"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing..." -Helen Keller
 
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These tasty things were somewhere between a brownie and cake... Really thick, super delicious. I saw a recipe of sorts for something similar and thought of following it, but I made so many adjustments and changed ingredients so many times, this one can be safely labeled as an inspired original.

Ingredients:
1 c. Whole wheat flour
1 1/2 c. white flour
1 1/4 t. baking powder
1/4 t. ground red pepper
1/2 t. salt
1 1/4 c. sugar
5 eggs... I know, SO many!
1 1/4 c. mashed pumpkin (or canned pumpkin)
2 1/2 T. liquid (I used a combination of water and oil
2 T. cocoa powder
1t. cinnamon
1/2 t. nutmeg

Mix the first five ingredients together. Beat the eggs and sugar together for about 5 minutes until fluffy.

Add this to the flour mixture.

Divide the batter into two bowls. I made the mistake of an unequal split and got more pumpkin batter than chocolate. The pumpkin part is delicious, but I'd recommend an equal split, or a bit more chocolate than pumpkin.

Add the pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg to one bowl, and the liquid and cocoa powder to the other.
Layer and marble the batters into a 9 x 9 square pan or a 10 inch round pan... don't know if they make those in America. Sprinkle chocolate on top if you want. Bake at 350 Fahrenheit for 40-45 minutes.
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French toast is possibly our favorite breakfast food these days, especially Austin's. Wednesday night is breakfast at dinner night (a tradition we picked up from my good friend Sarah), and about every week we find ourselves making french toast. Here's an easy recipe I found on one internet site, nothing spectacular, but a good way to mix things up a little.
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Ingredients:
2 or 3 slices of bread, cut into quarters
1 cup cornflake cereal
2 large eggs
1/3 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon all-purpose flour

Toast the bread squares 5 minutes or so; cool completely. Mix 2 eggs and 1/3 c. milk in a large, shallow bowl. Soak the bread squares about 1 minute on each side in the egg mixture. Cover the bread squares in corn flake pieces and place on sprayed baking sheet. Cook for 10 minutes at 400 degrees, flip, cook another 10 minutes.

This was really fun. We actually ate breakfast for breakfast this time because I just couldn't wait until breakfast at dinner... that still came just hours later.
 
Isn't it pretty cool that there's this vegetable that's bright purple? I've certainly encountered more of it in the last year living here than I had my whole life before that, and I think I really like it!

I ran across this recipe called "Lebanese Style Stuffed Eggplant" and decided that Austin would likely be 1/4 more likely to appreciate this one. Sure enough, he loved it! "Can we eat this like, everyday?"
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Ingredients:
5-6 eggplants, 7-9 inches in length (I used only 4 eggplants because of the size of my wok, and had leftover filling)
oil
3 T. chopped cashews
1/2 c. white rice
3/4 lb. ground beef
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 c. chicken broth
5-6 small tomatoes, diced, with juice
1 t. five spice
salt
black pepper
1/2 lemon


To prepare:
Brown the beef, and set aside into a bowl. Wash the rice and add it to the bowl as well. Add five spice, 1 t. salt, 1/2 t. black pepper to the same bowl.

Wash the eggplants and hollow them with a spoon or melon-baller. Chop the tomatoes.
Brown the cashews. Remove and add to meat/rice mixture. Simmer the onion and garlic 6-8 minutes, until brown and soft. Add half of this to the meat/rice bowl and stir thoroughly.

Add tomatoes, chicken broth, 3/4 t. salt, 1/2 t. pepper to the wok and simmer, uncovered, while stuffing the eggplant.

Stuff eggplant with meat mixture, being careful not to stuff it too full. (The rice will expand while cooking, and the eggplant will probably combust and kill everyone in a 1 mile radius if you stuff it to capacity now.) Lay stuffed eggplants in the sauce mixture inside the wok/skillet and cover, simmering for about 50 minutes or until the rice is cooked. Flip the eggplants half way through. (The original recipe called for 50 minutes; I cooked mine only about 35 minutes... they were really soft.)
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Remove from wok and squeeze lemon juice over the eggplant before serving.
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First, I feel it is entirely necessary to give a shout out to a country that sells affordable tofu. Shop for tofu at your local Kroger, and you'll be paying at least a few dollars for a ridiculously small cube of it. Take a trip to our local market, however, and you'll cough up the equivalent of about 7 cents for a nice little chunk. And so, friends, our lunch today was brought to us for mere pocket change. And knowing that always makes it taste just a little better.

Ingredients:
3 large squares of tofu (The guy measuring my tofu today was shady; I asked for the equivalent of 3/4 lb. and am not sure how much I got... likely more so I'd pay a little more.)
1/2 c. chicken broth
1 t. tumeric
1/2 t. onion powder
1/2 t. garlic powder
salt to taste
2 bunches of green onions, chopped

Chop the tofu into large chunks. Add it to the chicken broth in the wok. Boil, covered, for 2-3 minutes to allow the flavor to infuse. Drain excess liquid.

Then add the remaining ingredients and stir/scramble for 3-5 minutes. Salt to taste. Add more seasonings to taste. This is great, fast, easy, and healthy too!
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An original recipe.
 
I loved fall days of apple picking because it meant that my Mom's apple bread was not far behind. With a few adjustments of my own to the recipe, and allowances made for slightly different local ingredients, here's what to do.:

Ingredients:
2 T. oil
1/4 c. applesauce + 1T. (or use grated apple)
1 egg + 1 egg white
1/2 c. honey
1 1/2 c. chopped apples
3/4 c. white flour
3/4 c. oat flour (may yield a gooier bread) or whole wheat flour
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/2 c. chopped walnuts
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Combine all ingredients and pour into a 9" round pan. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 50-60 minutes, until cooked in the center.
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The sandwich. Ingenious.

In a world devoid of cold cuts, thank goodness for the good old crock pot. Pulled pork BBQ sandwiches coming right up!
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Ingredients:
5 small tomatoes, chopped
1/2 T. oil
1/2 large chopped onion
1/2 c. tomato paste
3/4 c. water
1/3 c. apple cider vinegar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1T. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. black pepper
3 1/2 t. barbecue sauce (You could use a little less of a stronger barbecue sauce or a dot of Liquid Smoke. We use a really watered down product here labeled as BBQ sauce.)
2 lb. shredded pork, cooked (We've done this with chicken too and it's amazing!)
3T. cornstarch to thicken

 Combine all ingredients in crock pot. Cook 6-8 hours on low. Remove top last half hour to thicken as needed.
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Baking is great. No-baking is better. These no-bake cookies turned out pretty well and are a nice summer afternoon snack.

Ingredients:
1 cup crushed Chinese noodles (ramen noodles could work)
1 cup raisins
1/4 cup peanut butter
2 T. honey

Heat the peanut butter and honey over medium heat until they're smoothly mixed. Pour over the noodles and raisins. Mix. Shape into golf-ball shaped balls or heaps. Refrigerate or "freezerate."
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I love dessert. Ice cream, cake, cookies, muffins, straight up chocolate... You name it, I'll eat it! And lots of it! I ran across a recipe for grilling some fruit the other day, and decided that while there's no backyard grill in sight, a little broiled fruit couldn't hurt.

This is easy, easy, easy-- especially if you don't have to hand-squeeze those fresh lemons! :)

Ingredients:
3 bananas, chopped into 1 inch slices
3 apples, chopped into large cubes
*Other fruit would be great, but the market here doesn't have much in-season fruit right now, so these are the most flavorful.
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup honey

Mix the juice and the honey. Pour it over the fruit in a bowl. Marinade the fruit in the lemon juice-honey mixture for at least 30 minutes, stirring intermittently to make sure all the fruit is covered.

After 30 minutes, skewer the fruit and place on a foil lined baking sheet for easy clean-up. Broil it for 8-10 minutes.

They're A-B-C-Delicious! (Austin would like to let you know that they're not as good as chocolate cake.)
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We are definitely cereal lovers. We'd eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and every snack in between if we could! It's just a little hard to come by here, and by that, I mean our town has NONE! We can find a little for outrageous prices in towns far away, and some corn flakes and fiber cereal for okay prices about an hour away. Our family also helps with our supply from time to time. (Thanks!) But for those in-between times when the cereal spot is looking a little bare, we've taken to experimenting with making our own granola.

I've tried lots of kind this year, adding sesame seeds, peanut butter, almonds, raisins, and anything else I could think of, but this recipe is probably my favorite. Simple, sweet, and great for snacking. Usually I just pour in ingredients until it looks good, but for the sake of blogging, I tried to measure this time.
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Ingredients:
4 1/2 cups oats (Old Fashioned style)
1/2-1/3 cup of honey (Both our oats and our honey are a little different than those in the U.S., so you may need to adjust just a little.)
1T. + 1t. cinnamon
Stir the three ingredients together (feel free to add any other spices, seeds, or fruit pieces too!). Spread them on a baking tray, sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.
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Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-25 minutes, stirring granola when it is halfway cooked. I usually pull mine out when it is browning but still soft. It hardens a whole lot as it cools, and we don't like ours too too crunchy.

I move it immediately from the baking tray to a pot to prevent it from cooling as one big rock, and I use the spatula to stir it around every five minutes or so until it cools. Sometimes it's a little sticky and will need to be chopped up or stirred again before pouring a bowl for breakfast, but it tastes great!
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An Original Recipe
 
Peaches. Chop 'em. Throw them in the crock pot. Add 1/4 cup water. Cook for 4-5 hours on high, covered. Remove lid to let excess liquid evaporate... Fast, easy, incredibly delicious!