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By Emily, October 22, 2009 3:01 pm

As I’ve mentioned before, I love fall.  The weather, the food, the holidays.   And though growing up my family never ate pumpkin (or any other squash), I really like pumpkin.  The availability of Starbuck’s Pumpkin Spice Lattes gets me really excited.  When Brian and I were visiting my parents for Columbus Day we bought a bag of Pumpkin Pie flavored popcorn from Coastal Maine Popcorn Company (it was really good!!!)) In short, I really like pumpkin.

Of course, this is all despite the fact that, until a week ago, I had never cooked with it.

That changed because about a month ago, I saw a post on $5 Dinners about a shortage of canned pumpkin puree, due to last year’s bad weather.  The article had a whole bunch of comments from people who were having a hard time finding canned pumpkin in their local stores.  Naturally, I became concerned and began looking for canned pumpkin every time I was in a store.

A couple weeks ago, I was thrilled to see that Walmart had canned pumpkin! Not wanting to miss out, I bought six cans.  Since then, it seems the shortage is over (that was quick!).  Nevertheless, I have six cans of pumpkin puree.  Luckily, many other food blogs are posting great pumpkin recipes.  We’ve been eating pumpkin-y foods all week in our apartment and I’m not sure it’s going to let up anytime soon, especially since pumpkin now seems so easy to come by!  This is the first of several entries which will focus on my experiments with recipes that star pumpkin puree.

The first recipient of my bounty of pumpkin was Pioneer Woman’s Moist Pumpkin Spice Muffins.  I figured, how could I go wrong with a Pioneer Woman recipe?

I was right, you can’t go wrong.  The muffins were really awesome.  Definitely moist.  I didn’t make the frosting because I’m lazy and cheap and not a big frosting person, but I’m sure it’s yummy too.  Oh, and I didn’t add the raisins.  One piece of advice: when she says “generously grease” the muffin tins, she means it.  I skipped it since I was using paper liners, but my muffins did stick to the liners a bit.  If you’re annoyed by the fact that the recipe calls for just over a cup for pumpkin, leaving you with about a 1/3 of a can, don’t worry.  Cook it up in a skillet with some nuts and brown sugar until warm and serve it as a side.  It’s pretty amazing.  Anyway, this muffin recipe is one of my new favorites and if you’re as into pumpkin as I am, you should check it out.

Come to think of it, I may need to make another batch of muffins for next week’s breakfast…

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By Emily, July 8, 2009 12:29 pm

How could I say no to “Buy 1, Get 1 Free” blueberries at the supermarket last week when I knew I had the perfect recipe for them?  My mom has the most delicious blueberry muffin recipe, and after waiting a couple days for her to email me the recipe (my recipe binder is with my in-laws in Connecticut with the rest of the stuff we couldn’t fit in our cars!), my Man also understands why we needed to buy blueberries last week.  Plus, it gave me the chance to use my new KitchenAid mixer!

Mom’s Blueberry Muffins

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½  teaspoon salt
½ cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup milk
2 cups blueberries
1 tablespoon sugar mixed with ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 375. Grease & flour 12 muffin cups and grease tops of the tins between the cups.(Or, do what I do: Use baking cups instead.  It’s much, much easier)
2. Mix together flour, powder, and salt.
3. In a medium-sized bowl, beat butter a few minutes until fluffy. Beat in sugar until well blended. Beat in the eggs thoroughly; add the vanilla.
4. Stir in the flour mixture about half at a time, alternating with milk, half at a time. Stir in 2 cups of blueberries.
5. Spoon batter into prepared cups, filling them to the top. Sprinkle with the nutmeg sugar.
6. Bake 25-30 minutes until golden. Let muffins cool about 30 minutes in pan before removing. (Or not…I’m pretty sure I didn’t…)
   
7. Enjoy!

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By Emily, March 7, 2009 9:11 am

Continuing with the Mark Bittman theme, I made granola bars last night based on the ones in  How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  I’m not sure why I felt the pressing need to do so; I’m sure we have a giant Sam’s Club box of Quaker Chewy Granola Bars in the basement and I like those just fine.  But the recipe really intrigued me, so I went for it.

Bittman offers several variations on his No Bake Granola Bar recipe, and I combined a couple of them.  It should be mentioned at this juncture (its surprising that it hasn’t come up sooner, really) that I am pretty close to obsessed with peaches and peach flavored things.  So, given all the options, I had to select dried peaches as my fruit of choice, but any dried fruit will work.  Now, without further ado,

You’ll need:
1/4 cup oil (I used Canola; Bittman recommends grapeseed or corn)
2 and 1/4 cups granola (whatever looks good to you, I used the plainest I could find)
3/4 cup walnuts, chopped (granola and nuts combined should total 3 cups; adjust amounts to taste)
1 and 1/2 cups dried peaches (or other dried fruit)

1.  Using a food processor, combine the peaches and oil until smooth.  Add water as necessary to achieve this.  I felt like I needed to add a lot of water to get my peaches to form something close to smooth.  I’ll spare you the photo, because it doesn’t look appetizing.

2. Warm the peach mixture in a small saucepan on the stove so that it becomes even softer.

3.  Mix the granola and walnuts in a large bowl.  Add the peach mixture a bit at a time and coat all the granola.

4.  Press into an 8 or 9-inch square pan with your fingers. Trust me, I tried pressing them with the spatula and they did not stick together.

5.  Cool in the refrigerator.  Cut into squares and enjoy.

They’re pretty tasty.  I don’t eat cereal, so I’m thinking this is going to be breakfast for the next few days.  I’m already brainstorming the other variations I want to try–apples, chocolate, cranberries, coconut…