This is part four in my series of pumpkin dessert recipe roundups. I’ve already looked at cheesecakes, trifles, and bread puddings. And you thought pumpkin pie was the only thing you could serve at Thanksgiving! For this post, I’m turning my attention to pumpkin cakes.

Who doesn’t love cake? It’s really the ultimate dessert, isn’t it? That’s why we serve it at all the important milestones of our lives. You get married, there’s a cake. Baby shower? Cake. Birthday? Cake. You get the picture.

Pumpkin is a great ingredient to use in cakes. I love spicy desserts, full of cinnamon, nutmeg, and other classic flavors of the fall. These cake recipes all include these wonderful flavors that are associated with pumpkin and offer something different for those of you who don’t love custard (which is part of bread pudding, pumpkin pies, and trifles). Plus, just about all of them include cream cheese frosting. Is there anyone who doesn’t like cream cheese frosting?

This recipe for pumpkin raisin bars is what I used last year for Thanksgiving. They turned out to be delicious, but I had some issues with them. For some reason, the center of the cake completely collapsed when I took it out of the oven. I think I was too concerned with making sure that they didn’t overcook, that I undercooked them. Luckily, it made a huge amount of the bars, so I was able to salvage the parts that were cooked, and just slathered even more cream cheese frosting on them. They turned out really well, despite my issues.

Nothing sounds better to me than this pumpkin cake with sage ice cream and pumpkin cherry compote, but come on? Who really has the time to make a compote, bake a cake, and whip up a homemade ice cream during this crazy holiday season? I know I don’t, which is a shame because I love sage and I really want to try it.

If you’re a huge fan of pumpkin pie and apple pie, you may want to try this recipe that combines the best of both: pumpkin-apple streusel cake. It looks delicious and I’m sure that the two flavors mesh really well together. Nothing says fall like apples and pumpkin.

If you’re looking for something a little more traditional, how about this recipe for spiced pumpkin layer cake with cream cheese frosting. It may just look like a basic layer cake, but with coconut, pineapple, and dried currants stuffed into the cake, there’s a lot going on.

With a title like pumpkin gooey butter cakes, is it any wonder that this recipe comes courtesy of Paula Deen? Essentially, she just undercooks the cakes to leave the center a little gooey. Isn’t that I what did last year?

This pumpkin-honey cake recipe caught my attention because the cream cheese frosting has pumpkin in it too. The directions have a whole lot of decorating instructions, though, and that makes me a little nervous. I’m a lot of things, but expert cake decorator is not one of them.

Do any of these recipes have your mouth watering?

Related posts

• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part one: pumpkin cheesecake
• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part two: pumpkin bread pudding
• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part three: pumpkin trifles

In this column, I’ve tried to break certain stereotypes about vegetarians: that we all support PETA, or that vegetarians and vegans are the same thing. Now I’m going to drop another knowledge bomb on you: vegetarians can be just as unhealthy as the rest of you. For example, last night, I took a wonderful vegetarian protein source, tempeh, which is also full of iron and calcium, and made a recipe that involved flour, breadcrumbs, sugar, and butter. Oh, copious amounts of wonderful, artery-clogging butter.

Yes, out of all of the recipes for broiled tempeh, or stir-fried tempeh, I managed to find a recipe for tempeh buffalo wings– and man, were they delightful.

These wings, or “tempeh wingz” as the recipe is actually titled, were obviously originally made by hippies, so I had to modify the recipe slightly. For instance, I do not own rice milk, so I used regular milk. I also don’t have panko, which are Japanese breadcrumbs, so I used regular breadcrumbs. The sauce also calls for agave nectar, but since I’m not Deb, I don’t have that in my kitchen. I ended up using sugar instead, which is a huge mistake that I’ll get to in a moment.

The process of making this is kind of interesting. First, you dip the cut tempeh into the milk, then you dip it in your flour and spices, followed by another milk bath, before it’s covered in breadcrumbs. You bake for 10 minutes on each side, and there you go. The sauce, the recipe for which is also at this link, is a little off for me. For one, it only calls for 2 1/2 T of hot sauce (btw, you have to use Frank’s. That’s not even up for discussion), and you really need way more than that. There is no way you should have 4 T of butter and 4T of ketchup and only use 2 1/2 T of hot sauce. That’s just crazy talk.

The big thing with the sauce though, is the agave nectar/sugar. YOU DON’T NEED IT. Again, I’d like to draw your attention to the 4 T of ketchup. That’s a lot of sugar right there. You don’t need any additional sweetener– it becomes a little sickly. When I made this, I had to add a crapload more hot sauce and a bunch of salt and pepper to try to counter-balance the sugar.

After some major doctoring though, these turned out deliciously. Even Luke, who was intrigued by the familiar buffalo wing smell, but weirded out by the whole tempeh thing, was intrigued. In fact, he ended up snagging several of them, saying that “they seem so wrong, but I still want some.” Now if that’s not an endorsement, I don’t know what is.

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I’m continuing to scour the internet for you, providing all sort of pumpkin dessert recipes for you to consider for your Thanksgiving feast. I’ve already discussed pumpkin cheesecakes and pumpkin bread puddings. In this post I want to discuss an option that may not even be on your Thanksgiving dessert radar: trifle.

I know I, for one, always think of trifle as a summer dessert, with its layers of cake, fruit, and custard. My siblings and I were obsessed with our mother’s trifles when we were growing up, always begging for her to make it. With layers of peaches, berries, pound cake soaked in orange juice (and sometimes liquor, when we got older), and vanilla pudding, they were (and continue to be) truly delicious. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that I never thought about making a pumpkin trifle.

That all changed, however, when I was looking for something different to do for a Thanksgiving dessert a few years ago.  I caught an episode of Paula Deen’s show and she was making a pumpkin gingerbread trifle. She made it look incredibly easy and delicious. I thought it was a perfect recipe to try, and it was a big hit. Indeed, it was very easy to make. Essentially, all you have to do is make some pudding, bake some boxed gingerbread, and then put everything together. As I said, it won a lot of good reviews.

Paula Deen’s is not the only recipe for pumpkin trifle, though. Epicurious has a competing recipe for a pumpkin gingerbread trifle. If you have the time, and want to feel like more of a gourmet, this recipe is probably for you. It includes a recipe for homemade gingerbread to use, as well as a pumpkin mousse to layer it with.

I’ve longingly looked over this recipe for autumn trifle with roasted apples, pears, and pumpkin caramel sauce for years now, but I’ve never had the guts to try it. Guts may not be the right word, because there’s nothing in it that I think would pose a problem, but it looks like it takes a lot of time, which I generally don’t have. Who does? In any case, it looks amazing, with homemade cinnamon pastry cream, pumpkin sauce, and roasted fruit, all layered with lady fingers. This is the type of recipe I would love someone else to cook for me!

Finally, there is this recipe for pumpkin praline trifle. It’s advertised as very similar to a tiramisu, so if you like the famous Italian dessert, you may want to check this out. It definitely sounds great, with the mascarpone cream, pumpkin filling, and ladyfingers.

Have any of these recipes piqued your interest?

Related posts

• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part four: pumpkin cakes
• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part two: pumpkin bread pudding
• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part one: pumpkin cheesecake

I’ve been digging through all the pumpkin dessert recipes out there so you don’t have to! This is the second in my series of posts about pumpkin desserts, the first being about pumpkin cheesecake. In this installment, I want to turn my attention to one of my favorite desserts of all time (whether or not it’s made with pumpkin): bread pudding.

I love, love, love, love, love bread pudding. There is something so rustic and soul-warming about it. It’s the perfect texture due to the combination of bread and custard. Aside from that, it’s incredibly versatile. If you’re a chocoholic you can add chocolate chips, chunks, or sauce. If you love fruit, you can add just about any type of berry, bananas, apples, or anything else. Of course, if you just like bread pudding, there’s the great standby recipe.

This post, however, is dedicated to pumpkin bread pudding, a great option for your Thanksgiving feast. The recipe that I’ve used is this one from the Inn at Sandwich Center: pumpkin bread pudding with caramel sauce. The thing that I really love about this recipe is that there isn’t too much sugar in it. In fact, it’s surprisingly not sweet, which is why you have to drench it with caramel sauce. It’s nice, though, that everyone can control how sweet they would like their portion to be. Make sure you don’t forget the caramel sauce though, because as I implied, the pudding itself isn’t quite sweet enough. Honestly, you can just buy a jar of caramel sauce. If you’re embarrassed, pour it into a sauce pan to heat and serve, no one will ever know.

Epicurious has a competing recipe for pumpkin bread pudding with caramel sauce. It doesn’t seem like there are enough eggs to make a really luxurious custard though. I do, however, have to admit that it seems a whole lot easier than the Sandwich Inn’s recipe.

This recipe is pretty unique because instead of adding a pumpkin custard to leftover bread, it adds custard to pumpkin-cranberry bread. Of course that creates a whole other step of having to bake the pumpkin bread itself, but it’s definitely a unique take on the dish, and it has me curious. If you’re curious too, check out pumpkin bread pudding with cranberry caramel sauce.

OK, so it’s not bread pudding, but this recipe for pumpkin ginger rice pudding looks fantastic. If you’re being ambitious, I would recommend giving it a look. It calls for fresh pumpkin (or butternut squash), so it’s probably a little too involved for me. I’m perfectly happy to open a can of pumpkin, thank you very much.

This recipe for pumpkin ginger bread pudding has all the same great flavors as the rice pudding, but it too expects you to cook your own pumpkin. I do love Anne Burrell, though, so I’ll give her a pass.

Are you as big a fan of bread pudding as I am? Will you be serving some pumpkin bread pudding at your Thanksgiving this year?

Related posts

• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part one: pumpkin cheesecake
• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part four: pumpkin cakes
• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part three: pumpkin trifles

As part of my Great Pumpkin Massacre of ‘09, I have been going through the bags of frozen pumpkin puree that I have stored in my freezer and making delicious treats. This weekend, I decided to bust out a recipe I had made once before: pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Fall to me = pumpkin, so I will put it in just about anything if you let me. It just makes everything instantly better. So chocolate chip cookies? Pretty damn good. Add pumpkin to that? Amazing.

The funny thing about these cookies is that I make them totally wrong– and I can’t figure out what it is that I’m doing different. Three possibilities: the recipe is actually from the King Arthur Flour website, so they naturally tell you to use King Arthur Flour. I do not, because I have no idea what that is. They also tell you to add walnuts, which I also do not do, because nothing ruins a dessert or a bread faster than nasty little nuts hiding inside, just waiting to ruin all of your flavor fun. The third (and the more I think about it, the most likely) possibility is that the fact that I’m using real pumpkin puree instead of canned is affecting the dough.

Whatever the reason, my cookie dough does not look like the cookie dough that they show you in the recipe. That dough looks firm and solid– like normal chocolate chip cookie dough. My dough, on the other hand, is much fluffier. This results in a almost cake-like cookie. In fact, I would say that they’re reminiscent of muffin tops. While I would prefer a more substantial cookie, it’s still freakin’ chocolate chip and pumpkin. So whatever the texture, it is delightful.

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Thanksgiving is coming, and along with the turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and cranberry sauce it also means pumpkin desserts! Yes, I usually eat so much at the main meal that I swear I won’t have dessert. If we’re being honest here, I’d much rather have another helping of stuffing over dessert, but at the end of the day, if Thanksgiving is about anything, it’s about gluttony (oh, and giving thanks), so there’s always room for dessert.

Every year I bring a pumpkin dessert to the festivities, because I know it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without something spicy and pumpkin-y to end the meal. Well, the first part of the meal, anyway, because later in the evening, the first round of sandwiches come out. In any case, I’ve tried to remain somewhat creative in my choices for dessert, avoiding the traditional pumpkin pie, and opting for something a little less obvious. Because of this, I’ve browsed through many recipes, and I want to share some of the ones I’ve tried and some of the ones I’ve wanted to try in a series of posts. This first entry focuses on pumpkin cheesecake!

A great alternative to pumpkin pie is the pumpkin cheesecake. The only drawback is that cheesecake is quite heavy and may not be the best accompaniment to such a huge dinner. It is delicious, though. In the past I’ve tried Emeril Lagasse’s recipe. It turned out really well (even though I skipped the bourbon spiked cream, which I’m sure is delicious). I liked that it was made in a food processor (mostly because I don’t have a standing mixer). However, my food processor at the time didn’t fit the whole cake and I had to do it in batches. This recipe does make an enormous cake, which may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your situation.

If you want some other choices, this recipe for pumpkin cheesecake crumble squares looks interesting. I like that there is some ginger in the filling; I’m sure that adds a great flavor. The topping has sour cream in it, though, and I’m not a big fan of sour cream in my cheesecakes.

Epicurious has a great selection of unique pumpkin cheesecake recipes. There’s a pumpkin-pecan cheescake that includes a caramel praline topping. I’m sure it’s delicious, but it’s a lot of steps, for me, and I’m a little afraid of sugar work.

Epicurious really loves those sour cream toppings. If you dig them too, you should check out these recipes: pumpkin cheesecake with bourbon sour cream topping and pumpkin cheesecake with marshmallow-sour cream topping and gingersnap crust.

If I were going to try one this year, it would definitely be this recipe for pumpkin ginger cheesecake.

Do you have a favorite pumpkin cheesecake recipe? Are you going to be trying one this year?

Related posts

• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part four: pumpkin cakes
• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part two: pumpkin bread pudding
• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part three: pumpkin trifles

Each week, fabulous recipes grace Debbie’s in-box and pop up on her computer screen, and she’s sharing her favorites with you.

I’ve got to admit, that even though I don’t eat wheat or white carbs, I always have a bite or two of stuffing on Thanksgiving. It’s partly because my dad makes the most wonderful stuffing imaginable, and partly because stuffing says “tradition” like no other side dish.

Imagine, for a moment, a Thanksgiving without a traditional stuffing. C’mon, try it — you’ll be all right. It’s fun to shake things up a bit and have something unexpected to put on your plate, isn’t it? If you’re a little too steeped in tradition and want to branch out a bit this year, here are some alternatives to a traditional stuffing that you and your guests are sure to enjoy. You might just create a new heirloom recipe for your family.

Butternut squash and cheddar bread pudding — This could very well be a near-perfect dish to go with turkey. There’s bread, but lots of cheese, cream, kale, and butternut squash will disguise it from anything resembling stuffing. And you’ve got your green veggie and orange veggie baked right in.

How about an autumn potato salad? Heidi Swanson breathes new life into a roasted potato salad with a mustard vinaigrette, roasted carrots, shallots, parsnips and scallions. Wouldn’t that be lovely with turkey — and a dish without all the bread is a welcome change.

Kona’s butternut squash risotto sounds like the perfect way to ditch the stuffing and enjoy something new to complement turkey (or Tofurky?). It’s seasonal, slightly sweet and rich … a Thanksgiving tradition in the making!

This barley bake is very simple, but with mushrooms, fresh parsley and onions all cooked in broth, it will compliment your turkey perfectly. And you can easily add your favorite ingredients to jazz it up a bit and wow your guests. Oh, and there’s pine nuts … score.

OK, technically this recipe for rice stuffing with apples, herbs and bacon is a stuffing, but non-traditional in that it’s rice. Who makes rice stuffing? Well, you could. I’m just saying. It’s got bacon.

How about you? Any non-traditional alternatives to stuffing to share with us?

Related posts

• Hold the Meat – this butternut squash risotto will save your Thanksgiving
• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part four: pumpkin cakes
• Thanksgiving pumpkin desserts part three: pumpkin trifles

I admit, my eye-catching title sure doesn’t make it sound simple, but trust me, this is the easiest healthy breakfast you could possibly create. You can plan ahead a little, right? It’s that simple.

I’ve been experimenting with oatmeal in the slow cooker and I’ve gotten it down to a science. It’s not only convenient, but it’s also the healthiest way to cook oatmeal to get all of the nutritional benefits. I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but it’s not just about the ingredients here: the process is important in boosting the nutrition of this yummy breakfast. Yeah, I admit it — there’s a place for technique.

We’re not talking some snobby French cooking school technique … just follow these three simple steps and you’ll have your healthy oatmeal.

1. The morning before you plan on eating the oatmeal, put the ingredients into your slow cooker and allow them to soak all day.
Ingredients:

• 1 c. whole oats
• 3 c. water
• 1/2 c. organic whole milk yogurt, plain
• 1 c. dried fruit (try to find unsulfured and unsweetened or fruit sweetened; I used currants in the above picture)

Why would you do such a thing as to soak your grains? The yogurt interacts with the oats, causing the anti-nutrients to dissipate, leaving a more digestible grain and boosting vitamin content, especially B vitamins.

2. Before bed, set your slow cooker to low. You want the oatmeal to cook about 7-9 hours, so plan your bedtime and waking time accordingly.

3. Wake up to your delicious breakfast! You want to try to serve this oatmeal with a little fat, which helps the nutrients absorb better. Swirl in some unrefined coconut oil, a little whole milk yogurt, flax or hemp seed oil or even some organic butter.

Did I mention all of the amazing benefits of this breakfast, besides the nutrition?

• Convenient — It is hot and ready for you when you wake up, smelling up the house with its hearty aroma.
• Variable — You can change it up so it is never the same oatmeal twice. Use different dried fruits, add nuts and seeds before serving, even swirl in more yogurt.
• Cheap — Oh, it is cheap to make (buy whole oats in bulk) and there is no packaging to clutter up the house and the environment.
• Portable — It can be portable — just stick it in a thermos, coffee cup, container of choice and eat it on the run.

You know you have the 24 hours to spare, and you’re dying to try this oatmeal. All the cool kids are doing it….

This article was originally posted on That’s Fit three years ago by me. It has been altered to fit CliqueClack Food’s style.

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My Idea of something different for dinner is adding some onion or bacon to my burger instead of having them plain. My wife, on the other hand, thinks cheeseburgers once a week is too often. She likes to try different things and likes a variety in the weekly menu. This chicken casserole is a good change of pace.

This recipe is a good one to add to your repertoire. It is simple and quick to prepare. You can use any meat in place of the chicken without having to change any other ingredients. We have used canned tuna and diced ham in place of the chicken and it’s just as good.

Sour Chicken Casserole

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups diced cooked chicken (I used chicken thighs)
• 18 oz noodles cooked (I used egg noodles)
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 1 can of cream of mushroom soup
• 1 16oz container sour cream
• 1 cup shredded cheese ( I used Wal-mart’s fiesta blend shredded cheese)

The easiest way to cook the chicken is to get some boneless skinless breasts and grill them. Add a little seasoning salt to them and grill until done. Dice the breasts and set aside.

My wife prefers thighs to breasts so we usually mix some seasoning salt into a little flour, add the chicken thighs to the flour and coat lightly, but completely. Add a few tablespoons of vegetable oil to a large frying pan and heat to a medium high temperature. Add the chicken thighs to the frying pan and cover. Cook the thighs for 5 to 8 minutes and turn over. Fry on the second side until done. This will take another 5 to 10 minutes depending on the actual heat of your stove and the size of the thighs. After the thighs are done set aside to cool. Remove the skin and remove the meat from the bone and dice. You can dice up the skin and add it to the casserole or enjoy the tasty snack while you are preparing the casserole for the oven.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine chicken, noodles, Cream of Chicken soup, Cream of Mushroom soup, and the sour cream. Mix well.

Pour into greased 9×13 casserole dish. Sprinkle top with the shredded cheese.

Bake 45-60 minutes.

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I’m aware that I put capers in almost everything lately. There’s definitely a caper energy permeating my household these days … and why not? They add a subtle saltiness and tang to any dish and I love the complexity that capers add to something that could be humdrum without them.

That doesn’t necessarily apply to this pasta recipe, because I don’t think there’s anything hum-drum about it. I have Emeril to loosely thank for my inspiration for this dish, with his fresh seafood pasta recipe, but beyond the seafood, tomatoes and white wine, they really don’t have a lot in common.

I was going for something distinctly tomato-y, but with some unexpected flavors, and I think I accomplished that, but without offending any traditionalists with a weird taste sensation. It’s traditional with a twist and it was a big hit tonight.

Seafood Pasta with Tomatoes, Baby Spinach and Capers

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces pasta, cooked to package instructions
• 1 onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 pound mixed seafood (we used the Trader Joe’s seafood blend with calamari, scallops and shrimp)
• 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1 tablespoon pesto
• 14-ounce can white beans, rinsed and drained
• 2 tablespoons capers
• about 4 good-sized handfuls baby spinach
• a drizzle of balsamic vinegar (about 2 tablespoons)
• 2 pinches sea salt or to taste
• lots and lots and lots of freshly ground black pepper
• pecorino romano cheese, freshly grated

Cook the onions and garlic over medium heat in some olive oil until translucent, just a few minutes. Add the seafood and saute for about 3 minutes, before adding the tomatoes and white wine. Cook for about 5 minutes of until seafood is done. Add the pesto, capers and beans and heat through. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in a drizzle or balsamic vinegar and the spinach, folding until spinach is wilted. Serve with grated cheese.

Just 1/4 teaspoon each of cinnamon and cumin and a 1/4 cup of currants or raisins would change this dish dramatically, giving it a Moroccan flair. Try it for a fun and exotic meal.

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I bought brown rice tortillas this week, and that means quesadillas in our house. The little tortilla pies are not something we indulge in very often because they just don’t come out great with corn tortillas. Since Owen and I don’t eat wheat, and we find it hard to work with the texture of the sprouted grain tortillas, we weren’t really left with much choice until I stumbled upon these little beauties at Trader Joe’s.

Of course we couldn’t keep it simple — it’s like unleashing a newly released prisoner in Las Vegas, right on Brothel Street. It’s hard just to ease into it once you’ve been given permission to let loose. We made two different kinds of quesadillas tonight, and it was our melding of two cultures that created the masterpiece.

Yes, we put pesto in a quesadilla, along with homemade sausage from the local meat market, two kinds of cheese and some caramelized onions and mushrooms. A little drizzle of aged balsamic vinegar and a thing of culinary beauty was born.

Quesadilla with Pesto, Sausage and Caramelized Onion

Ingredients:

• 2 tortillas (we used brown rice ones)
• about 2 tablespoons pesto (we used our homemade pesto)
• gourmet sausage (about 1 per quesadilla; we used sun-dried tomato basil), casings removed
• 1 onion, thinly sliced and caramelized
• 8 ounces mushrooms, sliced and sauteed until just browning
• mozzarella cheese, shredded
• feta cheese, crumbled
• aged balsamic vinegar (10 years of syrupy sweetness)

Cook up veggies while scrambling the sausage in another pan until browned and cooked through, about 5-10 minutes.

Then assemble the quesadilla in the following order: bottom tortilla, mozzarella cheese to taste, sausage, onions, mushrooms, feta, more mozzarella, top tortilla.

In a 12-inch skillet over low-to-medium heat, place the quesadilla with a smaller skillet on top, to squish things together so the cheese acts like glue when it melts. Try for about 5 minutes a side, or until cheese is melty and tortillas brown to taste.

Cut with a pizza wheel into four piece and drizzle with the balsamic vinegar just before serving.

You may never go back to a Mexican quesadilla again.

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Ugh. Thanksgiving. I’ve never been much of a fan of this holiday. After all, when you’re not eating turkey, what’s the point? I know, I know, being thankful, family, blah, blah, blah. The thing is, I can do that without fighting traffic and spending all day in the kitchen. Fact: one of my favorite Thanksgivings was when my friend Elizabeth and I stayed in New York instead of going home and had grilled cheese at a diner and watched Harry Potter on IMAX. That’s how it should be done.

However, this year I am doing more of a traditional Thanksgiving, so I’m trying to figure out things to cook. Luckily, Elizabeth sent me this AMAZING recipe for butternut squash risotto. I made it last week, and it was a huge hit. The recipe yields something like 10 servings, and it was gone in like a day and a half. Of course, the whole “10 servings” thing is really if you’re using it as a side dish, but it’s rich and filling enough that it can easily be a main dish befitting a certain November holiday.

As far as risottos go, it’s actually not that hard to make. The difficulty for me came in the beginning when I had to coordinate cooking the risotto, heating up the vegetable stock and sauteing the sage. That’s kind of a lot for me to do at the same time. Once I got past that, however, I was golden.

Oh, speaking of which. The reason it was kind of difficult was because I had to make the stock out of bouillon cubes, so there was an extra step involved. Pro tip: use Knorr vegetable bouillon cubes instead of vegetable stock. It gives you a much richer (and according to Luke) beefier taste. It really enhances the flavors and helps make sure that the butternut squash isn’t too sweet.

The only other tricky part comes whenever you make risotto, which is to make sure you stir! Once you start adding the stock to the rice, you’re not going anywhere. The directions say that it takes between 15-30 minutes for all of the stock to absorb into the rice, but it took me at least 45. I was having a real My Cousin Vinny experience, wondering if it takes longer for water to soak into a piece of arborio rice in my kitchen than it does anywhere else on the face of the earth. Luckily though, everything worked out in the end.

Other than the timing, this recipe isn’t nearly as difficult to make as it may seem. Hell, if I can make it perfectly on my first try, I’m sure you can. The other cool thing about this, is that it’s relatively healthy and definitely inexpensive. One serving contains 371 calories, 10 g fat, 1.4 g fiber, and more importantly, only costs about $1.77. You can find a full nutritional and cost breakdown on the Cheap Healthy Good website.

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How much do you love sweet and sour chicken wings? That gooey glaze, licking your fingers when they are sticky and covered in that gooey glaze, the golden-brown, appetizing color of the wings, covered in that gooey glaze.

You guessed it: for me, it’s all about the gooey glaze.

But to get that gooey glaze, you need sugar, and lots of it, right? Well, not necessarily. I’ve been experimenting with agave syrup as a sugar replacement in baking with great success (like in berry muffins, banana coconut muffins and Halloween orange muffins) , and tonight I decided to use it to make sweet and sour chicken wings. C’mon, doesn’t that picture say it all? They were fabulous.

I based this recipe on these sweet and sour chicken wings, but I didn’t want to use all that sugar. We honestly don’t eat refined sugar in our house because it just doesn’t make anyone feel good. This time of year, I’m particularly interested in protecting our immune systems and with so many healthy substitutes out there, I just can’t find a need for refined sugar.

Plus, have you seen my kid on sugar? The last time was a family party when my well-meaning mother-in-law made him some gluten-free brownies. It was very thoughtful and he loved them, but not long after he was out on the lawn in the dark, running around in his pajamas making alien noises. I know he’s weird, but the sugar definitely had something to do with that behavior.

Sweet and Sour Chicken Wings Sweetened with Agave Syrup

Ingredients:

• 12 large chicken wings, with wing tips cut off
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup agave syrup
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 clove garlic, minced

Whisk together ingredients for sauce, then coat chicken wings in about 2/3 of the sauce. Line a cookie sheet with foil and arrange the saucy wings. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes. Flip wings, pour the rest of the sauce over them and cook for another 25 minutes.

Take them off the foil before they cool, or they will stick. Ask me how I know.

You can play with this recipe a bit if you like. Try adding some fresh minced ginger, or some five-spice powder. A little oyster sauce or hoisin sauce would be lovely as well.

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Each week, fabulous recipes grace Debbie’s in-box and pop up on her computer screen, and she’s sharing her favorites with you.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about healthy crock pot recipes (five to be exact) and I’m sure it won’t be the last. More and more, I’m finding — thankfully! — crock pot recipes made with whole foods, not cream-of-yuck-with-a-side-of-sodium condensed soups as one of the main ingredients.

A cause for celebration? You bet, because the slow cooker is the life preserver of any busy mom or work-a-holic or just about anyone who wants a healthy, homecooked meal waiting for them when dinnertime rolls around. Let’s just say it: the crock pot saves lives.

Eggplant and chick peas is one of those Perfect Pairs … and someday I’ll write a post about it. Really. But for now, just enjoy this vegetarian ratatouille with chick peas. There’s almost nothing I like better in my crock pot than a chick pea stew. They soak in the flavors and they’re so hearty.

Speaking of eggplant, if you missed my recipe test drive of eggplant moussaka in the crock pot the first time around, give it a look. We adored this recipe and it was so, so easy.

Savory bean and spinach soup sounds so hearty and nutritious. And when it comes out of your crock pot and it’s ready to serve, you sprinkle cheese on it. It’s all good when covered in cheese.

Now this recipe is unlike any I’ve done before, but how could butternut squash and tomatoes, joined by leeks, white beans, bacon and cheese not be scrumptious?

Crock pot chicken and apples, with its orange and marjoram flavors sounds delicious, but I’ve never liked boneless, skinless chicken breasts done in the crock pot. They end up with a uniquely disgusting texture unlike anything edible. I may exaggerate a little, but I would recommend using boneless, skinless thighs at the very least, and probably a bone-in chicken part would be even better, like drumsticks.

Ah, so here’s a recipe that does it right. This crock pot chicken cacciatore calls for bone-in chicken thighs which will be truly succulent when slow-cooked, red wine and lots of Italian seasoning.

Here’s another rich chicken stew that uses chicken thighs. There’s just a bit of whipping cream in this recipe, but I’d replace it with plain yogurt or sour cream because they are cultured products and easier to digest. The sourness would also add to this dish, which is already flavorful with lots of lemon and fresh parsley.

Some meats that do well in a crock pot are slow-cooked beef and pork, and this coffee-braised pot roast with caramelized onions sounds heavenly.

I’ve been planning on making pulled pork in the crock pot for Owen’s birthday party for a while now, but this recipe for BBQ beef may just win out. Do you suppose I could do both?

I love that this beef stew recipe includes green beans and pasta, and you can cook it all right in the crock pot. You don’t even have to dirty an extra dish to cook the pasta, and you all know how much I love to save a dish!

It took me a long time to find a good crock pot chili, so I developed the recipe myself! This one’s got three kinds of beans, ground meat (I like buffalo) and green pepper, an ingredient that adds so much to chili, I find.

What do you mean, that’s only eleven recipes? Don’t forget to click on the link to my earlier article, five healthy slow cooker meals — that makes sixteen!

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It’s no secret that we love pancakes in our house (chocolate chip banana pancakes, buttermilk pancakes, all good things about pancakes….), especially for a weekend breakfast. It’s pretty much a tradition that every Saturday morning, Keith whips up a batch of the-flavor-of-the-week pancakes, often involving chocolate chips. We can’t change who we are, even at breakfast time.

In fact, we’re so set in our ways, you could probably walk into our house on any given Saturday morning and find the following things going on: Keith slaving away over a hot griddle, carefully tending to the pancake-of-the-week; Owen, with a giant grilling spatula, safely helping Keith flip the pancakes from a distance; Debbie cleaning up around and in-between Keith and Owen, determined not to spend the rest of Saturday in the kitchen. You might also hear Owen grumbling at his well-meaning mother for cleaning the batter bowl before he finished licking it….

We’ve been in a pumpkin groove lately, what with the pumpkin cornbread, the pumpkin carrot muffins and the pumpkin coconut ice cream. It only stands to reason that we’d pull our trusty ol’ pumpkin pancake recipe out of the files (read: Keith’s brain) for the season.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sprouted spelt flour (or flour of your choice)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice or nutmeg, or a combination
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 2 cups milk (we use unsweetened vanilla almond milk)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon melted butter
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl, whisk wet ingredients together in another. Add wet to dry and carefully mix until just moistened. Do not overmix. Cook the way you like — griddle, pan, oven — and enjoy. I always sprinkle ground flax seeds on mine, but you can serve yours with just butter and syrup if you like.

I just wanted to point out that even though these are fairly dense pancakes, with the pumpkin puree and the whole-grain flour, they are fluffy at heart. Look at the picture to see how they puff up while cooking; they are a wonder to behold, and nothing less. And our kid is eating squash, but please don’t tell him that pumpkin is a squash.

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A. Camille Nicholson is a graduate student in Cultural Studies and English Literature. Although she worked as an E-Commerce Developer during the .com’s height, she attributes her burgeoning interest in the culinary/baking arts to her volunteer duties at a local non-profit bakery and the past two years teaching cooking classes for kids.

I have loved the Twinkie since the dawn of my birth. As a child of suburban New Jersey in the 1980s, my fuschia green lunchbox frequently entertained the usual elementary lineup: Watermelon Ssips, a bologna or peanut butter sandwich, chocolate milk (which inexplicably required school permission), and a member of the Hostess snack cake family — typically, its irascible younger sibling, the Twinkie.

I have consistently defended the Twinkie against verbal assaults from more nutritionally minded acquaintances. However, the Twinkie’s reputation is slightly better than what they assert, although, admittedly, by a small margin. Surprisingly, one Twinkie provides only 150 calories and 4.5 grams of fat. Although it contains corn derivatives and two types of glycerides, the only preservative embodied within its banana yellow sheath is absorbic acid. When introduced in 1933 during the Great Depression, its offering of two cakes for five cents assisted those enduring financial deficit.

Additionally, the Twinkie participated in the war effort. During the 1940s, the Allies wove banana peels into mats to prevent German troops from landing along Britain’s shores. The Continental Baking Company, at the behest of the National Board of Strategic Banana Reserves and Rationing, ceased to make banana flavored Twinkies. And, in the 1960s, the rumor of long-lasting Twinkies made the snack cake a favorite for bomb shelters.

Considering the childhood memories nestled within the oblong shape, I was unsurprisingly overjoyed to discover my ability to create them from scratch without undergoing the shame of purchasing a family-pack in-store, as a non-family person.

So, if you want to create your own ‘Twinkies’ or cream-filled cakes, feel free to follow the instructions below. I particularly owe gratitude to the site that reprinted the Vegan Lunchbox’s recipe.

Homemade Twinkies

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

- Get a normal cupcake/muffin tin. If you want the oblong shape, Hostess sells its own Twinkies Bake Set, but you can purchase a ‘petite loaf pan’ for around $10-12 from any bake or craft shop such as Michael’s.

- If you’re feeling lazy, use a box of yellow cake mix and follow the directions. However, if you’re feeling more adventurous, make your own batter from scratch. However, I suggest using cake flour (which is lighter) and omitting the peaches.

- As usual, Pam the pan, preheat at 350, cook for about 15 min, and cool.

- To make the cream filling, use the typical buttercream frosting recipe . If you have a pastry bag injector (or a quart-sized Ziploc bag with a pastry tip), fill the bag with the frosting until partially full. Now, here comes the magic which made me enamored with Twinkies from childhood on. Stick the pastry bag into the center of the muffin and squeeze until the cream enters the cake and a bit of overflow appears at the cake’s top. If you used the canoe or petite loaf pans, insert three holes into each snack cake. Feel free to fill some with strawberry jam for a healthier and adult treat.

- If you want, stop there and enjoy your moist, buttery snack. However, if you secretly desire to seep those lovely lasso cakes in a vat of hot boiling liquid, continue on your quest.

- A nice offset of creating homemade Twinkies is that they feature half the fat (and half the cost, as one box of cake mix yields almost 20-25 cakes).

Deep Fried Twinkies

- Freeze or refrigerate the cakes for 2-4 hours (to prevent disintegration and oil absorption).

- Once thoroughly chilled, roll the Twinkie in flour, dip into an egg beater batter, and roll in flour again.

- In the meanwhile, heat four cups of vegetable oil in a large, covered soup pot until it reaches a boiling point. Once it is hot enough, reduce the heat to a simmer. When you sense the oil will no longer rebel against you, uncover the pot, and insert your cake into the oil. Allow it to remain for 30 seconds (but no more than 90-120 seconds) and use metal tongs or a fork to submerge and rotate the Twinkie. Leave it in for the full time limit if you want a crispier snack cake.

- Fry 1-2 cakes at a time until complete.

- Enjoy with whipped cream and a glass of milk.

On a side note, because the homemade snack cakes lack cellulose gum they will absorb less oil and might not require the glass of antacid that I will still suggest you keep on standby.

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Every Friday at work we have a treat day: a different person each week brings in food for the group. This is voluntary and we do have some people that do not participate. For those of us that do, we get something tasty each Friday morning. Sometimes this treat is doughnuts from the grocery store and sometimes it’s homemade cookies or brownies or some other dish. A few weeks ago Jeff Lim brought in a Hawaiian dish that was really good. I asked him for the recipe and thought I would try making Kalua Pig myself.

I am not one that tries new foods all that often. I know what I like and pretty much stick to that. Hell, I never even tried Chinese food until my wife and I got together. Chinese food is a favorite of hers so I agreed to take her to a Chinese restaurant. I don’t mind Chinese food, but I still prefer a cheeseburger.

I have tried different styles of BBQ pulled pork before and have never really been all that impressed, so as I looked at the pot of pulled pork I was not sure I’d really like it. When I tried it I realized that it was not at all like the pulled pork I had tried before.

Kalua Pig
Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Ingredients:

• 4-5 pound pork butt
• 2½ tablespoons Hawaiian salt (substitute kosher salt)
• 2 tablespoons liquid smoke
• 1 banana leaf (substitute 4-5 whole, unpeeled bananas)
• 4-6 ti leaves (substitute aluminum foil)
• ¼ to ½ a small head of cabbage, shredded
• 1 to 2 cups white rice
• chicken broth, enough to cook the rice

Usually Kalua pig is cooked in the ground over hot lava rocks. I don’t have a large supply of lava rocks or a way to heat them so I used the oven instead.

Trim any excess fat from the roast. Make several shallow long cuts along the roast or pierce liberally with a fork. (This allows the salt and liquid smoke to penetrate the meat.) Rub with salt and liquid smoke. Wrap the roast with banana leaf or place whole bananas on top of meat.

Cut the ribs from the ti leaves and wrap over the banana leaf. Substitute aluminum foil, if ti leaves are not available. (Ti leaves can often be obtained from a local florist). Tie securely with twine.

Roast in a 325-350 degree oven for about 45 minutes per pound. When meat is done, remove ti leaves, banana leaf (or bananas) and shred pork.

I did replace the Hawaiian salt with the kosher salt, the banana leaf with 5 whole bananas, and the Ti leaves with tin foil.

After the roast was cooked and shredded I put a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil in a frying pan, added the shredded roast and cabbage and fried the mixture until the cabbage was tender. Serve it over the rice cooked in the chicken broth.

My version was very good, but a bit lighter in flavor than what I had tried at work. I suspect that because I used the substitute ingredients the flavor was less. The next time I make this I will increase the liquid smoke and kosher salt rub.

Overall it was a very good recipe and we had 3 good meals out of it. I’ll be making this again soon.

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Join Debbie as she raves about whole foods, rants about chemicals and generally celebrates cooking and eating with fresh, local, nutritious foods. And sometimes she might get a little feisty….

We’re in the heart of it now… the beautiful season we call autumn. There are so many things to love about the fall in New England: the spectacular foliage, the crisp sunshiny weather and the seasonal foods. Let’s celebrate the fresh, whole food and autumn-inspired recipes that the season brings us. You just might find a new favorite.

You’ve read all about our organic apple-picking adventures and some of the ways we love to enjoy our apples. As I type this post, I’ve got some butternut squash seeds roasting in the oven and my house is just starting to take on that glorious toasty smell you only experience this time of year. Owen will be pleasantly surprised when he wakes up and finds he’s got a fun snack to accompany his breakfast (spoiled boy!).

We’re basically purists when it comes to seed-roasting, but if you want to venture out, Heidi Swanson has some unique ideas for fancy toasted pumpkin seeds: three great recipes, to be exact.

You may not associate cabbage with the fall, but we’ve gotten so many wonderful heads of it this year from our CSA farm that we’ve been enjoying it often. We’ve tried sweet and sour cabbage wedges, Moo Shu vegetables and most recently, Heidi Swanson’s (there she is again….) Tassajara warm cabbage salad. This is actually the first year in a long time that I haven’t made some homemade sauerkraut with it, but we’ve still loved every cabbage-y bite this fall.

One last thing that I must eat before I can declare it fall is some type of orange squash stew. Yes, I’ve got to have my butternut squash sage pizza, but I need a stew. Chicken, pumpkin and kale stew is one of my favorites and we finally cooked it up this week. It is astounding how just a few ingredients combine together so perfectly to create a simple and spectacular dish.

What are some of your favorite fall dishes?

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In the event that I came off as a total food snob when I referred to baked ziti as plebian (even though I think it’s completely delicious!), here’s one of our favorite recipes that most food snobs wouldn’t even consider making (because there’s canned tuna in it). We did, however, serve it to a food snob far more snobby than the likes of me, and it was a well-loved meal.

About 7000 years ago, or something closer to fifteen years, I acquired a fun little cookbook by Barbara Russo called Quick and Easy Elegant Pasta (long since out of print, unfortunately for you!). It’s all true. The recipes are so simple to make, with few ingredients yet lots of flavor, and there really is something distinctly elegant about each recipe. Whether an ingredient or a combination of ingredients, an interesting method or presentation, there’s something special about each of these recipes.

Over the years, her recipe for linguine with tuna and red wine has morphed into something revered in our household, both for the amazing base recipe Ms. Russo created, but also because we have altered it to suit our ever-changing culinary sensibilities.

Pasta with Tuna, Red Wine and Capers

Ingredients:

• 2 cans tuna in water (we use tongol)
• about 1/4 to 1/2 cup olive oil
• 2 large onions, thinly sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano (or to taste)
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 2 tablespoons capers
• crushed red pepper to taste
• grated pecorino romano
• 8 ounces pasta (we like brown rice spaghetti with this dish)

Cook pasta according to directions.

Meanwhile, in a large saute pan, place the tuna, onion, garlic and oregano in enough olive oil to coat everything and keep it moist. You may add more olive oil at any time, or you can try using tuna packed in oil. Cover and cook over low to medium heat for about 20 minutes, stirring every so often.

Add the red wine to the pan and reduce for about 5-10 minutes. Add the capers, crushed red pepper and any other seasonings you might like (always sea salt and freshly ground black pepper).

Toss sauce with pasta and grate fresh pecorino romano over the whole deal before serving.

Variations:

• Add sun dried tomatoes.
• Add roasted red peppers.
• Add some fresh chopped herbs — basil, parsley, oregano, thyme would all work well in this dish.
• Switch out the capers for anchovies or olives.
• You could probably even add some diced tomatoes if you wanted a heavier, more Italian-style sauce.

What do you think — are you too snobby to try it?

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Entertaining midday is a luxury many working folk don’t get on a regular basis, unless you throw a weekend luncheon. But I’m telling you, this is one of my favorite ways to enjoy good food and a small group of cherished friends or family. From the show-off-the-new-house-to-the-aunties luncheon, to the I-don’t see-my-girlfriends-enough-anymore luncheon, there is always an occasion to have someone — anyone! — over to enjoy some savory lunch fare. I admit, I got out of the habit when Owen came along, complete with midday naps that squashed the happy luncheon party.

My love for the luncheon has ironically come back in recent months, and I have to give all of the credit to Owen. Our local moms’ group has gotten into the habit of throwing a monthly pot luck lunch, and damn, we are having fun! The kids are old enough that they play well together and we can chat and visit and enjoy the recipes that turn up every month. And dare I say you might, on occasion, find some wine at our buffet?

If you love lunch as much as I do, I hope you’ll enjoy this luncheon menu I put together from some favorite recipes that crossed my path recently.

I love that Richard Olney’s garlic soup is a thick and creamy one without any cream. Instead, this recipe uses eggs to thicken and bind, and who doesn’t love the taste and health benefits of an egg? I thought of Kona and her obsessive love for garlic with this soup… here’s betting she’ll either try this recipe or devise something similar just to partake in the yummy goodness of garlic after reading this post.

This isn’t just your average mushroom quiche: this mushroom and fontina quiche is chock-full of five cups — five cups! — of assorted wild and gourmet mushrooms. If you loathe the culinary fungus, then run the other way, but if you adore the earthiness of mushrooms and think they’d be great smothered in cheese and eggs, then join me in worshiping at the alter of Epicurious.

For dessert, how about a rustic tart? This crispy braeburn apple and almond sheet tart caught my eye because it’s light on wheat (just a few sheet of phyllo) and includes delicious almond meal instead. Which, incidentally, is made into almond cream. Yeah, yum.

Really, can you think of anything more delicious than soup, quiche and a seasonal dessert? OK, something with chocolate… maybe in the next menu!

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There’s nothing like starting the day with a warm breakfast … except maybe smelling it cooking while you’re still in bed. That’s the beauty of this crock pot breakfast cobbler.

Another thing I like about this recipe is that it is so easy to prepare the night before. Let’s face it, no one really wants to be making a gourmet breakfast at ten-o-clock at night. What Keith and I do is dump all the ingredients into the crock pot when we are cleaning the kitchen from dinner, then we push the start button before we head to bed.

This is a recipe we’ve made for years, especially when we have lots of apples to use up. I’ve based it on this recipe for breakfast cobbler, but it has morphed throughout the years and we actually make it different every time … and there’s not really a whole lot of measuring going on these days.

Crock Pot Breakfast Cobbler

Ingredients:

• 6 apples, peeled, cored and slice (yes, get the fancy gadget; it’s worth every penny)
• about 2 tablespoons of maple syrup
• about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• about 2 cups of your favorite granola cereal (we use whatever is in the cabinet by Nature’s Path, who incidentally has a new one sweetened exclusively with agave syrup)
• about 1/4 cup slivered almonds

Place all ingredients in your crock pot. I put the cereal and almonds on top and don’t stir it until the next morning, but anything goes really. Cook overnight on low, about 8 hours.

I like to serve it with a dollop of plain, whole milk organic yogurt. But the spoon’s the most important part!

You can alter this recipe in endless ways — try adding some dried cranberries, using pears along with the apples, or mixing some nutmeg in along with the cinnamon. I’m not sure you could go wrong, unless you put in mayonnaise or something….

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Happy Halloween everyone. I hope you all are having a good Halloween. I thought about writing a piece about some cool spooky Halloween kind of dish. I came up with the idea of making a meatloaf into the shape of a hand or a foot or something. Then I came across the Not Martha website. This is a cool looking meatloaf and my wife and I thought it would be fun to make one of these the next time we get the whole family together so I am now on the hunt for a hand shaped mold. So now that the meatloaf body part has already been perfected by someone else I decided to go with my original idea and give you my lasagna recipe instead.

I like to make a big pan of lasagna because it will last a couple of days and it is easy to make. The prep time is a little more involved, but you will not be spending the whole day slaving over a hot stove.

Cheesy Lasagna

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Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 pound lasagna noodles
• 1 can (12 oz) tomato sauce
• 1 large onion diced
• 1 pound Velveeta cheese
• 1 pound shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 pound shredded cheddar cheese
• oregano and garlic

Cook the noodles in a large pot. If you want to use the ready bake noodles it will save some time. I have tried these and prefer cooking my noodles.

While the noodles are cooking, brown the ground beef in a large frying pan with the diced onion.

Add the tomato sauce. Add the oregano and garlic to taste. Simmer the meat and sauce for 5 minutes and remove from heat.

Drain the noodles and set aside to cool.

When the noodles are cool lay a layer of the noodles in the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking dish. Add a layer of the meat and sauce. Next add a layer of Velveeta slices. You can get the large brick of Velveeta and cut into slices, or you can use the sliced Velveeta.Now add a layer of the mozzarella cheese and the cheddar cheese. Instead of using the mozzarella and cheddar you can use your favorite blended cheese.

If you like cheesy lasagna this is the way to go. I don’t know how many calories are in a serving of this lasagna, but I do know I have to loosen my belt after eating a plate of this delicious dish.

I hope everyone has a happy, safe, and scary Halloween.

Oh and Rich — I want to thank you for your Candy Pyramid post. When my wife read it and found out why we never seem to get any trick or treaters she banned me from handing out candy. Me and the dogs will be watching the World series game uninterrupted tomorrow night.

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It’s almost Halloween! I love this holiday so much that I’ve actually visited two pumpkin patches so far, and bought more pumpkins than I honestly know what to do with. Maybe it’s because this is the first fall in several years that I haven’t spent in New York City, but I am obsessed with everything fall right now. Because guys, I’m in Virginia right now, and it is pretty.

Anyway, I recently massacred a pumpkin in a very Dexter-like fashion, so I’ve been (literally, at times) up to my elbows in the Halloween mascot. When Elizabeth and I were committing said pumpkin murder, one of the things we did was save the seeds, so we would have something to snack on during the next 80 hours we were spending pureeing the monster pumpkin I bought.

So while the food processor was working overtime, we made some addictive, delicious roasted pumpkin seeds, and it couldn’t have been easier.

The fun thing about pumpkin seeds is that they can basically be any flavor you want them to be. I had had roasted pumpkin seeds once before, when a roommate made them in college, and she just put salt and pepper on them. They were fine, but they didn’t exactly knock my socks off. This time, I wanted to go crazy.

We got a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, put the rinsed and dried pumpkin seeds inside, and just started throwing things in. We started with some olive oil, then added, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Then we just started going through all of the spices in my kitchen and adding them. I think we ended up with cumin, some chili powder, and some white pepper.

We shook it all up in the bag so the seeds were nice and coated, then put it all in a single layer on a cookie sheet. We baked at 375 and checked on them periodically. More salt and pepper was added during the baking process because you really need a lot of flavor for it to show up on the pumpkin seeds. After about a half an hour, they were crisp and roasted to perfection. They were also gone by about 8:00 that night.

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You only think you know how good this recipe might taste. I’m pretty good at reading recipes, in that I can tell not only what a recipe will taste like, but also what to alter to make it better.

I left this one completely alone.

My carnivorous husband, who moans and groans when I serve a vegetarian dinner, said he’d eat this dish as a stand-alone meal. He just offered that information, mind you, he was not asked.

Are you convinced yet?

I lied a little bit when I said I cooked the recipe exactly as was directed. I didn’t have a red onion, so I used a yellow one instead. Also, no golden raisins so I popped in the regular old brown ones. Finally, I used pecorino romano instead of parmesan for the sprinkling of cheese at the end.

A word to the wise: Don’t skip toasting and sugar-coating the sunflower seeds. I almost did, because I am basically a lazy cook. They are so amazingly delicious (and I’ve discovered a new snack!) and combine with the other flavors so well. It is worth the extra step and pan.

Heidi Swanson has never let me down, and she just secured her spot in my gastronomic heart with this recipe. It’s so simple to make and has very few ingredients, but each one is integral — and crucial — to the success of the dish. The flavors meld together perfectly.

The next time I make this, I’ll probably serve it with some curried chicken breasts, or maybe I’ll just add some chick peas for a vegetarian entree.

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Okay, I feel as though I’ve been pretty honest when it comes to my lack of food knowledge. In fact, the main reason I started writing for this site was so I would have a reason to get into the kitchen more. So here’s my confession for the week: other than from a store or a can, I didn’t really know where pumpkin pie came from.

I know that sounds insane, and of course I knew that pumpkin pie, or pumpkin bread, or any pumpkin dish came from pumpkins, but I didn’t really understand the logistics of the situation. I’m not kidding when I say that I honestly believed that the guts of the pumpkin is what got cooked. Sigh. I know.

So my friend Elizabeth came over and explained very slowly and clearly that it’s the pumpkin itself that gets roasted, while the guts just get thrown away. My mind = blown.

My job was to get the pumpkin. I didn’t want to use our happy pumpkin patch pumpkin that we had just picked over the weekend, so I decided to go across the street to the grocery store and buy one there. Now, I love a deal, but this is what got us into trouble. the grocery store pumpkins weren’t being sold by the pound: they were just $5.99 each. So what does that mean? It means that I had to find the biggest, heaviest pumpkin I could, just to get my money’s worth. Because I’m ridiculous.

What I ended up with was pretty much the carriage used in Cinderella. Like, I could hollow this thing out and use it as a dog bed. It was ginormous. It put my 19-lb. cute pumpkin to shame. In fact, we estimated that it was probably around 30 lbs. so yes, I was proud of myself for getting my money’s worth, but dear lord, we did not need that much pumpkin.

So we set to work slicing it apart, and throwing away the guts while reserving the seeds. After we got it into relatively manageable-sized pieces, we stuck it in the oven and baked it uncovered at 375. Because of the insane volume of pumpkin, we weren’t really sure how long to keep it in there, but we knew it was done when it was slightly browned, and a fork went all the way through.

After it was finished roasting, it was time to make the puree. We peeled off the skin and diced the pumpkin into pieces that would be small enough to fit in a food processor. After it was processed, the puree needed to be drained. Cheesecloth would probably be the recommended way of doing this, but I’m not exactly working in the Top Chef kitchen over here, so we used paper towels and a strainer.

At the end of the day (literally, this endeavor took the entire day), we ended up with an obscene amount of pumpkin puree– Something like 7 quarts or more. So what to do with all of that pumpkin? Well, frankly, I’m still trying to figure it out. But we started out with making some pumpkin treats. Luckily for us, Elizabeth has a website with our friend Lauren, and Lauren had just posted a bunch of yummy pumpkin recipes, including one for pumpkin chocolate chip bread that she made for me last year and caused me to see God.

So we made that and the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that were also on that page, and divvied up the rest of the puree into freezer bags, so we can make more delightful fall treats. I’ve still got about five freezer bags left, so stay tuned for more pumpkin adventures!

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