Today's Recipes

Alysha's Pumpkin Waffles

I started off the day by taking my new waffle iron for a spin. I got this waffle maker so that I could make something besided Belgian waffles - especially for pumpkin waffles which never seemed to fully cook without getting overly brown. I also decided that the last recipe I tried was less than satisfactory. As one reader said, they had a strange bitter taste - they were okay, but I knew they could be better.

My MIL has a recipe for great pumpkin waffles, but when I dug it out, I saw that it called for 1½ sticks of butter! Now, I don't insist on low-fat necessarily, but I do try to avoid gratuitous amounts of fat. If a great-tasting product can be achieved with less fat, I'm all for it. In the end, I tinkered with her recipe - cutting the fat (from 1½ sticks to a ½ stick), subbing one cup of whole wheat flour of one of the cups of white, cutting the eggs from 4 to 3, adding a bit more sugar, adding cloves and subbing ginger for coriander. I was a little nervous - trying out a new, untried recipe on a new, untried waffle iron - could be a recipe for disaster! I'm pleased to report that our experiment was a success.

The waffle iron did a great job on the waffles. It has a light that turns green when the waffle iron is heated and also when the waffles are finished cooking. It also has a variable setting for browning the waffles. The waffles were light, browned nicely on the outside without being underdone in the middle and tasted great. Now I have to decide if they are fine as is, or if they could be even better with more tinkering......maybe a slight increase in the spices......

Whole Grain Pumpkin Muffins/Bread

After making the waffles, I had a 1/2 can of pumpkin left so I decided to search for and try a whole grain pumpkin muffin recipe. I found a recipe online, made a few minor adjustments and the end results were quite good. The molasses in the recipe gives them a molasses/spice cookie sort of flavor - they are also very moist and tender. After baking the first pan, I decided to add raisins - definitely a worthwhile addition and I wish I had thought to add raisins to the whole batch.

Creamy Pea Soup

This is a simple, wonderful soup. I made it full fat - recipes that have only a few ingredients rely heavily on the flavor of each and every ingredient, so I was hesitant to cut back on the butter or cream. It was a big hit with DH who said that he wasn't just tolerating the soup (he "only tolerates" quite a few vegetables), but was loving it. The boys both liked it as well - always a big bonus. The soup almost wasn't - my first bag of peas turned out to be quite old - apparently they'd been sitting in the freezer a lot longer than I thought! Fortunately DH was kind enough to make a last minute run for some fresh bags and boy, what a difference. See for yourself....

Stay tuned for more recipes tomorrow. Don't know what yet, but there will be something cooking.....