Some recipe love

Fall in Minnesota. I love the 48 hours of fall we get here. This year especially, it seems like the leaves changed colors, and then 2 days later, a hefty wind came and whipped the leaves off in a matter of hours and now it's brown. The good news is the wind came and whipped the leaves out of my YARD, so it looks like there will be no yard work!

I woke up yesterday on pumpkin day and had a hankering for some pumpkin bread of some kind to munch on with my latte, and I was so pleased with the results, I'm going to share! Plenty more "pumkin-ish" days ahead to try this one out!


Pumpkin Scones (adapted from this recipe)


Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1T plus 1t baking powder
1 1/4 t baking soda
1/4 t ground ginger
3 t ground cinnamon
1/8 t ground cloves
1 t salt (decrease if you use salted butter)
1/2 cup butter, cold
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
15 oz can pumpkin puree
1 c chopped nuts (I used candied walnuts, but plain wlanuts or pecans would be good too)
3 T white sugar
1 t ground cinnamon

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, salt, and brown sugar.
Cut in butter using a pastry tool, until butter is pea size.
Mix in nuts.
In a small bowl, beat eggs and mix in pumpkin, then add them to the dry ingredients.
Just before the mixture is completely combined (should still be a little crumbly), plop it all onto a cutting board, pressing it to about a 9" circle.
Cut into wedges. Mix white sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle on top of scones.
Bake for 11-13 minutes until tops are golden brown.

Yummy. We had some left so I froze them, but I think I'm going to go get them out and eat them tomorrow!

Cheap, healthy, yummy,easy, fabulous meal. With a side of Taz.

I guess I'm getting back into cooking. Summertime - grilling, fresh produce, all of that just wakes up my tastebuds.

So, I'm sharing one of my "repeatable" meals that I am really excited about.

Step 1. Start with this refried bean recipe. It is WAY cheap AND easy AND healthy AND yummy. All of which are excellent reasons to make it.

Disclaimer: If you make the recipe, please do not put in 5 tsp of salt, as the recipe states. Then you will proclaim them a disaster and never come back to A Latte Talk for recipes again. I would say half that amount of salt would be plenty. Maybe 3 tsp.

Step 2. Make Bean Burritos from them. Doesn't get much more basic than that. Hardly even a recipe, really. Take a tortilla, glop some beans on, sprinkle with cheese, wrap up. Voila.

You can buy 2 pounds of pinto beans (2x as much as you need for the recipe) at Aldi for 1.29. Just one of these recipes stretches over several meals, even for a family. The beans also freeze great, OR my favorite thing to do is take the leftovers, make more burritos with them, and individually wrap each burrito in tinfoil (if you like to reheat in the oven) or saran-wrap (if you like to reheat in the microwave). Then you can take them out later and just reheat and serve!

The last time I made these, I made mango salsa to go with them. Here's my recipe:

1-2 mangos, diced
6 roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
purple onion (to taste - I love it, so I put a lot), diced
1/2 jalapeno, seeded and minced (optional - we usually skip)
lots of cilantro
lime juice (about 1/4 of a lime)
salt to taste

As I was finishing up the burritos, Taz snuck in the kitchen and proclaimed the salsa to be edible.

BUSTED!!!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.........

Delicious!

Must. Share.

My new favorite recipe.

Grilled Thai Chicken with Peanutty Noodles (how's that for a title??)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup chicken broth or water
1 inch fresh ginger root, grated
3T peanut butter
1T honey
3T soy sauce
3-4 cloves garlic, pressed
1/2 lb thin spagetti (another authentic asian noodle would probably be better, but I always use spaghetti)
2 large chicken breasts (marinated in soy sauce, olive oil, rice vinegar, and garlic powder)
1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded, and julienned
1 large red pepper, sliced thinly
1/2 cup cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped
2-4 green onions, cut on bias
1/2 cup peanuts


1)combine first 6 ingredients in a small saucepan and simmer until slightly thickened and peanut butter melts (will still look thin)
2)meanwhile, prep the veggies
3)grill marinated chicken breasts on preheated grill until cooked through and no longer pink in the middle; slice.
4)while chicken is cooking, cook noodles in boiling water until tender; drain and toss with peanut butter sauce.

Arrange peanutty noodles on large serving platter, top with chicken slices. Arrange cucumber, red pepper, cilantro, onions, and peanuts on top and serve!

It's beautiful and so very yummy.

My Posse

Do you want to know one of my birthday party secrets?

Seriously, I will share the single reason that I enjoyed myself at my girls' birthday party.

Even when my husband was working all day, both the day before the party, as well as the day of.

Even when I did most of the prep, cleaned my house, shopped for the various supplies to make our crazy messy crafts, by myself.

Even when my kids were on a serious Birthday High, having had no less than 4 birthday cakes and 43 presents to open in the weeks previous.

My secret is my Posse.


Firstly, my mom. She is Captain-behind-the-scenes. She ran to Target no less than 3 times in the 24 hours before the party. She washed children's hands and feet, was cook and busser, as well as dishwasher. She was the see-what-needs-to-be-done-and-do-it Posse.

Then there was the overnight help. Auntie Dawn and Uncle Lee agreed to have the girls sleep over at their house the night before (and dealt with the sleepover blues in a certain 4-year old), took them to the beach the morning of the party, took them to lunch, played all afternoon, and delivered them home, precisely 30 minutes before the party started. When they arrived, they were clean, happy, and smiling.

And, their mother was clean (I got a shower!), happy (I had peacefully organized a party and made cakes without 2 girls with the energy of drugged puppies at my ankles all day), and smiling (I was SO glad to see them!).

And as if THAT wasn't enough, when she got to the party, she organized the painting crafts. Remember what I said about how much I don't like to plan crafts? Well, this one, I planned. I just didn't execute it. Dawn did.

Can we all just have a moment of silence for how incredibly fabulous this was.

Thank you.

And she took charge and took the messy shirts and rinsed them out and dryed them in the dryer while we were eating dinner. And... and... and...


You'll have to find your own Aunt Dawn, of course. You can't have her. She's mine.

And her husband is no slacker, either. He helped with at least 22 things as well.

Thanks so much, y'all. I don't know what I would have done without any of you. And I don't know if it would have been possible to have a better Posse.

I pretty much just bossed my Posse around all day.

Actually, that's not 100% true. Dawn did a fair amount of bossing me around, too... which I needed. She's good like that.

We'll call her Sargeant-worth-her-weight-in-gold.


After the party, as I was watching my mom finish cleaning the kitchen, turn on the dishwasher and wipe down the counter, I said, "How in the world do moms put together birthday parties like this without a Posse of people helping them?"

Dawn piped in, "They rent out a room at Chuck-E-Cheese. They do NOT do all of this."

So there's my birthday party tip of the year. If you're in the market to do a birthday party,

Git yerself a Posse.

Foody Friday - What'd you cook last week?

Foody Friday! I miss you all.

So totally not a creative theme, I know. But I have to catch up with all of you Fellow Foodys. What's your best meal from the last several weeks?

This is one I cooked for a gathering of not-so-adventuresome family members. Not that they would EVER complain about anything that was made for them, but I just tend to make more, you know... odd-type food. So I was hoping to find something that was creative without being too weird.

Here's what I found:



8 ounces penne pasta
4 links spicy chicken andouille sausage (we used a pound of Kielbasa)
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/3 cup pesto
1/2 cup white wine
1 (15 ounce) can cannellini beans, undrained
3 cups torn arugula leaves (you could easily sub spinach or another green)
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
4 ounces crumbled goat cheese

DIRECTIONS
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Place penne in the pot, cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until al dente, and drain.
In a skillet over medium heat, cook the sausage until evenly brown. Cool and slice.
Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat, and cook the garlic 1 minute, until lightly browned. Mix in sausage, pesto, and white wine. Cook and stir until heated through. Mix in beans with liquid and arugula, and cook until arugula is wilted. Stir in the tomatoes, and cook until heated through. Toss with pasta, season with salt and pepper, and top with goat cheese to serve.

It was good. I took a picture of some of our family eating it:



Oh, but I guess it was so good, nobody has ANY left on their plates! And, doesn't Grandma look amazing?!

And I'm not kidding, every single person licked their plate clean. And it was easy. And it uses pesto.

You must make this.

I hope you join in and add your link below! Happy Foody Friday!