Pie High

Tags

baking, butternut squash, fall, NaBloPoMo, pie, pumpkin, Thanksgiving

Usually for holidays, I bake a couple of desserts. I’m not sure if it’s more for variety or to avoid the whole eggs/basket situation, but it’s probably a little of both. This year, I just made one because there is always too much dessert (yes, possible), and it sounded like we’d have less people.

Oddly enough, I decided to make a classic pumpkin pie, which is odd because I don’t really care for it that much. I mean, I’ll eat it, but it would never be near my first pick in a pie line-up. So, why? The recently-posted pumpkin pie recipe on Smitten Kitchen. There’s something so reassuring about Deb that she makes you feel like she’s posting something that’s going to be better than all of the other recipes because she’s done the dirty work and already tried them all for you. But if you’re reading this food blog, then you know this because hers is one of the best and that is partly why.

Um, not that I intended to wax poetic about Deb when I haven’t even talked about this pie. But no surprises here: it was fantastic. I have some truly depressing pie experiences behind me, but this came out pretty perfectly, crust(!) and all.

Butternut Squash Barley Risotto

Tags

arugula, barley, butternut squash, cooking, fall, parmesan, recipes, risotto, rosemary, sage, vegetarian

In grad school, my main source for recipes was AllRecipes.com.  I wouldn’t find out about food blogs until a few years later, and probably would have laughed if someone told me that years later I’d be writing for fun about baking and cooking.  (I might have stopped laughing if you then told me that I would still be freelancing at this point.)

One thing that drove me nuts about All Recipes is that so many of the comments would go something like this:

This dish sucked!  I subbed peanut butter for the broccoli, nixed the flour and doubled the tomato sauce, and it was TERRIBLE! (1 out of 5 stars)

I mean, really?  That’s totally not the recipe, so how can you rate it?

This was back when I would follow every single recipe to a T for fear of messing it up.

Now I’ve really let myself go and mess with most cooking and baking recipes, even if they’re for something I’ve never made.

Like risotto.

Halloween Pasta!

Tags

bell peppers, butternut squash, cooking, fall, garlic, Halloween, holiday, olives, pasta, recipes, weird

Don’t panic.  Open your mind.

This pasta is indeed black.

Does it make you feel better if I tell you that it’s not dyed with artificial colors?

How about if I tell you that it’s colored with squid ink?

(…still there?  I promise it doesn’t taste like squid!)