Pumpkin Muffins

Just in time for your Thanksgiving festivities I have for you an amazingly simple and delicious recipe for pumpkin muffins that are also quite versatile.  You can make them plain, with nuts, or with chocolate chips (as pictured above) or whatever else your heart desires (dried cranberries, anyone?)!

The Best Stuffed Mushrooms EVER

You may think that I am exaggerating with the title of this recipe, but trust me when I say that I'm not.  These really are the best stuffed mushrooms you'll ever have.

I needed to make an appetizer for a dinner at my local fire department earlier this week and stuffed mushrooms was one of the first things that popped into my head.  I knew that I wanted them to be a little spicy since they were going to be eaten by firemen, but beyond that I wasn't sure, so I went to the internets for ideas.  Google pointed me towards several different recipes with cream cheese based stuffing and I wondered why I'd never heard of them before.  I love cheese so it only seems natural to use cream cheese for the stuffing.  Thus my recipe began to take shape.

I decided on using sriracha to add the spice to the recipe because it has a slight sweetness to it and I knew that would compliment the cream cheese well, along with the white wine I had also decided to use.  If you're already familiar with sriracha and you are worried about how spicy it is, feel free to dial it back a little.  I only used about a tablespoon and a half for 32 ounces of mushrooms (which was about 72 for me, but the number of mushrooms in an 8 oz package varies widely from package to package) but I wound up with a slight warmth for the spice level, which I think was perfect.  I think if you added much more heat than that it would cover up the great balance of flavors going on in these mushrooms.

Turkey Potato Salad

One of my favorite foods to have as leftovers after Thanksgiving is turkey.  Between turkey soup, turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce, and turkey salad there's a lot of options, but this year we had so much turkey leftover that I was almost getting tired of it, as hard as that is to believe!  Luckily inspiration struck and I came up with this twist on turkey salad that also helped me get rid of those pesky leftover mashed potatoes.  It may sound a little weird at first, but trust me, you'll like this.  It's also a great way to stretch out your last bits of leftover turkey into several sandwiches.

Kiwi Peach Rustic Tart

This summer I have been in the mood for some new and different fruit combinations.  It all started when I had a dessert at my favorite restaurant with strawberries and peaches in it.  I started to wonder what other fruits could be paired with peaches, and this rustic tart with kiwis and peaches in it is my favorite answer so far.

Strawberry Blueberry Turnovers

 

I hope that you've all been following me on Facebook and have been anxiously awaiting this post to see exactly what was up my sleeves with the mystery recipe featuring strawberries and blueberries!  Unfortunately you've had to wait a bit longer than planned because future Mr ADON and I are in the process of moving to the other side of our beautiful city and wouldn't you know it I can't find the camera, so I apologize for that, but I really think this recipe was worth the wait.

Without further ado, here's the recipe you've been waiting for!

Chocolate Chip Applesauce Cake

A few months ago I was poking around my Google Reader and came upon a most delicious-looking recipe for applesauce cake over at Noble Pig. First, if you haven't read the blog before, go check it out. I'm not sure what's better, the story-telling, the recipes, or the wonderful photography. Seriously, that is the kind of blogger I aspire to be. But I digress.

I leave you to explore the Noble Pig's blog for the recipe. Even though the recipe came from scratch it was incredibly simple to put together. To illustrate, you'll use one bowl and no mixer. How simple is that? And look how yummy it looks when you cut into it:
I'm still not quite sure how this made it out of the house whole, but now that I've tried this once, I don't think I'll be so lucky the next time I make it.

For the nutrition info and to see how to make some healthy substitutions for this recipe check out my note on Facebook here.

Boston Cream Pi

Every year since college I have helped to organize a Pi Day celebration at my workplace. For those of you not in the know, pi is the the term mathematicians use to refer to the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference. Since the value of pi is approximately 3.14, dorks like me all over the world celebrate Pi Day on March 14th. (I could blame my high school math teachers for starting me on this path, but it's a tradition I've proudly carried on myself for over a decade, so I guess it's mostly my fault.)