What do you think of when you think of Christmas time? I think of my mom’s homemade cranberry bread, twinkly little lights around the windows, Mickey’s Christmas Carol on TV, and Nat King Cole singing “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”.
I also think of all things peppermint. There’s no better time of the year to break out the peppermint extract! Any other time of year, and you’ll just look like a weirdo. Since it’s December, you’re safe for the time being.
I think it was during a classroom Christmas party in the 3rd grade, that I first ate puppy chow.
No, not that kind of puppy chow! I mean the kind usually made with Chex cereal, chocolate, peanut butter, and powdered sugar!
Its a really tasty snack that only seems to pop up around Christmas time, and when I first heard of it as a wee little kid, I was ultimately confused. I thought that this kid in my class had actually brought in dog food to share with the class. Silly me!
I love s’mores. You might remember those little s’mores bars? They were impossible to stop eating.
This s’mores creme brulee was pretty much as good as those s’mores bars. It’s amazing! I made a version of this about 7 or 8 years ago and I always wanted to revisit it.
Pears are better than apples.
There, I said it. I’ve never been a huge fan of apples, they always smell better than they taste, to me. I do enjoy a few varieties that I’ll snack on if the rare mood strikes (Pink Lady, Honeycrisp), but I’d rather eat a pear than an apple, any day of the week. That’s why I decided to create a new cool-weather staple: enter the caramel-dipped pear!
You guys. Ohhh, you guys. I can’t remember the last time I cooked something that I loved as much as these donuts.
Fall and cider donuts go hand in hand. I live in the southwest so they’re not quite as popular around here as they may be, say, in upstate New York or somewhere, so I decided to make my own. I had been wanting to make homemade donuts for a while, and I’m so glad that this is the recipe I settled on. Think of it as sort of a modified, inside-out cider donut.
Continue reading “autumn spiced donuts with apple curd filling”
Let’s talk a little bit about pumpkin, shall we?
Pumpkin is good. It’s good in pie, it’s good in savory dishes, it’s good in soups, it’s even good in coffee as Starbucks would have you believe. Carving pumpkins is awesome, too.
How about pumpkin in lasagna? No, that’s not a typo. “But wait,” you say, “lasagna is supposed to have meat and tomatoes and lots of cheese! How can you fit pumpkin into all that?” Well, dear reader, I encourage you to branch out from your usual ideas of lasagna, cause this stuff is damn good.
As you lovely readers know, my dad Rick was diagnosed with stage 3 testicular cancer back in July of this year. Almost two weeks ago, he underwent an RPLND surgery to remove the remnants of the cancerous lymph nodes and tumors in his abdomen after completing three rounds of chemo. It’s currently No-Shave November and my dad is on the road to recovery, and growing … Continue reading bring back the ‘stache!
Back a few months ago when I made these Strawberry-Lime Crumble Bars, all I could think about was how I couldn’t wait to make a fall-inspired version! The strawberry and lime ones were amazing, but when the weather turns cool, you just want something with cinnamon, vanilla and warm spices, preferably with some apples included, to ring in the season.
The arrival of cool fall weather means a few different things to me. One, it means an end to the dreadfully hot Phoenix summers, and two, it means that I can once again eat things like hot oatmeal for breakfast without sweating over the bowl!
Continue reading “pumpkin pie oatmeal with cranberry crunch”
Isn’t Halloween one of the best parts of being a kid? It’s like that old Seinfeld bit, “What is this? What did you say? What did you say about giving out candy? Who’s giving out candy? Everyone that we know is just giving out candy?!”
Going trick-or-treating as a kid was one of my favorite times of the year. My mom would help me and my sisters touch up our costumes after wearing them at school all day, and when the sun started to go down, we’d pile into our neighbor Eric’s mom’s van and go through our neighborhoods in search of glorious, free candy! Armed with plastic pumpkin buckets and green glow sticks around our necks, we’d get out of the van every so often and get candy from a few streets worth of houses before getting back in and repeating it down the next few streets. You dress up, and people give you free candy. What a time to be alive!
oven + apron 