Archive | November, 2012

Southwestern Vegetarian Chili & Double Cornbread

26 Nov

I made the most delicious chili last night. It was all the best things a meal should be: easy, delicious, healthy, and filling. This is one of those amazing chop-it-all-up-and-dump-it-in-the-crock-pot sort of of recipes. With the beans, corns, and whatnot, it has a slight Southwest or Mexican flavor, but mostly it tastes like delicious, hearty chili. I made some cornbread to go along with it. Perfect for a chilly night. Ha, chili night. Get it? Yeah…

Soup's on!

Funny thing is, I used to hate chili. Now I love it. Almost any sort of chili, I will wolf down, especially if it’s topped with shredded cheddar cheese and I have some tortilla chips to scoop it up.

One thing that’s great about this recipe is that it’s meatless, but it’s so hearty and filling that no one will notice. So if you’re trying to join in on Meatless Mondays, reduce your meat consumption, or just want a healthier balanced diet, this is a great option. The BF, who originally wanted to add ground beef, loved it. I did have to promise to make him another batch of “normal” chili later though.

Mmm... chili

Southwestern Vegetarian Chili, adapted from Eating Well

1/2 onion, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1 can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can corn, drained and rinsed
2 sweet potatoes, chopped into 1/2″ cubes
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon cumin
3 tablespoons lime juice (the juice of 1 lime)
1 cup vegetable stock

Optional:
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoon water

Chop everything up, mix it together in a slow cooker, and cook on low for 5-7 hours.

Check the consistency of your chili about an hour before eating. If you want it to be a little thicker, thicken it with flour. In a small bowl, mix the flour and water until it forms a slurry. Stir into the chili. Repeat with 1 part flour and 1 part water until it reaches desired consistency.

Double Cornbread

 

Double Corn Bread from Better Homes & Gardens

1 tablespoon butter
1 cup flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup frozen corn, thawed

Preheat oven to 400 F. Place a tablespoon of butter in an 8×8 square baking dish and place in the oven until the butter melts. Remove dish and swirl butter until it coats the bottom and sides. Set aside.

Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl; set aside.

Combine eggs, milk, and oil in a small bowl. Once mixed, add to dry ingredients all at once. Stir until just moistened. Fold in corn. Do not over-stir.

Pour batter into hot baking dish. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cut into squares and serve warm.

 

Dinner time

 

Linking up for:
YOLO Mondays from Still Being Molly and Lipgloss and Crayons
Monday Meet Ups from Covered in Grace
Make Something Monday from Sarahndipities
Made by you Monday from Skip to my Lou
Linky Party with Fine Craft Guild

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Secret Recipe Apple Pie

19 Nov

You should feel so honored right now. I’m about to share my secret recipe with you. Once you make this apple pie, all other pie will pale in comparison. You may be tempted to make other pies, and when you do, you’ll just be disappointed that it’s not this pie. That’s how good this pie is.

Mmm... Apple pie

The BF likes it so much that even he will roll up his sleeves and help. Which is awesome, because peeling and grating apples is a pain. And yes, I said grating. That’s the first secret: don’t slice or dice your apples, grate them. With a cheese grater. Be careful not to grate your knuckles. When you slice or dice apples, you get random textures and tastes with each bite. When you grate the apple, you get a nice, uniform taste and texture throughout the pie. No weird mush surprises.

a la mode-y

Photo credit to Emily of Voila! with Emily

The other secret… using the right apple. I like sweet, and I’m not the biggest fan of tart. So I use my favorite apple: gala. Preferably organic, and if you’re lucky enough to have a Trader Joe’s in your neighborhood, go there. They always have excellent organic gala apples.

The third secret: When you get a handful of grated apple, squeeze out the extra juice before adding it to the bowl. You’ll end up with a thicker, heartier pie instead of a sloppy, runny pie. And you’ll also end up with a glass of the most delicious apple juice you’ll ever drink.

I guess the last secret is the recipe, so here you go. Just in time for Thanksgiving.

Secret Recipe Apple Pie

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons cold milk
1 1/2 teaspoons white sugar
1 teaspoon salt

6 medium-sized Gala apples
3/4 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

For the crust: Mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, oil, milk, 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar, and salt. Blend evenly. Spread mixture into a 9″ pie pan, pushing dough evenly across the bottom and up the sides.

Prepare the apples: Peel each apple. Grate the apples. Squeeze a handful of grated apple to reduce the amount of liquid. (Reserve juice if desired.) Add grated apple to a large bowl.

For the filling: To the apples, add 3/4 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Toss to coat evenly. Spread in unbaked pie shell.

For the topping: In a shallow bowl or pan, add 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and cold butter. Use a pastry cutter or pizza slicer to mix until evenly distributed and crumbly. (The butter should not melt or spread evenly, but will look like small balls or pearls mixed in among the flour and sugar.) Sprinkle mixture evenly over the apple mixture.

If desired, cover edges of pie with foil to prevent browning. Place pie in the oven on top of a cookie sheet to catch any juices that may spill over. Bake 45 minutes.

Classic

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Getting Started on Wedding Planning

14 Nov

When I told you that I got married, I said I’d write a little bit about planning a wedding, some DIY projects, et cetera. I’ve been a little busy posting pumpkin recipes, but I thought it was about time to get into wedding stuff. Maybe it’s Wedding Wednesday. Ha. Anyways, I thought I’d get started with, well, where to get started.

 

The first thing I did was to register with Wedding Wire and create a wedding budget. Well actually, that’s a lie. The first thing I did was buy these purple polka dot paper straws. LOVE them.

Wedding WireA lot of people wonder which wedding website to go with. I highly recommend Wedding Wire. And they’re not even paying me to say this. I thought it was very user-friendly, easy to navigate, and it had everything I needed in one spot. Compared to The Knot, much better. In terms of site design, Wedding Wire is much cleaner and nicer-looking. The Knot is covered in so much random stuff, you can’t figure out where you want to click. WW also offers personal websites, which I set up immediately.

So what was Wedding Wire good for?

Personal website

Ours included some pictures of us, our story, our bios, information about the ceremony and reception, links to our registries, a link to RSVP to the wedding, a form to request music, a place for people to send us ‘guest book’ messages, and a ‘contact us’ form. It was really great to be able to refer people to one place for everything.

We also saved money on invitations by having online RSVPs — we didn’t have to buy RSVP cards or return envelopes or postage for said envelopes. (Along the bottom of the invitation, we added the line, “Please RSVP to http://www.weddingwire.com/…and….” This also solved the problem of giving people access to the registry without being tacky and writing it on the invitation.

Bonus: There are a million design template to choose from, including the one we used, a Vera Wang design.

Our wedding website

Homepage of our wedding website

Budget

One of the most important tools is budgeting! I tracked everything because I wanted to make sure we stayed within a reasonable budget. The categories are helpful to get you to think about what’s important to you and what you’re willing to spend. Then as you’re planning, enter in your purchases. It will even let you say who paid for it, so if your parents are helping you out, you can indicate if they paid that bill or if you did. Excellent for tracking. Anything I bought online went automatically in, and any receipt from a store went into my wallet to be entered later.

Checklist

The checklist tool kept me all together. It came automatically filled in with tasks to do, arranged by month. So I had a great sense of when I needed to get my dress by, when I needed to send invitations, and all that. The checklist also allows you to personalize it by deleting or adding anything. You can also assign tasks to other people — super helpful if you’re having an argument with your fiance about who was supposed to call his mother to talk about the rehearsal dinner. (And for the record, he was.)

The checklist is also handy in that it increases motivation. If you miss a deadline, a little orange exclamation point will appear next to that task so that you know it is VERY IMPORTANT. When I logged on one day 2 months before my wedding and saw 27 exclamations, I knew it was time to step it up a notch. Which I did the next day, after I spent that day totally losing it.

My November Checklist

My checklist always has overdue tasks. Le sigh.

RSVPs

I highly recommend online RSVPs, but even if you do paper RSVPs, WW will keep them all organized for you. I uploaded our guest list from an Excel with the click of a button, and then everyone was stored with their addresses. I was able to say who was coming to which event. The ceremony, reception, and rehearsal dinner are already listed, but you can add anything — for example, bridal shower, bachelorette party, or engagement party. I ignored the ‘ceremony’ option, but I definitely used the rehearsal option and the rehearsal dinner. It was very simple to make sure everyone had been invited, to track RSVPs, and to get a final headcount for the caterers.

Other Things

Presumably Wedding Wire does many other things as well; I just didn’t really use any other functions. These were the most practical and helpful. There are areas of the site that allow you to interact with other users, read and write reviews of vendors, and more. They also have a mobile app for on-the-go planning. If I didn’t have such a crappy phone, that might have been useful. It seemed cool.

Alrighty, next time: more on budgeting. For any weirdos out there interested in personal information like how much money I spent on my wedding, you won’t want to miss it.

 

Pumpkin Brownies

12 Nov

After the Pumpkin Spice Cake and the Whole Wheat Pumpkin Muffins, here’s my last pumpkin recipe to share with you: Pumpkin Brownies! I’m not sure what goes better with pumpkin than chocolate. After looking through a million versions, I finally settled on a recipe from Delishhh.com.

Mmm... look at that swirl

I thought these were exceptional, and the addition of Ghiradelli chocolate chips was a stroke of genius. They were slightly more cake-like than fudge-like, and while I usually prefer the latter, they were amazing. Especially when warmed and topped with a scoop of ice cream, which I must admit I enjoyed probably 5 out of 6 nights last week. As I mentioned with my previous pumpkin recipes, I used pumpkin pie filling instead of regular pumpkin puree, which the original recipe called for. But I think you’re good either way — the pie filling makes the brownies a little sweeter and richer in the end.

Oh my goodness, look at that chocolate chip right there.

I baked these in my brand-new Bake and Store Baker from Crate and Barrel — a highly convenient wedding gift. After they cooled, all I had to do was snap the lid on and throw them in the passenger seat to take to a party. Perfect.

Oh, and by the way — one can of pumpkin pie filling is the perfect amount for this recipe, Whole Wheat Pumpkin Spice Muffins, AND the Pumpkin Cake with Spiced Buttercream. Just to give you a heads up there.

Pumpkin Swirl Brownies from Delishhh.com

¾ cup all purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
¾ cup butter (melted)
1 ½ cups white sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
¼ cup cocoa powder
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
½ cup pumpkin pie filling
1tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp nutmeg

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and spray an 8×8 inch baking dish with cooking spray.

In a bowl, whisk to combine flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a separate bowl, mix together melted butter, sugar, and vanilla. Beat in each egg one at a time. Add in the flour mixture a little at a time, and mix until combined. Divide the batter in half evenly into 2 separate bowls.

In one of the bowls, blend in the cocoa powder and chocolate chips. In the second bowl of batter, stir in pumpkin pie filling, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

Spread the chocolate batter into the bottom of the baking dish. Pour the pumpkin batter over that. Drag a kitchen knife or spatula through to mix it a bit. (This creates a mostly chocolate base with a mostly pumpkin top. If you want a more marbled brownie, pour half of each batter in at a time for a total of four layers, and then swirl the knife through it.)

Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool and cut into squares.

Linking up for:
YOLO Mondays from Still Being Molly and Lipgloss and Crayons
Monday Meet Ups from Covered in Grace
Made by you Monday from Skip to my Lou
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Happy Election Day!

6 Nov

In honor of Election Day, I got busy in the kitchen with my rolling pin and some cookie cutters.

Cookie Politics

Political Party Cookies! I used a basic sugar cookie recipe and dusted them with cinnamon-sugar before baking. Delicious to nosh on while we wait for the election results to come in tonight.

The Old North State

North Carolina is a big swing state this year. In the last election, N. C. voters elected a Democratic president after years of voting Republican in national elections. I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happens this year.

Donkey the Democrat

Ever wondered how the Democratic Donkey and the Republican Elephant came to be? Check out the answer here.

Elephant the Republican

I voted!

I Voted!

 

And then I rewarded myself with a Chai.

Mmm... Delicious DemocracyMake sure you get out and vote today! Every vote counts!

Bipartisanship.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Spice Muffins

5 Nov

Halloween may be over, but pumpkin season sure isn’t. We’ve got at least another month for pumpkin, so I’ve got two more recipes to share with you. First, these muffins. They’re pretty healthy, not too sweet. They make a great on-the-go breakfast. But if you want them to be cupcakes, just add a little sugar and a delicious cream cheese frosting on top. Or if you want to hit a nice sweet spot in the middle, sprinkle a little cinnamon-sugar on top just before or after baking.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Muffin

Also — side note — these will make your home smell AMAZING as they bake.

A few notes on the ingredients before we get started…

1) I used a mix of whole wheat and white flour, but really only because I ran out of whole wheat. You can use all whole, all white, or some combination. Whole wheat flour will yield a denser but healthier muffin. Regular white flour will give you a fluffy texture but has really no health value at all.

2) The original recipe called for pumpkin puree, and I accidentally bought pumpkin pie filling. I thought it was better though because it added a little bit of sugar to a not-so-sweet muffin. To each her own though.

Whoa, muffin! Put some clothes on!

Alright, RECIPE TIME:

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Spice Muffins, adapted from Cookin Canuck

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup canned pumpkin pie filling
1/2 cup plain fat-free Greek yogurt
3/4 cup (packed) brown sugar
2 tbsp canola oil
1 large egg

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Place liners in a muffin tin and set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt.

In a large bowl, combine pumpkin, yogurt, brown sugar, canola oil, and egg. Mix on medium speed until well combined. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and beat on low speed until just combined.

Spoon the muffin batter into the prepared muffin cups. If desired, sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the batter. Bake about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Remove muffins from the pan and cool.

Two-and-a-half-bite muffin
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