Root Vegetable Time!!!

I love Autumn - for turtlenecks and boots, for big magazine issues of InStyle and Elle, for beautiful leaves turning colours, for soups, and for root vegetables!

Friday I bought the October issue of Bon Appetit magazine... the apple torte with breadcrumb-hazelnut crust grabbed my attention as did the headline 'easy fall dinners'. Any kind of apple cake or coffee cake reminds me of all those coffee cakes mom used to make for the workers for coffee break on the farm. We never had dessert after dinner at our house but now that I think about it there were always coffee cakes sitting on the counter. Thank goodness I was active and involved in sports, otherwise I would have been an obese child with the amount of food that was in our house growing up.

Anyway.... I did my first pass of the magazine on Friday night and picked out a few recipes that I wanted to try right away. One being on page 93, the Root Vegetable Tagine with Sweet Potatoes,Carrots, Turnips, and Spice-Roasted Chickpeas.... as I write this Chris is making the quinoa (instead of the recommended couscous) while the tagine (moroccan for 'stew') sits and the flavours blend. We both keep 'testing' the flavours.... not sure if we'll even be hungry for dinner - the flavours are amazing. I don't cook with olives too often so that was a change and the other thing I had to prep beforehand was to make preserved lemon slices. Bam! These flavours are soooo good. The recipe is too long to write out here but you can pick up the issue or check out their website www.bonappetit.com

The Spice Roasted Chickpeas are similar to the ones in Delicious Detox that I made in the snack section. So you spoon the couscous (or in our case quinoa) into a bowl and then spoon the vegetable tagine into the center and then sprinkle the chickpeas over it.

While I was making the tagine, I was also making a banana, pumpkin walnut loaf.... I got the recipe from a facebook friend that has this amazing food album on her page. She was kind enough to share the recipe (thanks KLC!) and I decided to of course shake it up and substitute! Here's the recipe with my substitutions in brackets where done! Turned out delicious but when I do it again I would add a bit more ginger and nutmeg or actually get pumpkin spice. Great!

2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs (2 tbsp ground flaxseed mixed with 6 tbsp water)
1/3 cup vegetable oil (coconut oil)
1 1/3 cups canned pumpkin puree
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup white sugar (1/3 cup raw cane sugar)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (blend of spelt and quinoa flour, same amount)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (didn't have so I did 1 tsp ginger and 1 tsp nutmeg)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 9x5 inch loaf pan.
In a large bowl, stir together the mashed banana, eggs, oil, pumpkin, honey and sugar. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, pie spice and cinnamon, stir into the banana mixture until just combined. Fold in the walnuts. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Cool loaf in the pan for 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Off to eat!