Category Archives: Recipes

Pumpkin Biscuits

Boo! It’s Halloween weekend, folks. Time to be barraged by candy or trick-or-treaters or both. I giggled out loud this week when I read a friend’s Facebook post. “wondering how people will react on Halloween when they say ‘Trick or Treat’ and I throw a four-year-old in their bag…..” (She has 4-year-old TRIPLETS!) 

At my house, the munchkins have been practicing wearing their costumes and looking for treats all week! We’ve already had dress-up days at both schools, a Father-Son Pumpkin Carve at preschool, a Mother-Daughter pumpkin carve at home, a trip to the pumpkin patch, a trip to a farm with – yes – more pumpkins, and a kindergarten costume parade! Still ahead? A haunted walk through the woods, a neighbor’s Halloween bash (complete with a live band!), and, of course, trick-or-treating! Despite this embarrassment of Halloween riches, I’m going to squeeze in one more treat…these delightful Pumpkin Biscuits.

Light and flaky, these would make the perfect breakfast treat for a crisp weekend morning or a great complement to a steaming bowl of your favorite fall soup. Biscuits take hardly any time to make and you’ll feel so accomplished by the time you gently cut them with an overturned glass (because, really, who has a biscuit cutter?). A little icing jack-o-lantern face would be adorable…


Pumpkin Biscuits 
adapted from Cooking Light, 2008

makes 14

2 c. flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp. salt
5 Tbsp. cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/3 c. lowfat buttermilk
3/4 c. canned pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling!)
3 Tbsp. honey


Directions:
1. Heat oven to 400.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, and salt in a bowl. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or a large fork until mixture looks like coarse meal. Chill 10 minutes.
3. Whisk together buttermilk and honey; add canned pumpkin. Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture and stir until just moist.
4. Dump dough onto a floured cutting board and knead lightly. Roll dough into a 9×5 rectangle (about 1/2″ thick). Sprinkle top of dough with flour and fold dough into thirds. Reroll dough into a 9X5″ rectangle (again, about 1/2″ thick) and dust dough with flour. Fold dough into thirds again and pat it to 3/4″ thickness. Cut dough with a 1 3/4″ biscuit cutter (or an overturned glass measuring about that diameter). 
5. Place uncooked biscuits onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 400 for 14 minutes or until golden brown. 
6. Cool 2 minutes on wire racks and serve warm.

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Acorn Squash with Apple Walnut Topping

I am so excited to be dusting off my cool-weather recipes now that the temperature is finally dipping into the 60s around here. I have some perennial favorites that I simply won’t make until there’s a chill in the air, colored leaves visible from the kitchen window, and a football game playing on the TV in the next room. One of those is this acorn squash. 

For those of you not familiar with all of the squash varieties, an acorn squash is the smallish green one shaped like, well, an acorn!  They are super-easy to cook and are absolutely delicious. This particular recipe uses the microwave so it’s quick enough to make even for a weeknight meal – I love that!

While the squash is good prepared simply and topped with just a little butter and salt or grated parmesan, this version is sweet enough to stand in for dessert! Pair it with a roasted pork tenderloin or crispy baked chicken for a satisfying way to celebrate these first chilly fall days.

Acorn Squash with Apple Walnut Topping

serves 2

1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and diced
1 Macintosh apple, peeled and diced
1 Tbsp. butter
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 acorn squash
3 Tbsp. chopped toasted walnuts


Directions:
1. Place apples and butter in a nonstick skillet and saute until tender. Add  brown sugar, cinnamon and vanilla and stir until sugar dissolves.
2. While apple is cooking, place whole acorn squash in microwave on HIGH for 4 minutes. Turn over and microwave 4 more minutes. Carefully remove squash from microwave and cut in half (from stem to tip) with a sharp knife. With a spoon, scoop out seeds and discard.

3. Fill each half of the squash with half of the cooked apple mixture and sprinkle with toasted walnuts. Serve immediately.
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Kale Chips

Now before you click delete or navigate yourself right out of this post, hear me out. I was a kale chip skeptic. In fact, i was a kale skeptic altogether (just like you are, right?). Kale just looks so incredibly…well…healthy in a good-for-rabbits kind of way. Cooked kale can be a little bitter or even tough to chew if you’re not used to eating greens…so that skepticism may even be warranted in most instances. But not if that bunch of kale is prepared this way. This way it becomes one of the healthiest snack foods you can imagine. But not just healthy – it’s also salty and flavorful and crispy and just plain addictive. Reserve judgment until you’ve tried these. Please.

Why kale? It’s absolutely packed with health benefits and is often cited as a superfood (on lists of such things). If you want to read about all of its merits, check out this link from the World’s Healthiest Foods website – amazing stuff. But in a nutshell, it’s about the most efficient food on the planet for providing a host of nutrients for practically no calories. To get these health benefits, I’ve started to add kale to soups and stews and casseroles – all slow cooking methods with a ton of moisture –  which helps to break it down to a more “chewable” level. But this recipe? This takes it to another level altogether.  This method literally transforms kale from an uber-healthy green to a “pop in a DVD and kick back on the couch” kind of snack.

Betcha can’t eat just one.

Kale Chips

1 bunch fresh kale
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. salt
freshly ground black pepper


1. Preheat oven to 300. Wash and dry kale. Remove hard center “vein” from each leaf with a sharp knife. Cut remaining leaves into “chip sized” pieces. Place in large bowl, drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat.
2. Spread kale pieces in a single layer on large baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3. Bake for about 20 minutes or until thoroughly dried and crispy to the touch. Cool and eat.

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