Stuffed Pumpkin

Here is the last post for this week! This is a perfect dish for this time of year, especially if you like pumpkin in forms other than sweet pies and drinks. Cooked this way, it tastes almost like butternut squash. It is easier than I expected, and quite yummy! A friend of ours kept telling us about some other friends (now moved away) who used to make stuffed pumpkins. I did some research and discovered a Dorie Greenspan recipe. I decided to do my own version following her basic methods.

 

If you’re like me, you might get a bit eager with your filling and make extra. No worries, I just put the rest of the filling in a pie plate and baked it at the same temperature for 30 minutes. And there you go: stuffing two ways! (Or so we were joking. Hehe.)

 

Tips-y Tuesdays: Steak and Roasted Vegetables

This week will be a bit funny for posting because of Thanksgiving, so apologies and so on. Hopefully you are able to be with your family this week, and if not, that you are still with people you love. There are a few meals that I only ever loved at home, and did not enjoy as much outside of that setting. I have tried to reproduce these meals and only some have been successful. Now I can add steak to that list! For the vegetables, well, I have made them before, but this time I went a bit nuts. You can see the evidence below.

For steak, we have had numerous failures following all sorts of recipes. Finally, finally, we have our perfect steak dinner. Do you want to know what we did? Keep reading!

Meatball Subs

Today is an easy, simple recipe because the holidays have begun and we are busy. This is actually a weeknight meal, assuming you work ahead a little. I love that I can make these meatballs and sauce in the morning, then finish them in about 20 minutes when I get home. While they were heating up, I prepared the bread and cheese. Easy peasy! Feel free to use your own meatball recipe, but mine were mighty tasty in this. This might have been the best meatball sub I ever had. Actually, no, not just might have been. It was the best. And it’s so easy that you might start having the best meatball subs all of the time!

Tres Leches Cake

Sweet Week continues with a cake I had never made nor tasted before. A friend’s girlfriend was a big fan of the cake, and since we were hosting a party the same day as her birthday, I volunteered to make the cake. I can’t make any claims as to how authentic this cake is or isn’t since I have very little experience with it, but it did taste good. I would actually like to make just the cake part again and maybe even leave off the milk mixture. Some sort of buttercream frosting with it?? It was a moist cake even without the milk.

 

Homemade Chocolate Chips and Homemade Magic Shell

You could also title this post: Yummy Chocolate Stuff for Ice Cream, or Exploring the Many Uses of Coconut Oil and Chocolate. Basically, coconut oil is awesome because you can melt it and make tasty treats, then let it cool to room temperature and it hardens. But, it isn’t as unhealthy as other “hard-at-room temperature” fats. I have been trying to use it different ways to explore its properties. There is a slight coconut flavor with it, but if you add enough other ingredients, you don’t notice it (in case you don’t want coconut-flavored everything).

Frozen Smore

For this frozen s’more, you can combine the magic shell from below with my toasted marshmallow ice cream and graham crackers.

Graham Pancakes

One weekend morning I was very hungry, which usually means I will have a simple breakfast because if it takes too long I will start to get cranky. This particular morning I decided I was in the mood to make pancakes, but unique pancakes. When I came across the idea for adding graham cracker crumbs to pancake batter, I was sold. I enjoyed these with very little syrup so that I could better taste the graham flavor. You can also have them with jam like I made for K (directions below).

 

 

Moroccan Roasted Chicken

I couldn’t believe how easy this recipe was. The list of ingredients seems a bit long looking back at it now, but really it’s not. The only thing I had to buy was the green onion (I needed some more). The recipe was supposed to use hazelnuts, but my grocery store was completely out of them (and still is–ugh!!!). I love pistachios, and I felt they could go well with this. Now, I wouldn’t make it any other way! The rose water is an ingredient you might not have. You might want to do without it, and I get that…but if you’re at all curious, I suggest you try it. I’ve been on the fence, but this dish made me glad I had it. I could taste it, but not in a yucky way (haha). I could see how it added flavor and made it taste like I was somewhere fancier than my own kitchen.

Besides the pistachios, I also loved the sauce that gradually formed as the chicken baked. It was amazing!! Definitely make sure you have some rice to soak it up. And pan-roasted asparagus on the side? Yeah, I loved this meal.