Overnight Sweet Potato Pecan Monkey Bread

A colorful brunch bread using purple and orange sweet potatoes in an enriched dough. This bread is made in short sessions--make the dough and assemble the bread one day, bake when you're ready.

Apologies to Esther Dean** but, . . . na na na come on. Na nana nana come on, come on, come on

Cause I rarely bake, but I'm perfectly good at it

Yeast in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it

Baking stones make break, so Ode, but preferments excite me

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I'm much happier when my kitchen sessions happen in small chunks--make the pesto one day, freeze it, use it throughout the winter. Caramelize onions in the crock pot, use them in quick meals. Make pizza dough when I have time earlier in the week, enjoy a homemade pizza on Friday night. An entire book devoted to this method, Make Ahead Bread by Donna Currie, is a great idea. I've ordered my copy--to donate to my local library so more folks get to play than just me. You can see more info about the book via this Amazon affiliate link.

There is just something soul-warming about tearing off a hunk of sweet bread and stuffing it into your mouth. The way it seems to melt on your tongue as you begin to chew is so satisfying. I imagine all of the recipe testing involved in writing a book about bread would be an interesting mix of pleasure and chore, and kudos to Donna Currie for slogging through the chore aspect to create this achievement.

As we most often eat Multigrain Sourdough bread, I relegate the chore of preparing our standard loaf to my bread machine. I consider our daily bread to be more utilitarian in nature and don't really think about the craft of baking bread. When I heard about the movement to mark the first anniversary of Make Ahead Bread, (Amazon affiliate link) with a virtual book party, I knew I wanted in.

To drum up interest in a newly-released book, publishers will encourage bloggers to choose from a carefully-selected group of recipes for their posts. When I saw Donna's Sweet Potato Monkey Bread on the list I figured I'd use my purple farm share sweet potatoes in it. At the next Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share pick up I was describing my plans and Cara of fairly simple suggested making the monkey bread with a mixture of orange and purple sweet potatoes. Great idea!

Because I was making 2 doughs at the same time, I figured I'd use my mixer for one and the dough cycle of the bread machine for the other. Since the temperature of my kitchen ranges from really cold in the winter to really hot in the summer, using the bread machine year round provides a nice climate controlled environment each and every time. The dough in the machine rose twice as fast as the dough in my straight sided bucket.

[Note for new bread bakers--if you've got a straight sided bucket it makes the whole 'rise until double' thing easy to see. Simply dump in the dough, grab a ruler, and stick a piece of tape where 'double' should be. Then keep an eye on the dough until it hits the tape mark.]

This photo shows the Whole Wheat and Parmesan pizza crust as well as the monkey bread doughs.

For more recipes using sweet potatoes, please see my Sweet Potato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This page is a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, or garden abundance. Organizing by produce type appeals to my "I've got _______, what can I do with it?" mentality. I've got a board devoted to potatoes on Pinterest, and I'm sharing the latest from the kitchen and garden on my FB page. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

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.