Confessions of a Fall-aholic

My name is Allison, and I’m a fall-aholic.

Hi, Allison.

It started with lattes. The day that Starbucks brought the pumpkin spice latte back, I was traveling. I landed at La Guardia, knew I had precious little time to waste getting to my next gate, so I bolted for the nearest Starbucks kiosk. I threw people out of my way. I pushed old ladies with walkers aside. I kicked puppies. I couldn’t be slowed down until I had a hot, sugary pumpkin latte in my hands.

I quickly moved on to other forms of pumpkin - pumpkin beer, pumpkin ravioli. Pumpkin loaf, pumpkin scones, pumpkin soup. I thought I could give it up any time I wanted. It’s just pumpkin, I told myself. It’s a vegetable. I’m not hurting anyone by gorging on squash.

Soon, it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t getting the same rush from my bowl of three squash soup and a cold Dogfish Punkin Ale. So I did what any junkie would do and went right to the source – real, unadulterated pumpkins.

I found Alton Brown’s recipe for pumpkin bread, and it started to sound like a challenge. I can do this, I thought. Forget canned pumpkin, that’s for wimps and soccer moms. I took a knife and a grater to the flesh of a modest pie pumpkin from Kroger.

An hour later, with pumpkin seeds scattered over the table and the floor, my kitchen looked like the scene of a grizzly pumpkin massacre. And what did I have to show for it? A sack full of discarded pumpkin bits and three cups of the shredded good stuff.

A quick toast on a cup of seeds and I was ready to start assembling the dough. As a proud graduate of the Alton Brown School of Not Over-Mixing Your Dough, I was able to manage a loaf pan full of gooey, pumpkiny goodness. Into our finicky gas oven for an hour and fifteen minutes.

The smell of cinnamon wafted from the kitchen, a constant reminder each time I inhaled that there was something delicious in the oven that I couldn’t have yet. Even when the loaf was baked, and a paring knife inserted in the center came out clean, I still couldn’t have a slice of pumpkin bread. Alton insists that it must be cooled all the way – something important happens to the starches, I don’t know.

Wait I did, and when it was finally time to slice into the from-raw-pumpkins pumpkin loaf, it became clear to me what I would do next.

Eat it with Pumpkin Cream Cheese.

Behold the double-pumpkin overload.

If you too are a pumpkin junkie, you can take a look at the recipe here. There’s a nice video too in which, through the magic of television production, AB grates no actual pumpkins. But if you’re foolish like me and you have an afternoon to kill, it’s one hell of a pumpkin fix.

Cupcakes, Candy, and the CAC

I spent Monday night, the Monday when fall descended on us in a blustery mess, at the Contemporary Art Center checking out two new exhibits. This week the CAC opens a show by Marilyn Minter, photographer, painter, and all-around glam personality.

Walk upstairs to the second floor anytime during her show and you'll be greeted by a massive projected video of a model licking up various colored foodstuffs from a pane of glass. It's set to a moody soundtrack and sends you on your way wandering the rest of the exhibit kind of thinking about eating. That's what I did, anyway.

The colors across the floor reflected from Marilyn's photographs and paintings are sumptuous - candy pinks and jello greens. It's not just pretty though, it's all a little bit sticky and grimy. It's high fashion meets sugar, and the whole thing left me with a pretty serious pastry craving.

Luckily, a few days later Polly Campbell posted a veritable roadmap to the Cincy cupcake scene and I planned a trip to Milford to visit the Sugar Cupcakery.

The bakery case at the Sugar Cupcakery doesn’t squander any space to lesser items like cookies or doughnuts. It’s just cupcakes, in a variety of flavors, regular or mini sized. I quickly reverted to the mindset of a seven-year-old girl. It was the same rush I felt when I went to college and realized I could buy any cereal I wanted. By “any cereal,” I mean, of course, Lucky Charms.

And take into account the mini cupcake – by choosing the smaller cupcake, I suddenly have the latitude to order upwards of three pastries at once and consume them one by one. I threw in a mug of coffee to add as much fuel to the oncoming sugar rush as possible.

The service is beautiful, well thought-out and just plain delightful. As for the cupcakes, they’re pretty good too. Not too sugary, ironically, are the cupcakes at the Sugar Cupcakery. The carrot cake was buttery, and the chocolate chai was addictive. It packs a rich chocolate punch underneath creamy, slightly spiced icing.

It was just a little bit decadent and totally satisfying. There are a baker’s dozen cupcake shops in town, and if you find yourself craving something sweet after a visit to the CAC, I have good news – a cupcake isn’t far away.

Michael Pollan Lecture at Xavier: Better than Donuts

It's confusing and treacherous territory at the grocery store. Michael Pollan's books and articles have attempted to offer us some guidance in a time of general nutritional chaos, and on Sunday, he offered more advice in a lecture at Xavier's Cintas Center, clocking in just under an hour.

Armed with a Kroger bag of groceries in each hand as he took the stage in a pair of striped sneakers, he laid down some of the same themes he'd explored in his books. The demonizing of certain nutrients while we sanctify others, the link between our healthcare crisis and our diet crisis, and the pitfalls of nutritional science in its current form.

And then he touched on the really scary stuff, like the powerful viruses coming from cattle and hog breeding facilities. And the fact that Froot Loops cereal receives a "check" as a "Smart Choice" food because, as Pollan quotes an unnamed nutritionist, "it's better than donuts."

His lecture reaffirmed my admittedly already solid belief in the guy. He's on our side - the side of the supermarket shopper, the consumer, the eater. His passion is evident, his concern genuine, and his arguments are sound. In the confusion of the supermarket, we need some guidance. And if Michael Pollan is going to help us out, well that's a hell of a lot better than donuts.

Anyone else make it to the lecture? What were your thoughts?

West Coast Coffee in an East Coast City

I've complained often, in a very nasal-y high-pitched voice, that I don't get to eat well when I'm in New York for business. I visit one of the greatest dining cities in our country and somehow end up with only enough time for an "Old Timer" (that's "hamburger" to those of us who speak plain English) at Chili's in La Guardia's claustrophobic Delta terminal.

My most recent trip started no differently. Stranded outside of my hotel until check-in at three, I set up a make-shift office at a Starbucks on West 31st. I picked up a New York Times, because when else would it be more appropriate to read the New York Times?

It was the Chili's syndrome again. I found myself reading a rave review of Stumptown Coffee Roasters, a recently opened outlet of a Portland-based chain just a few blocks away, while I was sitting in a Starbucks.

I resolved to put a stop to that nonsense. The next day, I marched myself right past Starbucks and found the Ace Hotel that houses Stumptown after circling the block once.

The baristas are outfitted in newsies hats, tattooed and pierced and pouring frothed milk into little wiggly leaf patterns.

Not surprisingly, the NY Times was right on the mark. A plain, no-frills latte from Stumptown was hands-down the best coffee drink I've ever had. Maybe I don't have enough street cred to say that, being a kid from the Midwest who's never set foot in a west coast coffee house. Maybe it's really just an average latte, and it only shines in comparison to the sub-par, over-roasted espresso I've been drinking all my life.

I find that hard to believe. It was just so damn good. A beautifully pitched balance between slightly sweet espresso and perfect frothed milk. Well worth seeking out if you're in Manhattan or Portland. I guarantee you won't find one at La Guardia.

Kroger Mint Butter: A Brief Review

I've already discussed how much I love free samples. I have very low standards of what I'll eat for free. If it's speared on a toothpick and doesn't appear to be rotting, I'll take one, thank you. Potato chips, day-old hummus, stale sugar cookies, even sushi (doesn't that sound like a recipe for a night in the bathroom?) - I'm pretty much a sample pro at this point.

Dear friends, I'm here to tell you that I may have just encountered the strangest sample of them all, and it was at the sample mecca of greater Cincinnati: Anderson Kroger. It was on my afternoon dinner grocery run that I found myself balancing a cracker in one hand and my camera in the other, face to face with a blob of toothpaste-green goo. Mint butter.

It's not the concept of mint butter I find strange. I'm a big fan of stuff in butter. Ever since I tried a lavender/honey butter at a swank restaurant, I've been singing the praises of stuff in butter. But at Kroger? On a cracker? As a sample?

Yes, please.


There's no trace of actual mint in the butter, as best I could tell. Just an eerie green color that beckoned me away from the hummus sample on the other side of the deli.


Kroger's version of mint butter, priced reasonably at $8.99 "wit' card," is overwhelmingly sweet. And then it's a little minty. Like maybe I'd brushed my teeth an hour ago and just gotten a whiff of spearmint from lingering bits of Crest Whitening with Scope.

With my first bite, I'd tried to make the sample a two-bite ordeal, but the cracker couldn't handle the pressure and exploded all over my shirt. So then I was not only sampling green butter, I was wearing it. Perfect.

I wiped off the crumbs, got my groceries and went on my way, changed.

Thanks a Latte, Brutopia

Let's face it, the heat is coming and it's here to stay for a while. After I haul my cookies up the street to Brutopia, one of my favorite local coffee shops, I'm not in the mood for a steamy cappuccino. It's iced latte season, and I'm going to tell you something shocking: a good iced latte is made with warm milk.

I know. It seems contradictory, but so is an iced latte when you get right down to it. Here's my scientific-ish explanation. Milk tastes sweeter when it's been heated and frothed. Frothed milk = more delicious. Therefore, an iced latte with frothy milk is more delicious than an iced latte with milk straight out of the refrigerator.

Brutopia, a bright, quirky coffee shop on Ludlow in Clifton, offers up a delicious iced latte. It comes in one size. A shot of your favorite flavored syrup, if you like, goes in first. Then frothed milk over ice. Finally, espresso is drizzled through a cloud-like layer of milk.

I spent the better part of three summers making mediocre iced lattes for a couple of different coffee shops. Brutopia does it right. They do a lot of things right, and I'm taking my good time getting around to trying it all.

The baristas are awesome, but know that with only one person minding the store at a time, they get backed up with drink and food orders pretty easily. When a really good iced latte is on the line though, I'll wait.

Breakfast Times are the Best Times

I take breakfast very seriously. In fact, I was re-assessing my life the other day when I was trimming my nails, and I realized that breakfast is probably one of my top five life priorities.

When I get up, I need breakfast. It's that simple. This sometimes becomes a problem when I don't wake up in my own apartment. No matter where I am, though, it's the first thing I want in the morning. Staying at a friend's place? I want breakfast. Trapped in a cave? I want breakfast. If I have to go outside, catch it and kill it myself, I will. Usually, this just means finding the nearest Starbucks, which is always pretty easy, like finding the north star.

I like to keep weekday breakfasts simple. My breakfast ground rules are:

• It must be un-complicated and easy to assemble
• It must be tasty
• It must have coffee
  

Here's a classic recipe I defer to most mornings:

1 piece multigrain toast, blackened
1-ish TBSP Peanut Butter, creamy
1/2 sliced banana

Spread peanut butter on toast. Lay banana slices on top in a checkerboard pattern to ensure that each bite will maintain the proper ratio of sweet/peanut butter/crunchiness. If you're feeling extra dangerous, drizzle a little honey on top.


In fact, there are endless ways to embellish this dish. Whipped cream and nuts? I don't see why not. Sliced strawberries and powdered sugar? Might be kind of weird, but what the hell.

What is your un-complicated, tasty breakfast recipe?