Pumpkin Muffins

More of the leftover pumpkin bread batter went into muffins. Mmm...

Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken Pot Pie made it's long-awaited comeback, and it was better than the original. Though, cutting slits was not the same as cutting shapes because it did not leave enough room for steam. Now I have to clean potpie filling off the bottom of the oven.

Pumpkin Bread

This is close up of the bread. It was baked for an extra long time because I accidentally added twice as much pumpkin as necessary to the batter. So, none of it tasted burnt, it just took a long time to bake all the way through...

Thanksgiving

On Wednesday (or was it Tuesday?) I made pumpkin bread, pumpkin cake, and pumpkin muffins. (There was a lot of batter.) I decided the muffins could go to Thanksgiving dinner, the bread would stay at the house, and the cake need to be frosted to be a better coffee cake. LV is no sourcream or creamcheese fan, so I made buttercream frosting. Mmm...

So, we started the day with cake. We being LV and I; Scrappy still has an aversion to eating pumpkin.

Next I made a pie. It took a little longer to look cooked than the directions stated. Not too much longer. I was kind of surprised the knife came out clean when I did test it.

The pie was supposed to cool for two hours. That was plenty of time to make a new batch of candied yams and apples to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. The pie didn't look quite the same after an hour, though. It was cracking, falling away from the crust and sweating. It tasted good...

Candied Sweet Potatoes

So, Tuesday we found out we were assigned sweet potatoes for Scrappy's Wednesday potluck Thanksgiving with her second grade class. I've never made yams or sweet potatoes before. My mother raves about her own recipe for candied pecan yams, but opening a can seemed kind of gross. I wanted to wash and peel and chop and boil and bake and generally make things more difficult for myself. Although, I did have LV do the scrubbing.

When Scrappy awoke on Wednesday morning, there was a bucket of sweet potatoes with apples ready for her to take to class.

Pork Tenderloin

I saw a package of Hormel prepared pork tenderloin and thought that could be another good alternative to the usual LV breaded and baked pork. Lucky for me, I was home to make the pork that Tuesday.

Those are brussel sprouts. A new food in the Scrappy rotation.

Endless Salad

I bought a package of arugula at the beginning of the week, and then completely forgot to eat it for lunch each day. So, I had a lot of arugula about to go bad... This was dinner--arugula with potato chips and leftover crab topped with what was left of a Newman's Own Mustard dressing. A lot less gross than it sounds, but not nearly as good as lunch.

Leftover pork and apples served hot over arugula, onions, raisins, and Newman's Own Mustard-something-or-other-dressing.

The more traditional HappiestPuppies shot...

Burgers + Leftover Pork

Lucky for LV there was huge pile of dishes to be washed when he got home from work. Otherwise he might have eaten one these burgers raw instead of waiting for it to cook slowly in the toaster oven.

LV made this the night before. He didn't want to keep battering and baking pork, so I found this recipe in the 20-minute section of the cookbook. It was similar to the pear + pork recipe, but with a different flavor of apples and thyme.

Crabcake Sandwiches

The good thing about freelancing is that I can surprise LV with homemade dinner. After hearing about his un-fun day at the office, I can be waiting with crabcakes. Yay for food...

Corn Muffins Make It Better

Nothing makes me feel less like cooking than standing around in cold all day, photographing the marathon. So, we had the "I don't feel like trying" Sunday dinner of chicken, broccoli and Jiffy mix corn muffins.