Fall cooking

Although the daytime temperatures are still in the 70's (and sometimes 80's), I've enjoyed some recent fall cooking.

A few weekends ago I took an afternoon to make two squash-based recipes that were both easy and super yummy. I've been into soups lately so when I saw the recipe for a roasted squash soup with Indian flavors I thought it would be a perfect way to try a new recipe and incorporate fall staples like acorn and butternut squash.

Roasted squash soup with greek yogurt & honey topping.

This Indian-spiced roasted squash soup is hearty and so tasty. Plus, its healthy and easy to make. You can't really beat that.

The other recipe is sans picture but was also quite tasty and made for a great fall meal. For the quinoa stuffed squash I used acorn squash and again, it made for an easy, tasty and healthy meal. I only wish I had doubled it!

Birthday parties = tons of food

We had a few friends over to celebrate the husband's birthday this past weekend. I happened to be in need of a little cooking therapy so I took the opportunity to both bake and cook up a storm. I managed to only take pictures of the cake (which was a teensy bit lopsided).

Here's the menu - I went with a comfort food theme.

And now for the run down of the food.

Appetizers

All of the appetizers are things we've made a number of times and all well worth the minimal prep time. The pimento cheese (from Frank Stitt's Southern Table) is especially tasty! You can find a copy of the recipe here.

Main Dishes

As for the main dishes, the Buffalo meatloaf, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, and greens, were made from Bon Appetite recipes and the traditional meatloaf from a Gourmet recipe, which can all be found on the epicurious site (best site ever). I altered all of them a bit, using some of the comments on epicurious and some personal preferences as the basis for the changes.

Everything turned out pretty well as far as the main dishes went. I would HIGHLY recommend the mac and cheese - so tasty.  The mashed potato recipe was a dud - totally not worth the time it took, but the homemade ranch was tasty. And the greens were super yummy but pretty time consuming. The meatloafs were terrific and I love that the buffalo meatloaf is leaner but still quite tasty. I might add that all of these foods make fantastic leftovers.

Cake!

The dessert was most definitely different but quite tasty. I completely forgot to include almonds in the layers and some of the bites are a bit salty b/c of the sea salt but overall a very tasty unique cake. Would totally make it again.

Oh wait

Today is my husband's birthday! :)

Happy birthday husband!

I love you for so many wonderful and silly and ridiculous and annoying reasons!  And I am so grateful to have you standing by my side. Without you there, things would be just bad, you know, kinda grey and ugly and maybe even hairy. :) Hopefully you're picking up what I'm laying down! Anywho, thanks for being you and for being the perfect match for me.

Halloween crafts

I managed to fit in a teensy bit of crafting over the past three weeks - just enough that we had all of our Halloween decorations up for 3 whole days!  At least they will be ready to go next year and you better believe I'm going to put them out October 1!

I wanted to be a bit more festive this year so I made a Boo sign, paper pumpkins, and paper bats. Since I shopped so late in October, I also snagged a cheapo faux spider web. I think it all turned out pretty well and was all accomplished over a few nights in front of the tv.

 

The husband found a stencil on the Baltimore Ravens website and carved the pumpkin. Afterward he said he understood why I didn't want to carve a pumpkin! :)

The bats were based on a good old Martha tutorial and were a big pain to make because I did not buy large enough paper. You almost need poster board to get the really big ones. Oh well.

The Boo sign was based on this idea but I modified it by spraying the letters with leftover black spray paint and I mixed some orange paint to flick over the letters. I also picked up discounted ghosts and spiders and painted these before gluing them to the letters. Add a little string and done. Really quite easy.

The pumpkins were based on this tutorial and were also easy. I'm not a huge holiday decoration kinda gal but I wanted a little something to add around the house and I think these did the trick.

I got a little lazy on tying bows so I knotted the ends of some - you can't tell from further away and it was way easier! :)