Chicken with apples and sage (and my mail-order shoes)

Who doesn't love fall? Even if you live in California, where we don't get the brilliant turning leaves of New England, the weather gets decidedly brisker and the light adopts that shadowy, golden slant. Unless you're made of stone, autumn is a beautiful, romantic time of the year.

It's also the time of year for chicken with apples and sage.

I'm sorry this picture is a little cruddy. It really doesn't illustrate the gorgeous golden-brown of the chicken and the tiny flecks of sage which make the dish so pretty. I've been meaning to order one of those staging lights to help with my photography, but recently I ordered some shoes from Amazon which fit so poorly that I only got one on before realizing I would be severely hobbled by keeping them. It was a great disappointment because they were black suede mary jane heels with a little flower on the strap. I had already begun to envision how these new ladylike shoes would start to make up for the fact that I mostly kick around the house in jeans, clogs, and a faded Billabong hoodie. Unfortunately, when you're used to wearing clogs, you're even less likely to put up with pinchy high heels.

Anyway, while it's not Amazon's fault the shoes were a bust, I'm temporarily soured on the whole mail order thing. I realize it's convenient, but that's only true if you decide to keep whatever you ordered. If you don't, it's worse than returning it to a store, because you have to find packing tape and pay for the return costs. Now I have to lug the shoes to UPS and eat the shipping charges. $7 for a pair of shoes I didn't keep! So, it's hard for me to get excited about ordering anything else right now. The light will have to wait, and in the meantime, you'll have to endure a few dimly-lit shots. As great as autumn is, the shorter days that accompany it are no friend to the photographer. Oh well. I can only assume that with the millions of great blogs out there, no one's reading this one just for the pictures.

Let me spare you any further rantings and focus on this recipe, which I have made tons of times and expect to  make for years to come. It's delicious, simple, and totally satisfying on a cool October night. The blend of apples, shallots, sage, brown sugar, and cider vinegar is divine and  versatile--you can serve this chicken with rice, buttered egg noodles, or mashed potatoes. You could even do pork chops instead of chicken.

This time, I served it with thickly-cut roasted sweet potato coins and steamed green beans. If that isn't a pre-cursor to Thanksgiving, I don't know what is.

A strange and beautiful cake

To the husband's surprise, I made a grape cake today.

Well, let me back up. He wasn't completely shocked; I'd been muttering the whole week about all of the grapes we had to use up. It's possible to eat quite a few grapes just as they are, plucking them off the bunch and popping them in your mouth as you go about your day. But it's not possible for two people to eat two big sackfuls. I knew something had to be done with them.

I'd even begun planting the idea of the grape cake. But every time I mentioned it, he repeated, "Grape cake?" in a tone somewhere between disbelief and repulsion.

You may know this, but there aren't a lot of things you can do with grapes. But I kept coming across this one recipe for grape cake, adapted from a Patricia Wells original. I figured now was the time to try it.

First I took a photo of the grapes, which were a stunning deep, dark purple.

Then I set about making the cake, which was nothing too earth-shattering, in fact quite similar to both the raspberry buttermilk cake and the hangover cake I made over the summer. When I took it out of the oven, I was struck by how beautiful and strange it looked. It reminded me of some focaccia I'd once made with black olives and sea salt.

Although the cooking time the recipe gave was off by a good 13 minutes, luckily I am the kind of cook that lives in constant fear of over-cooking and over-baking things. While sometimes this is a certain flaw (like when I realize the pork roast, instead of being dry as I feared is undercooked in the center--trichinosis, anyone?), in a case like this, it's a good trait. I nervously started checking on the cake much earlier than recommended and it was a good thing I did or it would have been hard as a dog biscuit.

The cake itself had a nice crumb, moist from olive oil and milk.

But, to my dismay, the cake was as weird as the husband had predicted. The grapes seemed both unattractively withered and freakishly large, and I couldn't help feeling reminded of Mickey Mouse's nose every time I looked at one.

Also, it turns out hot, cooked grapes don't taste good. They lose the crisp juiciness which makes a grape a grape. Instead they seem heavy and soft in a frankly stomach-turning way.

The husband really gave it a try but couldn't finish his piece.

I finished mine, but only because whenever I make something, even if I don't like it, I feel strangely haughty and protective of it. "It's really not bad," I kept saying, "if you like hot, soft grapes."

Who am I kidding? That poor cake is sitting on the counter right now, enjoying its last few minutes of life. It's compost bin-bound and it knows it. In the future, I'll take my grapes raw, thank you very much. And, of course, in a bottle of wine.

Warm potato salad with lemon-lime vinaigrette

Making the root beer cake launched a lot of conversations in our house about sodas. The husband and I discussed the ones we like (root beer and ginger ale) and those we don't (most others), how the husband's teeth hurt when he thinks about drinking a Coke, and soda brands from our childhoods.

I grew up in California in a household that did not drink a lot of sodas. Yes, there was root beer at A&W, and I remember drinking some orange Fantas over the years. But my strongest memory of soft drinks was when we'd go on camping trips with family friends, who'd always bring a cooler full of Cragmont sodas. I was always thrilled to see that cooler, which I knew to be neatly stocked with shiny cans. Of all the flavors, which included bright pink strawberry and the exotic cream soda, I often chose lemon lime.

The husband didn't have Cragmont in Kentucky, but he did have Chek, which I had never heard of. A quick search on Wikipedia informed me that this too was a cheap brand like Cragmont and boasted the same classic flavors, as well as some suspicious-sounding ones, like Red Alert, Dr. Chek, and my personal favorite, diet Freshy, a Fresca rip-off.

Anyway, after I had a good laugh about Chek, I found myself thinking about lemon lime. Lemon lime is a weird flavor for a kid to pick out, but as I'm sure is evident by now, I was a weird kid. As an adult, I still like lemons and limes together, although I prefer them in their natural forms.

So last night, as I was roasting up a pork loin, I decided to make a potato salad. These two things don't really go together; one is more fall/winter and one is more spring/summer. Pork roasts make me think of root vegetables and bitter autumn greens, while potato salad is warm-weather picnic food. But we had a lot of little Yukon Gold potatoes that needed attention, as well as a bag of limes.  I decided to make a tangy vinaigrette using the zest and juice of one lemon and two limes, along with some coarse mustard and olive oil. I poured it over warm potatoes and cold celery, with lots of fresh chives. The result was a light but strongly-flavored potato salad straddling two seasons, a perfect accompaniment to the pork loin rubbed in rosemary.

I'm glad I was reminded about lemons and limes, even if it was through a lengthy analysis of cheap 1970's sodas. It's still a great combination that can lift a ho-hum dish into something both crisp and sunny.