I make Martha’s What’s for Dinner section in Living every month, but I don’t always make it all on the same night. For October, I decided to put it all together. I made Roasted Pumpkin Soup, Cheese Flautas with Cilantro Pesto and Black-Eyed Peas with Baby Greens for dinner. This recipe is also in the new Martha Stewart Dinner at Home book, coming out this month (my thoughts on the book are at the end of the post).

This dinner was not something you can quickly

pumpkin soup

whip up. It took some time. First, I started with the pumpkin. For the life of me, I could not get my pumpkin cut up so I could roast it. Mr. MarthaAndMe stepped in and did the grunt work. This pumpkin was nearly impossible to hack up! He was really sweating. Finally I got in the oven and roasted it with onion, garlic and mushrooms. Once it was roasted and peeled, it’s simple to get it to be soup. You puree it with some vegetable stock and heat it and that’s it. It was horribly bland though, so I added some cumin and also added a little bit of cream. Even so, I didn’t find it particularly flavorful. I have made butternut squash soup in the past and that is much tastier. I’ll stick with that in the future.

black eyed pea salad

The black-eyed pea salad with baby greens was a breeze to put together – peas, chopped tomato, cilantro, garlic, greens and dressing. I liked this and ate the rest of it for lunch the next day.

Now for the flautas. This was something completely new to me, so I was excited to give it a try. You start by cooking pumpkin seeds (green ones you buy at the store – NOT seeds from the pumpkin you roasted – I found mine in the bulk section) with garlic. You pulverize it into a pesto with fresh cilantro, lime and oil. I found this to be new and exciting. I love

spreading the pesto

the taste of cilantro and lime and the pumpkin seeds were a new ingredient for me. You spread the pesto on your tortillas, then add some Monterey Jack cheese and roll them. Then you fry them in some oil.

There wasn’t much to these when we ate them. Mostly, they tasted greasy from the oil. I am not big on deep-fried foods, so this didn’t appeal to my palate. I could barely taste the pesto, even though I slathered it on pretty thickly and

frying

it had a nice flavor when I sampled it before making up the flautas. There wasn’t a lot of cheese in proportion to tortilla. They were just not worth the effort. Now, I can see making this pesto and using it with chicken and adding some tomato or avocado and not frying the tortillas – that would appeal to me then, but this just did not. It would be a fun twist on tacos.

Out of three dishes, one was quite good, one was ok and one was just not

taking a bite

worth it. Pretty disappointing!

Now, as for Martha’s new book, I have an advance copy and it is definitely a gorgeous book. It’s divided into seasons and then within each season are complete meals. Each meal is set up like the “What’s for Dinner” section in Living – 4 items that go together. The book is meant for easy entertaining or at home meals and the ingredients are meant to be accessible. There are certainly a lot of interesting things in this book – things you won’t find elsewhere, so I like it for that. However, although the ingredients are meant to be accessible, these are not meals you can make on nights where you pull out the cookbook and 5 pm and see what you can pull together. For me at least, I would not have most ingredients lying around and would need to plan in advance to make these dishes.  There are many things in here I would never make just for us at home for dinner. Who makes truffles as a weeknight family dessert? Not me.  I also felt as though many of the meals were not complete enough for me – they needed more vegetables, so more work would be involved in making them into a complete meal. That being said, it is a fun, inspiring book.

I make Martha’s What’s for Dinner section in Living every month, but I don’t always make it all on the same night. For October, I decided to put it all together. I made Roasted Pumpkin Soup, Cheese Flautas with Cilantro Pesto and Black-Eyed Peas with Baby Greens for dinner. This recipe is also in the … Read more →

I make Martha’s What’s for Dinner section in Living every month, but I don’t always make it all on the same night. For October, I decided to put it all together. I made Roasted Pumpkin Soup, Cheese Flautas with Cilantro Pesto and Black-Eyed Peas with Baby Greens for dinner. This recipe is also in the new Martha Stewart Dinner at Home book, coming out this month (my thoughts on the book are at the end of the post).

This dinner was not something you can quickly

pumpkin soup

whip up. It took some time. First, I started with the pumpkin. For the life of me, I could not get my pumpkin cut up so I could roast it. Mr. MarthaAndMe stepped in and did the grunt work. This pumpkin was nearly impossible to hack up! He was really sweating. Finally I got in the oven and roasted it with onion, garlic and mushrooms. Once it was roasted and peeled, it’s simple to get it to be soup. You puree it with some vegetable stock and heat it and that’s it. It was horribly bland though, so I added some cumin and also added a little bit of cream. Even so, I didn’t find it particularly flavorful. I have made butternut squash soup in the past and that is much tastier. I’ll stick with that in the future.

black eyed pea salad

The black-eyed pea salad with baby greens was a breeze to put together – peas, chopped tomato, cilantro, garlic, greens and dressing. I liked this and ate the rest of it for lunch the next day.

Now for the flautas. This was something completely new to me, so I was excited to give it a try. You start by cooking pumpkin seeds (green ones you buy at the store – NOT seeds from the pumpkin you roasted – I found mine in the bulk section) with garlic. You pulverize it into a pesto with fresh cilantro, lime and oil. I found this to be new and exciting. I love

spreading the pesto

the taste of cilantro and lime and the pumpkin seeds were a new ingredient for me. You spread the pesto on your tortillas, then add some Monterey Jack cheese and roll them. Then you fry them in some oil.

There wasn’t much to these when we ate them. Mostly, they tasted greasy from the oil. I am not big on deep-fried foods, so this didn’t appeal to my palate. I could barely taste the pesto, even though I slathered it on pretty thickly and

frying

it had a nice flavor when I sampled it before making up the flautas. There wasn’t a lot of cheese in proportion to tortilla. They were just not worth the effort. Now, I can see making this pesto and using it with chicken and adding some tomato or avocado and not frying the tortillas – that would appeal to me then, but this just did not. It would be a fun twist on tacos.

Out of three dishes, one was quite good, one was ok and one was just not

taking a bite

worth it. Pretty disappointing!

Now, as for Martha’s new book, I have an advance copy and it is definitely a gorgeous book. It’s divided into seasons and then within each season are complete meals. Each meal is set up like the “What’s for Dinner” section in Living – 4 items that go together. The book is meant for easy entertaining or at home meals and the ingredients are meant to be accessible. There are certainly a lot of interesting things in this book – things you won’t find elsewhere, so I like it for that. However, although the ingredients are meant to be accessible, these are not meals you can make on nights where you pull out the cookbook and 5 pm and see what you can pull together. For me at least, I would not have most ingredients lying around and would need to plan in advance to make these dishes.  There are many things in here I would never make just for us at home for dinner. Who makes truffles as a weeknight family dessert? Not me.  I also felt as though many of the meals were not complete enough for me – they needed more vegetables, so more work would be involved in making them into a complete meal. That being said, it is a fun, inspiring book.

I make Martha’s What’s for Dinner section in Living every month, but I don’t always make it all on the same night. For October, I decided to put it all together. I made Roasted Pumpkin Soup, Cheese Flautas with Cilantro Pesto and Black-Eyed Peas with Baby Greens for dinner. This recipe is also in the … Read more →

I signed up to participate in a bonus round of the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club. Members are required to bake one recipe a month, on the 15th. A bonus round for the Banana Pecan Cupcakes was set for Sept 30 on a voluntary basis. I couldn’t pass it by. It just so happens that the kids had been asking me to make banana bread AND I had some practically rotten bananas at the ready.

Mr. MarthaAndMe grew up eating banana bread a lot. I didn’t. His mother always baked banana bread inside a clean tin can, so that it came out round. As a kid, that was a big deal to him. Although I don’t bake my banana bread in a tin can, I do make it once in a while. Mr. MarthaAndMe likes to put cream cheese on his (blech!) but the kids like theirs plain. I always use my grandmother’s recipe which is foolproof. I was ready to give Martha’s recipe a try though.

Martha’s recipe is pretty similar to mine, but she uses cake flour. Normally I use half white flour and half wheat flour in mine, but I followed the instructions here. The rest of the recipe was pretty unremarkable. I whipped it up and filled cupcake papers with it. Then it hit me – the recipe has no cinnamon in it! That is a travesty, so I mixed some cinnamon and coarse sugar together and sprinkled it on the tops of the cupcakes. Also, I left about 6 cupcakes without nuts for Dude Martha, who prefers no nuts in his.

These cupcakes took a lot longer to bake than Martha said – about 10 minutes more. They turned out nicely and everyone liked them. I did not frost them because these are really a muffin, not a cupcake and I also did top them with cinnamon and sugar.

I think I would stick to my grandmother’s recipe in the future, but I might make them as muffins, because they are convenient for freezing and for people to grab for breakfast.

I signed up to participate in a bonus round of the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club. Members are required to bake one recipe a month, on the 15th. A bonus round for the Banana Pecan Cupcakes was set for Sept 30 on a voluntary basis. I couldn’t pass it by. It just so happens that the … Read more →

I like apples and I like turkey but I never thought to put them together until I saw Apple Braised Turkey Thighs in October Martha Stewart Everyday Food.

This recipe takes about 2 hours to cook, so it’s a nice thing to make on a fall Sunday. I used a turkey breast instead of turkey thighs with this. It was very easy to make. You start by quickly searing the turkey breast to brown the skin side. Remove it and cook some shallots and then add in some peeled, cored and quartered apples. Put the turkey back in, add apple cider and chicken stock and bring to a boil, then stick in the oven for an hour covered and a half hour uncovered.

When mine was done, I took out the turkey and apples and cooked down the remaining liquid (with the added teaspoon of apple cider vinegar), then I added some Wondra to make it thick like a gravy. This was delicious! It wasn’t as sweet as you might think and the apples and turkey went together perfectly. We had some turkey leftover and I used it in my lunchtime salads for the rest of the week and it was incredibly tender and flavorful. Even the kids liked this one.

I like apples and I like turkey but I never thought to put them together until I saw Apple Braised Turkey Thighs in October Martha Stewart Everyday Food. This recipe takes about 2 hours to cook, so it’s a nice thing to make on a fall Sunday. I used a turkey breast instead of turkey … Read more →

Teresa at HomemadeIowaLife has chosen Warm Vanilla Cider for next week’s assignment. The recipe is on page 68 of October Martha Stewart Living. If you need the recipe, email me.  I look forward to trying it!

Teresa at HomemadeIowaLife has chosen Warm Vanilla Cider for next week’s assignment. The recipe is on page 68 of October Martha Stewart Living. If you need the recipe, email me.  I look forward to trying it!

This week’s Martha Mondays is Apple Brown Betty, chosen by April at AbbySweets. I make apple crisp every fall, but have never tried Brown Betty – and didn’t even know what the difference is until I made this recipe. The difference has to do with the starch component. When I make apple crisp, I make a topping of flour, sugar, butter and cinnamon. Apple Brown Betty relies on bread crumbs.

I made fresh breadcrumbs as Martha directs. You mix your apples with cinnamon, sugar,  and nutmeg and lemon juice and then some of the breadcrumbs (which have been tossed with butter).  Dump it into your pan and cover with the remaining breadcrumbs. This gets baked covered in foil for 40 minutes, then you uncover it until the apples are soft.

It looked and smelled good. There’s nothing like the smell of apples and cinnamon to make it feel like fall. We liked it, but we like apple crisp better.  The texture of the breadcrumbs is hard to get used to when you’re used to the softness of apple crisp. This also isn’t quite as sweet as my apple crisp recipe.  Somehow apple crisp is mushier – you can’t see slices of apple, but in this they stayed fairly intact. It was good, and would definitely be better with some vanilla ice cream, but I won’t make it again.

Here’s my recipe for apple crisp which I would make instead of this:

Peel, core and slice 6 apples. Toss them with 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp salt and 1/2 cup of water. Put in a square baking dish (sprayed with Pam). Mix and crumble together 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 4 tbsp butter. Spread over the top of the apples. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for an hour.

This week’s Martha Mondays is Apple Brown Betty, chosen by April at AbbySweets. I make apple crisp every fall, but have never tried Brown Betty – and didn’t even know what the difference is until I made this recipe. The difference has to do with the starch component. When I make apple crisp, I make … Read more →

Moroccan Stuffed Acorn Squash (October Martha Stewart Living – not on Martha’s site yet- email me if you need the recipe) sounded like something fun and different. The few Moroccan dishes I’ve had, I’ve liked.

You start by cutting the squash in half, scooping out the seeds and roasting them. I love to roast acorn squash with butter and brown sugar in the hollow, but this was something new. Once it cools, you scoop out the squash.

Next, you cook some ground beef and mix in cinnamon and nutmeg. Cook onions and garlic and add bulgur wheat, water and salt and cook until the wheat is fluffy. You add in raisins (I didn’t have any, so I didn’t add this), parsley and pine nuts, as well as the squash you’ve scooped out of the shells. Put it back in the shells and bake for about 15 minutes. This looked and smelled good.

However, it was bland. I added a lot of extra salt and pepper when I was mixing it up and that didn’t help much. You can taste the cinnamon and nutmeg and the garlic, so those flavors come through. The pine nuts give a nice crunch, but it just didn’t have enough flavor and I don’t know why. Maybe raisins would have helped, but I feel as though it was missing seasonings. Maybe some red pepper would have perked it up. I just don’t know.  I was really disappointed. And since I made the whole recipe and Mr. MarthaAndMe was away on business and the kids didn’t want it, I have three of these sitting in my fridge!

Moroccan Stuffed Acorn Squash (October Martha Stewart Living – not on Martha’s site yet- email me if you need the recipe) sounded like something fun and different. The few Moroccan dishes I’ve had, I’ve liked. You start by cutting the squash in half, scooping out the seeds and roasting them. I love to roast acorn … Read more →

Twice baked potatoes are something I make often and which I learned from my mom. Martha has a recipe for Twice-Baked Sour Cream and Chive Potatoes in October Martha Stewart Everyday Food, so I was ready to give hers a try to see how they compare.

Martha wants you to oven bake your potatoes. I was pressed for time, so I did mine in the microwave as I usually do. This recipe includes butter, sour cream (I used light), milk (I skipped this – I think it makes the potatoes too thin), chives and salt and pepper. You mix this with the insides of the potatoes which you’ve scooped out and then put it back in the shells.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to doctor this up a bit. I added cheese, which is an essential component in my mind. I also sprinkled the tops with paprika which is another essential component.

I liked these with the chives – very tasty. They were creamy and smooth and very filling and comforting. Some variations on twice baked potatoes that I’ve made in the past have included onions, garlic, various types of cheeses, thyme, or bacon. What’s nice about this recipe is that you can adjust it to your tastes and you don’t have to worry about whether it’s going to turn out.

Twice baked potatoes are something I make often and which I learned from my mom. Martha has a recipe for Twice-Baked Sour Cream and Chive Potatoes in October Martha Stewart Everyday Food, so I was ready to give hers a try to see how they compare. Martha wants you to oven bake your potatoes. I … Read more →

My October issue of Martha Stewart Living just arrived and I was anxious to dive in. I happened to have a butternut squash, so I thought I would make Squeamish Squash, part of a Halloween menu. Scary name, but I like butternut squash and I like rice.

First you boil some thinly sliced ginger in 2 cups of water. Then add a cup of rice and half of a butternut squash that’s been peeled and cored and cut into 1/2 inch pieces. Add a tablespoon of butter and some salt and let it simmer. It sounded easy. I was a bit worried when I added the squash and it went far above the water line. I ended up adding a little more water. This took about half an hour to cook.

Here’s the bad news. It was inedible. I could barely taste the rice and the squash was essentially flavorless, even though there was a hint of ginger. It was like a giant pile of orange mush. I tried adding salt and pepper and even some parmesan cheese, but nothing worked. Down the disposal this one went and good riddance. Squeamish squash indeed.

My October issue of Martha Stewart Living just arrived and I was anxious to dive in. I happened to have a butternut squash, so I thought I would make Squeamish Squash, part of a Halloween menu. Scary name, but I like butternut squash and I like rice. First you boil some thinly sliced ginger in … Read more →

You can never have too many ideas for salmon. We eat it a lot. In September Everyday Food, Martha suggests preparing it seared with bok choy, rice and a sauce made of soy sauce, fresh ginger, lime and agave. I didn’t have any agave and we ate this with some bread from the bread machine instead of rice. I also did not sear the salmon, but grilled it. This is a nice preparation. You wilt the bok choy and cook it with some garlic. When you plate it, you add the sauce to both. I enjoyed this and it was a quick way to brighten up salmon. It tasted best when we ate it together – salmon and bok choy together on the fork. It would be very good with rice as well.

You can never have too many ideas for salmon. We eat it a lot. In September Everyday Food, Martha suggests preparing it seared with bok choy, rice and a sauce made of soy sauce, fresh ginger, lime and agave. I didn’t have any agave and we ate this with some bread from the bread machine … Read more →