Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies

This weekend I am flying out to Austin, TX for the fellowship mid-field retreat. There we will get to see our fellow fellows, decompress from our experiences so far, continue some conversations that were started during training in September, plan ahead, and hopefully relax some as well! It is really hard to believe that the first half of the field placement has gone by!

We were asked to bring in something (creative) to help describe our life in our field placements. After much brainstorming (although it seems obvious at the time) I decided to bake something! I thought it would be great to use an ingredient that is pretty special to Tucson and I decided on mesquite flour. The mesquite tree grows throughout the Southwest and is everywhere in Tucson! It had pods that can be ground up into flour. Thankfully, our Mennonite friends had some extra mesquite flour lying around and I found this amazing recipe online! (it was from a random google search and I don't remember exactly where it was from, sorry!)

Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
1 cup mesquite flour, sifted if clumpy
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups natural cane sugar
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups rolled oats
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375°F, position the racks in the upper half of the oven, and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Whisk together the flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Set aside.

In a large bowl or stand mixer, beat the butter until light and fluffy, then beat in the sugar until of a consistency like thick frosting. Beat in the eggs one at a time, incorporating each fully before adding the next and scraping down the sides of the bowl a few times. Stir in the vanilla until evenly incorporated. Add the dry ingredients in 3 increments, stirring between each addition. At this point, you should have a moist, uniformly brown dough. Stir in the oats and chocolate
chips by hand, mixing only until evenly distributed.

Drop 2 tablespoons of dough for each cookie onto the prepared baking sheets 2 inches apart and bake for about 10 minutes, until golden on both top and bottom. Don’t overbake these; if anything, underbake them. Cool on wire racks.

Makes 2 to 3 dozen chunky, medium-large cookies.

The mesquite flour has a nice sweet and grainy taste to it, unlike any other flour I have ever had. It adds a really nice texture and flavor to these amazing cookies (it is also supposedly very good for you too!) I was unsure how all whole-wheat and mesquite cookies would turn out but I guess that ton of butter and sugar helps out! Hopefully they will be a hit with my fellow fellows!

There is a great group here in Tucson called Desert Harvesters, that has it's own mill and travels around Southern Arizona so people can mill their own mesquite pods. This is a really great thing because not only are people exposed to a healthy, incredibly local food (right from their backyard!), it has also been a way for people who have trouble affording healthy food to help feed themselves and maybe make a little extra income by selling the flour to their friends and neighbors.

My actual work at the Community Food Bank for the fellowship has been going great (and slightly exhausting) I have been traveling all around town (Phoenix 3 times in the last week!!) interviewing people for the document I am helping to write on Southern Arizona's local food system. I am focusing specifically on sustainable agriculture & government and community responses to hunger. I have interviewed tons of people already, including someone from Desert Harvesters, two organic farmers, a State Representative, someone from a WIC clinic, a teacher at a school garden, and many others. My job basically consists of talking to amazing, talented, bright people with tons of experience, learn from them, and write about it to share with the community. I can't really think of a better job than that! I expect the interviews to come to a close soon and then the writing will begin. If anyone is interested in reading what I write as it comes along, let me know. I will need editors!!

Pumpkin Pancakes & Apple Cider Syrup

I think I have mentioned how terribly I am missing autumn before. I miss the cool breeze, the changing leaves, and the smell of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. Thankfully I have access to the spices since the first two are impossible to buy in the desert.

I had some extra pumpkin and had this urge to make pumpkin pancakes for a while, so on Sunday morning I made them for our lovely wonderful guests from CA! The recipe is from allrecipes.com, (one of the best recipe sites, btw!) To top off this delicious breakfast, I threw together an amazing apple cider syrup.

Pumpkin Pancakes

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1/2 whole wheat flour)
  
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons vinegar

Directions

1. In a separate bowl, mix together the milk, pumpkin, egg, oil and vinegar. Combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, allspice, cinnamon, ginger and salt, stir into the pumpkin mixture just enough to combine.
2. Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.

There is no recipe for the apple cider syrup since I made it up on the spot! But all I did was pour about 1 cup of apple cider in a pot on medium heat with some cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. I then added a few tablespoons of flour (corn starch would have been ideal since you need 1/2 the starch to flour but I didn't have any) and whisked that in while over the heat for about 10 minutes until it thickened.

The pancakes were wonderful and fluffy. I was unsure what the wheat flour and pumpkin would do to the texture but they turned our really well. The pumpkin pancakes weren't very sweet so it was a good thing we had the syrup on hand! The combination of pumpkin, spices, and apple cider was really amazing. Expect some more pumpkin/apple cider combinations in the future!

Wine Tasting & Pumpkin Carving

Yesterday afternoon/night my friend Carmen & I went wine tasting in Tucson! We heard of one place from a friend, but when I looked online I could find nothing about it. But fate was on our side when I found out about a "Spooky Halloween Treats" tasting at CataVinos. How could you not go to that?! The owner, Yvonne, was amazingly kind and taught us all about how to taste wine and the reasons for doing the certain things. Like, did you know that when you swirl a glass of wine counter-clockwise you can smell the alcohol more, but if you go clockwise you can smell the fruit? I didn't believe it at all until I tried it, and whoah! Its crazy but true! The wine names and/or labels were all "spooky" in nature, like "Big Red Monster," or "Evil," and a reisling in a bottle the shape of a black cat! They were all delicious and I plan on going back there at least a few more times before I head back east!

So, I officially cant do anything political because of the fellowship, which is funded by the Congress in the Farm Bill. But I will just post this picture of a pumpkin I "found" (and..umm...didnt carve, thanks to the help of www.yeswecarve.com) because I thought it was awesome..and I will...umm...post a McCain pumpkin as soon as I find one...to be..fair and balanced? Yeah, thats it! On a completely unrelated note and an entirely different pumpkin! I baked the seeds with cinnamon and brown sugar, and saved some others for planting next year in DC!