Pro Pumpkin Pride

 

Pumpkin shaming. 

It's a thing. And you know it.

Fall is the only season I can think of, when it comes to food, and pumpkin the only tasty target, in which bigotry is widely accepted. Not only accepted, but prevalent everywhere, embraced by many as indisputable.

I'm here to represent. Show support. Solidarity. Not that I am one, a pumpkin, but you don't need to be a member of a group, any group {{hint, hint}}, to stand against blatant, widespread bigotry.

And really, it affects me, this constant attack starting as early as August (no judgement, but even I admit that timing is a bit rushed), but running rampant in October. Affected because I do post a few pumpkin recipes in this Halloween month. And I hope that rather than be discriminated against due to the color of their ingredients, that they will instead be judged simply by what they have to offer society. And your holiday menu. It's only fair.

Even if this gourd chooses to identify as a fruit, it is not our place to criticize.

And if these lovely cookies are brave enough to identify, loud and proud, as pumpkin, then who are we to shame them without even giving them a chance I say support them, embrace them. Foster and environment of inclusion when it comes to your holiday baking schedule. Proudly share then with your friends and neighbors. Be a voice of reason.

Cinnamon Pumpkin Rugelach

 

After all, they make the ultimate sacrifice. We carve them up like a turkey, light them on fire from the insides, roast them, mash them, and turn them into delicious side dishes and desserts for our holiday festivity pleasure.

The least we can do is show some respect. Stop the public shaming, the prejudice, and the discrimination. 

It's Fall, and it's holiday season, ride the tide, embrace the taste, join team Pro Pumpkin Pride.

Cinnamon Pumpkin Rugelach         

                                                                                      ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
6 TBSP butter, softened

1/4 cup speculoos cookie butter

4 oz cream cheese, softened

1 cup flour

powdered sugar for rolling

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup pepitas

Directions:
*Cream together the butter, speculoos, and cream cheese until smooth. Carefully beat in or stir in the flour until incorporated. Form the dough into two equal sized balls, enclose separately in plastic wrap, flatten, and refrigerate for at least an hour.

*Press the pumpkin puree between paper towels to release as much as the moisture as you can, leaving you with a firmer pumpkin pulp.

*Mix together the pumpkin puree, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and brown sugar. Set aside.

*Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, sprinkle a rolling surface with powdered sugar.

*NOTE: it's easiest to place plastic wrap over the dough for rolling. Roll each dough round, separately, into about 8 to 9 inch circles.
*Remove the plastic wrap from the top and spread about half of the filling onto each round to within about 1/2 inch of the edges. Sprinkle with the pepitas.
*Cut each dough round, like a pizza, into 12 long triangular shaped slices. Run a spatula under them to losen and start to separate them before, starting at the outside, rolling up to the tips to form 24 crescents. Place, point side down, on the baking sheet.

*Bake for 18 - 22 minutes, or until they start to brown. Allow to set for 3 minutes on the cookie sheet before removing to cool completely.

Pizza Party, 14 Unique Recipes

 

Labor Day is right around the corner. If you're not sure how that happened so quickly, join the party.

Actually, it's a party I wanted to talk about. Specifically, a pizza party.

Pizza is versatile in so many ways. It's a party food, yet an everyday food as well. Lunch, dinner, even cold leftovers for breakfast (yes, I went to college too). In fact, one brilliant pizza shop hired students to drag a huge box full of pizzas through the dorms at about 11:00 at night, when everyone would be hungry from a night of studying {{wink, wink}}. As the pizza shop employee dragged his box through the halls yelling "hot pizza, 2 dollars," students would pick a friend, count their pennies (sometimes literally) and split a pizza.

These days you'd be lucky to get a slice of pizza for $2. Yeah, we still buy them now and then, but making them at home is a great option. And you can really get creative.

So, for any occasion: first day of school, last day of school, sports parties, family get-togethers, a lazy weekend watching sports, if you want to start a party, pizza's a great way to go.

It doesn't have to be complicated, that's the thing about pizza, anything goes. Use a frozen bread dough, a premade crust, a homemade no yeast crust (like my rosemary infused crust), or a completely unique crust (you have to try my spaghetti crust). Use my homemade marinara, or your favorite store bought. And the toppings? There's where you can really have fun, the options are endless.

And don't just think of pizza in its traditional configuration. There's pizza inspired casseroles, and even soup.

Today I want to share with you, 14 of my most fun, interesting, and unique pizza recipe creations. Check them out, click on the name of the recipe below and you will magically jump to the post featuring the recipe at the end.

Classic pizza reinterpreted, dessert pizza, pizza imposters, and pizza inspired, something for everyone:

Top row, left to right:

~ Rosemary Infused Shrimp Scampi Pizza

The rosemary infused crust adds even more flavor to this classic dinner inspired pizza. 

~ Spaghetti Crusted Pizza

Can't decide between spaghetti and pizza? Have them both. This is one of my most popular pizza recipes.

~ Pizza Party Boat

Take a large Italian loaf, season the "crust," and fill it with pizza favorites.

~ Skillet Buffalo Chicken Naan Pizza

This Buffalo Chicken inspired pizza is made in a skillet with a naan crust.

Middle row, left to right:

~ Peanut Butter and Jelly Dessert Pizza

Pizza as a dessert, as a snack? Yes, please.

~ Crockpot Pepperoni Pizza Soup

We just love this pepperoni pizza inspired soup on a cold fall day.

Bottom row, left to right:

~ Grilled Steak and Pepper Pizza

Grill your pizza. It adds so much flavor. This one is pepper steak inspired.

~ Pepperoni Pizza Casserole

Have your pizza in casserole form, a comfort food family favorite dinner.

~ Italian Sub Pizza

I used a purchased prepared pizza crust for this one, and added all of our Italian sub favorite ingredients on the top.

~ Garlic Bread Pizza Casserole

Garlic bread gives so much flavor to this pizza casserole.

And just for fun:

~ Celebration Dessert Pizza

Serving as a treat, an educational tool, and a project, I made this one for Earth day with my son. But it can easily be decorated for any occasion.

~ Chocolate Pizza with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting

I guess I don't have to tell you that this recipe was created for the boys and their friends for a Halloween party.

~ April Fools Peanut Butter and Jelly Pizza Cookie

This peanut butter and jelly flavored giant cookie looks like a pizza, right? April Fools!

~ Down the Drain (April Fools) Pizza Cookie

OK, ewwww. But really, April Fools is a perfect day for ewww jokes, right?

Which ones will you try? And which one will you try first?

Upside Down with Purpose

 

Upside Down. 

 

Sometimes, upside down is OK. 

 

Not, of course, if you're stuck at the top of a Ferris Wheel, but maybe just in the course of day to day life.

 

Because sometimes you do just feel upside down. Not really wrong exactly, but not quite right.

 

It happens to me a lot in the fall. I love the hot summer days of flip flops and short sleeved shirts, longer brighter days of not always being chilled to the bone.

 

I hadn't seen my younger son in almost a year, it was getting darker earlier, I'd had a birthday and was getting . . . you know . . . older, prices were through the roof, our politics were in shambles, and the upcoming holiday season whirlwind has a tendency to be hectic.

So I was OK, just a little upside down. 

I walked out front one day a few weeks ago, and saw this little oak leaf on my walkway. We don't have oak or maple trees but, whatever, I'm sure the wind blew it here from somewhere.

As I walked past the leaf, I saw that it was upside down and, without really thinking about it, said under my breath "I know how you feel, buddy."

 

 

It was a dreary, cloudy day, in keeping with my mood, I guess. And it doesn't help that there's so little color mother nature shares with us this time of year, in contrast to the bright hues of spring and summer. I suppose that might be why, coming back into the house, I turned the leaf over saying (well, I said it in my head, I don't want you to think I was standing outside my house talking out loud to a leaf) "don't hide, show those pretty yellows and browns and greens." 

Sometimes, we need a little encouragement to show our colors to the world.

 

 

The next day, I'd been working in the kitchen and, as you might imagine, wasn't giving any thought to the leaf on the walkway.

Banana Spice Cake

(an upside down dessert)

 

When I went out to get the mail, I noticed that leaf, still there, right in the middle of my walkway.

 

Upside down.

 

And a little worse for wear. Curled in at the edges. 

 

I left it like that. Because sometimes you just have to feel your upside down for a while, keep your colors to yourself, and block out the world.

 

I get it.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking that I'm reading a whole lot into a biodegrading leaf on the sidewalk, and you could very well be right.

But I happen to believe that you take your life lessons from wherever they're presented to you.

"Tomorrow," I thought, "if that leaf is still there, and still upside down, I'll turn it over again."

Because sometimes you're just not ready the first time. But maybe, just maybe, it'll be ready to shine.

Banana Spice Cake         

                                                                                      ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
about 1 1/2 bananas

2 TBSP butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 tsp cinnamon, divided

1 box yellow cake mix

3/4 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup speculoos (cookie butter)

4 eggs

1 cup milk

1/4 cup sour cream

Directions:
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a bundt pan.

*Slice the bananas into approximately 1/4 - 1/3 inch rounds.

*Melt the butter, mix in the brown sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon, and spread into the bottom of the pan. Place the banana slices into the butter mixture, singly, in two rows along the bottom and barely up the side of the pan.

*Whisk together the cake mix, remaining cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and nutmeg. Separately, whisk together the oil and speculoos. Add to the cake mix, along with the eggs, milk, and sour cream. Beat for 2 minutes.

*Slowly pour the batter into the pan with the bananas, trying to keep the bananas in place as much as possible.

*Bake for 40 - 45 minutes, until the center of the cake springs back to the touch. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes before running a knife around the edge and inverting onto a serving plate.

Autumn Lessons

 

 

 It started about a month ago. Right around Halloween. Autumn was already long here, but before then it had been in name only. Now, it was in temperature as well. After waking rolled up in a ball with my head under the covers three mornings in a row, I finally gave in and turned the heat on in the house. Hubs shut down the sprinkler system and switched prominent garage status from the lawn mower to the snow blower. 

 

The leaves were turning color and falling. And due to a simple decision about a screen, I'd seen something in the yard. Something that compelled me to go out and take a picture. While there, I saw something else, just as noteworthy, and snapped a picture of that as well.

 

I wasn't sure what I'd do with the pictures, but their presence had felt important to me somehow. Embodiment of life lessons type importance. So I did what I always do, just let it be, let it germinate, tell me what I wanted to do with those pictures, to say about them.

 

Just for context, although many of you who read this blog regularly already know, let me just say this:

 

I grew up in New England. Fall is beautiful there. I've been on the Kancamangus Highway, seen the rolling mountains bursting with the colors of the season, reds and yellows and browns and burnt oranges and even greens all decorate both sides of the road.

 

Living in the Midwest, I always laugh when people who've never been anywhere else talk about the beauty of the Fall leaves. They have no idea. This, my friends, is nothing.

 

 

 

My house backs up to woods. Although, when I venture out, there are a few different colored leaves on trees here and there, what I get is just green, yellow and brown. Not that those aren't perfectly fine colors, but they are one-note, and I'm someone who's heard the symphony.

I wrote a blog post right about that time, published just a couple of days ago, called I Can See Clearly Now. I talked about the difference when we took the screen out of our kitchen window, the sharpness of the view. I credit that new clarity for, while working on a recipe, thinking that I had caught something out of the corner of my eye. 

Sweet Potato Mix Rolls

 

It was just a quick glimpse. The wind was gently blowing and leaves were falling. The lawn was not yet dormant, but was covered in a brown and yellow carpet. But when that wind blew, did I see a variation along the woods line? A deviation from the norm?

Truth is, had I not been so used to my monochromatic view, I would never have paid attention to the flash of color, even seen it, perhaps, let alone gone out to investigate. I wouldn't have been treated to the lesson embodied by nature, nonconformity is noteworthy. There is beauty in difference. Highlighted, no doubt by the juxtaposition of that difference among all that conformity.

There it is. Can you see it? Way over on the far left? Red. Hanging out there, just being red.

 

And had I not been out in the back yard acknowledging, documenting, that difference, I never would have taken that second picture. 

 

 

There among the dead leaves and half dormant, wilting plants, stood one Daylilly. On one single stock, one single hearty, fully formed flower that, despite the odds, was determined to have its one single day in the sun. 

 

Perseverance, determination, they can pay off. You can't know unless you try. That's what I got from that little yellow flower.

 

But for me, the main lesson, one we desperately need to acknowledge in this country, is what those red leaves so beautifully personified, just by being the only thing they could be. There is beauty in diversity.

 

Sweet Potato Mix Rolls       

                                                       ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

1 package (5.6 oz) Betty Crocker Homestyle Sweet Potato Mix

1 1/4 cup milk

1 cup hot water

4 TBSP butter, divided

2 1/4 cups flour, divided

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp allspice

 

Directions:

*NOTE: this recipe calls for a package of sweet potato mix, this recipe does not use the entire prepared mix.
*Prepare the packaged potato mix with the milk, hot water, and 3 TBSP of the butter in the microwave according to package instructions. Set aside, uncovered, for 5 minutes.

*Cover a kneading area with 1/4 cup flour. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the remaining 2 cups of flour with the baking powder, salt, and allspice.

*Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.

*Add 2 cups of the potato mixture to the flour mixture. Mix just until incorporated, then, on the floured kneading area, knead for just 1 minute.

*Form the dough into 12 balls, place on the baking sheet and allow to rest for 30 minutes.

*Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Melt the remaining 1 TBSP butter and brush onto the tops of the rolls.

*Bake for 20 minutes.

A Plague, an Apple, and Science

 

The plague, an apple, and science.

 

If we were playing Jeopardy right now, you could ring your buzzer and, forming your response in a question, say "What inspired Isaac Newton?" 

 

Why am I bringing up Isaac Newton? Blame the plague. No, not his bubonic plague, our Coronavirus.

 

It's October, a month that always brought me joy in the past. I loved playing with my food, from my Jack-O-Lantern Treat Bowls and Mocha Mummies snacks, to Snake Sandwich lunches and Bloody Fingers dinners to Individual Mummy Pies and Billy the Puppet Cake deserts. Part of it was the fun inspiration October brings, but the biggest joy was seeing the looks on the faces of my kids and their friends. Then, when you thought it couldn't possibly get any better, the month culminated in the parade of children in costumes right at my front door.

 

That changed in the past few years. First my boys had the unmitigated gall to go and grown up. Without the reaction, playing with my food became less fun. Then last year Covid forced a change in Halloween itself. This year I'm pretty sure I won't be passing out candy to unmasked kids of unvaccinated parents.

 

Enter Isaac Newton. Or really, I should say, enter the apple. Bringing along some interesting parallels and a new direction for my October recipes.

 

Caramel Apple Bundt Cake

 

Don't be surprised if I revert to a fun Halloween themed recipe or two. And although I promise not to focus only on pumpkin, there may be a couple of those making an October appearance as well. But for this year, Fall has me thinking more along the lines of apple. Inspired by Sir Isaac.

 

Newton was born in England in the 1600s. His father had a sheep farm and was successful, but he died before Isaac was even born. His mother remarried and moved away when he was 3, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother, until his mother's second husband died and she returned, with Isaac's half siblings. 

 

It was to that sheep farm that Isaac returned when Cambridge University closed down due to the plague. The result was a little home schooling of the bonked-on-the-head-by-an-apple variety. His visit to the homestead not only inspired his thoughts about gravity and motion, in which the seeds of the entire study of physics grew, but calculus as well (for which I decidedly would not have thanked him during my own college years, btw).

Besides being raised in an unconventional family situation, having his education interrupted by a plague, benefiting from a belief in reality and science, there's another interesting correlation between Newton's life and what's going on in our country now. Seems he knew a thing or two about building walls. But unlike the self-proclaimed builder of walls here, and in the spirit of Newton's third law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, he's been credited with the quote "we build too many walls and not enough bridges."  

 

The apple tree on Woolsthorpe Manor is still there, by the way, over 400 years old and, I'd imagine, still able to provide respite from the plague, and a reminder to respect science. Perhaps it should have some visitors from our side of the pond, I can think of a few American politicians (a whole party of them, in fact) who might benefit from a good old fashioned scientific bonk on the head.

Caramel Apple Bundt Cake         

                                                       ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup apple juice

1 packet (.74 oz) instant caramel apple cider

10 caramel apple flavored lollipops

1 box yellow cake mix

1/2 cup oil

4 eggs

1/4 cup cinnamon baking chips

1/2 cup powdered sugar

Directions:
*Heat the apple juice in the microwave for 2 minutes. Whisk the caramel apple cider mix into the juice until dissolved. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a nonstick bundt pan.

*Crush the caramel apple pops and discard the sticks.

*Once the cider mix has cooled, set aside 2 TBSP for the glaze, then beat the rest, along with the cake mix, oil, and eggs for 2 minutes. Mix in the cinnamon baking chips and about 2/3 of the crushed caramel apple candy.

*Spread the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until the center springs back to the touch. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, run a knife around the edges and remove to cool completely.

*Mix the remaining cider mix with the powdered sugar. Drizzle over the cooled cake and immediately top with the remaining chopped candy, pressing in gently to hold.

I Object: Word Counters

 

Counting my words again. 

Today my fellow Word Counters and I are sharing our monthly group post. Each month one group member picks a number between 12 and 74. All participating bloggers are then challenged to write something (or a few somethings, as the case may be) using that exact number of words. Today we all share what we came up with.

 The November number is 28. 
It was chosen by Diane of On the Border.

In these monthly posts, I chose a theme and use the assigned number of words multiple times using the theme. This month I've chosen the theme I Object.

~ I had a hard time with this one. No, not the number Diane chose, but how to name the post based on what I knew I wanted to say.

 

~ I knew I wanted to talk about what I hate. But especially at this time in our country's history, the word "hate" is too much of a trigger.

~ I specifically knew I would avoid politics today. I'm not averse to talking about it, I've done so many times, just wanted to take a break from it.

~ So, knowing what I wanted to say, and not say, I started looking at how to appropriately title this post. "I hate" was out. But what was in? 

~ Honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg (and fighting to keep from editorializing the debacle that followed her death), I chose a theme that serves to represent my intent: I Object.

~ Like . . . I object to the leaves changing colors (though beautiful) and raining down from the trees lining my backyard without having once been to a beach this year.

 

Cod and Hash Brown Florentine

 

~ I object to switching over to buying and cooking the heartier, more substantial fall and winter weather foods without ever having been to a farmer's market this year.

 

~ I object to my own new habit of taking scissors to my hair. Although I don't seem to be objecting to those streaks of grey here and there.

 

~ I object to making a determination about flying PurDude home for Thanksgiving, when we both live in covid hot spots, knowing that doing so could have deadly consequences.

 

~ I object to the other option, his having to drive alone for hours on desolate stretches of highway in questionable weather, so his mama can finally hug him.

 

~ But I don't object to talking him into driving home the first weekend of November before most of the bad weather hits, and staying a month. HE'S HERE!

Here are links to the other Word Counters posts:

Messymimi’s Meanderings 
On the Border 

Cod and Hash Brown Florentine         
                                                       ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

NOTE: If you prefer, you can substitute frozen chopped broccoli for the spinach

Ingredients:   

1 1/2 cups frozen hash brown shreds

10 oz package frozen spinach

 3/4# cod fillets

1 tsp salt, divided

1/4 plus 1/8 tsp pepper, divided

1/8 tsp ground cayenne spice

1/4 cup grated parmesan

1 tsp paprika

 

Directions:
*Defrost the hash brown shreds and pat dry. Defrost the spinach and press between paper towels to remove as much of the water as you can.

*Cut the cod into pieces of equal thickness so it will cook evenly.

*Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray an 8 inch square casserole dish with nonstick spray.

*Mix together the hash brown shreds, spinach, 3/4 tsp of the salt, 1/4 tsp of the pepper and the cayenne. Spread half of this mixture into the bottom of the casserole dish.

*Top with the cod pieces, then sprinkle them with the remaining 1/4 tsp salt and 1/8 tsp pepper.

*Arrange the remaining spinach and hash brown mixture over the fish. Sprinkle with the parmesan, then the paprika.

*Bake for approximately 25 minutes, until the fish is completely cooked, no longer translucent and flakes easily with a fork. How long your fish will take is dependent on the thickness of the fish.