Roasting Pumpkins for Recipes

I love squash, pretty much of any kind, in just about any way.
This time of year, pumpkins are my favorites. A few years ago I had no idea what the difference between some of them were. I assumed that the pumpkins some get to carve were the same ones you made pies out of. Found out the hard way that I was wrong.
The large carving ones have significantly more water and significantly less taste than pie pumpkins.  Pie pumpkins are smaller, denser, and actually sweeter than the bigger ones.  You can find them at some supermarkets and most pumpkin patches this time of year.  I buy mine at an orchard that grows them for 2 dollars a piece. I can get the equivilent of 3 cans of pumpkin out of one. To me, its totally worth the effort, because it just tastes better.

I use a chefs knife for just about everything. I trained myself to use them when it was all I had in the kitchen for the first 2 years of marriage and then all of the culinary classes I took at WKU taught me that I could, in fact, do most everything with them.  I have four of them. And I love them all. 

Anyway, I cut the top off first by basically inserting my chefs knife all the way around. The pumpkin is soft enough about an inch out from the stem that it's fairly easy to do. I'm sure you could probably do it with whatever carving equipment you have for your other pumpkins if you need to.

  

So after this I just cut the sucker in half and scooped out the seeds and put them in a colander to deal with while the pumpkin was roasting. 

I line my cookie sheets with foil. I've had these cookie sheets for at least 10 years and I love them and I find they preserve better if I line them with foil for things like this. I put about 1 tsp of canola oil and spread it around where the pumpkin was going to be and I set the oven at 350.

I made sure I washed the outside of the pumpkin so if it looks wet, thats why. Where we get our pumpkins from, they come directly from the pumpkin patch that morning and are generally covered in hard mud because it's been raining a lot here lately.  

While it's roasting away, I start washing the seeds to roast them later. The membrane holding them together generally comes right off with a little hand washing

Pulled the pumpkins out of the oven after about 45 minutes, you can kind of tell that the one on the left is caved in some.

 I peel mine while they are still hot, I've built up a tolerance to heat, so it's not that big of a deal but if you want to wait until they cool then that's fine too. They just peel easier while they are hot.

 And then I put them in a bowl, get out my hand mixer and beat the puree until there aren't many chunks left.  Since I don't can, I divide it up into freezer bags, 2 cups in each quart bag. I generally keep one out for smoothies or other recipes like a crust less pie. Or custard as the rest of the world calls it :) :)

While I was working on this, I blotted the seeds somewhat dry, tossed them with a couple TBS of canola oil and a couple tsp of salt and put them in the oven at 350. Stirring about every 10 minutes. They will stick no matter what at first because of the moisture coming out of the seeds, but eventually they wont and will become crispy. And delicious. I roasted mine in a glass dish because someone said they had better luck with roasting them that way. I'm indifferent. You can do them either way. This batch didn't see the light of another day but I made another batch later that went into some granola.

And there you go. This one only took me a week and a half to wrap up and post. :) Lots of stuff goin' on.

Hope this was helpful.
Gotta go feed some kiddos!

When Days Don't Go Anywhere Near Planned.

Yesterday was an interesting day. Wednesdays usually are. Wednesdays are kind of like Saturday night/Sunday morning, if something is going to go wrong or something comes up unexpected, thats when it comes up. Brewer law and what not.

Yesterday was no exception. My plan for dinner was to make a pork roast in the oven, shred it and put BBQ sauce on it for my husband (I don't like BBQ sauce, so I skip it), but when my daughter went down for her usual nap time at 2... lets just say things went the way they normally do at 2am.  I got the oven preheated, and then she started screaming and crying.  I popped my head around the corner and she was sitting up and I could see the tears down her face but her eyes were closed. When I went to lay her back down again, she clawed my face.  She never does that, she knows better than that.  So I just took both of her hands in mine and laid her down and got her settled. Then someone rang the doorbell. Legitimately woke her up, crying.  I answered it, it was the neighbors kids selling stuff, told them no while she was sobbing. Got her laid back down. She went back to sleep within minutes.  By then the oven was preheated. 

Thump.

Scream.

She fell on the floor.

Got her back in her bed, singing, then I hear Will choking.

Took care of that and he was awake then.  So much for a nap after the pork roast was put in the oven :) Such is the life with two kids. Oh well.

Wait. The pork roast isn't in the oven. 

Sigh. 

I go and get it out of the fridge, pull out the salt and pepper, and...

Blood curdling scream.

I grab Wills bouncy seat, and sit next to Mari until I get her settled down again all the while shes spurting gibberish. So I moved her to the couch so I didn't have to keep going back and forth.

This lasted for all of 20 minutes while I got Will changed and did some of his therapy. 


I went to the kitchen and heard her get up, no crying, so I thought she was awake.  Nope. Standing in the middle of the living room with her eyes half open. Pointing at me, asking me what that was.  "What is dat?" "It's my shirt." "No. What is dat?" "I don't know, what is that?" "Cat."

Went ahead and picked her up and laid her on my chest where for the next hour she did the sleep jump thing over and over again and never stopped moving. 

So when Shawn got home, he took her, she cried. Will woke up. I moved him into the kitchen with me.

I finally opened the pork tenderloin roast, realized it was two pieces, which made my life easier.  I threw one half in the preheated oven with salt and pepper for Shawn to take to lunch, shredded, with BBQ sauce and I butterflied the other half and made herb crusted pork chops for dinner. 



I salted the pork chops with Kosher salt. Yes. I see the irony in that. But it sticks to the pork chops better and helps make that crust.  Then I put on the onion powder and garlic powder. Then the rest. And no, I didn't use the applesauce. It's just sitting there because I have a 2 year old and currently am redoing my pantry area.

Olive oil was my oil of choice.

Not much, about half a TBS. And I keep it in a squirt bottle for things like this. 

Used my giant skillet. Got all four in.

Let them sear on each side for about 8 minutes. 

Which gave me some time to get some stuff done around the kitchen and to look outside for one of the first times that day at well after 5pm. 

I love the view from my kitchen window. I really do.  And the sign above it is a great reminder, especially on days like yesterday. 



It says, "Faith makes things possible, not easy."

I love being a Mom. It's what I've wanted to be since I was a little girl and am thankful for a Mother who encouraged that but also always reminded me to keep my eyes on the Lord and living my life for Him and everything would turn out for the best.  She encouraged me to be everything I needed to be, not everything I wanted to be, and for that I am eternally thankful for my Momma.

Flipped over my pork chops...



Put the potatoes in the microwave, and realized I didn't have any salad dressing or the time to make any before services, so we skipped the salad.

My husband scarfed it down after it was done, and I started getting the kids and myself ready for services.

Mari ended up settling and slept a total of four hours and then ate 2 PB&J's, 1 Kashi cereal bar, a handful of grapes, 2 cups of water... and asked for "medicine" which means her mouth was hurting. 

I'm not asking for advice as to what to do about her sleeping problem, we're working on it and I know what the problem was yesterday, it wasn't just her teeth, but I'm not going to get into that on here :)

But in this, the lessons I've learned over and over again since becoming a Mom 2 1/2 years ago from today, is to roll with the punches and when life throws you a curve ball. Make pork chops out of your roast.

Dutch Oven Pot Roast

I do see the irony in backing up a post about vegan banana chocolate chip muffins with a pot roast recipe.
We don't do vegan in this house and it's usually rare that we do beef because my husband hunts, but we are out of venison roasts in the freezer and we are not likely to get any this year for various reasons I don't want to get in to on here. 

Anyway. Apparently the price of beef now requires you selling all that you have to buy it so when I see it on mark down or really good sale, I snag it.  And before the last three days, it had been well over 2 months since we'd had anything with red meat in it at the house.  Just not in the budget and no one was putting it on sale for a price I could afford for the beef I was willing to buy. We had been eating a lot of ground turkey, pork chops, and chicken, and as much as I love those things, at some point I just crave red meat.  So this weekend when I went to IGA and Kroger, they had steaks, extra lean ground beef, and pot roast on either mark down or sale where I was comfortable paying for it. 

So the roast.  It was a nice piece of marbled meaty goodness. I love it. Makes for an extra tender roast. Did I trim it? No. But that's another post for another day.

For the roast I used:
1 roast (der)
1 TBS of canola oil
Generous amounts of Kosher salt and black pepper for the meat
1/2 of a large Vidalia onion (yellow will work fine too)
2 TBS of Red wine vinegar to deglaze
 And 1 whole container of low sodium chicken stock. I usually use low sodium beef stock, but chicken is what I had in the pantry and we're at the end of the month, so we have to make it to next Monday on what we've got.

And the most important ingredient:



My cast iron, ceramic plated, Lodge 6qt dutch oven.
I love this thing. Saving up right now to buy another one. I've had this one for 2 years and it has served me well. I named her Bessy, cause she's a hoss. I keep her on the stove top all of the time because she is pretty heavy and Mari likes to get into my cabinets and I don't need her trying to pick this puppy up.

I just rubbed some bacon fat in her a couple days before I made the roast to make sure she stays nice and seasoned.  Only the best for my Bessy.

She can go from stove top to oven to grill if need be. Shes made for outdoor camping use too, because she's a Lodge and thats what they do. 

ANyway.

Put the oil in the dutch oven. Let it get nice and hot. But don't turn the heat above 5. You don't want to fry the roast, you want to sear it.

While you're waiting for it to heat up, pat the roast dry on top to make sure you get a good sear and then rub it down with the salt and pepper. As much as you are comfortable with.  I like Kosher because it sticks to the meat better.

Test the oil with a drop of water and see if it sizzles, if it doesn't, wait another minute or two, and then add the roast.

I don't add any more than 1TBS of oil because, 1) I season my dutch oven with bacon fat and 2) The fat starts rendering down on the roast.

Turn it over when it has a good golden brown on the edges and sear on the other side.

  Remove the roast from the pot, deglaze with the red wine vinegar and add the sliced onions. I used sliced because they break down better.  I also let them get nice and golden brown to get that really good toasted flavor without having to use onion soup mix. 

As an aside, red wine vinegar helps break down the fibers of the meat making it more tender. I use it on my venison roasts to and it works really well. 

Put the roast back in the dutch oven with the onions and cover with the beef or chicken broth or stock.  And you can either leave it on low on the top of the stove or turn the oven to 250 and leave it in there for as long as you want really.

An hour before I served it I put baby carrots in with it. Leaves them a little crisp in the middle still, retaining some of their nutritional value :)

The roast will be falling apart when you take it out of the dutch oven. Try not to eat it all before your family gets any!
Also baked some potatoes in the microwave and made a little bit of gravy from the broth because thats how my husband likes it. 

It got an "awesome!" from my husband and a "dewicious!" from my 2 year old.  I even stuck a piece in Wills mouth for him to gum on while I held it and he seemed to like it!


-----


Well there it is. I know its lack luster, but it's roast. Its not supposed to be complicated and hard. Simple seasonings, fix it and forget it for your stove top or oven.
Don't get me wrong, I love my crock pot, but dutch ovens changed the way I do one pot meals. I use crock pots on Sundays when I'm going to be gone, but I use the dutch ovens I have for every day use in the fall and winter.  Soups, roasts, you name it. 

Love cast iron. Love. It.

Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins

Vegan is a bad word to many, visions of crazy hippys wearing tie dye and big circle pink glasses smoking whatever they can find.

Vegan just means made without animals or animal products. So this recipe just doesn't use eggs and animal fats like butter.  I know vegan gets a bad wrap but most of the vegans I know do it for health reasons and not because they are lifelong members of PETA. In fact, statistically, most people who are vegetarians in this country do it for health reasons and not because they are the fanatics many like to portray them as. But that's another blog for another day. 

Today we're talking about delicious muffins.
These delicious muffins:

Moist. Banana and chocolate deliciousness, with just a smidge of cinnamon, or as I like to call it, fall in a jar.

The muffin above has already been consumed by the 2 year old who helped make them. And test out the batter. And eat a few chocolate chunks in the process. I made her put her paci in her mouth and keep it there so she would stop eating the batter.  Another positive for it being vegan, if you have an aversion to letting your child eat dough with raw eggs. I just have an aversion to her eating all the dough and there not being any to make muffins with.

We made these yesterday but the only cupcake/muffin liners I had were fall themed and since we are giving most of what we made away, I figured it was appropriate since fall is tomorrow.

An adorable 25 pack of cupcake liners. 25. Because everyone knows 12+12=25... it does leave a little room for error if you are making a double batch and mess up 1 liner :)

So here goes: Preheat to 350 degrees, line 1 cupcake/muffin pan with 12 liners, spray them with non stick spray or oil. 





4 large bananas
1/4 cup of water
1/4 cup of unsweetened apple sauce (or 1/4 cup of oil)
1 TBS of baking soda
1 tsp of ground ginger
1 tsp of cinnamon
1 tsp of nutmeg or cloves, whichever you have on hand pumpkin pie spice works well too
1/4 tsp of salt
1 tsp of pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup of brown sugar, agave, or maple syrup
2 cups of whole wheat flour or gluten free all purpose flour
1-12 oz package of either semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks. I just get whichever is dairy free and on sale

Smash the bananas to a good chunky puree consistency. Add water, apple sauce, spices, salt, vanilla, and baking soda. Stir, and I let it get foamy, about 5 minutes of letting it sit. 
Add in sugar of choice and flour, stir until combined, it will be a little chunky.
Fold in chips/chunks.

Spoon equal amounts in each prepared cup until all batter is gone.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until tops are brown.

WAIT FOR THEM TO COOL SOME. Chocolate is like lava after it comes out of the oven. Trust me. I have the scars to prove it and Mari tried to eat some last night after I put them on the cooling wrack. Ask her how that turned out. Goober. 

I eat mine plain. My husband adds butter. Mari just eats all the chocolate out of it and asks for a banana. 

Will just sits there staring at us like this:



One day little man. One day.

Oh and this is for my Mom. Mari got some flour on her face and hair to show that she was a big helper and worked hard in the kitchen. I think there was more on the floor, but the vacuum helped take care of that.

She got a bath and braids after the muffins came out of the oven.  Love her so!

Screen Freeish

My husband and I have recently decided that we need to cut back on how much TV is watched at our house. With it being windy, rainy, etc. It's virtually impossible to take Will outside, and when its just me, I can't just leave a six month old in the house so I can let the 2 year old outside and play, no matter what the weather is.  And I figure as we are heading into the Fall/Winter months, I'm going to have to find things for us to do inside anyway.

My girl is currently obsessed with numbers, letters, and shapes, so I thought we'd do something along those lines.

So I started with 1 and worked up to 8. Just copier paper, red marker, and popsicle sticks.

She loved it. I think we did shapes yesterday for an hour.

Today she asked for her name and W,X,Y, and Z :)

And in my defense, I got the letters waaaaay too big, so she told me the A needed to have a top on it and the I needed more on the bottom. It only needs to be perfect in her eyes!

Katie came over so I could get some things straightened up, and one of Maris favorite things to do outside is paint with water on the sidewalk, and I can do that because I can open the window on the front door and paint with her outside and still be able to hear Will.  So she asked to do that with Katie. 

Yes thats my foot, and we need a bigger trellis for our rose bush we thought was dead but isn't.  And apparently our welcome mat has faded. Oh well :)

We also did simple sign language, color patterns with colored popsicle sticks, built a fort out of boxes, and did various chores around the house as well as our map work and Bible book work.

All told, I think everything total cost maybe 4 dollars.  Not even that. Trying to find some simple and cheap ways to entertain my child who needs to be busy every second she is awake can be super challenging, especially having a baby too.  You don't need fancy toys and contraptions from who knows where to entertain your kiddo. You don't even need to have the big box of lights and colors to entertain them.  Sometimes the best thing for her and me is to just put some music on and dance it out. 

Be creative, use what you already have. If you're tied to the house like I am most days, you don't have the option of running to the store to get something real quick. 

Next up is a string maze in the hallway and water fun in the bath since she got mud all over her painting outside. We also need to make muffins and dinner, so all told, it should be a fun afternoon!

Oh and what was Will doing during all of this?


Chillaxin in his Rock N Play, in my lap or on his play mat nearby.  If he can see sister, he's a happy camper.

Lessons from PB&J

We are, and have been for a while, in the midst of the, "I do it Mommy." stage . The frustration when I wont let her do something that she doesn't need to do yet (cut things with scissors or use markers without complete supervision) and the frustration on my part in my head when I let her do something somewhat menial that takes me 2 minutes to do that takes her 30. But she's got to learn to do it and she can't learn to do it if I don't teach her and I can't learn from her if I don't let her just do it on her own.

Today it was our every other day PB&J.

I keep the PB on a shelf in the fridge that she can get to because it's in a plastic container. We use the PB from Trader Joes because the ingredients are: Peanuts and salt and after you stir it and put it in the fridge it actually stays a thicker consistency, I'm not impressed with the natural stuff from Kroger because it is always in liquid form, even after you mix it.  I get out the jelly because it's in a glass jar and Mari isn't one for paying attention much yet and we've lost a couple jars of jelly in the process. 

I mean she is only 2 1/2. It's not like I expect her to write a thesis on PB&J.

We bust out the butter knife and get goin:

Smudgetastic. Ignore the counter.

"I mixin it Mommy!"

This whole process up to this point took about 15 minutes because this started happening a lot:

I told her that we needed to make it into a sandwich and she said, "Ok Mommy! I do it!"
"Ok."

Perfect. At least thats what I'm telling myself in my head. Do I believe it? I'm trying to. You can't expect perfection, you can't expect anything really, except that in the end that it will taste like the best PB&J in the world just the way that it is. And I think thats a good portion of being a Mom. Giving up the expectations that things are going to go on your schedule and the way you want it to. And it's amazing how much a 2 1/2 year old and a 7 month old can knock you to your knees and not realize thats what they are doing. 

You have to let go of complete control. Not that I'm saying that life goes as planned otherwise, but even moreso as a Momma.  It's been a big test of my faith at times, especially with an over active energy hyped toddler wondering if I'm ever getting to her on the days where it feels like all we are both doing is crying because she REALLY wants things to go her way.  And then I have to step back and realize that shes teaching me the same lesson with her PB&J.  Just because I'm an adult doesn't mean I get to get away with her attitude.  Not that I'm saying that she gets to either, but being a parent means being consistent. And how am I consistent teaching her that she doesn't get to do everything she wants when I turn around and get upset about the same things. 

Let go of the selfish. Just let it go. Give it to God. Just give it to Him. *deep sigh*

Back to the sandwich: She says, "Mommy, I made a mwess! I clean!"

So she did. It took another 10 minutes, and I did help because at one point she started licking the counter.

And then she climbed up into her high chair, asked me to cut her sandwich into "twiangles."

"How is it baby?"
"Its super dewishious. I made it Mommy!"
*high five*




Where was brother during all this? Sleepin :)  He's awake now that Mari is taking a nap, but that's pretty much par for the course.
If nothing else, parenting has taught me to not expect to sleep :)