A fall meal, with recipes: maple pork tenderloin fillet with carmelized apples and baked goat cheese salad

Still working my way through the apples, but I can proudly say I'm down to six!

I used several in this recipe for maple pork tenderloin fillet with carmelized apples, which comes from one of my favorite, go-to blogs for dinner ideas, dinnerwithjulie.com. I can honestly say that this was one of the tastiest things I've made in a long time. Even if you don't like maple or apples (What are you, some kind of FREAK? Who doesn't like APPLES?!), go check out the recipe simply for the sheer genius of the pork tenderloin "fillet." I mean, why haven't I seen this anywhere before?

While I give Julie all the credit for the entree, I must give some props to myself for adding an elegant yet simple salad of baked goat cheese with greens that really rounded out the meal. I had something similar when we traveled to the UK several years ago but sort of forgot about it until I was browsing through my copy of Joy of Cooking.

[Time for another sidebar: I only really learned how to cook properly about 10 years ago. For some reason, however, I had a decent array of cookbooks prior to that which I never even looked at. I really only cracked open my still-new copy of Joy of Cooking earlier this year, even though I bought it in 1997. I also have Craig Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook, and I'm sure I got that even earlier. Weird. End of sidebar.]

Apparently I was not alone in thinking that the salad looked very tasty...

Baked Goat Cheese and Baby Greens (from Joy of Cooking)
Ingredients
6 cups mixed baby greens
1 cup fine unseasoned breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon dried thyme (note: I actually used fresh thyme and it was just fine)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 rounds fresh goat cheese

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a small baking dish for the cheese. In a shallow bowl, stir together the breadcrumbs and thyme. Pour the olive oil in another shallow bowl. Coat the cheese rounds first with the olive oil and then with the breadcrumbs. Place the cheese in the baking dish and bake until golden brown, about 6 minutes.

Meanwhile, toss the greens with your favorite vinaigrette and divide among four salad plates. Place a round of cheese in the center of each and serve immediately.