to homemade pumpkin whoopie pies.We’ve got a winning record not only on the field but also in the snack realm. Do I attribute this to my well-crafted email? I wouldn’t flatter myself. I think we lucked into a great group of parents. And, perhaps, sometimes folks just need a little encouragement to pass up the potato chips in favor of the apple chips.

Recently, I made my lemonade pink from a mushy blood orange I had around, but generally this time of year, I make it pink from our wonderful local strawberries.

Pink Lemonade

Serves 4
For three years running, we’ve served Pink Lemonade as the beverage portion of my snack rotation, using strawberries to create the hue.
1/2 pint strawberries

3 lemons, approximately

2 tablespoons of sugar syrup

Hull the strawberries. Puree them in a blender or food processor. Strain through a fine mesh strainer into a 4-cup measuring cup. Add enough lemon juice to the strawberry puree to make 1/3 cup of juice. Fill water into the cup to measure 3 cups total of liquid. Stir in sugar syrup. If the lemonade is too tart to your taste, add more sugar syrup gradually.

When I see a restaurant touting “the best [fill in the blank],” I turn on my heels and look for another.

“Best” in a subjective realm like food is a matter of taste. My best chocolate chip cookie is super thin, with crispy edges and soft chocolate chips. Yours may be soft and chewy with the addition of chopped nuts.

That being said, after dinner tonight, I need to share with you the best steak sauce ever or at least the best steak sauce I’ve ever made.

I’d been hesitant in the past to share this recipe because it has a secret ingredient. I’m not keeping it a secret, it’s simply one that you likely won’t have readily at your disposal. However, given that the raw material for this secret ingredient is now in season, I thought I’d share with you with my best steak sauce ever.

Strip Steaks with Special Steak Sauce
Serves 2-3

2 strip steaks
2 teaspoons grapeseed or vegetable oil
¼ cup red wine
2/3 cup chicken or beef stock
1 teaspoon balsamic
1 ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 pickled ramps (recipe available from a previous post of mine)
1 teaspoon sour cream

Heat a cast iron skillet over high heat. Add oil and heat until smoking. Sear seasoned steaks on each side. Reduce the heat to medium heat and cook until 120° F about 7 to 10 minutes total.

Remove the steaks to a plate and cover with aluminum foil. Pour in the red wine and reduce slightly. Add stock and reduce until there’s only about 3 tablespoons of sauce in the pan. Add balsamic, mustard, and finely chopped ramps. Cook for 2 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and whisk in sour cream and any juices that have accumulated on the plate. Serve the steaks drenched with sauce.

With the impending arrival of a fuzzy, long eared creature, everyone seems to be talking about eggs this week. The always amazing Christina LeBeau gives her rundown of eggsperiments on Spoonfed. Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan just re-posted her how-to dye eggs naturally over the Kitchn (I love the suggestion of oiling the eggs to give them a high shine). Even bloggers of different faiths have gotten in on the game. Me, I’ll be dying lots of eggs since my Little Locavores kid and I will be appearing on WGN tomorrow at 11am to demonstrate natural egg dying.

I also wanted to share with you this entry that I wrote several years ago for The Local Beet, which talks not only about how to dye eggs naturally, but also how to buy eggs that are not only good for the body but also for the planet since that’s what Purple Asparagus is all about.

In pagan culture, the egg signified the rebirth of the earth during spring. Christians adopted this symbol for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, allegedly having occurred in early spring. Eastern Christianity has created several myths regarding the connection between the egg and the Easter story, including a claim that Mary Magdalene brought eggs to share at the tomb of Jesus, which turned bright red when she saw that Christ had risen.

With all of these associations with life and the earth, it only makes sense that the eggs that we dye for our baskets, egg hunts and rolls be good for the earth and respect life. To do this, we need to be educated consumers and understand the labeling on the cartons.

Sustainable Eggs

Three separate certifying systems have been created by egg producers.

Certified Organic: This is the only certification that is regulated by the government. To earn it, a farmer must pass an inspection showing that the eggs came from hens that eat an antibiotic-free, 100% organic diet, and are allowed access to the outdoors and sunlight. What it does not require is a certain barn or shed size or limit on the amount chickens housed inside such facilities. It also does not require that the chickens spend any time outdoors and specifically allows a farmer to temporarily confine his hens for a variety of reasons, with no definition of the term “temporarily.” It does, however, require certain humane limitations including that a bird must be anesthetized prior to de-beaking, a common practice in egg farming.

Certified Humane: This certification is regulated by Humane Farm Animal Care and is concerned less with what the birds eat than with how they are treated. Hens must eat a “wholesome” and “nutritious” diet, they may only receive antibiotics in the case of disease. The certification requires that the hens have “sufficient space, shelter and gentle handling to limit stress.” In Illinois, Phil’s Fresh Eggs has been named Certified Humane under this system. (They’re also white and great for taking on dye). To find other producers, visit Humane Farm Animal Care’s website. Organic Valley may not be “Certified Humane,” on its website, it states its promise to the consumer that its eggs have been:

“Produced on family farms in harmony with nature without antibiotics, synthetic hormones or pesticides. Our hens are raised humanely and given certified organic feed—never any animal by-products—and range freely outdoors.”

A note on hormones: a hormone-free claim is a bit of a non-sequitur given that hormones are never given to hens being grown for laying eggs or during the egg-laying period unless sick.

The United Egg Producers Certification: This is quite a dodgy “certification.” According to Marion Nestle, the certification “merely attests that a company gives food and water to its caged hens.” Unsurprisingly, a large majority of industrial egg producers have received this certification. The website is chock full of double speak. On the home page, we see a wholesome young family on their bucolic farm. There is a large section called Myth v. Fact. My favorite myth v. fact is the first:

Myth: Farmers only care about profit.
Fact: U.S. egg farmers are committed to the humane and ethical treatment of animals. Many of the farms are family-owned and operated.

While I’m sure that majority of family farmers treat their hens humanely, having recently watched HBO’s “Death on a Family Farm,” family-owned and operated can not necessarily be equated with humane treatment.

A Note on De-beaking: It’s important to note that none of the certifications prohibit de-beaking, though the Certified Organic and Humane standards do require that the birds be anaesthetized during the procedure. Birds are de-beaked to prevent the aggressive behavior that is almost inevitable in close quarters. In the “The Ethics of What We Eat,” Peter Singer identifies a handful of farmers who do not de-beak their birds. I have emailed several of the egg producers who sell locally at our farmers market to find out their practices and will report back with what I learn.

Sustainable Egg Dyeing

Ever since my son was born 5 years ago, we’ve coloring our eggs naturally. What we’ve done is to use the by-products of our home cooking that would otherwise be destined for the garbage or the compost bin. For example, yellow onion skins create a lovely beige shade, red, a purplish one. I’ll blanch spinach, a traditional menu item on Maundy Thursday, for green. Boil some beets for red. Leftover coffee stains not your teeth for brown. The only virgin ingredients that I use are dried spices – really, how many of you are going to use up that entire jar or turmeric? I also have a huge jar of tomato powder that is past its prime (a donation from the very generous Spice House for a Purple Asparagus project) that when combined with vinegar turns up orange. When using spices, boil water to fill a bowl just large enough to hold an egg or two and add a tablespoon or more or the desired spice with a bit of vinegar. But my all time favorite natural egg dye? Red wine. Not only does it color the egg, but it gives it a sparkly sheen – I’ve always assumed that it’s the sulfites. The best part? When your egg is done, it’s cocktail time.

Pink
1 beet, quartered
cold water to cover
1 teaspoon white vinegar

Cover the beet with cold water in a small pot and bring to a boil. Simmer until tender. Pour off 3/4 cup of beet liquid into a small cup. Mix with vinegar. Reserve the beet for another purpose. Soak eggs for 15 minutes to 1/2 hour.

Yellow
3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon turmeric
1 teaspoon white vinegar

Bring the water to a boil. Whisk in turmeric and white vinegar. Let the liquid cool. Soak eggs for 15 minutes to 1/2 hour.

Blue
1/2 cup blueberry juice poured off from a bag of frozen blueberries, thawed
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon white vinegar

Heat the blueberry juice and water to boiling. Add vinegar. Let the liquid cool. Soak eggs for 15 minutes to 1/2 hour.

Purple
1 cup red wine

This is my favorite egg dye. Soak eggs for a few hours in the refrigerator. They will become a mottled, sparkly purple. The wine can be reserved for cooking

Green
This is a new color suggested by my friends over at Kiwi Magazine.

3/4 cup water
2 to 3 chlorophyll caplets (found in natural food stores)
1 teaspoon vinegar

Bring the water to a boil. Break open the caplets and pour the content and stir. Let the liquid cool. Soak eggs for 1/2 hour or longer.

It’s been almost a year [now 2 years] since the Illinois legislature passed S.B. 99, intended to make commercial composting viable in Illinois. Prior to the passage of this act, Illinois required a commercial food scrap composting facility to obtain a pollution control permit, an arduous and financially prohibitive process. The bill amended the Illinois Environmental Protection Act to remove food scraps from the definition of garbage so that now Illinois treats food scrap composting in the same manner as landscape composting, allowed in the state for years. To read more about the legislation, click here.

Despite the passage of the bill, the dream of commercial composting for residential purposes (i.e. curbside composting found in cities like Portland, OR) is still just that, a dream. Given the financial climate, it would be very difficult for a businessperson to raise the funds to build a composting facility available to the general public and the City just doesn’t have the resources to fund one at this time.

Given this reality, any Chicagoan wanting to reduce their organic waste that heads to the landfill will need to explore small scale, home-based composting systems. About a year and half ago, Michael Morowitz had asked me to prepare a down and dirty guide on these systems for The Local Beet. At the time, I was having my own composting struggles so I begged off. Fifteen months later, with my electric composter churning away and my worms fat and happy, I think I can provide a brief introduction to the realm of urban composting. I’ll also explain how to tap into the more expert worm wranglers and compost keepers for more knowledgeable advice.

To start out, I want to make it perfectly clear, I do no outdoor composting. We live in an old rowhouse a few door down from Ravenswood, the el, and Metra. We’ve had rat problems in the past, including one that nuzzled its way through crumbling brick outside our back door, glided down what must have been a rodent slide, and peeked its way through the gap in our laundry room cupboards. Seeing this, we called our contractor who removed said cupboards and found no rat, but three tiny dead mice babies. Sealing up the hole, replacing the cabinets, we seem to have been rodent free (knock on wood) since then. But I will do NOTHING, not one thing, to attract any of these critters to my back yard. If you’re looking for advice on compost piles, rack composting systems, solar composting devices, or the drums that require turning, look elsewhere, I’ve got nothing for you.

What I can tell you is how we, as a family of three who eat at home regularly, have diverted most of our food waste from the garbage to the compost bin.

The High Tech

Almost two years ago, I ordered the Nature Mill electric composter. The marketing materials suggested that this machine could do it all. Not only would it churn vegetable and fruit waste into finely ground compost, but it could take on meat and bread scraps (two no-nos for the worm and outdoor compost bins). My first disappointment transpired when I opened the box and realized the size of it. The Nature Mill people suggest their machine will fit under the sink (a replacement for the garbage disposal). In fact, it does fit in a standard under the sink cabinet as long as you don’t plan to open it up, which is how you add the scraps. Okay, small impediment. I located it downstairs in our laundry room, set it up according to the directions, and began adding our waste.

The first week or so, all seemed to be a go. But then, it began to stink. Reviewing the instructions, I realized that the mixture needed balancing so I added some baking soda and sawdust pellets and it evened itself out. Feeling confident, I then decided to add the protein that I was assured it could handle. About a half a cup of shrimp shells (spent from making stock) were tossed in with veggie waste and coffee grinds. Within a day, the stench emanating from the machine could knock you back. Note to self, no more animal protein.

A few more weeks went by and it seemed to operating smoothly until it wasn’t. The machine shorted out. I called the company and they replaced the control panel and everything seemed fine, that is until the couscous incident. Along with vegetable waste, baking soda, sawdust, coffee grinds, I added a whole mess of cooked couscous left over from a DIY Couscous table that Purple Asparagus organized for Lab School. I’m not sure what happened but within a week or so, I found these little tiny seeds (or so I thought) clinging to the interior sides of the bin. They didn’t concern me that much at first, until they started to multiply. For those of you who know your bugs will realize that these multiplying seeds weren’t seeds at all, but maggots.

Vowing not to be beaten by the machine, I cleaned out the machine with a mask covering my mouth and nose and gloves on my hands. I started it up again, but something that I did in cleaning must have damaged the apparatus, and the machine wouldn’t churn. Harumph. I gave up for the time being.

A few months later, I put aside the maggots from my imagination and called the company. Unfortunately, at this point the warranty had expired. After some sweet talking and firm talking, they finally offered to sell me another at cost (allowing me to upgrade). Hoping that I wasn’t throwing good money after bad, I agreed.

It arrived, I unpacked it, I set up the culture, waited two weeks (a step not explained in the first manual) and it seemed to be working. Until it wasn’t. Another call to the company, another package returned, and another composter sent. This was last year.

Fast forward to today, after all that headache, it’s working. Situated in our kitchen, it churns a few times a day. We fill it with fruit and veggie scraps, an occasional bread crust, balancing this all with a judicious amount of baking soda and coffee grinds. With a pretty deep well, we divert a large percentage of our daily food scraps to our Nature Mill so despite the effort and cost involved, I do think that it was worth it. I also do know that the company, a new one, did work to improve their product and their manual, so that us first-generation owners probably worked out a lot of the kinks for them. If you’ve got the resources and want a simple composting with less ick factor this may be the way to go.

The Low Tech

In between all of the hassles we endured with the Nature Mill, friend and author Tim Magner, gave Thor his book Earl the Earthworm Digs for his Life, which inspired the little locavore to ask for a pet worm (along with his sports jerseys and Wii games) for his 5th birthday. Ordering a worm ranch from Montana with a 1000 red wigglers, we started our experiment with vermicomposting.

A far easier process (with just a bit more ick), we have a large green perforated rectangle that sits another rectangular box slightly bigger than the first. We lined it with newspaper scraps, dumped the worms with the accompanying castings, and covered them with a bunch of food scraps and another layer of shredded newspaper. I closed up the hard cover of the box and we waited. A few weeks later, most of the foodstuffs had been processed into soft brown bits and the newspaper soaked through. Our little red friends wriggled in and out of the shreds. I added more food and more newspaper and covered it back up. Things were going very smoothly. The bin emitted no odor and it was a pretty easy to maintain. As it got warmer, things got a little dicey as we saw some little flies around the box, both in and out. I pulled out my used copy of Worms Eat My Garbage, which recommended covering the bedding with a thick sheet of plastic. Once I did that our bug problem ceased.

The worms are pretty easy to maintain. I feed them every other week, allowing my food scraps to rot a little in a compost pail that I keep under the sink (apparently it’s easier for the worms to work through partially decomposed foodstuffs). Quarterly, I need to drain out the worm poop that accumulates in the bottom tray. Cutting it with lots of water, I pour that as a fertilizer in our garden. While there’s a bit of ick factor involved in the worms, once you get over it they are actually rather easy to handle.

Over the course of these two years in these adventures, I’ve learned a few things about worm wrangling and compost keeping. Here are my top 5 tips.

1. Always maintain a balance between browns (paper, coffee grinds, sawdust, wood pellets) and greens (most everything else). Otherwise it will stink.
2. Keep out the protein, fats, and bread. After my shrimp shell incident, I keep the animal protein out of my compost. Otherwise it will stink.
3. With your worm bin, make sure the food waste is always covered, at least by shredded newspaper and preferably with a thick piece of plastic. Otherwise, you’ll get flies.
4. Be patient especially at first. With either the worm bin or the electric composter, don’t put in too much waste to start. Otherwise it will stink or you’ll get flies.
5. Make sure to chop or tear your organic matter into small pieces, it’s easier for both the electric composter and the worm bin to process the waste. The longer it takes, the more likely it will stink.

Since this is more a story about composting than a guide, I have a few resources for those of you wanting to find more detailed information on composting.

Editor’s note: Melissa wrote this piece a few years ago. As we have spring cleaning on our minds, we thought t
In Chicago, there’s no one who makes composting more fun than Stephanie Davies of Urban Worm Girl. With her school programs and Worms and Wine events, Stephanie makes composting fun and easy. She sells what has to be the most attractive worm bin, deep green and shaped sort of like a pagoda.

In the suburbs, you can find the grand dame of the garbage heap, Kay McKeen and her organization SCARCE.

The bible on vermicomposting is Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof. Anyone starting out with worms need to have a copy of this book.

January’s nearing to a close, which is good time to reassess the resolutions of the New Year. Did you lose 5 pounds? Have you exercised daily? Don’t worry, neither did I.

There is one resolution that if you didn’t make, it’s a good one to adopt now: making family dinner a regular habit.

Statistics show that children who share a meal regularly with their families do better in school and have a better relationship with their parents. We all have to eat, so let’s do it together.

I may not have any advice about dieting or exercise, but this is one resolution that I can help with.

Until last year, Purple Asparagus’ mission was to bring families back to the table. With our burgeoning work in the schools (more than 22 and rising), we revised our mission in 2011 to educating children, families, and the community about eating that’s good for the body and the planet. Believe you me, with the number of parent cooking classes I teach, I still have some tips, five in fact, about how to make family dinner 2012’s healthy habit.

1. Be flexible: The greatest enemy to the family dinner is the unrelenting devotion to the clock. Dinner in my house may at 5:30, it might be at 7:30; it all depends upon our schedules, individual and collective. If my son doesn’t get a bath that night, so be it, I’d rather have that half hour for our family to reconnect at the end of the day.
2. Embrace convenience: Don’t be ashamed to use convenience foods. While I know many a food snob that will turn a nose up at the idea of prepared cereals or a tub of hummus. I’m not one of them. Even though I often prepare bread or pasta from scratch, these are weekend activities, not a project to undertake when I’m trying to get dinner on the table after a long day at work. When there are so many wonderful food artisans creating nutritious products with top quality and locally sourced ingredients, there’s no shame in incorporating them into your weekly routine.
3. Upcycle your leftovers: Leftovers, whether from my own kitchen or a restaurant meal, are in regular rotation in my kitchen. Not just meat scraps, like beef or chicken strips that can be laid onto salads or rolled into wraps, but everything. For example, transform your mashed potatoes into a tart crust. Cold rice can be folded with a lemony dressing and garnished with oil-cured tuna. Both her and on my personal blog Little Locavores, I detail these tricks and many more make short work of dinner.
4. Make a plan: Don’t just make a shopping list before entering a grocery or visiting a farmers’ market, but also a plan. Wine Braised Pot Roast served with roasted vegetables can on the day after be a delicious topping for whole grain pasta. Making meatloaf, double the recipe and stuff half into peppers. If you’re not used to this type of cooking, there are lots of terrific resources for meal planning, including The Scramble and Feed Our Families. About two years ago, I ran a few of these meal plans on Little Locavores, including my own.
5. One of the best pieces of advice about family dinner came from a powerful women partner at my former firm. While she was a terrific cook, she freely admitted that she wasn’t always the one cooking for her family. What was more important to her was that the family ate together. If the meal was at a restaurant or from the take-out section of Whole Foods, it was still family dinner. I wasn’t ready to hear the advice when she gave it, only a month after my son was born, and it likely hastened my departure from my Big Law job. Nowadays, I get it. Restaurant dinners and healthy take out are also among the tools at my disposal to get family dinner on the table.

To make this last tip even easier to follow, there’s a brand new initiative taking place at many Chicago restaurants: Healthy Fare for Kids. Spearheaded by Chef Sarah Stegner (a mom herself), Alderman Michele Smith, and former public health profession Diane Schmidt, the program is committed to providing parents with healthy options for their children at restaurants. The restaurants participating in the program will offer at least one delicious and healthy meal for kids on their menus.

Healthy Fare for Kids provided guidelines to chefs, including limiting the bread on the table before the meal and instead providing fresh vegetables. It also asks restaurants to ensure some lean protein with the meal and to use whole grain breads and pasta. Other suggestions are to use cooking methods that are lower in fat, incorporating and local and seasonal products (a goal close to this Little Locavores’ heart), controlling portion size and serving no-sugar beverages and small, if any, desserts.

For more information about the initiative and to learn which restaurants are participating, visit the initative’s website or watch Chef Stegner be interviewed by the Fooditude kids.

Now I will not deny that the little locavore has some peculiar tastes. Yes, his favorite dish is pizza and most green stuff still gives the willies. But then and again, he’ll declare a dish yum, yum, yummy that I would never in a million years expect. This is one of those dishes.

Disclaimer: I still fish out the greens in Thor’s bowl. All the rest is downed with alacrity.

Polish Sausage, Kale and Dragon’s Tongue Beans
4 servings

4 Polish sausages
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 bunch young kale, hard stems removed
Pinch red pepper flakes
1 cup cooked Dragon’s Tongue or Pinto beans
1/2 cup red wine
1/2 cup water

Brown the sausages in a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Remove to a plate. Let the pan cool slightly and add olive oil. When hot but not smoking, add garlic and cook until fragrant approximately 30 seconds. Add kale and stir to combine. Pour in wine and water and return sausages with the beans to the pan with any juices accumulated on the plate. Add a pinch of red pepper flakes and kosher salt and bring the liquid to a simmer and cook until the kale is wilted and most of the juices have evaporated. Serve in a shallow bowl.

Thanksgiving is less than a week a way.  Many of us have ideas of what to make; others have a vague sense that the meal will contain turkey and something.  What that something will be, they are not quite sure.  Over the years, for the Local Beet, I’ve provided many recipes suitable for this time of year.  I’ve collected many of my recipes for Thanksgiving below.  All the recipes consist of items available NOW from you CSA box, at area farmer’s markets, or at places like Green Grocer Chicago.   Have a happy, sustainable, local holiday again this year.

• Kohlrabi, cabbage and apple slaw – This makes for a refreshing salad in contrast to all the heavy dishes usually around the table
• Potato, spinach and goat cheese pie – Great for providing a hearty entree to vegetarians.
• Pumpkin marscapone cheesecake – A family favorite
• Butternut squash rosemary puree – In the spirit of our Pilgrim friends
• Sunchoke gratin – You can find plenty of sunchokes in the markets for this crowd pleaser
• Parmesan potatoes anna – This will impress Mom
• Beet humus – A show-stopping appetizer

• Rutabaga puree – We’re rooting for you not to overlook this cold weather favorite
• Brussels Sprouts with Salad Turnips, Pomegranates and Pistachios – Something not found on the Pilgrim’s table
• French fry stuffing – Don’t you dare, yes dare!
• Beet Choux Puffs Filled with Goat Cheese Mousse and Micro Greens – Another way to impress Mom

Just last month, I wrote a post for Williams-Sonoma’s Blender blog about the multitude of uses for squash and pumpkin. When cooking for families, the puree can be blended into mac and cheese, smeared onto tortillas for quesadillas, and whirred in a blender with a banana and apple cider for a smoothie. All of these recipes are delicious and nutritious as we like to say at Purple Asparagus. But none will generate more applause than this.

Doughnuts!

I love homemade doughnuts. But making them for the three of us doesn’t seem an economical use of time or ingredients. The cost of the oil alone. Oy.

I don’t often entertain for brunch. But when I do, it’s too much effort to sit in front of a hot pot of oil. Fry, drain, repeat. Fry, drain, repeat.

That’s what’s nice about being the snack mom for the organized sport du saison. I get to try out new crowd-pleasing recipes for a very hungry crowd. On a cold, October morning, two dozen chocolate and cinnamon sugar pumpkin doughnuts were disappeared by a hungry team of 6, 7 and 8 year old soccer players and parents.

Pumpkin-Spice Doughnuts
Adapted from John Hadamuschin’s Special Occasions

3 cups sifted cake flour
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 cup sifted whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon allspice
¼ cup vegetable shortening
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups pumpkin or other squash puree

Cinnamon Sugar
¾ granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Chocolate Glaze
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate
¼ cup heavy cream
1 ¼ cup confectioner’s sugar

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, salt and spices. Cream together the shortening and the sugar in a large stand mixer. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after the addition of each. Beat in the squash puree. Gradually add in the dry ingredients and stir until just blended. Let the batter sit for ½ hour.

Pour vegetable oil into a large heavy pot to about 4-inches. Heat it over medium high heat to 360° F.

On a well floured surface, roll out the dough to a thickness of 3/8-inch. Cut out the dough with a doughnut cutter well dusted with flour. Let sit for 10 minutes.
While waiting, make the cinnamon sugar by combining the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl. Set the chocolate in a medium heat proof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Stir in the cream and sugar.

Fry the doughnuts and the holes in the hot fat until browned, a minute or so on each side. After the first batch of doughnuts are done, you can reroll the scraps.

While hot, toss half the doughnuts and the holes in the cinnamon sugar. Glaze the remaining doughnuts by dipping them in the chocolate glaze. Let them drain on a baking rack.