Sweet potato and roasted beet confetti

This recipe features candy-like root vegetables that are sweet in two totally different ways. Cooking them separately preserves their beautiful colors and enhances the texture of each--they look amazing together and taste even better. Start by peeling and cubing one medium sized beet (I try to do this on a plastic bag to prevent from staining everything around me).You want little cubes about the size of the end of your thumb. Toss them in a baking dish with about 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt, and a teeny pinch of sugar and let them roast at 400 for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally. You want them to get shriveled and very concentrated in flavor, kind of like making beet raisins.Meanwhile, cube up one sweet potato.Cook the cubes in a pan with about 1/2 cup of water for 10 minutes or so to get them softened.Drain off the water and add 1 tablespoon olive oil to the pan and begin to saute your sweet potato cubes. Add 1 teaspoon each of cumin and chile powder. Be careful not to mush the sweet potato cubes but do turn them around so they get browned and delicious in the pan.When the sweet potatoes are soft and lightly browned, add in your roasted beets. Remove them from heat and very gently mix in 1 - 2 teaspoons white balsamic vinegar and a tablespoon minced parsley. You want your sweet potatoes and beets to be separate from each other so don't mash them up while you mix.Taste to make sure all the flavors are correct--does it need salt or a little more vinegar or sugar? Top with a good handful of crumbled goat cheese to serve. Each creamy and spicy bite of the sweet potatoes is perfect with the intensely sweet and earthy beets. They were made for each other!

Last tomato post of the year?

The semi-caprese: Hard goat cheese gouda shaved over the season's final perfect tomatoes and my last basil from the porch. Pale green olive oil schlepped from Sicily hidden in someone's luggage. Lovingly decanted and occasionally doled out for good reasons.

Sausage and pepper skillet

Here I sliced sausage (my favorite brand, Georgia Boy!) into chunks and browned in a cast iron skillet with the most beautiful array of peppers representing the end of pepper season from the Morningside farmers market. It is a very loosy-goosey type of recipe--really meant for improvisation. Chop up one smallish onion and saute in olive oil. Add in 2 bell peppers of any color that floats your boat, de-seeded and cut into strips. After they are softened, clear a space in the middle and lay out slices of sausage. Turn them over to get deliciously browned and to madden yourself with hunger from the scent. After they are going a bit crispy brown and the pepper and onion are well cooked (about 8 minutes), add in some beer from someone's bottle they're drinking, or a little white wine if that's what you have open on hand instead. Let cook down for another minute or so then mix in 1 tablespoon brown sugar, a dash of worchestershire, salt, and a pinch red pepper flakes (and some hot sauce if you like it spicy, which we do around here) and stir everything up together. Right before serving, stir in 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar and a bit of minced parsley. That's it!The peppers and sausage hung out on the plate with a lovely roasted butternut squash--a meeting of summer and fall seasonal vegetables.

Fried okra

The easiest recipe in the world--does it even count? Cut up okra any way you like. Toss in cornmeal. Heat up some canola or veg oil in big pan until hot, then fry in batches. Fish them out when they're crispy brown, drain on paper towels and sprinkle with salt and pepper. I serve it with lemon which is unorthodox but delicious.Once I served this with little pieces of crisp bacon mixed in with the fried okra as well. That was a great addition.

Oven-dried tomatoes

Here's a quick recipe for the end of tomato season: I got armloads of underripe plum tomatoes from the Morningside farmers market, let them ripen up on the windowsill, then slowly dried them in the oven. Like canning for lazy people!They took about 4 days to become sweet and ripe.Sliced them all in half, or quarters, depending on the size...Laid them out cut side down on a foil lined baking sheet and drizzled a little bit of olive oil over the top. Then a bit of salt.These get baked in a 200 degree oven for between 2 to 4 hours. At 2 hours they will still be sort of juicy. After 4 hours they'll be less liquidy and the flavor will be very concentrated. They're basically like making your own sundried tomatoes. If you want them really dried out, try lowering the heat and leaving them in for even longer. Then report back because I want to know how they turn out. These ones were in for 4 hours.I packed them into jars and covered with olive oil to preserve in the fridge. They're good for a week or two like that.Good use of tomato bounty, right? Great for pizza topping or anywhere you just need a little punch of tomato flavor.

New Orleans absinthe

I had the greatest time in New Orleans watching our fantastic bartender at Pirate's Alley Cafe prepare glasses of absinthe--it felt like something out of another century. It made me think of last Thanksgiving when we all had some of Steve's eastern european contraband absinthe, except the process here was more fetishized with its specialized equipment and probably less illegal.She poured the absinthe through the sugar cubes balanced on top...They got a little melty. Then she lit the absinthe-soaked sugar cubes with a match.And let icy, purified water drip through the sugar from this crazy olde timey glass contraption to mix gently with the liquor.It made a groovy, cloudy green mixture in the glass.Best enjoyed by an open window in the best city in the world when you have nowhere to be anytime soon.

Oatmeal jumble cookies

I decided I needed to bake some of my own after getting an emergency oatmeal cookie at the grocery store last week. I based them on Mark Bittman's basic oatmeal cookie recipe, which allows for about 1 ½ cup or so of tasty extras, like nuts, chocolate, raisins...I wanted these to be jumble cookies, with a little bit of everything good in them. I started by creaming together 1 stick of butter (softened and cut into tablespoon sized chunks) with ½ cup white sugar plus ½ cup brown sugar. Of the brown sugar, I actually used something more like ¼ regular brown sugar combined with ¼ cup of large crystal turbinado, but it doesn't matter too much as long as you get to 1 cup of sugar total and some of it is brown for that nice molasses-y flavor. After the butter and sugars were creamed together, I mixed in 2 eggs, adding them one at a time. In another bowl I combined 1 ½ cup flour with 2 cups rolled oats, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon cardamom, a pinch of salt and 2 teaspoons baking powder. Then slowly added the dry oat-flour mixture into the sugar/butter/egg combination. I added about ½ cup milk so it would mix more easily.Also added ½ teaspoon almond extract--I got this bottle as a gift in my Christmas stocking last year!At the same time I got my extras ready, like this wonderful dark bittersweet chocolate. I had something like about 1 ¾ cup total of various add-ins: slivered almonds, chopped pecans, golden raisins, dried cranberries and that delicious chocolate.They all got stirred into the combined batter. Full disclosure: I did not personally stir in all these chunky delights as that would be far too much like work. Instead, I found a pair of willing forearms and enlisted their help.The forearms also volunteered to drop teaspoons of cookie dough on the sheets because apparently cookies are at their most delicious when unbaked and still attached to the spoon. Pop them into an oven that has been preheating at 375 degrees for about 12 - 15 minutes. Let them cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet then transfer to a wire rack for cooling.