Thanksgiving Dessert: Quick & Easy Pumpkin Pie from Scratch

This is the time of year that I look forward to Pumpkin Pie; it's my favorite dish at Thanksgiving.  There's just something about Pumpkin and Cinnamon that excites my taste buds, but I'm not a big fan of the pie crust. So when I make pumpkin pie from scratch, I skip the traditional pie crust entirely and make a quick graham cracker with a twist crust.  This really simplifies making pie from scratch and you can easily impress your friends and family with a homemade pie.  Oh, and I love using my food processor for this recipe.

Ingredients:
Crust:
1 1/2 cups of graham cracker cookies - ground (preferable homemade)
1/2 - 3/4 cups of pecans - ground
1 tbsp ground cinnamon (optional)
1/2 cup of brown sugar (if you want a sweeter crust)
about 1 stick of melted butter

Filling:
2 eggs, beaten
16 oz of pumpkin puree (preferably homemade)
3/4 cup brown sugar
pinch of salt
2-3 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 1/2 cups half-and-half

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2.  Combine all ingredients, expect butter in a food processer and process until ground crumbs.  See picture.
3.  Slowly add butter and mix by hand or in the food processor until crumbs start to combine.
4.  Grease pie dish and press crumbs into the bottom and sides of dish.  Bake for about 5-10 minutes in the oven.  Do not let the edges burn or become too dark.
5.  Combine all filling ingredients in a bowl and mix.
6.  Pour into cooled pie crust.  Bake 15 minutes.
7.  Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and continue baking for about 45 minutes or until the center is set and knife in the center comes out clean.
8.  Allow to cool and serve.  Can be made a day ahead

The edges turned out slightly 'burned'

Fried Fish Sandwich

Every once in a while I like to batter some cod and make one of two choices - fish tacos or fish & chips.  This time I created a little twist as I was inspired by an episode of Sandwich King on the Food Network.  Now I have three choices when I batter cod - tacos, fish & chips or sandwich.

Ingredients:

Sandwich & Fish Batter:
2 portions of cod (any size of your choice)
1 bottle of beer - preferable dark beer
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
pinch of salt
Spice mixture - Ancho-Chili powder, Chiptole Chili powder, Chili powder, Paprika, Cumin, and a pinch of Cayenne (all to taste or about 1 tsp each)
Salt & Pepper
Canola Oil
2-3 radishes - sliced thinly
Green leaf lettuce
Fresh baked bread, sliced - Pugliese or Sourdough works best

Tartar Sauce:
2-3 Dill pickles, chopped (you can substitute Bread & Butter or Sweet if you prefer)
1 teaspoon capers, chopped
1 cup Mayonnaise
1 tsp ground mustard powder
juice of 1/2 lemon
Salt & Pepper

Instructions:
1. Salt and Pepper your cod portions.  Heat oil in a large pot or Dutch oven.
2.  Mix all dry ingredients for the batter, then add beer.  Whisk until blended and no lumps.
3.  Oil should be about 350 degrees.  Dip cod 1 portion at a time in the batter and carefully place in oil.  Fry, flipping once until golden brown.  If you use a dark beer the batter will be darker.
4.  Drain both fried pieces on a rack placed in a baking tray.  (see picture)
5.  Meanwhile mix all ingredients for Tartar sauce.  Allow to chill in the refrigerator.
6.  Slice bread and radishes.
7.  Assemble sandwich and enjoy!

A side of fries

Salt & Pepper your Cod portions

The Batter with spices

Homemade Tartar Sauce

Hot Oil! - Use Caution

Tray with rack to drain fried foods - Works great!

Sliced fresh bread

Assembling the Sandwich - radishes on the left, Tartar sauce on the right

Sandwich and fries - Dinner is served

Deep Dish Pizza

I always make pizza at home these days, but do not normally go for a deep dish pizza.  I find deep dish pizza to be a bit more "work" than just making my normal pizza dough.

Here's what I used to bake my deep dish pizza. 

Deep Dish Pizza Kit (find at online retailers)

For the pizza dough you can find recipes for specific deep dish pizza, but I just use my normal pizza dough and add a little medium or course grind cornmeal.  The cornmeal gives the dough a little more of a bite or crunch and that's what I like about a deep dish pizza.

Add toppings, sauce and cheese (not in that order) - and the pizza is ready for the oven.

Deep Dish Pizza dough

Time to eat!

Tip of the Month: Substituting Ingredients when cooking

I am finally able to sit down and post my November tip, though it's a bit late when I usually post at the beginning of the month.  Since Thanksgiving is just days away, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about cooking and substituting ingredients.  The Fall and Winter are always times of year that I bake more, partly because I don't like to have the oven on when it's hot outside.  On cooler days, the oven can warm the house and I don't mind that.

There are many reasons why you might want to substitute ingredients in a recipe, here are the one's I find to be more common, but by-no-means all of them:
       1.  Cannot find the specific ingredient
       2.  Do not have the ingredient in your pantry (and do not want to go to the store)
       3.  Want to include a healthier ingredient
       4.  Do not like a specific ingredient
       5.  Allergic or food-sensitive to a specific ingredient


No matter what your reasoning is, let's figure out how to substitute and not drastically alter a recipe or the flavor.  For baking you can easily substitute ingredients like butter and oil and you do not need to change measurements.  If you have a cup of butter or oil, substitute 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce or cooked pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix).  I've used applesauce in place of butter and oil in many baking recipes, and just recently tried substituting pumpkin for butter in a whoopee pie recipe.  The pumpkin was a great substitute, especially since I was making the whoopee pie's for Halloween.   Applesauce and pumpkin make cookies, muffins, breads and the like moist and are great choices for vegans.  I haven't come up with a great alternative to eggs, if you are looking for a truly  vegan substitution.

Creamed Pumpkin and sugar

Whoopee pie with pumpkin substituted for butter

Now I wouldn't recommend substituting applesauce or pumpkin if you are making any pie crusts or pastry dough.  For those I still use butter and I might try coconut oil, but that will be for another day.

For cooking, I substitute or exclude ingredients depending on the what the recipe is.  For instance, I recently tried Giada's Orecchiette with Roasted Fennel recipe, but did not have any sun-dried tomatoes.  I could have substituted purely sun-dried tomatoes that were not in oil, however I did not have those either.  So to make sure I still had a tomato flavor in the dish, I simply added about a cup or so (to taste) of marinara sauce.  The result was fantastic and I think I might always make this recipe with the substitution.   In other cases you can substitute different cuts of meats or even types of meat.  I often substitute chicken breast for recipes that call for chicken thighs or drumsticks.  Other times, when I cannot find an ingredient, for instance harissa paste, I found a recipe to make my own and used that as a substitute.  Sometimes if can be a simple substitution baby bella mushrooms for button mushrooms or vegetable stock for chicken stock.

Substituting ingredients should not be difficult and remember it is possible to substitute, just make sure you like what you are replacing.  You can find some of my "experiments" with substituting Hemp Seed Here and Here.

Time Change

Did you know that Daylight Savings Time began during World War I?  The idea was originally mentioned by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 and proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson.

Daylight Savings Time, though sometimes referred to by other names, is used internationally, mostly among Northern Hemisphere countries  Check out this image.  That's not to say that every nation or state actually uses it.  For example Arizona and Hawaii are two states that do not follow the time change.  In Australia, Queensland does not follow either and the reasons I have heard as to why Queensland does not include the cows would become confused and the drapes would fade.  Whatever the reason is why one should follow or not, doesn't always matter because they are pros and cons to time change.  Our "spring ahead" and "fall back" is meant to give us more sunlight hours in the evenings and less light in the morning.  But is the the 'real truth'?  With the time change occurring later and later in the fall, I'm not so sure.

What do you think of time change?  Just don't forget to change your clocks today!

Pumpkin-Spice Latte at Home

Fall is probably my favorite time of year.  I love the colors of the leaves changing, the pumpkins in the fields and the chill in the air.  It's also the time of year that I indulge in a Pumpkin-Spice Latte at Starbucks, however this year Starbucks ran out of their "syrup" for this seasonal Latte.  So I was on a quest to recreate my own at home as my past attempts failed.  You can find and use Pumpkin-Spice syrups that are available during the holidays at stores such as BevMo.  I tried a couple brands, but found that I did not get the pumpkin or spice flavor that I love in a Pumpkin-Spice Latte, plus the ingredients are for the most part, artificial anyways.  I have also looked at many different recipes for coffee, lattes and the like.  Finally, I think I have come-up with a good alternative for creating my own Pumpkin-Spice Latte.

Ingredients:

(for 2 cups of coffee/latte)
1/3 cup of purred pumpkin
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg (freshly grated works best)
1/2 tsp pumpkin-spice (if desired)
1 cup of milk
Brown sugar to taste (I used about 1-2 tablespoon)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
About 2 cups of brewed coffee or espresso

Instructions:
1. Mix pumpkin and spices together.
2. Froth milk with a milk-frother, such as Bodum.
3. Combine coffee and pumpkin mixture, whisk.  If you do not want any "bits" from the pumpkin you may want to strain it.
4. In a coffee mug pour in the coffee-pumpkin mixture and add sugar to taste.  Then add in frothed milk.
Serve and enjoy!

The ingredients & tools

Pumpkin-Spice mixture

Frothed Milk

Time to Enjoy

Quick & Easy Mulled Apple Cider

I love the smell of Apple Cider and the spices that are used to make mulled apple cider.  Most that I have tasted are too sweet for me, so I decided to try making my own and make my house smell like Autumn in the process.  Almost anyone that purchases the necessary ingredients and follows a recipe can make their own mulled apple cider.  Let's start cooking!

Ingredients:
1 gallon of good quality Apple Cider (unsweetened)
8 packets of Mulling Spices

Instructions:
1.  Bring Apple Cider and spices to a boil in a pot.  Steep for about 5 minutes.  Remove spice packets and serve.

You may use the individual spice packets to make smaller quantities if desired.

Enjoy!

Fall Gardening

By the time Autumn comes around, most gardens have been harvested and plants removed to make room for winter crops.  For me, I do not stick to a strict gardening calendar since the weather can be unpredictable.  At this moment I still have tomatoes, peppers, a few cucumbers and my cantaloupe growing in my garden.  The weather cooled down and a brief storm passed over Northern California a few weeks ago, then the temperatures rose back into the 80's and now we had a very cold storm pass over that brought snow to the Sierra's.  The 80 degree weather was plenty warm for my tomatoes and peppers to ripen, though a bit slower.  Once the nighttime temperatures stay in the low 50's and do not get above 75 degrees during the daytime, then I will pick whatever is left on my plants before digging them up.  So when I heard the weather predictions of this storm I picked the last of my pepper and tomato crop, even the green tomatoes.

Here's a tip on ripening your own green tomatoes, if you are tired of fried green tomatoes, just put them in a paper bag and allow to ripen.  I will tell you that ripened green tomatoes in a bag are not quite as good as freshly picked vine-ripened tomatoes, but they are still better than conventional tomatoes.  You can make a tomato soup with your leftover crop, check out what I did last year HERE.

Unfortunately I do not have a greenhouse of my own to grow some vegetables year round, so I have to pay attention to weather patterns.  My herbs, for the most part will continue to grow through the winter, except my basil, which I will harvest before the first frost.  I replanted my Swiss chard so that it can grow during the winter and I also added some blueberry plants to my garden.

Swiss Chard

Tomatoes!

Blueberry Plant

One more Cantaloupe on the vine

The last of my summer vegetable crop

Ruffle Scarfs

This weekend I took a break from gardening and worked on a few of my yarn projects.  I had purchased a few different yarns that are mainly used to knit ruffle scarfs, which my Mom has been wanting me to make for awhile now.  So I sat down and found my instructions and in a day I had two completed ruffle scarfs and a third in the works.  With the right instructions (and pictures) these ruffle scarfs are fairly easy to whip up and would make great gifts this holiday season.  HERE are the instructions that I found the most useful with good pictures for those of us that are visual learners and there is even a video!  Both scarfs turned out great and now I have a basket full of finished projects that I need to weave in ends and block.  My next ruffle scarf is with some specialty yarn from my Local Yarn shop, so I will share that when it's completed.

Patons Pirouette (left) and Red Heart Boutique Sashay (right)

If you don't know how to knit, you could try this crochet ruffle scarf with Lion Brand's Homespun yarn.  The result is not quite the same since the yarn, itself, is entirely different.  However, I still love the look of the ruffle scarf, which can be made shorter or longer (the one below is longer).

Lion Brand Homespun: Crochet Ruffle Scarf

On the Hook & Needle Project Update

Usually I only have one or two projects each for crochet and knitting in-the-works, but since I had taken a handful of classes in July at Anna's Yarn Shoppe, I have more than that.  Plus I started a few fall projects that I shared this week on the blog HERE.

Crochet: Frost Scarf

If you do not have the link for the pattern, check out my previous post HERE.  I worked several weeks on this project, only a few hours a day and I'm not quite done.  After awhile, I became bored with repeating the same row over and over again.  It really is an easy pattern if you know basic crochet stitches.  I did find that I would stitch looser or tighter at different times when I would work on this.  Though I think I can get away with this minor "problem" as the bottom is wider then the middle and I will be blocking it in the end.  I just have to be sure to make the bottom on the other side of the scarf wider then the middle.  This will give it a different effect than the pattern intended, but it also makes my scarf more unique - it is handmade after-all.

Knit: Winter Berries Wrap/Scarf

I really love the look of this pattern and the mock cabling.  You can read my previous post HERE.  Once I learned the new stitches in this pattern it was not a difficult pattern.  I found that the way it was written (having to go back and forth to look at the decorative pattern and the main pattern) made it more difficult than actually knitting it.  I must have knit the first 10-15 rows about 5 times!  By the time I started over a 6th time, I was able to continue in the pattern and I did manage to rip out my mistakes.  However, I usually had to rip out 4 rows to finally be able to start again in the pattern.  Not sure why I ended up having to rip out more than a row to fix a mistake in the previous row, but it was good practice in fixing my mistakes.  Now I am finishing the last part of the pattern, which is not descriptive enough for me (as a beginner knitter) to make sure I am making the correct decreases in the pattern.  Once I can figure this out, I have the final edging and it will be complete, before blocking.

You can see the mock cabling starting to develop

Two Great Fall Scarf Patterns

Among other projects I have in the works or have already finished, I am working on two scarfs for the Fall.  The first pattern is crochet and can be made in other colors the yarn comes in, but I choose the Autumn color (Harvest Moon) as it reminds me of the changing colors of leaves.  The second one is knitted and the design has a beautiful leaf pattern to it that I am working in a gorgeous fall green color.  There are several other knitted projects with intricate leaf designs that I have on my list to make at some point.  Most of them are on Raverly, so if you haven't joined you should.  There are great patterns both free and to buy.

Scarf 1: Sophisticated Scarf by Red Heart in Crochet

Follow my progress, new photos and notes HERE. You can find the pattern HERE.  The picture doesn't do the actual color justice, but you get an idea of how the scarf looks.

Scarf 2: Daphne

Follow my progress, new photos and notes HERE.  You can find the pattern HERE.  So far I have only finished the repeat of rows twice and already you can clearly see the leaf pattern developing..  It will look even better once it is blocked

Tip of the Month: Knitting Terms in German

Earlier this year, in the Spring, I came across a knitting magazine - Filati  (click here to read about it) and found I really love these patterns.  Maybe it's my European roots, that I love these German designs.  Either way, I was a bit disappointed that two of the company's Feltro pattern books were not reprinted in English.  After finding a supplier that had these in stock, I decided to go ahead and order them in German.   Well, now I get to practice my German translation skills and decipher German knitting terms.  First I decided to look up knitting terms in German, then put the whole pattern into an online translator program (such a great tool!).

Here are some German Knitting Terms:
Purl: linke Masche; links stricken
Knit: stricken
Knitted: gestrickt
Cast On: anschlagen, aufschlagen
Gauge: gage messgerat


Now I can knit these adorable dog mats (bottom left):

www.lanagrossa.com

Knitting Patterns to Share

If you are like me, you are always adding to your collection of crochet or knitting patterns.  I already have a binder-full, but sometimes I find that certain patterns come in handy when you want to whip-up a cute little gift for someone.  Here a few of the patterns that I recently added as my favorites.  Just click on the links for the patterns and pictures.

I came across NobleKnits blog in my search of patterns and found that this is a very resourceful blog for knitters. Besides free patterns, there are knitting charities, a shop and knitting help, plus all of the fun blog posts.  Check out the new lace knit patterns that require only 1 skein of yarn!  Yes that's right one skein of yarn and 4 patterns.  What a find.

A Unicorn hat by Brittany Tyler is great for teens or as a Halloween costume.  The pictures on Stixyarn are great.

Cute Star Ornaments which are perfect for bowl fillers or ornaments on a tree.  Whip one up for a cute gift.

Cabled Leg warmers that are chic, yet remind me of the '80's!  Perfect for yoga in the cooler months.  Though I need to learn to cable before I can tackle this project.

Hooded Scarf that is also cabled, yet very stylish for the winter months.  I just recently came across her blog and there are many great projects there.

A Star baby blanket and Car booties which are cute baby shower gifts.

And finally a cute Heart Dishcloth so you can get ready for Valentine's Day early, though this makes a great gift for the holidays too.

It's blooming Sunflowers

My sunflowers are finally blooming and I was quite excited when I found them blooming.  So far no red sunflowers, but more have yet to bloom.  These did not grow as tall as most sunflowers and I have come to the conclusion that I planted these a bit late in the season.  Next year I will have to start sooner and then I should have some gigantic sunflowers with large heads of sunflower seeds.  Here are lots of photos to enjoy.