We’re a mixed faith family here at FoodieTots, and as the non-Jewish spouse I’ve had a lot of fun over the past years learning about Jewish culinary traditions. Rosh Hashana, which falls right in the peak of the fall harvest, brings honey-dipped apples and other sweet treats to start the new year. Wishing those of you who celebrate a peaceful respite from the daily grind … and a happy harvest to the rest of you!

Tonight’s dinner menu:

• apples, pears, challah + honey*
• matzo ball soup
• gelfite fish + horseradish
• quinoa with apricots + pepitas
• lemon roasted zucchini + carrots*
• maple-glazed roasted salmon*
• homemade plum ice cream*
• sokol blosser evolution wine (oregon)

* = locally-sourced

For the final glimpse back at our summer vacation, I’ll share a few of our favorite places to chow down during breaks from good old-fashioned digging-holes-in-the-sand fun on the beach.

Devil’s Punchbowl at Otter Rock is one of my favorite spots. Not only are the views spectacular, the little cove beach buffered from the wind and uncrowded, but there’s a Mo’s seafood shack*, Flying Dutchman winery and ice cream truck all perched atop the bluff. Nothing says summer like a fried oyster sandwich and cup of clam chowder, chased down with a glass of pinot and huckleberry ice cream cone overlooking the Pacific. Bliss.

Also on the 101 en route from Lincoln City to Newport, Riptide BBQ pit serves some tasty brisket and pulled pork. And when you get to Newport, Rogue Ale’s global headquarters is a must visit. Oh, there’s also a pretty cool aquarium down there, but we didn’t have time for that this trip. Pig ‘n Pancake is a local breakfast chain, with real, tasty food. As in, real Northwest berries and strawberry sauce that is strawberry red, not red dye #5 red …. and a kid’s menu that has actual kid-sized portions, plus small-portioned combos for adults. The Dungeness crab benedict is quite yummy.

*There’s are several Mo’s locations along the Coast. The one in Lincoln City is perched over the Siletz Bay and offers a pretty spectacular sunset view.

September is a wonderful month at our local markets, with tomatoes and peaches mingling with winter squash, sweet potatoes, the return of salad greens (arugula!), and sweet, crisp apples. Now that we’ve roasted, salsa-ed, gazpachoed, and preserved a gazillion tomatoes, we’re embracing fall and highlighting a few DC-area bloggers who are making the most of the season’s fresh produce.

SQUASH
One of my favorite squash vendors, Three Way Farm at the Del Ray Market, reports that summer zucchini is winding down fast with the shortening days. I shredded and froze a few more pounds today, and am ready to embrace butternuts, spaghetti, acorns and all the other winter squash that add serious heft to my fall market basket…

• The Arugula Files makes a Italian Sausage, Arugula & Squash Soup, with butternut squash.
• Dish-trict shares Brown Rice with Butternut Squash, Wild Mushrooms & Salami.
• And I made grilled butternut spears, getting the most out of our grill while it’s still warm.

APPLES
“Appy? appy” need an appy!” is a frequent refrain in our house these days. Aside from the stash of little delicious, honey crisp and such we keep on hand for snacking, I buy some of the bigger, tarter varieties for cooking. (Jonagold and Matsu this weekend, from D&S Farms at Del Ray.)

• Tiffany at The Garden Apartment perfects the Apple Pie, with Jonathan apples from Bigg Riggs.
• Capital Cooking’s Lauren shares an Apple Crisp recipe, for those who want to skip the crust.
• I made a savory Apple Celery Soup, with Bigg Riggs’ lovely Rambo apples.
• And for still more apple ideas, check out Everyday Food’s Apple Fest round-up.

MISCELLANY
Of course it’s not all squash and apples, check out a few other seasonal ideas.

• Sylvie, the Rappahannock Cook’s Upside Down Plum Spice Cake, with Italian blue plums.
• The Food Scribe’s Lemon Cucumbers & Beets, with fun heirloom cucumbers from Evensong Farm.
• Everyone seems to be pickling these days, and The Slow Cook offers Pickled Okra (one of quite a few pickle recipes he’s posted).
• Grape & Goat Cheese Pizza from Food Rockz Man.
• Speaking of grapes, Ramona at Houndstooth Gourmet made an eye-catching Gorgonzola Cheese Blintz with Concord Grape Sauce. Yum!

We will be participating in the Eat Local Challenge for the month of October, so check back for updates & we’ll see you October 24 for the next FarmFreshDC round-up.

My favorite local coffee shop, Buzz, has delved into campaign politics with a spirited competition between elephant ears and donkey tails. Now, I’m happy to see elephant ears have made their way to the East Coast (although these are actually palmiers, not authentic elephant ears), but it’s fair to assume given our neighborhood that they’ll be taking second place come Election Day.

In more serious matters, Buzz is holding steady in first place (popular vote) in the Washington Post’s cupcake wars. Now, the reviewer gave Buzz mediocre ratings, and I am seriously questioning his judgment. That “funky” taste in the red velvet cupcake’s frosting? Cream cheese. As opposed to the sugar overloaded frostings of so many other, lesser pastry chefs. Buzz’s mini cupcakes were a hit at the toddler’s birthday parties and are our family’s preferred pastries. So, please, support Josh Short and vote early and often!

We recently ventured out to Stribling Orchard’s Apple Festival to kick off fall with fresh-plucked apples. It didn’t feel particularly like fall as it was a scorching 95 degrees. Stribling is a sixth-generation family farm with a lovely view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The occasional train passing by below the orchard provided an added thrill for the kids.

The toddler picked a few apples, had some fun with the picking stick, and then we headed back to the shade of the country store to indulge in a caramel apple.

We got some beautiful young celery in our CSA bag last week, and I was planning to use it in some sort of soup when I had the thought to use some of our apples as well. This can be served hot or chilled, in case you also live somewhere where the weather and calendar aren’t always in sync.

Recipe: Creamy Apple Celery Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 T butter
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 4 large apples, peeled and chopped
• 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• black pepper to taste

Instructions: Melt butter in stock pot over medium low heat. Add onions and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add celery and cook 2 minutes more. Stir in apples and broth and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat and simmer over medium low heat for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and puree with immersion blender. Serve with freshly ground pepper warm, or chill for at least 1 hour to enjoy cold. Makes 4 servings.

Notes: This creamy soup is lower in fat than your traditional cream of celery, and the sweetness of the apples will appeal to kids and adults alike.

On last year’s trip to the Oregon coast, my mom and I visited the Lincoln City Farmers Market and came across the largest zucchini I’d ever seen. This year, we headed to the source, Barking Dog Farms, just south of Lincoln City at the base of the Siletz River. This was perhaps the greenest, lushest little farm I’ve ever seen, clearly benefiting from the cool, damp climate. The toddlers snacked on watermelon and picked dandelions while the rest of us checked out the offerings.

My sister-in-law chatted with the owner about their heirloom seed supplier as we drooled over the beautiful tomatoes, zucchini, and cut-to-order herbs and greens. I brought back a large, freshly harvested leek, garlic chives, romanesco zucchini, black russian tomato, pluots and some local goatzarella cheese from Fraga Farm. The leek and chives were used in my oven-roasted salmon, and I made a roasted zucchini, tomato and goatzarella salad to serve on the side. Just two of those hearty zucchini fed the entire family of 10!

Hitting the road soon? Check out Culinate’s “Local 50: Good things to eat in every state.”

I have been eagerly hoarding the last of the peaches and tomatoes at the market. On this final weekend of summer, I picked up lovely nectarines (Papa’s Orchard) and golden cherry tomatoes at the West End market. As is probably evident by now, I love the combination of peach and tomato. This time, I grilled the nectarines and made a sweet, tangy salad with the cherry tomatoes, basil, feta and a lemon vinaigrette. The smoky flavor of the nectarine is a great complement to these perfectly sweet cherry tomatoes and salty, fresh feta.

Recipe: Grilled Nectarine Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

• 4 nectarines, halved and pits removed
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes
• 6 large basil leaves, torn or sliced
• 4 oz. sheep milk feta
• vinaigrette - I mixed together lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper

Instructions: Brush the cut side of the nectarines with olive oil and grill over medium high heat until just charred. Remove from grill, chop, and toss with remaining ingredients. Makes 4 servings. Enjoy!

Submitting this for Ramona’s “You Say Tomato” round-up at Houndstooth Gourmet.

This week I had the opportunity to be in the audience for Martha Stewart’s blogging show. I wasn’t one of the cool kids live blogging in the laptop section, but it was a fun experience nonetheless. One of the guests, Eddie Ross (also a Martha employee and Top Design contestant), blogged from backstage, for a different perspective. Matt Armendariz of Matt Bites was the featured foodblogger, who cooked up a batch of cookies with Martha.

I made the most of my day in New York with a foodie tour of the city. I keep a running list on del.icio.us of places I need to visit in NYC, and since I only had a couple hours after the show, I had to narrow it down to a few highlights. In the spirit of Martha, here are my “Foodie Good Things, NYC.”

1. The Martha Stewart set. The kitchen is even more drool-worthy in person. And then there’s the prep kitchen to the side, which I would love to actually get inside of one day.

2. Hot dogs. I have far too many restaurants on my must-visit list, but with limited time I figured I’d stick with a classic fast food option, the hot dog. Little did I know we were going to have to sit through Martha tasting 27 hot dogs for a hot dog competition to air next week! Some of them were pretty spectacular (macaroni and cheese on top?!) and others Martha and her judging partner literally gagged on. I was vicariously hot dogged out by the end, but as I walked through Chelsea in search of a lunch spot, F&B Gudtfood caught my eye with a “healthy hot dog” claim. I settled on the Farm Dog, a chicken sausage on whole wheat bun topped with sweet corn salsa. Yum. Of course I countered the healthy selection with a helping of truffle fries. Can’t wait to see who wins Martha’s hot dog challenge next week, to add to my list for our next trip up.

3. Cupcakes. This is the city that started the cupcake craze, after all. I headed to batch nyc to check out their offerings. I was tempted by the chocolate matcha green tea, but couldn’t resist the salted caramel carrot cake. It’s hard to judge a cupcakery on a carrot cupcake, rather than something light and fluffy like basic vanilla, but this one was outstanding. Moist, dense, and full of fresh carrot without seeming overly healthy. The salted caramel frosting was scrumptious.

4. Cheese. Now that we have a cheese/gourmet shop in our neighborhood and an Italian store not far away, my pantry-stocking list is a little shorter when visiting NY. But that wasn’t going to deter me from visiting the cheese mecca, Murray’s, in the Village. They claimed to carry more of the Wine Spectator 100 Great Cheeses than anyone else, but I failed to count them to see how Cheesetique measures up. I found one of those 100 that I don’t believe my shop carries to bring home, La Serena, which was excellent.

5. Cookbooks. Bonnie Slotnick’s vintage cookbook shop is a treasure trove of food history, and if it were a little roomier, I could easily move in. The friendly owner hands out chocolates of the day, making the shop even more irresistible. I picked up a Peter Rabbit cookbook I’ve been searching for for years, for my kids’ cookbook collection.

6. Kids shops. Of course I couldn’t spend 24 hours away from home and not pick up a little something for the toddler. Doodle Doo’s is a hair salon-slash-boutique with cute toys, onesies, books and games. What’s the food connection? The 1, 2, 3 New York counting book has apples, pizza and hot dogs, of course.

7. Gelato. Another NY must eat, my gelateria of choice was Grom. I had the flavor of the month, Noce, made from walnut oil from Sorrento. Grom uses all-natural ingredients, many from Italy, and supports the Slow Food Presidia project. And it was tasty, too. Rich, creamy and flavorful.

8. Greenmarket. Union Square’s Greenmarket is one of the largest in the country. I love seeing what’s in season in other parts of the country, though New York’s crops are fairly similar to ours. A couple vendors still had strawberries though, and there’s some definite NYC sticker-shock when stumbling across $5 per pound heirloom tomatoes. My $3 brandywine a couple weeks ago seems like a bargain now! I picked up a couple New Jersey peaches to snack on on my drive home, and to add a seventh state to my list of peaches sampled this year. (MD, VA, WV, PA, OR, WA and NJ.)

9. Bialys. We love the bialys from Slim’s over in Queens, and my in-laws were kind enough to pick them up for me to have ready for breakfast.

10. Pizza. Okay, it would be wildly inappropriate to write a Good Things NY list and not include pizza. We usually just eat at one of the perfectly acceptable places in Queens, where my in-laws live, but my personal favorite is in Brooklyn. I’m only a New Yorker by marriage, so please consult the experts before choosing a pizza joint for your own visit.

My biggest foodie craving left unsatisfied this visit was brunch at Balthazar. Would love to hear your NYC cravings or suggestions to add to my must-visit list!

When canning tomatoes recently, I saved some to make a batch of fresh tomato soup. This is highly adaptable and a great way to use up any stray vegetables in the fridge. I froze a portion and the remainder lasted us two nights. The first night we ate it plain with country ham & biscuits on the side, and the second night I added cooked sausage slices to the portion we were about to eat. You could poach some fish in it or add cooked shrimp, chicken, or other protein to make a complete meal.

Recipe: Harvest Tomato Soup

Ingredients

• 2 T olive oil
• 6-8 tomatoes, seeded and diced (or two 8 oz. cans crushed tomatoes)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1 zucchini, diced
• 1 ear corn, cut off kernels
• 1 T dried oregano
• 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• 4 cups water
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro (or parsley)

Instructions: Heat olive oil in soup pot over medium heat. Add garlic, onion and carrots and saute until onion is golden. Add tomatoes, oregano, broth and water. Bring to boil, reduce heat to medium low and simmer for 30 minutes. Stir in zucchini and corn, simmer five minutes longer. Add cilantro and season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat. Serve with a nice crusty baguette and enjoy!

A FarmFreshDC Note: The September installment of Farm Fresh DC will be posted Sept. 26. In honor of the official start of fall, we’ll be featuring apples & squash. If you’ve got a recipe to share, comment below or email me at foodietots at gmail dot com. Thanks!

In the Fields: Apple Picking Season is Here! Though it’s hard to tell from the relentless heat this weekend, fall has definitely arrived at our local orchards. Peaches are on their last legs, so if you didn’t get them this weekend you may be out of luck. Apples are ripe, and I was surprised to learn that some varieties are already past their peak. Stribling Orchard in Markham, Va., was our destination this weekend. They have a well-stocked country store where you can find every type of preserved peach, apple or pumpkin product you could want, plus local cheese, fresh-baked pies, turnovers, bread and cinnamon spice donuts. We picked golden and red delicious and Empire varieties. While apples store well and are brought to market throughout the winter, they’re only on the trees for about two months so head out soon if you want to pick your own! The pick-your-own website provides a directory, and the new Farms + Fests page here lists some upcoming apple festivals you might want to check out if you’re local.

Alexandria Market Report: At the markets, heirloom tomatoes are winding down - available last Wednesday at Upper King Street but gone at the West End, and corn is less abundant. Peppers, summer squash, melons and field-ripened tomatoes are still available, Italian blue plums, and a few grapes are in season. Sweet potatoes and the first baby pumpkins are here. Squash blossoms can still be found at the West End Market, and Westmoreland Farms had several recipes printed out for the taking. Norma’s had a few purple tomatillos again this week, which I snatched up for a final batch of Peach-Tomatillo Salsa (recipe below). Tom the Cheese Guy reports that the Del Ray vendors are still negotiating a winter market. He says there is one city councilman who is very difficult to work with but refused to name names. October 19 will be “Oktoberfest” at the West End market, an alcohol-free, kid-friendly event with vendors planning to serve food.

Recipe: Roasted Peach Tomatillo Salsa

Ingredients:

• 1 peach
• 1 pt. tomatillos, skins removed
• 1 jalapeno (seeded for milder heat)
• 1 small onion
• 1/3 c cilantro
• olive oil
• juice of one lime
• pinch of salt

Instructions: Drizzle a touch of olive oil over peach, tomatillos and jalapeno. Sear on grill over high heat until just charred. Remove from heat and cool. Chop/quarter grilled ingredients and onion, pulse in food processor with cilantro until desired consistency. Stir in lime juice and salt and allow to stand at least 1 hour before serving. Enjoy!