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.

S'mores-filled Peanut Butter Oatmeal Blondies

Layers of thick whole grain oatmeal peanut butter cookie surround plenty of dark chocolate and mini marshmallows in this thick, gooey, and chewy treat.

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Hey ho! No, your calendar is not off. I've got a rogue Tuesday post because it's #Choctoberfest week! Raise your glass/fork/a little hell/spoon/hand and join in!

Let's talk about pans. Over the weekend I incinerated a pan of green beans that I'd merely meant to roast. I posted the photo of my epic fail over on my FB page, where I share all my epic fails. A friend asked if the pan was OK, and I replied 'you can't keep a good pan down'.

Do you have any well-loved kitchen items that you've received?

A good pan can last generations. The pan these blondies were baked in was handed down from my mom. [I baked Jujube Butter Oatmeal Bars in it last week, and she emailed 'is that my old pan?'.] Well, mom, here's your old pan again. I like to bake bar cookies in it for a few reasons--first, it's metal so the bars get a nice crisp bottom. Second, the bottom of the pan lifts out--leaving a clean edge to the bar. Third, it's an 8 inch square pan which means I've got less dessert staring me in the face.

My kids made a 9x13 pan of Sunny Hello Dolly Bars over the weekend because I am being a Good Mom and teaching them how to pull a dessert out of the pantry when you're craving something sweet and don't want to think too much or head to the store. Except no one wanted to pulverize graham crackers in the food processor, so I did it, and I didn't measure out the amount before transferring it to a bowl. When my son dumped the entire amount onto the melted butter . . . well, like I said, I'm teaching them. Life is a learning process.

I've got plenty of hand me down kitchen items. The stainless steel bowls from my mom and my late Grandma-in-law are used near daily, and the baking pans are used several times a month. It makes my heart smile to use a pan that's been loved by someone before me. I don't even have to know them--I get great stuff at thrift stores as well!

I'm damn lucky to live within walking distance of an awesome grocery store. They serve Killer Brownies® and we get them--and give them--for special occasions. Salted Caramel flavor is the best!
I decided to try my hand at making my own version of a filled bar cookie--but with s'mores flavors, since I haven't gotten enough s'mores this year. After a couple of attempts [like when testing the recipe for Cheater Margarita Smoothies, repeated testing is necessary] I'm happy to say this recipe is a keeper. Along with the pan.

Trail Mix with Leftover Halloween Candy for #Choctoberfest

Got leftover Halloween candy? Mix it up and stretch it out with fruit and nuts for a {Leftover} Halloween Candy Trail Mix.

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Do you buy the Halloween candy that you like, or do you buy the Halloween candy that will not tempt you? [Does anyone actually like Bit-o-Honey?]

When I moved to Ohio I realized that, unlike the 4th of July, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas or New Year's, the day that Halloween is celebrated is not set in stone. Around here, some towns have their kids trick or treat on the weekend before October 31st for reasons that have escaped me. [Let's celebrate Thanksgiving on a Sunday, hmm? That actually makes sense, so you're not working all day long and then pulling the best American meal of the year out of your ear 24 hrs later.]

Our town always celebrates on the 31st, which means that many years our flat, well-lit, sidewalked town with houses close together is overrun with 'people from off' coming to double dip on their trick or treating. I am quite curious this year, as Halloween falls on a Saturday, to see what reasons folks will invent to come trick or treat in our town. It's possible folks will keep to their own towns, and in that case I'll need to change up my game. See, I usually buy candy I DON'T want to have leftovers of, so I am not tempted into additional snackage.

Using an overgrown volunteer zucchini and other squash for our jack-o-lanterns.

As a side note, I've got kids with peanut and dairy allergies on my block, so I always have 2 bowls of candy: one that only contains nut- and dairy-free packages (i.e., pure packets of sugary goodness) and one that may have nuts and/or dairy. I've got signs on each bowl, and often kids thank me. Consider doing that yourself.

Jujube Butter Oatmeal Bars

Jujube fruit simmered with apple cider to make a fruit butter, sandwiched between layers of pecan oatmeal bar cookie in a fruit dessert from the farmer to you via Barn2Door.

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Have you ever eaten a jujube fruit? There are more than a dozen people in SW Ohio who can now say 'yes, I have, they're yummy' because of these bars. Jujubes taste like a crunchy apple-pear, and they have a pit similar to a date. Disclosure: this recipe and my previous one used jujube fruits grown by Fairview Orchards that I received from Barn2Door in exchange for a post. Because I believe in buying directly from farmers who choose to grow food in sustainable ways, I am glad to spread the word about this platform, and I was delighted to share the last of the fruits and these bars with our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmers to close the circle.

In my last post I marveled over the ability for me, in an area not known for local foodies, to source exotic produce direct from the farmer to concoct my Jujube Fruit and King Oyster Mushroom Sauté.
Today I'm going to tell you a bit more about Barn2Door's mission, and share another recipe I made--Jujube Butter Oatmeal Bars. [Of course you can just eat the fruit out of hand, like we did when I opened the box, but one of the purposes of my blog is to provide recipe inspiration for farm share ingredients, so I wanted to play some more.] Check out Barn2Door and subscribe to the newsletter. You can find them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and Pinterest. While it would simplify things to say Barn2Door is an online farmer's market, it's a bit more than that.

Barn2Door is a marketplace where you can buy sustainably grown meat, fish, fruits, vegetables & items like raw honey and real maple syrup right from producers and growers. Farmers, fishers, ranchers and gardeners have their own store - like Etsy for farms - where they showcase the food they have for sale, and manage direct communications, sales and fulfillment (local delivery, national shipping or both!).

I like the idea of giving producers a platform to sell their products to a wider audience than the folks who make it out to the local farmer's market each week. I am a fan of supporting folks who choose to grow food in sustainable ways, so a platform that takes much of the effort out of creating an online presence--enabling the farmers to continue doing what they do best (grow my food) gets my tail wagging like Robert Barker's. [If I had the skillz to make a gif of his tail zooming side to side and then circling to the left and then back to side to side, I would. Dog has talent.] I typed in my zip code and was impressed with the variety of products I could have delivered to me from Fairview Orchards and other producers. While I will continue to source my local Ohio maple syrup and local Ohio honey from my farmer's market, if you don't have access to your local producers you can get Vermont maple syrup delivered to your door. How cool is that?

I thought it was pretty neat to get jujube fruits from Fairview Orchards. The package was on our doorstep, watched over by Robert Barker and Simon, when we arrived from a bike ride. A note telling me the fruit was picked 2 days before I received it gave me a little thrill. Just like when I pick up my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, the folks who grew the produce put it into the box and I take it out of the box. That's awesome, and 100% why I agreed to do this post. Fairview Orchards is diversified (got to be, with short growing seasons and uncertain water supplies). You can find them on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, and learn a bit about the Sean on the blog. Their storefront says it best:

"Fairview Orchards is a family owned & operated farm that cultivates a diverse variety of certified organic fruit such as Hass Avocados, Meyer Lemons, Blood Oranges, Figs, Specialty Tangerines, Jujubes & Pomegranates. Hand-picked and delivered or shipped fresh, we practice both traditional and sustainable farming methods while utilizing the latest technologies. Our farm is 100% powered by solar energy and is nestled in Ojai, California surrounded by rolling hills and the Topa Topa mountains. We are fortunate to have naturally rich soil and a great micro-climate that our trees and plants love."

One more thing I want to share before I get to the recipe--Barn2Door has a newsletter where you can sign up to stay in touch. Click here to sign up. You won't miss out on the latest news, promotions(!), new farmers, and of course seasonal food. 

For more recipes using Jujube fruits, I'll have to add a category to my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating direct from the farmer. Check out more on Pinterest and Facebook. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Jujube Fruit and King Oyster Mushroom Sauté (Eating Direct from Farmers with Barn2Door)

Subtitle: Get Your Produce Direct From The Farmer

Jujube fruit and King Oyster mushrooms sautéed with a bit of farm share onion in roasted garlic-flavored olive oil and butter. An elegant appetizer made from produce direct from the farmer.

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Today's recipe uses rare-to-me ingredients that I got directly from the folks that grew them but in different ways. Disclosure: I received the jujube fruit from Barn2Door in exchange for writing about this new way to buy directly from the farmer. As a dorkily passionate supporter of keeping sustainable farmers in business, I am delighted to help spread the Good Word.

Last weekend was the last local farmer's market of the season. We walked down with a big bag to stock up on long-storing local apples and also picked up some candy onions to caramelize and freeze for Fall and winter stews. The mushroom folks had a nice array of King Oyster/Trumpet Royale mushrooms, so with my remaining small bills [pay cash for local businesses whenever possible, please] I picked up a container. The lovely lady manning the booth offered me recipe tips and I headed home thinking I'd make some kind of mushroom appetizer for my spouse.

We returned from a Saturday afternoon bike ride to this sight--boxes on the front stoop, watched over by ⅔ of the canine population [Vincent is too little to look out]. I'm not usually one to get excited about printer ink, but the other box, from Fairview Orchards, did give me a little thrill. The folks at Fairview Orchards picked these organic jujube fruits and I got them from California 2 days later.

If you think, when you visit the farmer's market at 10 am on a Saturday, that all of the product on display was freshly picked that morning by an army of minions in fields with football stadium lighting--well, you've got another think coming. Farmers like to sleep just like the rest of us, and plenty of weekly offerings are picked in the days before and stored until market day. Heck, the garlic and onions were harvested and cured before being offered at market. A mere 2 days for jujube fruits all the way from California? Amazingly fresh in my book!

With two exotic items staring me in the face, I knew I wanted to combine them. After biting into a jujube fruit (we all tried them fresh out of the box, a crunchy light apple-pear kind of flavor with a date-like pit in the middle), I thought of the Trumpet Royale Mushroom, Apple, and Walnut Sauté I'd seen on the recipe sheet from the mushroom folks. I adapted that recipe to use the jujube fruits, and my spouse and I enjoyed this gourmet date night appetizer at home.

This got me thinking about the power of the internet and how Janelle and her folks at Barn2Door are harnessing that power to enable farmers to sell directly to a wider audience than just the local folks who choose to visit their market stall. There are small pockets of local supporters all over, but their reach is limited to their local areas. I mean, the grocery store down the street also supports local farmers--they spotlight the family who supplies their sweet corn in summer and the folks who grow their turkeys for Thanksgiving. To give their customers greater access to seasonal items, Hatch chiles are trucked up from New Mexico and wild caught salmon is flown in from Alaska. Yeah, and I can walk to all of this seasonal abundance. But what if you don't live near my fabulous grocery store? You've got an online resource in Barn2Door.

My town is known for the electric car starter and the pull tab for beer cans. We are not at the cutting edge of the local food movement. However, between in person and online interactions, I was able to sit down to a savory appetizer of exotic produce direct from the farmers who grew it.

Apple Oatmeal Muffins, A Whole Grain Muffin #MuffinMonday

Chunks of apples mixed with buttermilk-soaked oats in a whole wheat muffin, topped with streusel for a sweet and wholesome treat.

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I realized that my muffin recipes, over on the drop down sidebar, are lacking in basic apple muffins. I've got sugar-less Apple Cider Muffins. I've got savory Cheddar Apple Multigrain Muffins. I've got 'throw everything in there' Cranberry Apple Pecan Tangerine Mini Muffins. I didn't have a basic apple muffin recipe. Until today. For my inaugural recipe with the #MuffinMonday crew [thanks for having me] I thought I'd remedy the deficiency.

This muffin has a streusel topping which is fancier than my typical 'feed the kids muffins for breakfast or a snack' muffin although I did keep the sugar inside at my usual amount. I made them for a morning coffee that I ended up missing because my visiting folks arrived at the same time. I did manage to snag a picture before I dropped them off, in true food blogger fashion. I even had enough batter to bake some regular-sized muffins to greet my folks.

NOTE:  The base of these muffins is my standard Soaked Oatmeal Muffin base. You can start these an hour before baking by combining oats and buttermilk in a bowl on the counter, or you could plan ahead [boy I wish I were the plan ahead type] and fill a bunch of wide mouth pint canning jars with a cup of oats and a cup of buttermilk. Screw on a plastic storage cap [Amazon affiliate link] and store in your fridge for up to a week for soaked oat muffins in a jiffy. (Shown are not wide mouth pint jars, they were all full of salsa.)

I used a blend of apples in these muffins--Gala and one other from the farmer's market that wasn't labelled--and I recommend any eating apple (i.e., not a cooking apple) for these. Chop them into small pieces, but do leave the peels on--they provide a pretty color.

As I was serving unknown guests at the morning coffee, I left out nuts. I think some chopped pecans would be an excellent addition to the streusel topping if nuts are not an issue.

For more recipes using up the seasonal abundance that is my fridge and spilling over onto the kitchen counter during apple season, please see my Apple Recipes Collection. This is part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks eating seasonally like we do. I've got a fruit board on Pinterest for ideas from around the web. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

BBQ Pork and Potato Pizza

Got leftover pulled pork? Grab a potato, some cheese and some more BBQ sauce for this yummy pizza. Making something fresh out of leftovers for Friday Night Pizza Night.

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Sometimes I am in a light mood and make lighter food. I say 'light' not in the commonly accepted 'lower in fat and/or calories' way, more in terms of how I feel when I eat the food. My newly updated post of my vegetarian White Spinach Pizza (better than CPK copycat) would be an example. Other times I want to burrow in and enjoy heartier fare. This pizza is decidedly heartier fare.

Ever have leftovers of pulled pork? We sure do--making a slow cooker full of Kalua Pig means there's pig all over the menu for a while. I took my friend Holly's suggestion to add some BBQ sauce to leftover Kalua Pig and created this pizza. It's a simple-yet-flavorful way to change up a Friday Night Pizza Night (link to my Pinterest board of the same name).

I'd say this is a Cook Once Eat Twice meal, but in fact you are cooking that pig, cooking that potato, and then cooking that pizza. So it's not really twice. However, making pizza at home is such a simple groove to get into that the concept of leftovers remade into a pizza is an easy-to-happen thing.

For more recipes using potatoes, because some of us ordered 25 pounds of red and 25 pounds of white from our farm share, in addition to the weekly bunches of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and turnips coming in and are therefore stuffing potatoes into the family for breakfast, lunch, and dinner . . . lost the train of thought here . . . please see my Potato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This is a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, and seasonal abundance. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Easy Butternut Squash & Burrata Pasta, a 5 Ingredient Farm Share Meal

Cubes of butternut squash, Italian sausage crumbles, hot pasta and creamy burrata cheese. An easy, simple, and satisfying Fall supper using 5 main ingredients (plus oil, water, salt and pepper).

There's rice on this plate. Yes, rice with a pasta dish. It was my daughter's desire to have pasta with a side of rice for her lunch, and ever since we did child-led weaning I've supported her food choices.

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I have been sitting impatiently on this recipe until I could declare "Happy Fall, Ya'll" and stay true to my seasonal eating roots. No matter that winter squash is long-storing, and that I used the last of the butternuts from the 2014 Strategic Winter Squash Reserve in April and May of this year. [Yes, one of the ways I feed my family from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share 12 months out of the year when we get farm fresh produce 5 months out of the year is the SWSR.]

Sometimes we add freshly grated Parm on top.

It is so good. It is so easy. It is so not vegetarian. [Please see my Easy Artichoke Arugula Pesto and Burrata Pasta for a similar but vegetarian option.] Carnivores--grab 5 items from your favorite local purveyors: a pound of pasta, a pound of Italian sausage (sweet, hot, your choice), an onion, a butternut squash, and a tub of burrata cheese.

Ripping up burrata cheese and adding to the tossed pasta.

The fancy cheese counter of my local Kroger sells burrata for $10 a tub. I am sure it is worth it. However, I am a cheap so and so. That means every time I make a milk run to Kroger I'll cruise for magical markdown stickers in the fancy cheese area. Five dollars a tub is well worth the splurge to me.

I would also like to comment that, while I am highlighting the paucity of ingredients, good food usually takes time and longer ingredient lists. You are worth putting some effort into your food. Anyone else you feed is worth putting some effort into the food. Don't shortchange yourself by seeking out meals based solely on a tiny number of ingredients. You're missing out on flavor over convenience.

Instead of sharing ten photos of the exact same plate of food taken during the exact same photo shoot, I'm sharing a variety of photos because I kept on making this dish and for some reason my spouse happened to be taking pictures. I think we had company at least one of those times. It is so yummy, so cheesy, and such a nice balance of sweet creamy roasted squash with savory sausage all wrapped up with gooey cheese.

This version used leftover grilled vegetables reheated on top of the sausage. Note the saved pasta water.

This pasta is also simple to make. Grill or roast a butternut squash (heck, I've used leftover grilled zucchini in this as well). Alanna's directions on how to efficiently turn a butternut squash into cubes can be found here. You can even cook the vegetables a day ahead while cooking another meal. They'll keep in the fridge, then simply toss the cooled cooked veggies onto the cooked sausage to warm up while you're working on the pasta. Combine everything in a big bowl, crack open a burrata on top, and toss it all together.

This pasta reheats well for a midday lunch, if you're lucky enough to come home for lunch.

For other recipes using butternut squash, please see my Buttercup/Butternut Squash Recipe Collection. This is part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks who eat from the farm share and farmer's market. I've got more squash recipes and plenty more pasta recipes on my Pinterest boards. Want to know How to Use this Blog? Click here.