PUMPKINS!

I love pumpkins! I love to carve them, I love to paint them. I love the smell of them. But most of all, I love to eat them! Yum, Yum, Yum! Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, Pumpkin Bread, Pumpkin roll, Pumpkin Pie, Pumpkin Ice Cream (from Cold Stone - Sooooooo Good!) you name it, I love it! This week I found special edition Pumpkin Spice Quaker oatmeal at the store. Of course, I had to buy some. It was good (though not super pumpkin-ey). One thing that I had never done and always wanted to was make a dinner in a pumpkin. This year we finally tried it, and this was the end result:

You clean out a pumpkin and fill it with a stuffing made with LOTS of things. Then you bake it. When you serve it you take a scoop of the stuffing, and you scrape the cooked pumpkin off the sides to eat along with it. It was my first time eating pumpkin as a squash side dish, and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it! Definitely a worthy effort. Plus, I think it turned out so pretty! It fed 12 people quite easily. I think this is going to become a yearly tradition in our home!

This is what our supper looked like after Liz and Steve got to it. They pulled off pieces of the pumpkin skin and created a "Jack-o-lantern". I think it looks like ET.

Madison found her Uncle Eric's hat. She loved it. Doesn't she look adorable?

I learned something from the TV!

I am not really a TV person, but my weakness is the Food Network. Lately I have gotten in the habit of watching “The Next Food Network Star” on Monday mornings while I run on the treadmill. It’s the first season I have ever followed it, but I have really been enjoying this show! A couple of weeks ago each of the contestants were challenged to explain a culinary technique to the audience in under a minute. They also had no idea which technique they would be teaching until they were on camera. One man was asked to teach how to peel a pineapple. The first thing he did was show how to remove the “leafy plume” of the pineapple, (aka, the top). He showed how on a ripe pineapple you should be able to just twist the top off easily. Then he went on and on about how you should save this part and use it for a garnish. (he then got docked by the judges for not showing how to peel a pineapple, just how to take the top off)

So yesterday I was helping my Mom prepare food for a baby shower. We were making fruit kabobs, and the daunting task of peeling a pineapple was in front of me. I remembered what I had learned on NFNS, grabbed the top, and sure enough, it twisted right off! SO COOL! Then as we were finishing our kabobs I got the brilliant idea to use the top as a garnish (I never garnish anything, so this was way different for me). I stuck the leafy plume in the middle, and it actually looked nice! We were really impressed with how pretty the tray turned out. It looked like this:

So the fact of the matter is that you CAN learn things from watching TV! Who would have thought? So good job, Aaron! The judges may not have appreciated your demonstration, but I learned something!

I also made a batch of some of my favorite cookies for the baby shower. I first tried them when I was a freshman in college, but I lost the recipe and haven’t been able to find it for years. I recently found it and have been looking for an excuse to make them. They were even better than I remember them being! They look simple on the outside, but they are incredible! They are always a huge hit at parties! Here is the recipe . . . (If you click on the picture you can really see the ooey gooey goodness!)

Rolo Cookies

1 Box chocolate cake mix

2 Eggs

1/3 cup Oil

Around 45 Rolo candies (unwrapped, please :)

Heat oven to 350*. In a bowl, mix cake mix, eggs and oil together. It will look dry, but just keep mixing until everything comes together (it will)! Take a small pinch of your dough and press it completely around a Rolo. Roll it in your hands to make a nice ball shape. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Continue until all the candies are covered or until the dough is gone. Makes between 36-45, depending on how much dough you use. Bake cookies for 10 minutes (don’t overcook). Leave on pan to cool for 5 minutes and move to cooling rack. The finished product will be a pretty chocolate cookie on the outside with melted caramel inside (and the caramel stays melted, even when they are cool!) ENJOY!

Tips:

-Make sure that you cover the entire Rolo. If you don’t, the caramel will melt out of the cookie.

-It takes hardly any dough to cover the Rolo. You want just enough to cover the candy. (Just a bit more than 1/2 Tablespoon)

-Don’t crowd the cookies on the cookie sheet. You don’t want them running into each other when they are baking!

-You can switch the Rolos with many other candies (like York Peppermint Patties or mini Peanut Butter Cups). YUM!

Whole Grain Waffles

As part of my effort to get healthier in the month of June, I made a goal to try out one really healthy recipe per week. This week was whole grain waffles. I have wanted to make my own ever since I saw some Ego Whole Wheat Waffles in the store one day. I found the recipe on my favorite recipe site with LOTS of really good reviews. I tweaked the recipe a bit, and they turned out AWESOME! Everyone loved them, and I think I prefer them to normal waffles. They have lots of flavor and an excellent texture (plus they are full of lots of really good stuff for you). I even ended up mixing up a second batch so that we could freeze them to eat during the week. Here is the recipe that I used:

Whole Grain Waffles

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 3/4 cups skim milk
• 1/4 cup canola oil (if you don’t want to use oil, use more pumpkin)
• 1/4 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or just whole wheat flour)
• 1/2 cup flax seed meal
• 1/4 cup wheat germ
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• cinnamon (to taste)
  
• Nutmeg (to taste)
  

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, oil, applesauce, and vanilla. Beat in whole wheat pastry flour, flax seed meal, wheat germ, all-purpose flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt until batter is smooth.

2. Preheat a waffle iron, and coat with cooking spray. Pour batter into waffle iron in batches, and cook until crisp and golden brown.

Enjoy!

Here's the recipe!

Sorry, I didn’t even think to post the recipes, so here it is:

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 C. Butter or Margarine

1 1/2 C. Sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp. salt

2/3 C. cocoa

2 C. Flour

¾ C. semi-sweet chocolate chips

¾ C. White chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350*. Cream together butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Add soda, salt and cocoa, mixing well. Add flour, 1 cup at a time. Mix thoroughly. Add chocolate chips. Drop by rounded spoonfuls on a cookie sheet (should make about 3 dozen); bake 9-11 minutes, until just soft. Cool slightly and move to a wire rack. Serve with milk. :)

I like a lot of chocolate chips in mine, so if you aren't a major chocoholic, you could use less! I also like to use the two different kinds, because I think it looks pretty, but you can totally just use the semi-sweet ones, and they are awesome! Since they are a chocolate based cookie, it can be hard to tell when they are done. Make sure you don’t overcook, or they are only really yummy for about an hour, and then they turn hard! Hope you like them as much as I do!

Soups On!

Last week when I was at the Olive Garden I fell in love with their Zuppa soup. I enjoyed it so much that the next day I started searching for the recipe on the Internet. I found several recipes and lots of reviews that claimed that the soup turned out just like the Olive Gardens. I was way excited! I made it today for a special President’s Day Family Night that we had. I doubled the recipe and it made A TON of soup! One batch would have made enough to feed all seven of us, but who complains about leftover soup? It just gets better! Here is the recipe that I used. (this was the recipe BEFORE I doubled it)

Ingredients:

• 1 pound bulk mild Italian Sausage
• ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 4 slices bacon, cut into ½ inch pieces
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 5 chicken bullion cubes
• 10 cups water
• 6 potatoes, thinly sliced
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 head chopped kale

1. Cook the Italian sausage and red pepper flakes in a large pot over medium heat until crumbly and cooked through. Remove from pot and refrigerate while preparing the rest of the soup.

2. Using the same pot, cook bacon until crispy. Add onions and garlic and cook until translucent.

3. Add the bullion cubes and water to the pot. Bring to a boil. Add potato slices. Turn down heat and let simmer until the potatoes are tender. This should take about 20 minutes.

4. Mix in heavy cream and sausage and heat through. Mix in kale and let boil for five minutes.

Serve with a good bread. ENJOY!

I will definitely make this soup again, it was awesome! I don’t know if it is identical to Olive Gardens, but it is really close! Here are some things that I would recommend doing if you ever decide to try this recipe:

-The original recipe calls for 1 ½ teaspoons of crushed red pepper. I started with ½ teaspoon, and found it to be plenty! (Seriously, 1 ½ would be way to much!) Start low and then go up.

-If you don’t get all of the sausage grease off before adding it back into the soup, the grease all floats to the top and makes the soup kind of pink. Next time I will set the sausage to drain on top of a stack of paper towels so it absorbs the fat.

-I think next time I will use half and half instead of heavy cream just to be a bit healthier, and I don’t think it will make much of a difference.

-Don’t overcook the potatoes, they will fall apart!

-The recipe doesnt include salt, but depending on the bacon and bullion cubes that you use, you may need to add some. I added about 1/2 teaspoon per batch about the same time that I added in the water and bullion.

-If there is not fresh kale available you can use fresh spinach (or so I have heard!) but I really LOVE the fresh kale in this! It was my first time ever using kale, and it was actually really easy to find.


Let me know if you ever decide to try the recipe out. I would highly recommend it!

Valentines Day

I just LOVE valentines day! Seriously, love it. I am not even dating anyone right now, so I didn’t have a valentine this year, but I like any excuse to celebrate! This Valentines Day was really fun! My siblings and parents decided that eating at a nice restaurant on Valentines Day stinks, because its super crowded and they rush you in and rush you out, so you don’t even get to enjoy it (plus its really expensive). So this year we decided to do a nice dinner at home with everyone bringing something so that no one got stuck doing all the work. (valentine's day with the family, might not seem to romantic or exciting, but it was awesome!)

My mom was in charge of the Lasagna, Lacey made a great salad, and my SIL (Liz) made her Focaccia bread with an alfredo dipping sauce. Yum, yum, yum, YUM!

I was on desert duty, so I brought a chocolate cheesecake with a powdered sugar heart on top! I love cheesecake of any kind, and this is definitely going on my list of favorites. I found it on the kraft webpage. It was pretty simple to make (as far as cheesecakes go), and turned out really smooth and decadent. It also makes 16 servings! I will be making this one again!

So the dinner was just as good (if not better) than what we would have had in a restaurant. And it was super cheap too!

We then watched “No Reservations”. This movie is a kind of cheesy chic flick, but I really enjoyed it! It was cute, and clean, and a fun romance story. Perfect for Valentines Day! It is more of just a feel good movie; there really isn’t much depth to it, So I give it 7 stars. If you haven't seen it yet, it's worth seeing!

The night ended with me trying to find my keys and realizing that I had locked them in my car (this was the first time in my life that I have done that!) Beyond that, the day was awesome!

Hope you all had a great Valentines Day!