My apologies. I had NO IDEA that I had not posted this recipe yet. I’m so glad an observant reader brought this to my attention as I thought I had posted this recipe ages ago. While I love my yeasted waffles recipe for Saturday morning simplicity, I’m always so disappointed when they go limp minutes after taking them out of the waffle maker. Pam Anderson’s recipe for super crunchy waffles that stay crunchy for up to an hour after taking them out of the waffle maker is my new favorite. The secret is the corn starch and the 5 minutes in the oven. I absolutely adore these, topping mine with syrup, fresh berries, and whipped cream. Give them a shot and tell me if they don’t become your new favorite waffle recipe too!

Continue reading: super crunchy waffles that *stay* crunchy

By writing this post, I am perfecting my procrastination skills. I am supposed to be cleaning house for our family Easter gathering tonight, but instead I’ve decided to finally share this recipe with you. In the grand scheme of things, what is more important: vacuumed floors or bacon? Right. Bacon.

This dish was a big winner in our house! Brant and I are both terrified of squash, but I thought that the pine nuts, crispy bacon and fried sage might be enough to win us over. I was right! This pasta dish is packed with flavor and we even liked the squash in it, which is a miracle.

Okay, I seriously need to go clean house now. In the mean time, thaw some bacon and peel some squash. You’ll want to eat this for dinner soon

Continue reading: roasted butternut squash and bacon pasta

The reason I have been delinquent in posting for the last 4 months is that I am 4 months pregnant! :) After two miscarriages last year, we are so thrilled to share this news. We cannot wait to meet our little guy (or girl!?!) and have our lives forever changed. In the meantime, all those pregnancy hormones have messed with my love for food. All I seem to eat these days is cereal. Life cereal. Raisin Bran. Cheerios. Frosted mini-wheats. I have a whole arsenal of cereals to eat because so far cereal has been the one thing guaranteed to taste good any time of day or night. Everything else has been hit or miss, and new recipes are *never* exciting these days. It’s challenging to blog about the new foods that I’m eating when those new foods are simply a new brand of cereal!

My appetite still isn’t what it was, but I did manage to eat some fish today, so that’s promising! While things are on the up-and-up, I’m back with a tweak on one of my favorite recipes: apple pie. I love making apple pie, but I love even more the idea of a personalized apple pie. Here I take my favorite apple pie recipe and cook it in small pots for individual servings. The best part? Layer the tops with cute cookie cutter shapes to match the seasons!

My friend Bridget asked me if I would donate cookies to her school’s fundraising event. One of the challenges of being a food blogger is finding a home for all the desserts that I bake, so these kinds of opportunities are a great excuse to try a new recipe. Bridget specifically wanted me to donate a few already-baked cookies along with a couple of bags of frozen cookie dough so that the lucky winner would not have to eat 4 dozen cookies at once. I flipped through my must-make-cookies and came across this recipe that a friend had forwarded to me months ago.

After reading the directions, I realized that their assembly was way too complicated for me to ask someone else to prepare at home. It involved dividing dough balls into disks, mashing cream cheese between the disks and pinching the dough balls together while hoping that the cream cheese would not ooze out any cracks that formed. A tester batch was in order. I prepared one cookie as directed in the recipe and two cookies with a small amount of cream cheese pressed into the center of the baked cookie. A friend dropped by randomly and we taste tested the results. The cream-cheese topped cookies were a clear winner. My friend declared these cookies some of the best snicker doodles she has ever had. I’m not usually a snicker doodle fan, but I could see why she liked them so much. They are crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, and the cream cheese topping is really something special.

As a general rule, my philosophy on dessert is, “If it doesn’t have chocolate, why bother?” These cookies break that rule. My mom makes pecan sandies every year for Christmas. They are lightly sweet, deeply buttery and over-the-top delicious. I am so glad that she shared the recipe with me so that I can share it with you. These are simple cookies to make and they are even easier to eat! They hold up well to give away as gifts. Don’t just bake them at Christmas either! They’re delicious all year long!

This soup has it all: healthy, hearty, quick to make, and tastes fabulous.

Last year, my little pumpkin patch was prolific, and we harvested 75-100 pounds of squash. I still have some of those pumpkins leftover today, waiting to be turned into pies, cookies, breads, and this soup. I first made this soup earlier this year during a surprise late-spring cold snap. Brant’s not a fan of squash, but he knew not to complain as I was running out of creative uses for pumpkin and this soup automatically garnished my favor simply because it used two cups of pumpkin. I was hesitant because I was afraid that the soup would taste pumpkin-y. Nope! It was great! Brant and I were both eager to eat it again for leftovers and, like most soups, it tasted even better the second day. The pumpkin made the soup rich and thick, but even with such a large amount of pumpkin, the soup didn’t taste like squash. We loved the addition of the meaty, salty ham chunks and the flavor that they imparted. This is a new favorite for us on cold winter nights, and it’s so healthy that we don’t feel guilty about going back for seconds!

Back to the quinoa again. I made a huge batch the other night and decided I would test recipe after recipe until I found one I liked. I was shocked when I loved these quinoa cakes and then again when I found out that I also loved this salad. This is not much different from my standard winter salad, except that I also add a hefty handful or two of quinoa for some nutritious protein. It can even turn a side salad into a main dish!

But if you really, really, really want a great tasting salad, fry your quinoa. It probably ruins all the nutritious benefits of this grain, but really, who cares? It’s delicious! And it’s still healthy because you’re still eating salad! I was inspired by this when I was making the quinoa cakes and some of the quinoa fell off the patties and into the oil in the pan. It got super crispy and I thought, “Hmmm… I bet we’d love this as a salad topping!” If you add 1 cup of cooked quinoa to a splash of hot olive oil, the quinoa turns a toasty brown and makes the most amazing crunchy topping. My husband loved this part so much that he literally licked the pan clean. Try it. You’ll like it.

I’m not sure if mashed potatoes will ever be considered a health food, but I certainly don’t feel guilty about giving myself a double portion of these. Instead of having a stick of butter, they have a mere tablespoon. To give the potatoes that same smooth, buttery taste, a bit of sour cream and a splash of milk goes a long way. The secret to these amazing potatoes isn’t just the ingredients, though. It’s also in how they’re cooked. Cook’s Illustrated originally posted the recipe for their light mashed potatoes in one cookbook and their alternative cooking method for full-fat potatoes in another cookbook. I decided to experiment with combining the new cooking method with their light mashed potato recipe and boy oh boy! These were the fluffiest, smoothest, creamiest, most delicious mashed potatoes I have *ever* eaten. The cooler fall and winter weather is a perfect excuse to load up my plate with these spuds.

I promise you that if you try these mashed potatoes, you’ll never go back to the old ways of making taters again!!!

Continue reading: “lite” fluffy mashed potatoes

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I posted on Facebook asking the question, “What in the world should I do with the swiss chard growing in my garden?” Boy, oh boy did my readers have soooooo many suggestions! Eggs to soups to lasagnas to pizzas… the list goes on! I whipped up this scramble for lunch that day and I was surprised. I liked it! I really liked it! I liked it so much, in fact, that I made it a week later as a special breakfast for my husband. He loves anything savory for breakfast, so eggs doused in cheese is a real winner. I encouraged him to try these even though his negative sentiments towards swiss chard surpass mine! Brant loved this egg scramble and gobbled it up, swiss chard and all! And so we have a swiss chard winner!

Is your ideal breakfast sweet or savory? Because I’m *totally* a sweet person. In fact, I couldn’t eat this scramble for breakfast. For lunch? Divine. For breakfast? Ick. I gave my portion to Brant and reheated a strudel topped peach muffin for myself. How about you? Sweet or savory to start your day? 

Continue reading: egg, cheese, and swiss chard scramble

Before we begin, I have a confession. I did not make these. I delegated the task to two of my favorite students who were here baking with me to prep for this shower. I figured that this recipe was easy enough to leave them to do on their own. Sure enough, they handled it like champs. If high schoolers can make this, YOU can make it. And you won’t at all regret the decision to do so.

Just like the chocolate things, these need a new name. I’ve been calling them cheesecake truffle bombs when talking with my friends about them, but I didn’t want you to think that I called them that because they were a bomb. Quite the opposite! They were a hit! Who doesn’t love mounds of cream cheese dipped in chocolate, sprinkled with pecans, and drizzled with hot caramel?

My mom and dad, some of my biggest food critics, wanted these to have a more pronounced cream cheese flavor. I would recommend using the smaller amount of graham crackers in the cream cheese mixture to start, and then adding more to taste. You want the mixture to have some tang because the chocolate and caramel add plenty of sweetness. I also might suggest sprinkling these with a few flecks of fleur de sel before serving. You know me… I love adding salt to just about anything.