Cooking Fall Foods

This past weekend I could not get myself out of the kitchen!  The air was chilly, the leaves are turning bright shades of yellow, orange, and red, the scent of fall is carried in the breeze, and all I wanted to do was cook.  Often what I do is get an idea in my head of something I want to try making.  Then I browse through online recipes to see if I find something similar, and then I try to create it in my own way.  My favorite recipe website is All-Recipes.com.  It's fabulous!  You can search for recipes by type of meat, course, or ingredient.  You can even ask the search to not include certain ingredients you don't like.

Fridays I work a half-day at work.  I stopped at the grocery store on my way home and then got to work.  I was having my mother over for dinner Friday night and had gotten a pumpkin from a patient at work, a sugar pumpkin, one that is perfect for cooking.  I decided to make some sort of pumpkin pasta.  Also, since it was cold out and I was craving beef stew, I decided to make a beef stew.  In addition, I was craving apples and cinnamon, so I made a fresh apple salsa.  I also made some French horn cookies, which one of our patients makes and they are SOO GOOD, and I made a poke-cake.

The spicy apple salsa was an appetizer that I served with both blue corn chips and jalapeño-lime corn chips.  I chopped up some apples and soaked them in a little lime juice, then also chopped up some peppercinis and walnuts for the salsa.

For the main course, we had the pumpkin pasta, which was made with grated pumpkin, sautéed for about 10 minutes, then mixed with some tomato paste and water as well as chili powder and light sour cream.  This made a delicious and hearty fall topping for the wheat fettuccine I used.

I also made a Dijon-mustard beef stew that had potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, shallots, and buffalo sauce in it.  This cooked for about 2 hours in my dutch oven and was really delicious, if spicy.

Dessert was going to be the poke-cake but my mother and husband were picking at the French horn cookies that were cooling on a wire rack on the table and after the meal, no one was hungry for dessert.  The cookies are made with a cream cheese dough, then filled with a walnut-sugar filling and rolled up into crescents.  Very tasty, although I have not perfected the recipe as the patient that comes to our office has.  Her cookies are much better.

For the poke cake, all you do is bake a cake, I used yellow cake mix.  When the cake comes out, you use a wooden spoon handle to poke holes in it about one inch apart, and then you layer on and fill the holes with pudding.  I used instant chocolate pudding.  When we finally ate this cake, it was a real hit!  The cake itself was light and fluffy.  It actually sat for a few days in the fridge which made it more moist and delicious!  I also made some poke cupcakes and topped them with both pudding and chocolate frosting...yum!

On Saturday, my husband was working and what do I do when left to my own devices but COOK SOME MORE!!  I made a batch of wheat bread which came out fantastic!  I also made some pesto sauce with basil, pignoli nuts, olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic cloves.  I made some applesauce too, which I have never made before.  I did not realize how simple it is!! You boil apples in a little bit of water, add in some sugar, cinnamon, and whatever other spices you like, and mix it up.  I left mine on the chunky side but you can puree it so it's more smooth too.  Delicious!!  I was quite productive and we had leftovers for days!