Whole Wheat & Parmesan Pizza Crust from Make Ahead Bread

Trigger warning: carbs. Lots of them. In oh so delicious ways. (insert Homer Simpson noises)

A pizza crust chock full of flavor from parmesan cheese, with a great chewy texture thanks to the addition of whole wheat flour. This recipe is made in stages, so when you've got a couple small chunks of time you'll end up with easy homemade pizza.

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When I am invited to spread the word about a new cookbook I am not encouraged to randomly share any old recipe that strikes my fancy from the book. Instead, publishers give us bloggers an approved selection of recipes and ask us to pick from that list. If there's a recipe using a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share-sourced ingredient, or something that fits with my blog and appeals to my family, I'm glad to participate.

Last time I shared a brand new cookbook all about macaroni and cheese called Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese (Amazon affiliate link). I did so because I could use a farm share pumpkin, filled with macaroni and cheese, as a recipe. That was a fun challenge and amazingly delicious. The flavor combo was so inspiring I went on to share 2 more variations on that theme, Macaroni and Cheese with Beet Greens, Ham and Manchego and Macaroni and Cheese with Roasted Winter Squash.

Today, and for my next post, I am sharing recipes from Donna Currie's book Make Ahead Bread: 100 Recipes for Melt-in-Your-Mouth Fresh Bread Every Day(Amazon affiliate link) in honor of the first anniversary of publication.

Looking through the assortment of publisher-selected recipes it was hard to narrow it down to one. So I didn't. Today, being a Friday and a traditional Pizza Night for our family I am sharing Donna's Whole Wheat & Parmesan Pizza Crust. Monday I've got a photogenic brunch treat with bicolor Sweet Potato and Pecan Monkey Bread. Again I've found recipes that use farm share-sourced ingredients as well as recipes that fit in with my blog and boy do they appeal to my family!

As I noted at the top, there's a trigger warning about carbs on this post. Looking through the recipes from Donna's book made me want to BAKE ALL THE THINGS! In fact, as I mentioned on my FB page, I weighed out more than 3 pounds of flour while baking on Saturday. And more on Sunday. I gave away bread to my neighbors, friends, and even my son's ACT test proctor because the kids and I were getting swamped with all of these yummy goodies and I am inspired to try more variations.

I'm baking like a fiend [do fiends bake? Maybe they'd be less fiendish if they did] so that on Tuesday, the one year anniversary of publication of Make Ahead Bread (Amazon affiliate link, still) my recipes will be added to a round up of recipes shared on Mother Would Know. Then we hope you buy a copy for yourself, for your local library, or for someone who will bake for you!

Needs a bit more kneading--this is when I added the salt and cheese.

For more pizzas ideas, since I fix one for my family nearly every Friday night, please see my Visual Pizza Recipe Index. I've got it broken down into pizza doughs (where this recipe will land), savory pizzas using fruit, vegetarian pizzas, and pizzas with meat toppings. I've got a Pinterest board of pizza ideas from around the web. On my FB page I often share what's going on in the kitchen as well as recipes and round ups that catch my eye. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Chicken, Pumpkin, and White Bean Chili

A hearty white chili with cubes of roasted pumpkin and spicy Hatch chiles, chunks of chicken breast, and creamy white beans in a beer-spiked broth.

Subtitle: Pumpkin Chunk'n Chicken White Bean Chili

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Would you like another change-of-pace chili using abundant seasonal produce? One that does not use tomatoes, green or otherwise? I would. So I made this one. I'm all about using the available veggies in new and creative ways. While I adore the simplicity of a Summer Tomato Sandwich [and in fact have been enjoying several each week with the final tomatoes of the year] when life give me lots . . . and lots and lots . . . of pumpkins I get inspired.

Since what I'm blogging about is what we're eating, primarily I focus on savory foods. While Tasty Pumpkin Treats and Pumpkin Eggnog Chocolate Chip Waffles are fun ways to eat the pumpkins that volunteer in the back yard, reality is I just can't eat like that all the time. Nor do I want to! We need a foundation of wholesome meals underneath the treats. Like this chili. It uses up the copious pumpkin in a healthy and flavorful way.

Normally I don't share a photo of what I looked like while fixing this dish, but it just happened that I was interviewed for the local paper the day I made this. You can read the article here.

For more recipes using pumpkins, please see my Pumpkin Recipes Collection. For more recipes including beans, please see my Beans (Legumes) Recipes Collection. For more recipes using Hatch chiles, please see my Hatch Chile Recipe Collection. For more recipes using chicken, use the search function on the blog because I haven't gone that far in my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. It's a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, and right now my farm share doesn't give me chicken. I've got boards on Pinterest devoted to piles of chicken, though. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Asian Pear & Cardamom Cream Muffins #MuffinMonday

Cardamom-spiced Asian pear chunks fill this rich-with-cream whole wheat muffin. It's a wonderfully sweet treat to celebrate Fall and serve to your favorite book group!

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These muffins are a mouthful to describe, but once you get it all out there should be no further need for description. I'll tell ya how I came up with them, though, and share where I served them.
The common thread is BOOKS.

My mom went to college in Canada and learned Home Ec [or whatever they called it back in the 50s that became Home Ec in the 80s that has become Family and Consumer Science these days].
Two of my mom's college friends wrote a couple of cookbooks, including one on muffins: Muffins: A Cookbook by Joan Bidinosti and Marilyn Wearring (Amazon Affiliate link). My copy, handed down from my mom, is covered with her scribbles "too sweet" "make 10 next time" etc. It's where I turn when I have an idea for a muffin but want some back up that it will work.

I picked up some Asian pears because they looked interesting, and this is the time of year I'm getting a handle on the farm share produce and can actually lift my head up in the grocery store and look around [instead of making a head-down beeline for yet another gallon of milk]. We enjoyed a few Asian pears fresh, but I wanted to play.  I really don't know why I turned a Whole Wheat Applesauce muffin into these Asian Pear & Cardamom Cream muffins, but that's what happened.

I served these muffins to the women of my book group. We are a diverse bunch--united by a love of reading, a love of someone who at some point was in the military, and a possibly temporary geographic location of SW Ohio. Aside from that we're all different, and I love how varied our discussions become with each person sharing her perspective. It's good to hang out with people who are a different age than you, or don't have kids the same age as yours/don't have kids, or who don't hold the same job as you. And they are wonderful guinea pigs!

This is the last recipe I'm sharing from that one meeting at my house. Considering I'm hosting next month (we're reading Our Souls at Night and if my mom sends me the book in time I'll join in), I think I'm going to have future blog fodder (I'm already working up a braided sweet bread recipe). I've already shared my Slow Cooker Apple Chai for a Crowd, Roasted Sweet Potato and Turkey Sausage Breakfast Casserole, Cornbread, Roasted Chile and Sweet Potato Breakfast Casserole, and some other damn muffin that I can't remember right now. I make a lot of muffins, you see.

Beef and Turnip Pot Pie

Ground beef and sautéed turnips topped with pie crust and baked in a skillet. Hearty comfort food from the farm share.

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Can we talk about turnips? Well, it's my blog so I guess the question is rhetorical. Turnips are a cool weather crop that typically grows well for the farmers who've supplied our farm share. What grows well you tend to get in plentiful amounts.

A decade ago, before I'd ever heard of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and when local eating was the tomatoes I'd grow each summer or the fruit we'd get at a 'let's take the kids, it'll be fun' pick your own outing, I rarely ate turnips. I had no recipes that called for turnips--but if rutabagas weren't available in the store when I wanted to make pasties I'd substitute a turnip.

A single turnip, a few times a year.

Now I get a bag of turnips at least a couple times a month at the beginning and the end of the CSA season when the cool weather crops are flourishing. [Let me put it this way--if you're getting tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini you're probably not getting turnips. All other times you're getting turnips.]

Instead of fighting the turnip, I'm embracing it's uniqueness. [Somewhat like my darling Robert Barker's uniqueness.] Sometimes the turnips stand alone, like in turnip pickles and turnip fritters. Most often, though, I combine turnips with meat or other vegetables. Sometimes I have failures, like the watery scalloped turnips and salami I shared on my FB page [I'm intrigued by Cindy's suggestion to brine turnip slices to draw out the moisture before cooking]. Other times I have a success, like this Beef and Turnip Pot Pie. This is a variation on my Beef & Bok Choy Pie, flavored similarly to a pasty but using ground, not cubed, beef.

You can find all of my turnip recipes in the Turnip Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This is a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, or grocery store specials [not that I've ever seen turnips on special but you never know]. I've got turnip recipes pinned on Pinterest--you can follow me here. For more info on how to use this blog, click here.

Rambutan Eyeballs--How to Make Real Food Halloween Treats

Want ideas for healthy real food Halloween treats? I've got some! Let's start with Spooky Rambutan Eyeballs, with fresh grapes and juicy rambutan in a freaky display.

Disclosure--I received a box of #FreakyFruits from Melissa's Produce without obligation. The rambutan used in today's recipe is from that box. I bought the grapes at my local grocery store.

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My kids were always ready to head out trick or treating approximately 17.5 minutes after returning home from school. Unfortunately for them Beggar Night hours didn't start until suppertime. That was my problem--how do I feed my kids something nutritious when their minds are focused on CANDY CANDY CANDY?

During the elementary school years we were fortunate to live in people-dense communities both on and off base. Since my kids could walk/roll around the neighborhood to meet their trick-or-treating needs I decided to host a pre-game Halloween tailgate party and invite our neighbors. Everyone could show off costumes while it was still light, we'd eat a bit of veggies, fruits, and protein to fuel the evening's adventures, and the parents could stand around drinking red wine in portable cups. 

[I enjoyed those years.]

Find this recipe at Cookistry.

Nowadays I still like the tradition of eating something festive yet . . . healthy/natural/less-processed/real/clean . . . you insert the adjective of your choice. To that end, I've got a guest post over on Cookistry where I'm sharing my Buddha's Hand Citron Feta Dip. It's savory and tangy, great for dipping crackers and vegetables and can be presented as scary or as spooky as you like. Please check out the recipe here. You'll find a bunch more ideas for Halloween snacks as well--sweet and savory, spooky and scary, kid and grownup alike!

I really don't care to scroll through plenty of photos and text that ends with a link to someone else's guest post, though, so I've got some value added today instead of just directing you to Donna's blog. 

Today's recipe is such a simple one I didn't think it merited an entire post, so I'm glad to offer you some options for other healthy Halloween ideas. Sometimes keeping it simple is just the thing. I figured these Rambutan Eyeballs would be an excellent addition to a Halloween spread. I've seen rambutan at the grocery store, and you can check out Melissa's Produce as well. Rambutan taste mildly sweet. They have a pit inside of them, so we found it easier to nibble around and discard the pit, though you could easily slice into the fruit and slice it from the pit.

Chile, Cornbread, and Sweet Potato Breakfast Casserole

A vegetarian and gluten free breakfast casserole made from roasted sweet potatoes and Hatch chiles in a cornbread and custard base. Topped with crumbled queso, this is a spicy way to start your day.

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When I get an idea for a recipe I'll think up both an omnivore version and a vegetarian version. The resulting products seem to vary widely--like my Easy Artichoke Arugula Pesto Burrata Pasta and my 5 Ingredient Butternut Squash, Sausage and Burrata Pasta or my Cheddar Apple Onion Bacon Pizza and my Apple Gouda Pecan Pizza. Today's recipe is no exception. My initial idea was to use roasted sweet potatoes from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share to make a gluten free breakfast casserole. My omnivore version was posted last year. I used gouda cheese and turkey sausage to make a colorful and hearty dish. You can find the recipe here.

I wanted to try a vegetarian version and wanted to keep it gluten free just because there are plenty of bread-laden breakfast casseroles out there, so I used cornbread. My cornbread recipe is not as sweet as some Southern ones I've had, and does not use wheat flour--only corn meal--so it is gluten free if your cornmeal comes from a place that keeps an eye on cross contamination. You can find my cornbread recipe in this tamale pie post or this tamale pie post, because I change things up, yo. Spicing things up with some roasted Hatch chiles kept it interesting.

Note: If you don't have a freezer stash of roasted Hatch chiles, no worries, check out the Hispanic section of most grocery stores. You can find 4 to 7 ounce cans of chopped green chiles in various heat levels. Choose whatever you feel comfortable with. My local grocery store gets truckloads of chiles up from Hatch, New Mexico and fires up the roaster in the parking lot. I pick up a couple of quarts each August. I use some in salsa verde and freeze some for recipes like this. You could also sub a roasted poblano if you've got some lying around looking to stay out of trouble.

For more recipes using Hatch chiles, please see my Hatch Chile Recipe Collection. For more recipes using sweet potatoes, please see my Sweet Potato Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, or seasonal produce from the grocery store. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

How to Make Easy Spiced Caramel Pumpkin Butter

Roasted pumpkin puree baked slowly and simply with caramels, spices, and butter. This sweet treat is easy to make and can even be frozen for winter giving.

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Right now pie pumpkins are $1.49 each at the grocery store. Cans of pumpkin puree are 3 for $5 ($1.67). Considering that a pie pumpkin makes more pumpkin puree than is in a can, it would be frugal to make your own. As much as I crow ramble babble about how my compost grows volunteer squash, if yours does not--NOW IS THE TIME TO BUY PIE PUMPKINS. Here's how I process a pile of them, and Bobbi has an even easier way in the slow cooker. Do you need to make pumpkin pie with your pie pumpkin? Heck no! I've got 12 pumpkin pie free recipe ideas in my Pumpkin Recipe Collection. Here's another one.

I've got nothing against a can of pumpkin. In fact, canned pumpkin is a more consistent product than what my garden produces. If it's been a rainy season my pumpkin flesh will be more moist after roasting, and I need to adjust my baking to account for it. My pumpkins are volunteer, which means there may have been some chromosomal shenanigans going on in the compost bins. Could my pumpkins be GMO? Sure could--naturally and spontaneously genetically modified, though, by the whims of whatever lurks in the compost, not deliberately altered by me or anyone else.

The thing is, as much as I've been putting up endless farm share produce as salsa after this year, last year I was getting creative with the pumpkin. I made a large batch of Easy Spiced Caramel Pumpkin Butter just for grins and giggles. I froze some for a test (shown above) and stored the rest in the fridge.

Spaghetti Squash with Mustard Greens Pesto

A low carb entree of baked spaghetti squash tossed with mustard greens pesto. Jazz it up with crumbled Italian sausage and cheese for a farm share dinner to please the while family.

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I'm going to preach today. If you're in the choir, skip on down or shout Amen! as the spirit moves you. I want to talk to the folks, LIKE ME, who get overwhelmed by the produce in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share box. The folks who don't want to keep on with a farm share because they we don't know what to do with ________ [insert name of farm share ingredient here] before it goes bad. It's why I started this blog, after all.

The thing is, we all eat. Heck, my spouse and kids want to consume food 4 to 6 times a day, every single day. It doesn't make sense to waste the food already in your fridge. After all, you've paid for it, you know? Not to mention that your farmers have grown it. So practical tips like this one help you us to make the most of the farm share.

A while back I shared a recipe for Mustard Greens Pesto. You can find the recipe here. This recipe makes quick work of a large volume of mustard greens and can hang out in the fridge or freezer until you are ready to use it. Since my farm share is about 25 weeks of the year, there is plenty of time for me to enjoy put up farm share produce on the off months.

This low carb recipe is flexible. I could have stopped with just the pesto and made it vegetarian, but to tempt my family I browned half a pound of Italian sausage and served that over top. Plenty of cheese seals the deal for everyone who loves cheese.

For other recipes using mustard greens, please see my Mustard Greens Recipe Collection. For more recipes using winter squash [as spaghetti squash is a winter squash and this is it's debut on the blog] please see my Winter Squash Recipe Collection. These are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share. For more recipe ideas follow me on Pinterest and for my latest epic fails check out my Facebook page. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Roasted Sweet Potato and Onion Enchiladas

A vegetarian enchilada casserole of corn tortillas stuffed with spicy sweet potatoes and onion, covered in roasted tomato sauce and plenty of cheese.

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Welcome back to your normal How To Use the Vegetables from your Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share box programming. Did you enjoy the week of desserts? I won't lie, it was loads of fun making them--especially the Killer S'mores Blondie!

I thought I'd settle back into a routine with a vegetarian enchilada recipe. I've been sitting on this one since the ladies at the Thrift shop raved about it last winter, and now that I'm getting sweet potatoes in the farm share--blue ones, too--it's time to put it up on the blog.

I can't tell you why I veered away from the standard "sweet potato and black bean" combo, other than everyone else is doing that, so why should I? Instead, I used a filling of roasted sweet potatoes and sautéed onions, spiced up with some salsa verde. Yum! We get plenty of protein in our diets, we sure don't need a can of black beans to make or break things. [Heck, yesterday at the Ohio Renaissance Festival I ate not one but 2 Scotch eggs--one for my honey since he couldn't be there. That's a hard cooked egg covered in sausage and deep fried. Yeah, some protein. And oh so good.]

I've shared plenty of enchilada recipes on this blog, vegetarian and otherwise. Some you can find on my Clickable Collages of Recipe Suggestions page. Since that was published I've added Turnip Enchiladas, Cranberry, Chicken and Leek Enchiladas, Easy Cheesy Vegetable Rice Enchiladas, and Beef Tongue Enchiladas. You could say I have a thing for enchiladas--they are a terrific vehicle for getting dinner on the table.

For other recipes using sweet potatoes, blue or otherwise (I still don't know what to make with them, good thing potatoes store for a long time in the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve) please see my Sweet Potato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, and whatever's plentiful and cheap at the store.

Pumpkin Eggnog Waffles with Chocolate Chips

Tender pumpkin waffles made with pumpkin spice eggnog, with chocolate chips inside and out.

Chocolate is a comfort food, and comfort foods are good in lousy situations. Traditions are comforting, too. So a tradition that involves chocolate can sometimes be just the ticket for comfort.

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I'm not certain how we started the tradition of going out for chocolate chip breakfast foods en route home from the airport after seeing off my spouse for a deployment. I think he had an early flight and we didn't want to wake the kids up until just before we were ready to leave. Dawn was breaking as I drove home, and I just wasn't ready to face reality so we stopped for breakfast. I ordered chocolate chip pancakes. The kids were young, and the idea of mom eating a mountain of chocolate for breakfast must have surprised them. The next time he deployed we had chocolate chip pancakes deliberately--something to look forward to after saying goodbye. After we moved to Ohio we had to adjust the tradition, as all military families learn to do. The next departure was on Mother's Day, and while at Waffle House eating chocolate chip waffles I got a carnation from the staff. Too sweet.

That brings you up to speed for the reasoning behind this recipe. This time the kids said goodbye and headed off to school, knowing that we'd get our chocolate chip waffles in a homemade version/after school snack so I could blog about it for #Choctoberfest.

Military children are nothing if not resilient. A food blogger's kids are nothing if not resigned to eating when the photos have been taken.  The day turned dark and gloomy, though, so I greeted my returning children with:

Yes, I know it's our tradition to eat chocolate chip waffles the day your father deploys, but the lighting is bad for taking photos. We'll have our waffles tomorrow, ok?

Gotta love kids that will roll with the changes life brings.

Some people celebrate ALL THINGS PUMPKIN by choice. I do it by necessity.

Despite never purposefully planting them,  I grow about a dozen pumpkins in my back yard every year. I hate to waste food, so that means I spend time each Fall processing a pile of pumpkins into puree. It also means that while my pantry is not stocked with cans of pumpkin the freezer has bags of puree stuffed every which way. I don't mind all the pumpkin. Because I put it up, I can choose the amount I want to have in each package. [If you're using canned pumpkin just double the recipe and use the entire can. It will be close enough.]

For more recipes using pumpkin, please see my Pumpkin Recipes Collection. This is part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me who eat seasonally or have a backyard prone to producing pie pumpkins. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Chocolate Beet Crinkle Cookies #Choctoberfest

We are all just stardust on a tiny speck in an unimaginable multiverse. The following chocolate beet crinkle cookie is pretty pointless if you consider it in light of the reality, but I'm sharing it anyway. That's what happens when you come home from a wonderful talk by Neil DeGrasse Tyson knowing that you're going to be putting up a cookie recipe later. Like a food blog is important in the grand scheme of life. Might as well eat a cookie. NDT gives an excellent show if you're able to go.

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THIS IMAGE IS FROM NASA'S CASSINI MISSION. I ADDED THE ARROW. YOU'RE LOOKING AT AN ECLIPSE WITH THE SUN BEHIND SATURN. WE'RE A LITTLE SPECK NEAR THE ARROW.

Roasted beets in a tender and chocolatey crinkle cookie.

Now that I'm settling into a routine of posting dessert recipes (a very brief routine), I felt it would be prudent to reveal more of my veggie-loving self and bring some beets to the party.  It's our 4th date, I think it's about time. After all, the purpose of my blog is to provide practical support for local eating and where I've eaten locally that means beets. Lots and lots of beets.

I'm still waiting to find the recipe that makes me crave the beets I get in my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share (found it!) so I enlisted the help of my fellow food bloggers for recipe ideas. I've got 59 recipes in my Beet Recipes Collection. This recipe will make an even 60! That collection is part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, and random beets that show up in the mail.

The first time I made this recipe I was using beets sent to me without obligation from Melissa's Produce. They are shown in the ingredient photo below, roasted and ready-to-go in a clever shrink-wrapped package. After I got a vacuum sealer for Christmas, I duplicated their idea since I frequently have beets lolliping around in the crisper looking for something to do.

If you've got beets, roast them drizzled with a bit of olive or cooking oil and wrapped in foil at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as it takes to make them 'give' when you squeeze them. It ranges anywhere from 20 minutes to 80 minutes for me, depending on the size of the beet.