Pumpkin Cider Bread

I'm posting late, has this ever happened before?! I was looking for a recipe to use up apple cider from Halloween and found this on epicurious. It wasn't anything new or crazy but everyone liked it! I jazzed up the picture using instagram to make it more exciting :) 

My Day Off

Pumpkin spice cake and latte

Also known as Thanksgiving for the rest of you. Basically I had a day off work and that was wonderful! I spent a good portion of the day on the phone with friends and family and the rest of the time eating and reading and watching TV.


Smoked mozzarella and artichoke ravioli. Apple pie crumb cake something-or-other.

Ingredient for Nov.: Free for All!

Kim has informed me that it is my turn to post on bloggy-blog. She had to set me straight since I was under the impression (and so proud of myself, btw) that I had participated in the pear challenge for the month of Nov. which was actually for Oct. I am obviously a month behind! (good luck Lisa thinking you are going to get a xmas list out of me before Jan. haha!) So Kim suggested that this month be a free for all. Which might seem lazy on my part, but really, this is a good idea because it is Thanksgiving and isn't it fitting that the posts represent a CORNUCOPIA of food ideas anyway?! Seriously, bravo!

The Essence of Pear

This tea is really good. Usually I add something to my tea but this one is great all on its own. Impressive!


I specifically bought this because it had pear in it! Pretty simple, as you can see, but very good. Added a few more things and brought it to the mall for my lunch the next day. I was taking my lunch break in the food court and an older lady actually stopped at my table and said 'Ohhh that looks goood!' then she offered to trade for a brownie she got at the cookie place! It was a tempting offer...

Pear Pancakes!

I saw this idea using apples and decided to try it with pears instead. You slice some pears, make some pancake batter (we added random yummy spices), dip and cook it like you would a regular pancake. They were a big hit and I'm definitely going to try it with apples sometime too!

Pears!

I'm choosing pears for October, hopefully it will help me get better at finding ripe ones because I always try to eat them too early!

Pea Pesto Crostini

This is a pea pesto that is eaten on grilled or toasted slices of baguette. It sounds strange but we (Pat and I) enjoyed it very much. I forgot to take a picture of it once we had spread it on the bread so here are pictures of just the pesto! Recipe here!

Regular pesto picture

Artsy pesto picture

Pea Pasta Salad

 Pea, broccoli and feta pasta salad – This was really good.  We enjoyed it.  Let us know if you want the recipe

(Mom and Dad made this and asked me to post it because they were having trouble signing in! I have no idea why the bottom of the picture didn't show up!)

Peas

Mom and Dad picked peas!

Corn and Zucchini Orzo Salad

I have yet to find anyone besides me that likes this but I'm still marking it as a successful recipe! I found it in my Everyday Food magazine and then I found a zucchini growing in my garden and bought myself a bag of corn (I couldn't bear to cut it off the cob, I would have eaten it that way and it never would have made it in!). I omitted the jalapeno in the hopes that Owen would like this but he didn't and it probably would have been super tasty with it in there. I also just used some shredded colby-jack cheese instead of feta (gross!) but next time would use small chunks of cheese to get more taste in there. Also, added beans to make it a full meal instead of a side dish! 

Corn salad

What we have here for you is a wonderful mix of corn, vegenaise, queso fresco, queso cotija, green onion and minced poblano pepper. Excellent warm or cold.

August ingredient - CORN!

Blueberry Smoothie

Don't think that the blueberry challenge was lost on us! While we did have a few other ideas we didn't have time to make, Alex and I have both had lots of smoothies that had blueberries in 'em.

Honey Oat and Blueberry Pancakes

I gave blueberry pancakes another try because this recipe looked so good! This one is the winner! Soooo tasty! Check out the video below, I did not coach them, they just kept making "mmm" and "yum" noises so I took a video of it. (It's not lost on me that I was feeding them pancakes for dinner so that is probably what heightened the yumminess factor)

Blueberry Ricotta Pancakes

So the ingredient hasn't been officially announced but I got the inside scoop a week or two ago and made these because I had an ingredient I needed to get rid of. I'll leave the announcement to Jamie or you can guess! These pancakes were a Giada recipe and they were pretty good although the texture was more like a crepe instead of a pancake!





Chocolate-covered Pineapple

We tend to keep a lot of frozen fruit in our freezer during the summer months for making smoothies. Since we had pineapple frozen already, we decided to melt some chocolate in a double-boiler and dip chunks of the frozen pineapple in it. It turned out great, and it tastes mighty good too!

Kebabs

I thought this recipe was meant to be but it was clearly just messing with my head. I bought a $1 bag of bananas a the grocery store and it had two plantains in it! I was excited because I hadn't tried them before. When I was trying to figure out what to do with them I came across this recipe that also used pineapple so I decided to try it. It was pretty bleh. I should have just fried the plantains in butter. To be fair...they probably would have been better if I had made them on an outdoor grill instead of inside on the George Foreman grill...  

Pineapple!

On the grill,

and with ice cream!

Pineapple Muffins

I made Pineapple Muffins over the weekend and thought they were great! I made a mini version instead of the normal size so they were a little overdone (but not burnt!) because I wasn't sure how long they should stay in.

June!

The ingredient for this month is...Pineapple!

Oatmeal raisin bars everybody!

Oh yeah, with melted chocolate chips! ; )

I forget what these are called and I'm too lazy to get the book

I've been having difficulty with my baking lately and these are no exception! I followed the directions exactly (no really!) and they just didn't seem to be finished when I checked them but they were turning very brown on top so then I took them out and of course they sank and looked all crazy and then stuck to the dish when I took them out...they tasted good though. Very yummy.



Chocolate Chips!

Mom wanted me to post this for her because she "forgot" to do it ("forgot" = Mom knew I would bug her about it eventually and do it myself).

The Absent Blogger

Hello everyone! I am so sorry for not being able to contribute lately! As you can see the best contribution I can make at this time is toast. On white bread no less, I don’t even care for white bread! It’s too bad I don’t have a full kitchen since I have plenty of time on my hands right now. Here is my visual rationalization for my lame contribution this month. The current kitchen and the future kitchen, with oven. Sorry the picture is blurry, I think Nigel was really excited about the house and forgot to focus. (Ha-ha.)

French (er, Italian?) Bread Pizza

We made more of the Macaroni Grill bread and cut a loaf in half, then we topped that with homemade pizza sauce, thinly sliced fresh mozzarella, and diced roasted red pepper after toasting the bread slightly. After broiling it all, we took it out and topped everything with a fresh basil chiffonade. Yum indeed.

Chili Dogs

Using the leftover chili from the baked potatoes, we made chili dogs for Alex's birthday. Oh yeah—we actually made the buns from scratch. Take that bread month!

Cornbread

Somehow we never realized how good a baked potato could be with chili, cheese, and taco fixins on top. So we baked potatoes and tried it out with Alex's famous lentil chili. On the side? Cornbread. Oh yeah.

Rosemary Bread (Macaroni Grill Clone)

This Macaroni Grill clone recipe for the bread they give you before your food comes is great! Here's the recipe: http://www.food.com/recipe/romanos-macaroni-grill-rosemary-bread-64446. This was enjoyed at Kim's place for the birthday celebration.

Avocado-Guacamole Bread

This bread was from the same cookbook as the carrot bread but was not nearly as successful. I had such high hopes! It's alright and made a really good grilled cheese (with tomato and green pepper!) but it just wasn't that exciting. It made enough dough for two loaves so I did one in a loaf pan (here) and a free-form loaf. The free form loaf baked up much better, not surprising since that's how the recipe said to make it... 



Kalamata Pita

Another recipe we tried from Collister's book was the pita bread recipe. We baked in kalamata olives, which was tasty, but did make the bread a bit salty. Not all of the pitas puffed up right in the oven, but we ate them with a spread of fresh veggies and home made hummus (top), so it wasn't a big deal. All in all a success. More to come!

Iraqi Kahk

Linda Collister's Bread: From Sourdough to Rye has become our best friend this month. We began with the Iraqi Kahk recipe, but we substituted coriander and cumin seeds for the ground variety. The finished product was tasty, and the texture was nice. Definitely not a usual flavor for us though.

Carrot Bread

I love bread month! This bread was fantastic! The recipe is from the book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day (one of the best bread books ever along with Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day) and it was pretty easy to make. It's chock-full of carrots, coconut, walnuts and raisins. Everyone in the house was in agreement about its tastiness.

Tuna Fish Patties

This is a recipe I meant to make for fish month but didn't get around to until this past Friday. They came from the book Kitchen for Kids and I thought they were really good. Owen said he didn't like them but I can tell he didn't mind them by how few times I had to remind him to eat his dinner. You just mix a can of tuna with some stuff, coat the patties with cornflakes and bake. Yum!





Bread!

Let's make some bread this April!

Blackened Tilapia Sandwiches w/ Jambalaya

Blackened tilapia sandwiches and jambalaya rice with Tofurky sausage. Definitely a little heat, but we both liked it! Lenten and Mardi Gras-en.

Fish Tacos and Cheezy Grits

Here are some fish tacos we made. The fish was breaded and pan-fried, then garnished with tomato and lettuce, as well as a dressing that was just Miracle Whip, Chipotle Tabasco sauce, and a little water. On the side were cheesy grits.

Where's the Fish?!

Come on people!

Tuna Melts!

This recipe from Everyday Food was called Emeril's Kicked-Up Tuna Melt but I think we eliminated the "kicked-up" part by not putting in the capers. We aren't big fans of capers and I didn't want to buy them. Anyway, it didn't matter because I thought this tuna melt was great and the broiler is my new best friend. Thank you to Lisa and Alex because I forgot about tuna as a fish option until our conversation last weekend:) The only other thing I would say about the recipe is that it said it served 4 and called for 4 cans of tuna! I knew I did not want a whole can of tuna on my slice of bread so I used 2 cans between the 3 of us and still had a little tuna left over.

The Ingredient for March is FISH!

Finally catching up!

Here's the raisin contribution. We made most of our traditional Thanksgiving feast - you know, Tofurkey with roasted veggies, rolls, green beans and stuffing. The stuffing had celery, onion and raisins which got all juicy and great! I don't think we'll ever make plain 'ol stuffing again.















And for the potato entry - Alex made potato corn chowder and we also had rolls (despite our best efforts we can't find the name of them.) It was definitely comfort food and even better with a little shredded cheese on top.