Pumpkin Dinner Rolls for #BreadBakers

November is cruising by and with the festival season around, I'm sure all of you must be planning or at least thinking of your holiday menus. So you are in luck because our #BreadBakers group is baking up some special and festive loaves or rolls or breads that you can bring to a family feast or celebratory dinner. Actually I'm lucky to be hosting this month's event, big thanks to Stacy and Renee for the opportunity. Don't forget to scroll down to the bottom of the post for the list of breads by my fellow bread bakers.

We went apple picking last month and ended up with 4 little pie pumpkins from the patch. I kept them for display till Halloween, then roasted a couple and made pumpkin puree out of them. With that puree I made these Pumpkin dinner rolls. Recipe is from King Arthur Flour site.

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Fruit & Toasted Almond Stuffing for Thanksgiving

Stuffing is a quintessential Thanksgiving side dish. I never understood the concept for stuffing, to me stuffing has to be inside something to be called that, but this stuffing is usually served on the side.
There are regional differences in the way stuffing is made. Southerners make their stuffing, called dressing in the South, from cornbread, while those in the other parts of the country make it from white, wheat or rye bread as base. Apples, chestnuts, raisins, celery and/ or other vegetables, sausage are added to stuffing.

Generally there is meat added to the stuffing and even if it is meat free, the bread is usually moistened with chicken/ turkey broth. So I've eaten stuffing very few times and never thought of making at home either. But my Thanksgiving recipe series made me look for traditional recipes and try and make them vegetarian.

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Duchess Potatoes

Duchess Potatoes is a classic French dish where flavored mashed potatoes are piped in cute shapes and baked until golden and crisp. In my opinion it is a 5-Star version of good old mashed potatoes :-)
This dish has been on my to-make list for a few years now. I saw them for the first time in a Vegetarian Times magazine and loved how cute they looked and I was sure my potato loving husband would love these. But it took me so many years to actually make them that too when my husband was traveling :-)

All that this dish requires is boil and mashed potatoes which are then combined with sour cream, butter, some chives and egg yolks. Then the mixture is put into a piping bag with a star or round tip and then piped & baked till golden. My Duchess potatoes didn't get that pretty swirl shape -- not sure why -- but they tasted great. The outside firms up after baking, but the inside is light and airy.

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Maple Glazed Sweet Potatoes (Thanksgiving Recipe)

Here's another super simple, yer super tasty Thanksgiving recipe with Sweet Potatoes. Sweet potatoes are cooked in a blend of maple syrup and apple cider vinegar. As the potatoes cook this sugar & vinegar thicken into a light glaze making the potatoes glisten. 

Using pure maple syrup and good quality apple cider vinegar is crucial for this dish. The only time consuming part in this dish is peeling and dicing the sweet potatoes -- after that the dish is cooked entirely in the oven.

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Roasted Green Bean Bundles (Thanksgiving Side dish)

Continuing with the Thanksgiving recipes, here's an interesting roasted green beans recipe. Traditionally green bean casserole is made for Thanksgiving or during the holiday season, but I'm not a big fan of creamy mushrooms, so this individual bundles of seasoned, roasted green beans sounded like a perfect alternate.

This dish needs a little bit of prep work. Beans need to be blanched, drained and tossed with dressing. Then they are formed into bundles and roasted. So the best thing to do is to blanch and keep the beans ready the day before and then they can tossed with dressing and roasted just before the dinner starts.

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Warm Farro Pilaf with Dried Cranberries & Kale

It's November and the beginning of holiday season. I can't believe that the stores here started selling Christmas trees from early October. From my experience, it is better to buy them when you see them in the stores even if it is ridiculously early in the season because by the time you are mentally ready for the holidays, all the stores will be out of holiday stuff and you will have nothing to decorate the house (true story -- from about 2 years ago). So now-a-days I go shopping with an open mind, hopefully I'll find a great deal on summer patio set in the middle of winter -- you never know ;-)

Holiday season also means lots of parties and food. I pulled out my old magazines and bookmarked quite a few recipes for this time of the year -- some festive and some seasonal -- all perfect to entertain for the holidays. So my self imposed theme for 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge' for November & December will be holiday/ seasonal specials.

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Farro Salad with Roasted Vegetables

Blogging Marathon# 38: Week 4/ Day 1
Theme: Revisiting Recipes
Dish: Farro Salad with Roasted Vegetables

We are starting the final week of blogging marathon# 38 today and I chose a relatively simple theme. I am going to be revisiting some of my old posts and updating them with new pictures. 

Today I am updating my hearty and healthy Farro salad with roasted vegetables post. I don't know what I was thinking when I was taking those pictures, I used my used pizza stone with stains on them which wasn't the best of backgrounds to use. So here is a simple salad with some updated pictures. 

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Persimmon and Nuts Salad

Blogging Marathon# 36: Week 4/ Day 2
Theme: Online Bookmarked Recipes
Dish: Persimmon Salad

This year's winter has been brutal till now. Snow is something that is expected this time of the year, but the freezing temperatures have been really the killer. Arctic blast & polar vortex are the terms that are widely being used not just by the meteorologists but by everyone dealing with this harsh weather. Even with all that going on, life still moves on.
Coming back to today's recipe, this is probably the simplest dish ever. I had some persimmons in the fridge and after enjoying some as is, I wanted to do something else with it. I saw the recipe for persimmon salad in Vegetarian times magazine, but I didn't have the ingredients on hand. But the idea of making the salad stuck with me and google search led me to this recipe on LA times.

There is not much of a recipe for this dish, but the salad was so colorful that I couldn't stop clicking. So here are some shots of the dish.

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Farro Salad with Roasted Vegetables

After posting sugary desserts for the past 4 days, I thought it was time for something healthy and definitely savory. Also May happens to be the 'National Month of Salad', so what's better than a healthy salad to kick start this month. I didn't know that there was such a thing as salad month, but I guess it's never too late to know about good things, right??

Today's salad is made with "Farro", an ancient grain believed to have sustained the Roman legions. I have heard about and have seen a number of bloggers cooking with it, so I bought some from Whole Foods recently. Since the weather is still a little chilly, I roasted some veggies in the oven and mixed them with cooked farro for a simple, filling and healthy salad.

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French Lentil Salad with Goat Cheese

Blogging Marathon #26: Week 2/ Day 2
Theme: Salads & Soups
Dish: Lentil Based - French (Puy) Lentil Salad

Today's salad has "Lentil" as the star ingredient and one of my favorite lentils in salads happens to be French Lentils aka Puy lentils. These lentils look very similar to whole masoor dal, but are greenish with spots. They don't fall apart and still have a good bite when cooked which is perfect for Salads. 

Today's salad is inspired from a recipe that I received in my mailbox from Everyday Food. Recipe was actually for roasted vegetable salad with french lentils, but what caught my attention was the use of goat cheese. I've tasted goat cheese a few times, but never bought it myself. So I picked a small log of goat cheese on my recent grocery shopping and make this hearty & delicious salad. Goat cheese is creamy and has a tart taste to it.

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Pressure Cooker Curried Butternut Squash Risotto

Hope everyone celebrating Thanksgiving had a good time this weekend. 4 day long weekend flew right by. We spent most of the weekend at my cousin's place and returned home in the afternoon today. We were hungry from the long drive and I wanted to make something real quick with minimum effort. So I made this one pot pressure cooker risotto with butternut squash from Nupur's blog.

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Lentil Salad with Cranberries & Walnuts

After hogging on these yummy cookies, I think it's time for something healthy, yet festive and delicious. This brown lentil salad is very easy to make and will make a great item for a holiday menu or even for potlucks. You can adapt the recipe and add nuts or cheese (feta would be excellent) to make it even more holiday worthy.

The recipe is slightly sweet and tart with the agave & dried cranberries and crunchy with the toasted walnuts. Dish can be served at room temperature or chilled, which is perfect for a make ahead menu.

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Thanksgiving Dinner for Two

This is a quick post with pics of the dishes I made for Thanksgiving dinner. It was quiet with just the 3 of us and I didn't want any leftovers since I'm going to have company today. I made stuffed Acorn Squash (inspired from DK's recipe), Mashed Potatoes & Stuffing. For dessert I made 2 servings of Mini Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake tarts (recipe adapted from here). Here are few photos, will post the recipes and more pics soon. I've to get the house cleaned up before my guests come over. See you soon. Hope all of you have a wonderful holiday weekend.