Autumn Cooking and Voting

Cold weather has come to stay in Copenhagen. Our morning bike rides include bike seats with ice and wearing long johns and gloves. The inside of our apartment is currently 13C/55F (but I refuse to turn the heat on until December!). This cold weather, both inside and outside, means hearty, warm meals for dinner, like this crostata with roasted beets, caramelized garlic, goat cheese, and pecans.

Bobby and I fell in love with roasted beets while living in France. Our favorite salad, which we ate almost every day and wrote about here, was arugula, roasted beats, soft goat cheese, and walnuts. This rustic tart is obviously inspired by our beloved salad. And, as much as I love to complain about how expensive it is to live in Denmark, beets are actually quite cheep. I picked up 1.5 kg/3.3 lb at the market for only 5 kr./86 cents!

All sorts of squashes and gords have hit the market. I bought a butternut squash one day without any real plan of what to make with it. I stumbled across this recipe for creamy butternut squash soup and had some fun with it. Instead of the sherry called for in the recipe, I used cognac. I also swapped the leeks with an onion and a few shallots. I didn't add the cream at the end, but instead sautéed some smoked duck breast slices and added the rendered fat to the soup. Garnished with the sautéed duck and accompanied by some bread with herbed goat cheese, we had a tasty Autumn-inspired meal.

This is the first American presidential election held since we moved abroad. At first I didn't think I should vote: I don't plan on moving back to the States, so why should I have a say in the politics? However, a French friend of mine convinced me to vote by stating that American politics affects the entire world (and especially Europe), so I should cast a vote for Europe. So Bobby and I voted! It was a tough choice between Roseanne Barr, Barak Obama, and Mitt Romney, but I think we made the right choice.