Top 5: Fall Recipes

I can't believe that Thanksgiving is this week! I am not at all prepared for how fast time is passing or how soon there will be a perpetual blanket of snow on the ground. It's still fall until at least December 1 in my book, so I'm making autumn last as long as possible. Fall food is some of the best, and we have a whole holiday where all you do is get together and eat, so I'm pretty excited. Below are my favorite fall recipes that I'm still hoping to squeeze in before the onset of Christmas cookies.

5. Gingerbread & Cool-Whip

Food doesn't have to be fancy to be delicious, and this is honestly one of the easiest desserts in the world to make. It's not even an actual recipe but I'm including it anyway. Basically you buy a box, mix it up and bake it like cake, and serve it with a huge dollop of cool whip on top. This works for Christmas, too, so I won't be terribly upset if I don't get to it until sometime next month.

4. Pear Cider

So I've never actually had this, but doesn't it sound delicious?? I came across the recipe on Pinterest and had to try very hard not to salivate all over my keyboard. You can find the recipe here.

3. Caramel-Filled Snickerdoodles

photo from The Baker Chick

First of all, Snickerdoodles are one of my all-time favorite cookies, right after my mom's Cocoa Mint Dollars. Second, THEY ARE FILLED WITH CARAMEL. How could that not be good? This is another thing I found on Pinterest and will actually make in real life. The Baker Chick suggests Martha Stewart's Snickerdoodle recipe but I bought a prepackaged mix at Target along with a bag of Kraft caramels.

2. Jim's Chili 

I've written about my college professor's chili recipe before, but I don't think I can say enough about how delicious it is. I tend to crave it around the end of October and first of November because he always made a batch for our art department Halloween party. Get the recipe from my original post here.

1. Sweet Potato Casserole

My family doesn't actually make sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving. Some people love candied yams with mini marshmallows, but we are not those people. But every year a lady at my parent's church brings this sweet potato casserole to our Thanksgiving meal and I make sure to get a good-sized serving. It's mashed sweet potatoes with a crunchy pecan topping and is so sweet it's practically a dessert. I don't have her recipe, but Googled it and found this, which sounds extremely close. Now that I've talked about it I might have to pick up all the ingredients and make a batch.
 

**Bonus: Yesterday I got to try some of Jeni's Sweet Potato with Torched Marshmallows ice cream and boy, is it delicious. The ice cream is smooth and subtle and spicy like a pumpkin pie ice cream, and is dotted with homemade marshmallows that are toasted first. Seriously, you need to try it. It's like dessert casserole, but tastes way better than "dessert casserole" sounds.

Empty Places

I’ve been mesmerized by birds lately.

Each day on my way home from work I sit at the same stoplight, a busy intersection near a train track. Lately, between 5:15 and 5:30, there have been hundreds of birds there. I have no idea where they all come from. I sit in my car, listening to the click click click of my turn signal, and stare at them. Small, dark colored birds, I don’t know what kind, flying in swarms, flitting back and forth and up and down and close together and far apart and back and forth again in a pulsating motion, suspended in mid-air not unlike schools of fish in the ocean. They dance in groups, directed by some invisible choreographer, rising and falling as if on cue. They seem to know exactly how to move in order to keep from running into any of the other eight hundred flapping dancers.

Because of the recent time change, the sun is already starting to set during my drive home. The shimmering disc floats just above the horizon, casting a warm glow on the clouds, turning them into puffs of strawberry cotton candy strewn across the sky. The telephone lines reflect the fall sun as bright orange strings where the birds gather to rest. For one brief moment they all clamor to balance on the phone lines. They squeeze in, fill in the gaps, chattering noisily like a crowd. I start to wonder what it’s like to be a bird. What do they do all day? Is their entire life comprised of dancing and resting on telephone wires? What did they do before telephone wires? What must it have been like to be out for a walk, and come across a tree, full of birds that were chirping and hopping from branch to branch, buzzing with life like a beehive? The verse comes to mind about God caring enough to keep every bird fed, and how much more important we are to God than birds. I wonder if He has named each and every one of them.

Then, at some unseen signal, in one swift rippling motion they all lift up, fly away, disperse, filling the sky with small dark dots. The golden lines are suddenly vacant. I am no longer thinking of them as wires, but as empty places were birds used to rest. I wonder if they will all return, if ten minutes from now someone else will be sitting at the light and notice the birds all sitting there anxiously waiting for takeoff.

But then the light turns green and the car in front of me moves. I forget about the birds and focus on the traffic. I drive away, my turn signal silencing itself, leaving the road behind me, an empty place were I used to rest.

Do Something Impressive This November

It's that time again - check out my newest post on my office's Staff Blog!

For most people, November isn’t the most exciting month. Sure, it has Thanksgiving and Black Friday, which are both fun, but the entire month kind of feels like a stepping stone to Christmas. Halloween has passed and in just a few weeks, stores will be hanging garland and slipping holiday songs into their music rotation. Next thing you know, you’ll be eating turkey, buying wrapping paper, and watching the same holiday specials that have been on every year since your parents were children.

Personally, I love November – although I may be a little biased because birthday is in this month! Aside from that, I love that November is the month selected by some great groups to get people to do something impressive with their lives.

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Best Thing: Jim's Chili

One of my favorite things about my college experience was having such awesome professors. I don't know if it was because I went to a small school and it was easier to know your profs, or if I was just lucky enough to have amazing people as teachers, but either way it was great. I loved having teachers that would invite you to their house and eat lunch with you in the cafeteria.

At Halloween each year the Art Club and the art professors threw a big dance party with food and snacks. We blared music and gave away costume awards and scared the rest of our conservative campus and had a ton of fun doing it. Everyone in the art department made an appearance (even alumni) for one reason: Prof. Jim Hendrickx's Chili.

Jim's Chili, Fall 2009

 I always ended up on the clean-up committee, but it was worth it - inevitably Jim would go home long before the party was over and ask us to take home his crock pot and bring it to class on Monday. Which meant my apartment ended up with leftover chili. Score!

Now that I've graduated, fall feels incomplete without a steaming pot of his thick and delicious homemade chili. I finally convinced someone who knew his secret recipe to share it with me (thanks, Chris!) and even though all I had was a list of the ingredients, I figured I could wing it and end up with something close. I'm not sure if my final product tasted exactly like his, but it was so good we cleaned out the pot and didn't even have leftovers! The recipe for what I ended up making is below.

My version of Jim's Chili

Jim Hendrickx's Chili

1 lb ground pork sausage
1 small onion, diced
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 can kidney beans, undrained
1 can northern beans, undrained
1 can black beans, undrained
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp cumin
4-5 bay leaves
hot sauce to taste

In a large pot, brown ground sausage until no longer pink.  Add onion and garlic, stir. Add beans and tomatoes - do NOT drain any of the liquid, just dump everything in. Add remaining ingredients, adjusting for taste. Stir to combine and let simmer for at least an hour in order for the liquid to thicken (mine was on the stove for 3 hours).

Cupcakes: Pumpkin Gems

One of my family's favorite fall snacks is Pumpkin Gems - tiny delicious pumpkin spice cupcakes topped with cream cheese frosting. You can eat half a dozen at once without even thinking about it. My sister requested them for her birthday this year (Happy Birthday, Whitneigh!) so yesterday I made a huge double batch so we could have extras to share. According to the recipe (below) it should have made an entire gross (that's the term for 12 dozen of something) and we have multiple tupperware storage boxes full to prove it. My mom got the recipe at a Pampered Chef party years ago and we've been making them almost every year since.

Pumpkin Gems

1 yellow cake mix
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
20-oz canned pumpkin

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Blend together all ingredients with electric mixer. Line mini muffin pans with mini-cupcake papers, fill each 2/3 full (about a rounded spoonfull). Bake for 15 minutes. Cool and frost with cream cheese frosting (we usually just buy a can but you can make your own).

Yield: 6 dozen

Best Thing: Bellville World's Fair

This past week I was able to experience one of my favorite things about my hometown - our annual street fair. This year marked the 161st anniversary of what we lovingly refer to it as the World's Fair, which interestingly is a year older than the original "World's Fair" at Hyde Park in London created by Prince Albert. And we probably have cooler food. I doubt they had fried swiss cheese on a stick like Bellville does.

We love our fair food (there really isn't much else to do at the fair besides eat, unless you like Elvis impersonators). My family and I make lists of all the awesome food we want to eat, and try to make sure we get all of it before the event is over. So to get you excited about next years 162nd Bellville World's Fair, here are some pictures of the delicious foods we ate this past week.

Flavorburst Soft Serve Ice Cream - Bubblegum Flavor, just like when I was little!

Steak on a Stick 

Gyro the size of a small child

DiRusso's Italian Sausage 

Homemade apple dumplings with ice cream - that's a whole apple in there!

Peachy Keen fruit smoothie - blended fresh to order and topped with a paper umbrella

Giant Tenderloin - notice it's about the same size as the plate it comes on

Fresh cut french fries smothered in salt and vinegar

Funnel cake 

Indian Bread - my favorite fair food of all time! It's like Mexican pizza but even more delicious. The crust is a soft and delicious fried dough of some sort layered with taco fixings and sour cream that is squirted on with a contraption that looks like a calking gun. It's amazing. Once you eat it you vow to come back to Bellville next year and eat half a dozen of them.