Check out the scary cheddar spread that I made for my company’s Halloween party. Okay, so there isn’t anything all that scary about the spread itself (I mean, the recipe is a little white trash which, in a way, is scary.) The truly creepy part of this dish is my kalamata spider garnish. The spiders weren’t nearly as labor intensive to make as last year’s skull and bones crostini, but I think they’re just as cool. Simply use half an olive for the body, and then cut thin strips for the legs. If you wanted to up the creep factor, you could even use a couple of peppercorns to replicate those gross bulging eyeballs that spiders sometime have. I didn’t go there – the shiny, black kalamata skin gave these spiders enough of a menacing quality for my taste! Happy Halloween!

I don’t normally go for vegetarian meat products. Most of these fake meats aren’t very good, and I have actually never felt like I needed any sort of replacement for the meat that is missing from my diet. A simple pasta with marinara or vegetarian soup is a complete meal in my book. However, I have always enjoyed Field Roast, a popular vegetarian meat substitute that is made locally here in Seattle, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, although the products are often formed into sausage and other meat-like shapes, Field Roast isn’t trying to replicate the taste and texture of meat. It is very much its own thing with its own unique flavor. The other reason that I like Field Roast is because it is produced in one of my favorite Seattle neighborhoods: Georgetown. Field Roast is a common sight on the menus of many Georgetown pubs. I can’t get enough of the Field Roast Reuben at Smartypants or Georgetown Liquor Company’s “Picard,” a Field Roast sandwich on a ciabatta roll served with vegan au jus sauce for dipping!

Field Roast Grain Meat Company was founded by Seattle chef David Lee in 1997. Wanting to create a flavorful, protein-rich alternative to meat, Lee looked to a product first developed in seventh century China: seitan. According to legend, seitan was first created by vegetarian Buddhist monks. It is made by kneading wheat flour dough in water until all of the starch dissolves; the stretchy gluten that is left behind is seitan, and it can be used in a myriad of ways (if you have ever had the mock duck at a vegetarian Chinese restaurant, then you have eaten seitan.) Instead of focusing on Asian seasonings, chef Lee flavored his seitan with the European ingredients commonly used in charcuterie. The end result was a unique product that he called Field Roast. Field Roast flavors include Lentil-Sage, Wild Mushroom and Smoked Tomato. It is available in a wide variety of products including sausage links, deli slices, breaded cutlets and the Celebration Loaf: savory field roast stuffed with butternut squash, apples and mushrooms. Vegetarians – do yourself a favor, skip the tofurky this year and treat yourself to a Celebration Loaf instead!

The Stranger, Seattle’s offbeat free weekly, recently did a piece on Field Roast. The author of the article proclaimed Field Roast’s Mexican Chipotle Sausages to be the best of the bunch so I picked up a package at my local co-op last week. I crumbled up two of the links and scrambled them with onions and eggs to use as a filling for breakfast burritos. Robert, a true breakfast burrito aficionado, went crazy for it. He even described the Field Roast as “meaty.” The Mexican Chipotle Field Roast makes a great substitute for chorizo. Like chorizo, it is heavily seasoned with garlic and spices. Make no mistake, it is plenty spicy – I topped my breakfast burritos with red chili but it ended up being completely superfluous. Field Roast’s Mexican Chipotle Sausage would be great anywhere that chorizo is used – empanadas, enchiladas, huevos rancheros, etc. You could even use it to make a spicy “chorizo” pizza. Last night, we stir-fried the rest of our Field Roast and stuffed it into crispy taco shells alongside some fideos for an easy, delicious dinner.

On last week’s episode of Mad Men, Don Draper snapped at his secretary and chauvinistically demanded “Get me a bear claw!” Robert thought it was hilarious and has been saying it to me all week long (yeah, real funny Robert.) In the end, I relented. I’m such a good woman. It was kind of hard to say no when I was already planning to make breakfast this Sunday and I just happened to have all of the ingredients on hand for bear claws (even almond extract, which is amazing considering how tightly I control the kitchen’s inventory – normally, if I discover an ingredient that I haven’t used in the past year, I toss it.)

Once I started researching bear claw recipes, I realized that I didn’t actually know what a bear claw was. I mean, I knew that it was a pastry and was made to look like a bear claw but, if you were to ask me what a bear claw is traditionally filled with, I would have been clueless. You would think, with a cool name like bear claw, I would have eaten one once as a child. Robert says kids usually pass them over because they aren’t filled with jelly or covered in sprinkles and frosting – makes sense. Traditional bear claws are indeed quite simple – a sweet yeast dough filled with an almond paste filling and topped with slivered almonds. Like everything else, they have been bastardized; nowadays, you see doughnuts and fritters being passed off as bear claws or, worse, bear claws that are filled with chocolate chips and coconut.

I decided to keep things traditional with my bear claws. I found a dough recipe online that was easy and called for significantly less butter than most. I made the dough Saturday evening reducing much of the work the next morning. Most of the filling recipes I saw called for almond paste, an expensive ingredient that I did not have on hand and wasn’t willing to buy. Instead, I used a combination of ground almonds and a few drops of almond extract. I didn’t have quite enough almonds so the filling ended up on the thin side and oozed out the sides of the claws a bit (refrigerating the filling overnight might have helped to remedy this.) The process of assembling the bear claws wasn’t difficult and, since I was only making six, it wasn’t very time-consuming. I used the instructive photos over at Joe Pastry (where, incidentally, I also got the recipe for the filling) as a guide. The only thing I did differently was to place the rolls seam side down. Also, I didn’t have any slivered almonds so I used some sliced almonds to make decorative claws instead. My bear claws tasted great, and I think they turned out pretty cute too!

Click here for my Bear Claw recipe >>

My newest goal is to learn more about the different styles of beer. I prefer wine, but wine just doesn’t feel right when you are at the pub. I’ve been in a bit of a beer rut for several years now. I typically choose one of two styles of beer when I’m out: a nice, hoppy IPA or a cheap yet light and refreshing Mexican, Japanese, Polish, etc. lager. This spring, I branched out and tried a Belgian pale ale, and I enjoyed it very much. Its spicy, almost floral, aroma was unique and made me realize that, like wine, there is a whole world of beers out there each with their own unique style. It was time I got to know some of them.

One website that I find particularly useful is beeradvocate.com. There, you will find information on the various styles of beer, up-to-date beer news, community forums and tons of beer reviews. Recently, I enjoyed a beer called Mothership Wit from New Belgium Brewery. A quick search on beeradvocate.com informed me that this a witbier, a Belgian style of beer that is traditionally brewed with spices such as orange peel and coriander. Witbiers are typically very aromatic and a bit sour. Because they are unfiltered, witbiers are usually pale and cloudy in appearance (hence the name witbier which means “white beer.”) You may be familiar with Hoegaarden, a popular witbier found on many pub menus. I liked this style of beer enough that I picked up a bottle of Deschutes Brewery’s 20th Anniversary Wit to try. It was quite similar to the New Belgium Wit but perhaps a bit more subtle with the spices.

After work yesterday, I stopped by Pike Street Beer and Wine Shop, a relatively new neighborhood beer store located on Capitol Hill (on the corner of Pike and Belmont.) They have beers from all over the world – Russia, Japan, Great Britain, Lithuania, you name it! They have a decent selection of domestic beers as well. I spotted some rather unusual beers including a Japanese red rice ale and a beer brewed with dates. When I mentioned I was interested in learning more about beer, the shop’s owner suggested that I come to one of their weekly beer tastings (every Friday from 5-7.) Sounds like fun! I picked up a couple of saison farmhouse ales (sturdy, rustic beers that were traditionally brewed for consumption by farm workers throughout the summer harvest) and a bottle of Dogfish Head Brewery’s Punkin’ Ale. Dogfish Head is one of the highest rated pumpkin ales on beeradvocate.com. I cracked that one open last night. It was less pumpkiny than the Elysian Night Owl I tried last year. Mostly, it tasted like a well-crafted brown ale: a bit bitter and bit sweet with just a light hint of pumpkin pie. Pumpkin ale – what a perfect way to kick off October!