I had bought some sweet potatoes last week as they, along with pumpkins, also remind me of Fall. Although, I think that sweet potatoes can certainly be eaten all year long. I had 2 sweet potatoes left and I decided I'd give it a go at making some sweet potato fries. I just googled for directions (I wasn't entirely sure how long to bake them, etc.) and I found this GREAT recipe for Baked Sweet Potato Fries. I've imagined that since they are baked, they're fairly healthy. I didn't use parsley because I didn't have any and I used regular old plain salt and not fresh black pepper and they were still incredibly delicious. Go to the actual website (link embedded above) if you want pictures.
Baked Sweet Potato Fries
2 medium-sized sweet potatoes*
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1/2 t cumin
1/2 t oregano
1/2 t coriander
1 t kosher salt
1 t parsley
fresh ground pepper (about 10 turns of a pepper mill)
I also saw on the blog, Our Best Bites, a few other recipes that I'd like to give a try--namely, No-Rise Sweet Rolls, Pumpkin Cheesecake Bites, and Pumpkin Alfredo Sauce. Yum!!
So if you live in Orlando/Central Florida, you just let me know when you'd like to come over for dinner. I'd be happy to cook for you--especially dessert!!! :)
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
It's Pumpkin Season
I love Fall for a few reasons including cool, brisk weather, leaves changing colors, warm apple cider, and pumpkin recipes. Well, considering I now live in the Sunshine State where today's weather was something like 90 degrees and sunny it doesn't look like I'll be experiencing cool, brisk weather here anytime soon. And the leaves changing colors...well, that just doesn't happen here. Believe it or not, palm trees don't change colors. So tonight, to get myself in the spirit of the Fall season, I decided to do a bit of baking. I originally intended just to make one batch of Pumpkin Cookies with Caramel frosting but once I got started baking I kind of got on a roll. I ended up making 2 batches of Pumpkin Cookies (one batch w/ walnuts and one batch without) which equals a little over 5 dozen cookies and I made 2 batches of Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe courtesy of Sara.
The fruits of my labor (minus the cookies and muffins that Ryan and I snacked on this evening):
I must say that part of the reason that I kept going is that I was listening to a couple of really compelling sermons by a few great Reformed preachers. I had been wanting to listen to these sermons and I don't do well just sitting and listening so this was the perfect way for me listen to them. I felt like I spent an evening hanging out with Jesus (however corny that my sound). In any case, definitely check out the message about Baptism by Greg Blosser of Grace Central Presbyterian Church in Columbus, Ohio and these 2 messages about Hope for the World and Hope and the Poor by Tim Keller of Reedemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. The Gospel came alive again for me tonight as I listened to these messages. It's a love story that I will never tire of hearing.
But, let's get back to baking. So, here is seriously the world's best Pumpkin cookie recipe. I got it from my mom and I'm not sure where she got it from. She's been making these cookies for as long as I can remember and they are the definition of Fall for me. Plus, it helps that they are literally so easy to make. Also, I recommend refrigerating them after they are baked and topped with Caramel icing. For some reason, these cookies are delicious cold (served with a glass of milk, too, of course). Also, you can choose to put nuts in them or not. It's up to you. I used walnuts, but I'm pretty sure I've used pecans before and it was just as delicious. I also made some without any nuts, but I think I had to bake them just a minute or 2 longer.
Pumpkin Cookies
Combine ingredients:
1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup pumpkin
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup nut (optional)
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 tsp soda
½ tsp salt
Drop by tsp on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 mins at 375 degrees.
You can tell if they're done by doing the toothpick trick.
The necessary ingredients for cookies:
Pumpkin Cookie Dough:
Cookies ready to be baked:
The final product. Yum:
I don't have any pictures of the cookies with the frosting on them.
Caramel Icing
Cook 3 Tbsp butter, 4 tsp milk ½ cup brown sugar. Cool (Actually, I think it's better if you just immediately add in the vanilla and conf. sugar). Add ¾ tsp vanilla and 1 cup conf. sugar and mix with a hand mixer. Since you're going to do this right in the pan, make sure you use a pan without nonstick coating b/c the handmixer could likely pull up the coating on the pan. Not that I have any experience with that or anything...ahem...right. One of my friends prefers the cookies w/out the icing as she thinks the icing is too rich, but I love the icing (who wouldn't love the sugary goodness?!?). So you may want to make some cookies with icing and some without.
I knew I wanted to make some sort of pumpkin bread or muffins and I remembered that my friend Sara had posted a recipe recently for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins. I decided to give them a try and honestly, I may have a new favorite pumpkin recipe. They are SO. INCREDIBLY. DELICIOUS. And they're pretty darn easy to make, too. When you check out Sara's blog, she wrote that she always doubles the recipes and recommends doing that. She's right. You'll want to double the recipe. It's that good. Seriously.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
This is for a single batch....you'll definitely want to double everything below. Yum!
Mix these ingredients well:
3/4 cup pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling . . . regular pureed pumpkin)
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
Mix these ingredients in a separate bowl and then add gradually to the wet mixture until everything is combined:
1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Once everything is combined well to form a batter, add the chocolate chips. The recipe calls for 3/4 cup - which would be 1 1/2 cups if your doubling the recipe - but when I double the recipe, I add at least 2 cups. Probably a little bit more. The moral of the story: Add chocolate chips until you have your desired amount. I ended up just using a bag of chocolate chips which is about 1 1/2 cups, I believe.
Pour into a 9 x 5 loaf pan (or 2 - 9 x 5 loaf pans) and bake at 350. I think for around 50 minutes to an hour for loaves. More like 25 - 30 minutes for muffins. You know . . . until a knife comes out clean. I ended up baking the muffins for 27 minutes and they were perfect.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffin Ingredients:
The wet & dry ingredients. (it doesn't look very appetizing at this point):
Finished batter with chocolate chips:
Baked muffiny goodness:
So there you have it. My evening of Pumpkiny goodness. I love making recipes with pumpkin in them...I may have to try out some more soon. In the meantime, try out my above recipes and let me know what you think. Enjoy :)
The fruits of my labor (minus the cookies and muffins that Ryan and I snacked on this evening):
I must say that part of the reason that I kept going is that I was listening to a couple of really compelling sermons by a few great Reformed preachers. I had been wanting to listen to these sermons and I don't do well just sitting and listening so this was the perfect way for me listen to them. I felt like I spent an evening hanging out with Jesus (however corny that my sound). In any case, definitely check out the message about Baptism by Greg Blosser of Grace Central Presbyterian Church in Columbus, Ohio and these 2 messages about Hope for the World and Hope and the Poor by Tim Keller of Reedemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. The Gospel came alive again for me tonight as I listened to these messages. It's a love story that I will never tire of hearing.
But, let's get back to baking. So, here is seriously the world's best Pumpkin cookie recipe. I got it from my mom and I'm not sure where she got it from. She's been making these cookies for as long as I can remember and they are the definition of Fall for me. Plus, it helps that they are literally so easy to make. Also, I recommend refrigerating them after they are baked and topped with Caramel icing. For some reason, these cookies are delicious cold (served with a glass of milk, too, of course). Also, you can choose to put nuts in them or not. It's up to you. I used walnuts, but I'm pretty sure I've used pecans before and it was just as delicious. I also made some without any nuts, but I think I had to bake them just a minute or 2 longer.
Pumpkin Cookies
Combine ingredients:
1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup pumpkin
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup nut (optional)
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 tsp soda
½ tsp salt
Drop by tsp on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 mins at 375 degrees.
You can tell if they're done by doing the toothpick trick.
The necessary ingredients for cookies:
Pumpkin Cookie Dough:
Cookies ready to be baked:
The final product. Yum:
I don't have any pictures of the cookies with the frosting on them.
Caramel Icing
Cook 3 Tbsp butter, 4 tsp milk ½ cup brown sugar. Cool (Actually, I think it's better if you just immediately add in the vanilla and conf. sugar). Add ¾ tsp vanilla and 1 cup conf. sugar and mix with a hand mixer. Since you're going to do this right in the pan, make sure you use a pan without nonstick coating b/c the handmixer could likely pull up the coating on the pan. Not that I have any experience with that or anything...ahem...right. One of my friends prefers the cookies w/out the icing as she thinks the icing is too rich, but I love the icing (who wouldn't love the sugary goodness?!?). So you may want to make some cookies with icing and some without.
I knew I wanted to make some sort of pumpkin bread or muffins and I remembered that my friend Sara had posted a recipe recently for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins. I decided to give them a try and honestly, I may have a new favorite pumpkin recipe. They are SO. INCREDIBLY. DELICIOUS. And they're pretty darn easy to make, too. When you check out Sara's blog, she wrote that she always doubles the recipes and recommends doing that. She's right. You'll want to double the recipe. It's that good. Seriously.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
This is for a single batch....you'll definitely want to double everything below. Yum!
Mix these ingredients well:
3/4 cup pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling . . . regular pureed pumpkin)
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
Mix these ingredients in a separate bowl and then add gradually to the wet mixture until everything is combined:
1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Once everything is combined well to form a batter, add the chocolate chips. The recipe calls for 3/4 cup - which would be 1 1/2 cups if your doubling the recipe - but when I double the recipe, I add at least 2 cups. Probably a little bit more. The moral of the story: Add chocolate chips until you have your desired amount. I ended up just using a bag of chocolate chips which is about 1 1/2 cups, I believe.
Pour into a 9 x 5 loaf pan (or 2 - 9 x 5 loaf pans) and bake at 350. I think for around 50 minutes to an hour for loaves. More like 25 - 30 minutes for muffins. You know . . . until a knife comes out clean. I ended up baking the muffins for 27 minutes and they were perfect.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffin Ingredients:
The wet & dry ingredients. (it doesn't look very appetizing at this point):
Finished batter with chocolate chips:
Baked muffiny goodness:
So there you have it. My evening of Pumpkiny goodness. I love making recipes with pumpkin in them...I may have to try out some more soon. In the meantime, try out my above recipes and let me know what you think. Enjoy :)
Saturday, October 3, 2009
My question today...
I was reading on a church website today that the church was growing and adding a fourth service. At first thought, it sounded impressive. Wow, 4 services. That church must be doing good things for it to be growing like that. But then it got me thinking. Just because a church is growing, does that mean it is a "good" church. What I mean by "good"--Is the church honestly teaching Truth? Is the church teaching the redemptive story of Christ? Is the church teaching the entirety of the Gospel?
I'll preface this next part with saying that I think I'm often a skeptic when it comes to issues of the church. In any case, I get concerned when I see a church growing so fast and then peek into what the church is teaching and it's just self-help messages. Our society thrives on ways to make us feel better here on earth. So of course, you can pick and choose verses from the Bible that can sound like tips for better living and improved happiness for here on Earth. But paraphrasing Tim Keller, Christian Hope isn't about our happiness here on Earth, but about our ultimate, eternal state. While I'm not suggesting that we should be unhappy and miserable as Christians here on Earth, I do think we need to evaluate the types of messages churches are preaching. We can't pick and choose what makes us feel good, but rather, we have to accept the Bible in its entirety. Being made aware of our sinful nature, being called to live needing and wanting less, giving all that we have (our money, our time, our talents) to Christ (it is His to begin with, after all)--all these things and more can be hard. At times we can feel out of place and unwelcomed in society when we live according to the call of Christ.
Now if I see a church teaching the entirety of the Bible and it's growing in leaps and bounds--now that's something to stand in awe of!
Just something I was contemplating today...
Thoughts?
I'll preface this next part with saying that I think I'm often a skeptic when it comes to issues of the church. In any case, I get concerned when I see a church growing so fast and then peek into what the church is teaching and it's just self-help messages. Our society thrives on ways to make us feel better here on earth. So of course, you can pick and choose verses from the Bible that can sound like tips for better living and improved happiness for here on Earth. But paraphrasing Tim Keller, Christian Hope isn't about our happiness here on Earth, but about our ultimate, eternal state. While I'm not suggesting that we should be unhappy and miserable as Christians here on Earth, I do think we need to evaluate the types of messages churches are preaching. We can't pick and choose what makes us feel good, but rather, we have to accept the Bible in its entirety. Being made aware of our sinful nature, being called to live needing and wanting less, giving all that we have (our money, our time, our talents) to Christ (it is His to begin with, after all)--all these things and more can be hard. At times we can feel out of place and unwelcomed in society when we live according to the call of Christ.
Now if I see a church teaching the entirety of the Bible and it's growing in leaps and bounds--now that's something to stand in awe of!
Just something I was contemplating today...
Thoughts?
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