This week in our local basket, we got some of the most beautiful roma tomatoes that I have ever seen. I decided to make Paneer and Tomato Curry with them and attempted to make my own paneer. Paneer is a really simple pressed Indian cheese that you make by bringing milk to 180 degrees and adding buttermilk. It separates and you drain the curds in cheesecloth for a couple hours. It’s pretty much ricotta with less liquid. I’m not sure that I did everything right with the paneer but it still tasted good and it was a nice vegetarian addition to our weekly meals.

I’m still singing the praises of the New Best Recipe Cookbook. This French toast is pretty much perfect and you can make it with simple sandwich bread, which is kinda ridiculous. I have never made a French toast that I want to eat again with regular sandwich bread – it’s always something fancy, like brioche, challah or some sort of raisin cinnamon bread. And then I was introduce to this goodness. It’s amazing. And simple. You should try it!

I had made sushi at home once before, so we decided to give it a go again. This is nice for a couple of reasons – one of which is that you can control the sustainability of the fish. I usually have to turn off that part of my brain when we go enjoy sushi. . . Alaskan sockeye salmon and wild caught blue swimming crab were our ‘fish’ of choice. I wasn’t going to mess with raw fish. The most complicated component is the rice and I used Alton Brown’s simple straightforward recipe. Our other roll components were cream cheese, jalapeños, cucumber, asparagus, avocado, panko, wasabi, ginger, and spicy mayo.

Everyone rolled their own roll and then we all shared. It was pretty delicious. And I think it was pretty beautiful as well!

What have you been cooking lately?

Well, we will pretend that it really is fall somewhere in the world and that makes it time to pursue fall flavors – cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, anise. That delicious spicy smell that just makes you feel warm and happy inside. And pumpkins. You can’t forget the pumpkins. I want to make pumpkin pie now! I’m pretty sure I could eat a whole pumpkin pie by myself. Pie? Did someone say pie?

But until pie is a reality in my life (sometime around Thanksgiving), I will have to make do with pumpkin muffins. An oh, these pumpkin muffins satisfy.

Again, another confession – I bought way too much flour and it was taking up too much space in my pantry.

I have a small pantry.

Well, that and the flour was crying out at me to turn it into something delicious. And it happened to be sitting next to a random can of pumpkin.

And then Monica posted on pumpkin bread.

It couldn’t be denied. It was fate. A delicious fate indeed.

I turned the recipe into muffins so that I could freeze half of the batch for later. I like to freeze things so I can enjoy them later with the illusion of no work. Yes. Freezing is good. And freezing muffins means you can take one or two out at a time to enjoy instead of thawing a whole loaf. My waistline thanks me for that.

Yours will thank you if you just MAKE THESE MUFFINS!

Recipe for Pumpkin Muffins
Modified from Deliberately Domestic

Makes 48 muffins

Ingredients
3 cups of Sugar
4 Eggs
1 cup of Canola Oil
2 cups of Pumpkin Solid (make sure not to get the pumpkin pie solid, just plain pumpkin)
1 cup of Water
3 1/2 cups of Unbleached White Flour
1 teaspoon of Baking Powder
2 teaspoons of Baking Soda
2 teaspoons of Salt
1 teaspoon each of Ground Cloves, Ginger, Cinnamon, and Nutmeg

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350. Grease your muffin pan.

Blend together the sugar, eggs, canola oil, pumpkin solid, and water. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. Slowly add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture while stirring. Pour into muffin cups. Bake for 15-17 minutes or toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

Recipe for Shakshuka

I did make a few changes to the recipes. I didn’t use orange zest, substituted toasted crushed almonds for pecans, used bittersweet chocolate chips and cut down on the sugar just a bit. When I pulled the two loaves of zucchini bread out of the oven, I was worried that it had over baked, they were so firm on the top. But thankfully they were perfect. The zucchini kept everything moist and delicious. Not a dry spot in the bread. And really, the zucchini flavor wasn’t pronounced at all but the bread was absolutely delicious! Looking forward to seeing what else I can make with the zucchini from the garden. Any suggestions?

Recipe for Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread

Recipe for Homemade Thick, Chewy Granola Bars

So. Much. Better. Than. Starbucks.

My batch made more than the Pioneer Woman’s batch, but that was ok with me. I gave some away (it was difficult). Enjoyed them for dessert and with coffee the next morning. If you are unfamiliar with using a pastry blender, I wrote a tutorial on using one awhile back. I was afraid that they would be too sweet, but they surprised me, even with all that sugary glaze. Not too sweet at all. I did dip the whole scone in the glaze because, as Pioneer Woman noted, the glaze keeps the scones from going stale too quickly and I had a hope that these would stick around for at least a couple days.

They didn’t.

Recipe for Vanilla Bean Scones

I love the granola topping on this. It almost feels like you’re eating apple pie, but the granola topping brings this recipe back to breakfast. I did learn that I absolutely hate peeling apples and I had a bag of tiny granny smiths . . . so word to the wise, look for giant apples so that you don’t have to peel as many apples. It is worth the peeling time to make this though.

I thought it would be weird to serve this cold with vanilla yogurt, mainly because I had apple pie on the brain, but it was perfect. I would make the recommendation NOT to use sweetened flaked coconut because the only downfall to this recipe is that I felt it was a little too sweet. I also didn’t use the almonds which probably would have helped cut down on the sweetness of the recipe.

Definitely a good breakfast candidate and perfect to make the night before a nice breakfast/brunch! It’s also great to make and eat off of for a week. . . I mean, not that I did that or anything. . .

recipe for breakfast apple granola crisp

Well, the recipe. It was super easy to make. So few ingredients. I used chopped dried cranberries instead of currants because dried cranberries are just easier to find. I think next time, adding some orange zest would be delicious too. The best thing about these? They freeze really well! I made the batch not knowing when we were going to eat them, frozen them on a cookie sheet and then stored them in a freezer bag. You can bake them right out of the freezer for just a minute or two longer than the recipe calls for. This is one of those recipes that I would love to make and triple and store in a deep freeze. Hopefully we will be getting a deep freeze soon!

Recipe for Dreamy Cranberry Cream Scones

This recipe is essentially a savory bread pudding. I added some bacon because, really, bacon makes everything better (I need that on a shirt or something). This one even reheated the next day well. I think the one thing I would do differently is either reduce the recipe, cook for longer at a lower temperature, or use a bigger pan. The first day, the middles was a bit soggy and everyone enjoyed the edges the most. The second day, everything was cooked through more evenly and there were no complaints. Not that I get that many complaints when I feed people.

So yeah, come on over. You’ll get fed.

Recipe for Spinach and Cheese Strata

I made two batches of the no-knead dough and let them rise in the fridge for several days. Talk about easy – all you do is mix all of the ingredients together, cover and refrigerate. Then whenever you’re ready for it, you pull of a pinch of the dough to bake off. Pretty awesome! I rolled out and cut the sticky buns and placed them in the aluminum trays then stuck them in the freezer so I could bake them off as close to the actual feeding time as possible. I mean, I wanted them to be super fresh. I took them out of the freezer after Jude’s 6am feeding and let them thaw before sticking them in the oven. The two batches made approximately 120 sticky buns and they were dang good (I snuck a bite to make sure they were tasty)!

You just flip them over to show their caramel goodness when you take them out of the oven. Delicious and very sticky! I’m pretty sure I will be returning to this recipe if I have to do a brunch anytime in the near future. Super easy as long as you allow for a couple of days of rising in the fridge.

Recipe for No Knead Pecan Caramel Sticky Buns