I’ll sum up the results of my September Cookbook Challenge by saying: Once Upon A Tart is an awesome book, and we cooked from it so much that I didn’t cook from my other two September picks. That said, I did take the opportunity to leaf through the Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook and The Pleasures of Cooking For One, and enjoyed getting reacquainted.

We’ve been in a soup mood, so that’s what we’ve been cooking out of Once Upon A Tart (I say we, but honestly it’s mostly been Jeff, which I have no problem with!). We made Black Bean and Pumpkin Soup with Cinnamon and Ginger, Green-Lentil Soup with Coconut Milk and Indian Spices, Creamy Carrot Soup with Fresh Dill and Chickpea-Tomato Soup with Fresh Rosemary. We have the ingredients for Curried Corn Chowder with Coconut Milk but haven’t made it yet.

For October, Jeff and I collectively decided (after all of his soup-making, he should get to help decide) to take a little trip down memory lane and cook from some books that used to be in heavy rotation but have been untouched for ages.

The New Laurel’s Kitchen (“new” being 1986) was the first cookbook I ever bought, when I first moved out of the dorms and into an apartment during my undergrad years at the University of Oregon (Go Ducks!). Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant came into my life several years later, when I was working for a pittance as a reporter at a weekly newspaper and living in a teeny-tiny cottage in Silverton, Oregon. The Mazzi’s Cookbook (not available online, or anymore, perhaps) was a gift to myself when Jeff graduated from UO (a few years after I did) and we moved to the Midwest for newspaper jobs. I was very sad to be leaving the Northwest, and I’d had many meals at Mazzi’s Italian Restaurant (still alive and kicking in its original Eugene location, thank goodness) with family or friends.

In leafing through the books the other day, I was surprised and delighted to see a page-and-a-half about quinoa in Laurel’s Kitchen. Wow, were they ahead of the trend!