Pumpkin Crunch Bars

You totally doubted me, didn’t you? You all thought I’d renege on my promise to post again so quickly!

As an inspiration for my recent pumpkin fixation, I have to show you this video. Although it’s intended for Halloween, it’s still fitting for Thanksgiving, and holy hell it is HILARIOUS. We get to slicey dice, to makea da poompkin gooch!

Bork bork bork! Can you tell how excited I am to go see the Muppets movie? SO. FREAKING. EXCITED.

This is going to be a quick post because I’ve got lots to do to get ready for the holiday, as I’m sure everyone reading this does. This is a super quick, super easy, and super delicious last-minute addition to any meal, Thanksgiving or not.

Pumpkin Pie Crunch Bars (adapted from Duncan Hines)

What You’ll Need

• 1 pkg yellow cake mix
• 1 16 oz can solid pack pumpkin
• 1 12 oz can fat free evaporated milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1 ½ cups Splenda (or sugar)
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, melted
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
• 4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• ½ tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 350°F, and grease a 9x12 pan with cooking spray. In a large mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin, milk, eggs, Splenda, pumpkin pie spice, and salt.

Blend well with a fork or whisk until the mixture is smooth, then transfer into the baking pan.

Cover the surface of the pumpkin mixture with the yellow cake mix so that no pumpkin is visible and the cake mix is in an even layer. Next, scatter the chopped nuts over the cake mix.

Drizzle the melted butter over the surface of the cake mix.

Bake for 50-55 minutes, or until the surface is golden brown and the cake mix has slightly puffed.

Let this cool until it is just warm, and serve plain or with whipped cream.

This is, essentially, a delicious, non-fruity version of a dump cake. This is almost an upside-down pumpkin pie, and I love the way the nuts add a nice bit of crunch to the overall soft texture. As much as I love pumpkin pie, I love that this takes only 10 minutes to put together but ends up tasting just as great!

And with that, I’m signing off until after the holiday. On Thursday, while in the midst of your food comas, please remember that Thanksgiving is truly about how lucky we all are to have friends, family and loved ones by our side, and a bounty of food to share and enjoy. Now go eat your hearts out!

Gobbles!

No, that is not the gobbler that I will be happily feasting on all weekend. This big guy, along with two of his other buddies, resides on the grounds where I work. Since we are approaching our national Annual Turkey Massacre, these 3 plucky fowls have decided it is high time to assert their presence and remind me of their cuteness by stalking around the parking lot, flapping their wings, and looking generally disgruntled. Guilt. It’s what’s for dinner.

^{Gobbles? (This picture, and this post’s title, will make no sense until you watch this piece of genius from South Park.)}

So! Thanksgiving is in 4 days and I CAN’T WAIT. I looooove Thanksgiving. What’s not to love about a whole day celebrating mashed potatoes (heavenly), butternut squash (highly underrated), stuffing (aka thigh padding), and PIE?! Yes, I am thankful for all of the many blessings in my life. But without fail, every single year, I am especially thankful that I have free rein to eat pumpkin pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I am not kidding.

No, this is not a recipe for pumpkin pie. Everyone has a family recipe that they follow, or a version of the one on the cans of pumpkin, and they are all equally delicious. Like butternut squash, though, I think pumpkin is an underrated vegetable that should be utilized in more dishes.

Since I had a craving for pumpkin-related foods, I decided to make a soup and a non-pie dessert (I am saving myself for my beloved). This soup is incredibly easy, and whether or not you choose to include it in your holiday dinner, it would go great with those leftover turkey sandwiches everyone looks forward to the day after Thanksgiving.

Curried Pumpkin Soup (recipe adapted from Panera)

• 2 large carrots, chopped
• ½ white onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 15 oz. cans of 100% pumpkin puree
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 2 cups (or 1 15 oz. can) light coconut milk
• 1 tbsp butter or margarine
• 1 tbsp canola oil
• 1 ½ tsp curry powder
• 1 tsp ground (or 2 tsp minced fresh) ginger
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp sugar

Peel then roughly chop your carrots, onion, and garlic (evenness in size/shape doesn’t matter, since you’ll be blending it later). Heat the butter and oil on medium heat until they get hot, then add the veggies, ginger, and curry powder. Mix well so the spices evenly coat the veggies, and cook for about 8 minutes or until the carrots start to soften.

After the carrots soften, add the vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer while covered for about 10 minutes.

At this point the broth will have cooked down a bit, and the color will have richened from the veggies breaking down into the liquid.

Next, add the pumpkin, coconut milk, salt, and sugar.

Mix well, then continue cooking on medium-low heat for about 3-4 minutes, or until the contents are thoroughly hot.

At this point, you can either transfer your soup to a blender or food processor, or puree it using an immersion blender. I used my immersion blender and the soup reached an even, rich thickness after blending it for about 1 minute.

Heat this for another minute or two, then serve immediately with fresh, crusty bread.

If you want to get all fancy, you can top this with some crème fraÎche, roasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds), or minced red bell peppers. Personally, I was barely able to restrain myself from shoving my face in the bowl, so the foo-fah was unnecessary.

Eric proclaimed this to be the best soup I’ve ever made. With the exception of my tomato basil bisque, it was also the easiest. Without using too many snooty foodie terms, this soup has an amazing depth of flavor. The first taste has mild pumpkin overtones, but each successive bite has layers of vegetables and spices that meld into one un-frickin’-believable meal. We both had large bowls of this for lunch and our plates were literally wiped clean by the time we finished 2.3 minutes later. I cannot recommend this enough – it’s by far my favorite recipe that I’ve made in many months!

Stay tuned…tomorrow (or, knowing me, possibly a day or two later in the week) I’ll post a simple recipe for Pumpkin Crunch Bars that will knock your socks off!

Indian Lentil Pilaf

OH HAI! Remember me?! Yeah, it’s been awhile. I left my job of 5+ years, moved, and started a new job. All within 3 weeks! Cue mental breakdown (not really, but oh so close!).

I’m still settling in, still searching through boxes for all those scraps of recipes that I stashed wherever I had space while I was frantically packing. In the midst of the 3 days I had in between leaving my old job and moving day, I decided a really spectacular use of my free time would be to cut out all the recipes I wanted from the STACKS of food magazines I had accumulated over the years. I made this Indian salad from one of those recipes, and it comes from Vegetarian Times.

Indian Lentil Pilaf

What You’ll Need

• 1 cup lentils (I used greenish brown)
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 large carrots, diced
• 1 cup basmati rice
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 14.5 oz can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
• 1 cup low-sodium vegetable broth
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 ½ tsp garam masala
• 1 tbsp minced fresh ginger (or 1 tsp dried ground ginger)

What To Do

The name of my game when making this recipe was to explicitly NOT follow the directions.

The first thing the magazine tells you to do is rinse and sort the lentils. I summarily ignored this, and instead dumped them straight from the bag into 4 cups of water. Bring this to a boil, then turn the heat down to low and simmer for about 15 minutes. The recipe doesn’t say whether or not they should be covered while simmering. I left them uncovered and it was fine, so take your pick.

After 15 minutes of simmering, you’re supposed to drain the lentils and reserve ¾ cup of the cooking water, which is brown and looks like…well, use your imagination. I realized this mid-draining, so I only saved about ½ cup. The lentils then get stored in a bowl until you’re ready for them later.

While the lentils cook, dice your veggies and garlic. Add the oil and onion to your newly emptied pan and cook on medium for about 4 minutes.

I’m fairly sure the recipe intends for you to use a white/yellow onion because it mentions cooking until the onion turns translucent. I only had a mangy red onion, so that’s what I used, and it was fine.

After the onions cooked for 4 minutes longer than I intended because the damn carrots took longer to cut than I expected, I added the carrots and rice to the pot. My carrots were roughly hacked, not diced. Also, I didn’t have Basmati rice, so I used jasmine rice. TAKE THAT, RECIPE.

I stirred these around for about 3 or 4 minutes until the rice was nice and golden brown and toasted, and then I added the garam masala, ginger, and garlic. For those of you not familiar with it, garam masala is a spice blend comprised of coriander, clove, peppercorns, cumin, cardamom, nutmeg, and other spices, and commonly used in Indian cooking. It isn’t spicy, but its got a strong, distinctive flavor that, if you’ve ever eaten Indian food, you will recognize by taste. You can make your own based on the recipe here, or, like me, you may be able to find it in the international section of your grocery store (I scored mine at ShopRite, so it’s not that uncommon). Can you guess what I fudged at this step? Did you guess ginger? Bingo! I never buy fresh because the rest of the wonky looking tuber gets old and dried out in my fridge, so I guesstimated and subbed the 1 tbsp fresh ginger for 1 tsp ground ginger. That’s the benefit of making new things – you’ll never know how badly you screwed up the original if it tastes good at the end!

Once the spices had coated the contents of the pan, I dumped in the lentils, tomatoes, reserved poo water lentil cooking water, and veggie broth. I didn’t have veggie broth, so I used chicken broth. TAKE THAT, VEGETARIANS! And it wasn’t even the low-sodium version! TAKE THAT PART INFINITY, RECIPE! At this point, cover the pot, turn the heat way down to low, and simmer for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

 

After about 20 minutes, the rice will be nice and fluffy and most of the cooking liquid will be absorbed.

While it may appear as if there is a ghostly specter hovering over my lentils, it is only the copious amounts of steam that were pouring off of this bowl. In my opinion, this dish benefits greatly from a healthy dose of pepper and a little bit of salt, especially if you follow the recipe (HAHAHAHA) and use the low-sodium broth. Once seasoned, this is scrumptious. I served this when my mother-in-law came for lunch, and I was a little worried she wouldn’t like it because of the Indian flavors (not everyone shares my love of ethnic foods) but she devoured it. In fact, I think this could even use more spices than it calls for. Garam masala has an intense flavor profile but it’s slightly muted by veggies and other components of this dish, so I might use 2 or 2 ¼ tsp the next time around. Even though I served this as a side dish, you could also easily add some grilled tofu, chicken, shrimp, or fish to make this a main course. The recipe says this serves 6, and that’s being conservative. Like most salads, the more you let the flavors settle and meld the better, so you’ll enjoy any leftovers even more!