Pumpkin Cruch Cake

Carissa, I can't believe you had not made this. I made it right away when I got the book because I remembered eating this in Tyler and loved it! I have taken it to multiple functions and it is always a hit....easy and fast to make last minute too! Never had enough left to try and freeze though. Thanks for the heads up on the pumpkin shortage, that is one of my staples. I usually have a couple of can on hand.

I now have 200 of your Pecan Sandies, balled and in zip locks in my freezer. I took them to a bridal shower and got pegged to make more for the wedding!

Lorrie

Pumpkin Crunch Cake ~ page 260

This was truly delicious! This is my mom's recipe that I have eaten when she has made, but I hadn't actually made it myself till now! I had to go to 3 different grocery stores to find canned pumpkin! I thought that was just because it wasn't in high demand right now, but someone told me the pumpkin farmers had been hit hard with bad weather! Either way, just keep looking, someone is bound to carry it!

It is like soft pumpkin pie on the bottom and moist cake on the top with crunchy nuts on top of that. I didn't have pumpkin pie spice, so I used the next best thing...apple pie spice! I couldn't tell a difference. It made so much that I was afraid that I would eat it all myself, so I frozen half of it. Not sure how well if freezes, I'll let you know once I thaw it out and eat it. If you haven't made this, go run to the store real fast and get the ingredients so you can make it tonight! Your house will smell heavenly while it is baking. --Carissa

Chicken Marsala ~ page 123

This was a spur of the moment dinner the other night...all I had to run by the store to grab were mushrooms. It makes 6 servings, so plan on leftovers if you don't have a big family or company coming over. I first had this dish at an Italian restaurant in Houston right after we moved here, and fell in love with the smooth sauce. Of course if you order it in a restaurant it is not so great for you. Most recipes I have seen for this dish have you adding in many tablespoons of butter at the end to make the sauce smooth and silky. I use cornstarch to add that without the fat.

Here I pre-measured everything on the counter an hour or so before dinner so that when Adam came home from work all I had to do was throw it all together. The only thing I didn't mix up was the cornstarch mixture. I have done that ahead of time on another recipe and thought that the cornstarch didn't thicken like it was suppose to. So now I do that at the last minute.

In case you are like me and have no idea about wines...here is what Marsala wine looks like. One bottle should make about 2 recipes of this. Below is the tender chicken tenders simmering away in the sauce! Yum!

For the kid friendly report...my 5 year old gobbled it up and the 2 year old did not, so she went to bed without dinner poor thing.



On a completely different topic...I made the forgotten short ribs from page 169 again last night for dinner...OH, my!!! There were to die for! You need to try them out right away if you haven't yet!! They were great with mashed potatoes!!! It says to cook for 4 hours, I had an extra hour so I let them keep cooking for another hour...they were falling apart delicious!

Simple & Low-Fat Hot Fudge Cake ~ page 261

I made this for dessert for some friends that were coming over....It turned out so yummy! I ate two bowls before anyone else had finished their first helping! In the cookbook I mention eating this for breakfast...yup...that is when this top picture was taken. This was the next morning, and it was just as good as the night before! :)

It is a great dessert to make when you don't have any special baking ingredients on hand. It is pretty basic, as long as you keep cocoa powder around, you are ready to make this any night of the week. There are no eggs and only 2 Tablespoons of oil...can't beat that. It will be a touch squishy on top here and there because of the fudge sauce, so don't let that scare you. Just make sure your piece has lots of sauce spooned over the top! --Carissa

Bok Choy Salad ~ page 63

Although this salad goes with many kinds of meals, it is especially nice with any type Chinese food, especially when you need an extra vegetable to round things out. Bok choy is in interesting type of Chinese cabbage. It has a light, sweet flavor, crisp texture, and high nutritional value.

The white stalks on bok choy resemble celery without the stinginess, and the dark green crinkly leaves is similar to Romaine lettuce. Use both the stalks and the leaves in this recipe.

You can make the crispy salad topping up early in the day, or several days before you need it. Crush uncooked Ramen noodles, then add chopped almonds and sunflower seeds to toast in the oven.

This stuff is very good! This particular recipe does not use any butter or oil to make the topping. (If you look at the Crunchy Romaine Toss on page 66, there is a similar topping that uses butter to toast the noodle and nuts--but this recipe is the low fat version!) I think it is tasty both ways.

The salad dressing can be made up well before serving, also. I took this salad to a pot luck dinner, and packed the 3 components up in separate covered dishes, then when ready to serve, tossed all 3 parts together. This is very easy to travel with, or to make well in advance.

Pita Snacks ~ page 25

You will be delighted at how easy, low fat, healthy, and lip-smacking tasty these chips are! They are made from whole wheat pita bread. Just split the disks of pita, brush with olive oil on the inside, and sprinkle with seasonings.

Spread the pieces out on baking sheets to crisp in the oven for 10 minutes. The recipe says to bake till light brown, so you might want to add in this time to the recipe in your cookbook, to give you an idea of when to check them. I took mine out when a few were still a bit soft, as I didn't want them to get teeth cracking hard, and I knew they would crisp up as they cool. I didn't have enough Parmesan cheese on hand to sprinkle on, as the recipe calls for, so I didn't use it on this batch. I added coarsely ground black pepper instead of cayenne pepper. You can be creative with your seasonings, as you see!

Hummas is the favored dip for these low-fat chips, although these pita snacks are great for many other uses too.

These will keep well in a tightly covered container for several days. After a few days, I still had a handful leftover, so I needed some breadcrumbs for meatballs, and just threw the pita chips in the food processor and it made flavorful, healthy crumbs!

Hummus and Pimento Cheese gone wild...

I found a new spice that I am trying out in everything that seems reasonable...well, actually it is not a new spice, I just came across some intriguing information about Turmeric, and decided I wanted to use more of it. Turmeric basically cures whatever ails you ("they" say). From cancer, to inflammation, to acne...I am willing to give it a try, since I like turmeric anyway. So I put 1/2 teaspoon turmeric in our Hummus recipe and got brave enough to take it to a church homegroup event. You can see it altered the color a good bit--kind of looks like guacomole, but it is not! It was very well liked, however, I was questioned about the color! But several said it was the best hummus they had ever had.

You can't beat how easy this is to make--throw it all in the food processor, pulse till smooth, and you have hummus! Carissa often substitutes peanut butter for the tahini called for in this hummus, and she says that tastes great. I keep the tahini on hand though, so I use that, and like the taste a lot.

Done! Makes a lot and last a long time in the fridge. Now for my next exploits with turmeric...

The pimento cheese spread on page 18 took on amazing color with the addition of turmeric! David and I love the taste so much in this spread, that I think I will always use this spice when I make pimento cheese.
If you want to read more about turmeric, here is a site I found interesting--it has some pros and cons of the science behind the claims--but I still say it can't hurt to try it out. It is a tasty experiment.
http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/20-health-benefits-of-turmeric.html

Squash Dressing ~ page 105

I should call this Southern Squash Dressing--it just taste like something good from the South! This is filling, delicious, and quick and easy. Besides yellow squash, the main ingredient is cornbread crumbs. Some cheese and eggs holds it all together. I always use leftover cornbread that I stick in the freezer just for this recipe.

I steam my squash in this electric steamer--it is a wonderful appliance. Be sure to undercook the squash though. It will get more cooking in the oven.

If your leftover cornbread is frozen in a zipper-top baggie, just squeeze around on the bag till it is all in crumbs. Mince the onion so it will cook fast.

Saute the onion just a bit, then dump in all the ingredients and stir everything together.

Press the mixture into a baking dish and send it off to the oven to set up.

This squash dish serves up in neat pieces. Once again, here is my vegetarian meal with Squash Dressing and Spinach and Onion Couscous. The zucchini sticks is the first zucchini picked from my garden today--just had to show that off...

Spinach and Onion Couscous ~ page 104

I just started using couscous a few years ago--I don't know if it has been around forever, and I just didn't notice, or why I didn't know about it. Not sure. But it is my new quickie side dish. I especially like it in the summer, when I don't want to heat the kitchen up, but I don't want cold salad either.

Here are two kinds of couscous that comes in a box. Carissa just recently told me about the one on the right--called giant pasta pearls. I found it at the health food store. (Couscous is just pasta--tiny balls of it that don't have to cook, they just kind of rehydrate in hot liquid for 5 minutes.) Carissa's sister-in-law, Holly, made this recipe with the giant couscous for a crowd of probably 50 or more people for her brother Andrew's rehearsal dinner. I dropped by and got to taste it, and it was great! I really liked the large size of the couscous. One nice thing about this recipe, is that it can sit out for a long time, and is still very good at room temperature--which makes it wonderful for a buffet dish or pot luck. But today, I used the regular size couscous for this recipe. (The large size does need to cook longer, so that needs to be factored into this recipe...)

You can do this whole recipe in a skillet. I sautéed the onion and garlic, then piled in my fresh spinach. I cooked the spinach for about a minute till it wasn't overflowing the pan...

Then just dump in the dry couscous and the hot chicken broth (which I made with boiling water and granular chicken bouillon) and cover the pan and remove from heat. After 5 minutes, fluff with a fork and stir in the lemon juice, Parmesan cheese, and black pepper. You probably wont need extra salt because chicken broth is always very salty on its own. Pretty fast, huh?

Here is a vegetarian meal with Spinach and Onion Couscous along with Squash Dressing, just one page over in the cookbook. If my garden tomatoes were ripe (they will be in about 1 week!) I would have just served this recipe along with a plate a fresh sliced tomatoes, and called it a light summer meal.

Blackberry Coffee Cake ~ page 248

Sunday morning before church, David and I got up early and went wild blackberry picking....and here is the result of that outing...Mmmm.

Our house is located within walking distance to a large wooded natural park. The woods are loaded with ripe blackberry brambles this spring. We suffered a few scratches and insect bites, but it was worth it to gather the star component for this coffee cake.

The batter mixes up pretty much like muffins would.

I made the topping in the food processor. Some of the topping is mixed in with the blackberries to coat them and keep them from dropping to the bottom of the cake, or bleeding into the cake.

The berry mixture is scattered on top the cake batter.

Then the remainder of the topping is sprinkled over the berries.

This coffee cake is not as sweet as a cake--it is more like the sweetness of a muffin. So for a dinner dessert, you might enjoy a scoop of ice cream alongside each serving. For breakfast, a cup of coffee is all you need!

Cream Cheese Braids ~ page 231

This is such a lovely bread. The steps are simple and it is well worth your time. The look on people's faces as they take their first bite says it all.

This is one of those things that once you have had it, you will think about it....and you will make it again.

This is the dough ready for the refrigerator and the 
overnight rising.



And then after the rising and split into four parts.

This is the rolled out dough spread with the cream cheese filling, and then rolled up and the dough split, ready to rise again and bake.

Homemade Mayonnaise ~ page 21

I get such a kick out of making mayonnaise--like I have beat the system or something! It just seems like such an impossibility that you can take ingredients as simple as a raw egg, oil, and lemon juice, and make this creamy, delicious spread.

Now I know there are those that will be afraid of the raw egg. But my research on google shows that the odds of contracting salmonella from eggs is fairly slim --1 in 30,000. I know that is just google...but still, it seems very low odds of getting sick, and you are not eating the whole egg in a serving of this mayonnaise anyway. So onto mayonnaise making...

The only trick to this recipe is to dribble the oil into the top hole of the lid of the blender (that has the egg and lemon juice in it), drop my drop, then dribble by dribble, until all the oil is slowly incorporated.

Very quickly the mixture begins to thicken into a silky mass.

This is what you pour out of the blender--isn't that amazing? I do like to stir in the optional Dijon mustard into the finished mixture.

I made salmon salad for lunch with this mayonnaise (from the leftover honey-pepper salmon from the other day...).

My next use will be the homemade pimento cheese spread with my mayonnaise. And then I might finish off the rest as a tartar sauce with fish next week...we will see. I do like to use this mayonnaise up within a week, so I make out my plans for it when I make up a batch.