Food Cold Weather Cravings

It's October, my favorite month! Bit of a cold snap here in North Carolina, and even though it isn't supposed to last, I've been thinking of all the yummy stuff I somehow like even more when it's cold out. I don't know if it's the crisp air, the smell of autumn, or holiday memories...or maybe a combination of the three.

Firstly, gingerbread. Not only does it taste like heaven, I love the way the kitchen smells when I'm baking it.

Secondly, apple cider. I know you can get it year-round, but when I was kid, we'd go to a fruit farm about half an hour away and get freshly made cider every October. So very very yummy.

I've also been wanting some homemade caramels and molasses cookies, but I tend to associate those more with wintery weather, probably because my neighbor and my grandma made them every Christmas.

Does the cooler weather affect your taste cravings? What foods do you most associate with autumn?

 

Pumpkin cream cheese muffins... the simple Weight Watchers base recipe (a box of spice cake mix, the recommended number of eggs and a can of pumpkin) but when ladling into the muffin tins, I fill them 1/3 full, put a spoonful of a cream cheese mix (neufchatel, a little sugar, a little vanilla, an egg white, and a little almond milk to taste/texture), then fill them up the rest of the way with pumpkin/spice cake mix. I don't like pie crusts, but I love pumpkin, so this is one way I like it. Sometimes I put a little tiny bit of fresh ground cinnamon and nutmeg in the cream cheese mix, but not usually because the spice cake is so yum.

I've never had real, fresh cider, Cinn. Cold or hot?

I love baking my habenero spice cookies when it gets cold, the house smells amazing. Fall brings up cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin, and oddly enough, vanilla almond milk cravings. I think the almond milk comes from when we used to make hot chocolate with almond milk instead of water and add Bailey's as a treat a few years ago.
I crave soup year-round so that never really changes for me.

 

Autumn/Fall beer selections! OMB Mecktoberfest and Copper have been high on my recent weeknight selection list.

 

bourbon

 

Temps in the low 50's here today with a brisk wind. Thick pea soup with ham or a beef stew with dumplings.

 

I prefer it cold, but hot with a bit of cinnamon is yummy, too. I think there's an apple orchard close to us here in NC...maybe I can get Lordeden to spend a day there with me soon.

Ooh, I have a similar pumpkin spice muffin recipe... but I just use spice cake mix and a can of pumpkin. The mix is kind of a bitch to stir, but worth it.

Good call...I really like Sam Adams Octoberfest. Some pumpkin ales overdo it a little, but trying them out is always fun.

Hmmm...hazelnut coffee is another big fall thing for me. I was also going to say chai tea, but I drink that all year.

 

Man... now I want some Swamphead's Catherine's Imperial Stout (espresso and chocolate infused).
And some awesome lentil soup with thick crusty bread from the Inn at the Crossroads thread. Or some split-pea and ham. Or my chili.
Warm, hearty... I also crave cabbage now, I can't eat it when it's warm outside. I dig the corned beef and cabbage made from the Culhane family recipe.
And hot toddies with fresh, whole cloves. I like mine with Blanton's from time to time in the winter time....

 

I LOVE gingerbread during cold weather, especially in winter.

In Germany we have traditional chocolate-glazed and cherry-filled gingerbread "cookies" shaped in semi-circles, hearts, circles and stars. Love 'em.

Zey look like zis:


Another traditionally German thing: "Christstollen" (apparently translates to "Christmas stollen") which you can really only get during the Christmas period from early till late December. Zat one looks like zis:



And not to forget, an all-time German classic during the winter months: "Glühwein" (translations: "glogg", "mulled claret" and "hot wine punch"). Looks like zis:

 

Wow, interesting reality check.
It's something we totally take for granted in upstate NY. It's like I can't imagine not having had it, if that makes sense. I drink it daily from Labor Day to Thanksgiving.
And this is a really bountiful year for apples so the wonderful cider is flowing in abundance.

 

I can walk outside and make orange juice or lime-aide, so it balances out, I guess

 

I second the fresh cider. Mrs. Levite and I were just in Minneapolis for a cousin's bat mitzvah, and we stopped en route home at an apple farm for freshly picked Honeycrisp apples and fresh pressed cider to take home. Stunningly good apples, and the cider was awesome fresh and cold, and absolutely unreal when mulled with spices and a pinch of brown sugar, and served hot over a shot of rum.

I have begun craving oxtail soup, also, which is a cold weather favorite of mine. And barley and sausage soup. And lamb stewed with wheat-berries and ale.

Also, there is a dish traditional to Jewish cuisine called chulent (or cholent, or hamin), which is served for Shabbat (Sabbath, Saturday) lunch in cooler weather. It is a beef stew usually featuring various beans and barley or potatoes, as well as carrot and onion, etc. Friday evening before sunset, one sets the pot to cooking over a low flame, using a blech (I don't know what it's called in English: it's like a circle of enameled cast iron that you put over the burner so that it spreads the heat from the flames evenly. I found mine at a store in a Jewish neighborhood, and the proprietor knew what it was called in Yiddish and in Hebrew, but not in English), and it cooks slowly from Friday sunset to Saturday lunch, around 18 hours or so, by which time it is a thing of splendid deliciousness, though more than one bowl will send you to sleep faster than Ambien.

 

Mulled wine
Hot Chocolate
Tomato Soup
Potato Soup
Veggie Chili
Pumpkin anything...lattes, pie, cookies, cupcakes mmmm with whipped cream or cream cheese icing...droooooool

 

Lately I have been buying German sausage, or the closest I can find here. Sadly I was able to find it much easier in Oregon, but they do have incredible quantities of lentils and other things I never eat here.

 

What type of sausage? Bratwurst, Wiener, Frankfurter, Deutschländer, Bremer?

 

I wish I had such choices. We are talking "German Brand" sausage or something to that affect. But I have been eyeing the Bratwurst - that is what is readily available here. Of course there is a Meat locker in Moscow that probably has superb German Sausage with some better selection but that is a trip I rarely if ever make.

 

It's not cold here yet. October and it's in the 80s.. unheard of for the UK!

When it does get cold, fresh fish and chips.

 

I eat fewer sandwiches and more hot meals. Chicken noodle soup is one of my favorites. Heated Mike's Hard Apple Cider. Come to think of it, I seem to start craving hot liquids quite a bit in the autumn and also winter.

 

I used to live near a German butcher and developed a real taste for the thin, mild white sausages.
I can't recall the name.
What are those?