A couple of weeks ago, my mom dropped off 3 half bushels of apples.  Incase you are unfamiliar with how many apples that is, I’ve used 20 pounds of peeled and cored apples and haven’t used a whole half bushel yet.  These apples were fresh from the trees in their backyard and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I quickly got to work. First thing I wanted?  Apple butter.  I made a lackluster apple butter last year, and yet everyone seemed to love it.  I was determined to make an even better version this year and totally blow everyone’s sock off.  But if you’re looking for the real reasons I wanted to make apple butter, they’re A. the wonderful smell that fills your house...

If this is the first pumpkin butter recipe you’ve seen this year, then bloggers are doing fall wrong.  There should be apples and pumpkins as far as the eye can see (and I promise I’m bringing you an apple butter recipe ASAP).  If you’ve already seen a million recipes, the main difference with mine is that it’s naturally sweetened.  I was pretty appalled at the recipes I’ve seen online calling for CUPS of sugar.  Cups!  Pumpkin is delicious – I see no reason to add even close to that much sugar. I always see pictures, tweets, and general raves about pumpkin butter from Trader Joes.  Unfortunately, there are no Trader Joes anywhere near me.  So I did the only logical thing and bought 8 pie pumpkins  thinking I’d make and...

As fall gets into full swing with chilly mornings, I find myself staying in bed later and waking up wanting warm, comforting food.  In fact, I accidentally slept in until almost 11 am on Saturday, after going to bed at a pretty decent time on Friday.  Blaming the weather.  I’m definitely not just super lazy 😉 When I finally rolled out of bed, it was obviously too late for breakfast.  This implies that I never eat pancakes at 5 pm, 9 pm, or 2 am, but rest assured, I definitely have and do.  It’s how I end up with so many pancake recipes.  I guess I was just looking for something different in my life, something that just screamed with fall flavor. Enter this delicious hash.  It’s full of a...

Confession: When I make soup, I sing that shots song, replacing shots with soup.  So. Basically, I run around the kitchen yelling Soup! Soup! Soup soup soup soup!  Why am I telling you this? I don’t know. Soup makes me happy. When I’m feeling sick or sad, I turn to soup.  Happy yet? Eat more soup.  I eat soup all year round, but now that it’s a socially acceptable soup temperature outside, I just can’t stop eating and talking about this miracle food.  I had to work from home today because my cat Peter is sick, and that’s pretty stressful.  It’s hard to stay focused and it just all around sucks when someone you care about isn’t feeling well (yeah, I just referred to my cat as a person).  Luckily,...

By posting this recipe I am entering a recipe contest sponsored by the California Sweetpotato Council and am eligible to win prizes associated with the contest. I was not compensated for my time.   I’ve always found the difference between yams and sweet potatoes confusing, especially because so many people use the names interchangeably.  When a recipe called for one or the other, I would just grab what I happened to run in to at the store and hope for the best (note: the results were NOT always the best).  California sweetpotatoes have made it a little simpler for the easily confused like me by removing the space to distinguish themselves from that confusing mess. In case you are still struggling with the difference, yams are dry and starchy –...

If were to guess what my diet was like based on my blog postings, you’d probably graph my cheese consumption similar to cosine this week.  I started out cheese heavy on Monday, delved into some sweet vegan treats on Wednesday, and then rounded my week out with a cheesy Caesar dressing. Well, you’d be wrong.  My cheese consumption was more like a straight line, graphed somewhere around 85% of my diet.  Okay, 85% is a little high, but I was definitely cheese heavy. I love, love, love Caesar salads, but the unfortunate truth is that most Caesar dressings are not vegetarian as they contain anchovies.  The anchovies add only a subtle flavor, though it’s very obvious when it’s missing.  My solution? Soy sauce.  It brings the umami flavor of anchovies...