Kitchen Scoop Blog

Today’s recipe is a beautiful example of what it truly means to be thankful. My friend, Pauline Byron, is originally from Holland and grew up in South Africa. When she moved to the U.S. some 20 years ago and became a U.S. citizen, she embraced all it means to be an American. Thanksgiving is one of her favorite holidays.
But Pauline doesn’t have the extended family that a lot of us do here in the states that she can visit for the traditional celebration of the Thanksgiving meal. So she bakes Pumpkin Bread for all of her “U.S. family” to say, each and every year, just how thankful she is for them.

Isn't is amazing how much it will elevate a simple dessert if you just upgrade the dish it is served in?

Martini glasses are perfect ice cream sundae dishes with a wide mouth and sloping sides. Double upgrade the sundae with home-made spiced nuts. Perfect at this time of year with pumpkin spices.

Last week's Desperation Dinners!:

Today’s installment in “Foods to be Thankful For” is my Mom’s amazing Sweet Potato Casserole. If there is one side dish that is her signature dish, it is this casserole. A plain baked sweet potato, with just a touch of butter is enough to have me singing the veggie’s praises. (And I always throw a few extras in the oven when I prepping for this casserole so I can do just that.) But these baked beauties stirred into Gayle’s Sweet Potato Casserole is enough to make me belt out the Halleluiah Chorus! Seriously folks, you haven’t tasted perfection in a casserole form until you’ve sampled this one. To my knowledge, in the 40 plus years I’ve been eating this casserole, there has never been a soul that tastes this classic holiday dish and doesn’t practically swoon.

I have a confession: I ate, by myself, five Pumpkin Raisin Biscuits in the course of an afternoon.

This is how it happened: I needed to make a batch of the biscuits to shoot a photograph so I could post it on the site. No problem, right? I keep the ingredients on hand through the fall for these delicious biscuits anyway, so into the kitchen I went, right at lunch time. My plan was to prepare the biscuits, and while they were baking, grab a bite for lunch and set up the shoot.

Biscuits went together in under 10 minutes and I popped them into the preheated oven.

It's just as easy to bake one sweet potato as it is to bake a bunch. Follow the easy directions here and have plenty on hand for dinner tonight or to whip up sweet potato casserole or pie.

Last week's Desperation Dinners column: I feel as if I blinked and August turned into November. Fall happens that way for me most of the time. Ever since my kids lived at home and they’d head back to school at the end of the summer, it felt like we hit fast forward right up until Thanksgiving and the December holidays. So now that life should be a little slower around here, I’m being intentional about all aspects of life. So in celebration of November and Thanksgiving, Desperation Dinners is going to focus on “Foods to be Thankful For.”
Today’s offering is a simple and elegant Carrot Bisque. I love this velvety soup all by itself, with a hearty whole grain roll and steaming mug of apple cider. But it also makes a beautiful soup course for a fall-themed dinner party or it’d be perfect alongside a leftover turkey sandwich after Thanksgiving.

If you've ever tried making biscuits, even from a biscuit mix and the result is akin to cardboard, your problem is not enough liquid.

Seems like I get asked quite often, probably because I grew up in the South, how do you make good biscuits? The secret, really is moisture. If when you are stirring your dough together, your dough is not moist and sticky, you don't have enough milk in there. (Some mixes call for water, but even those I prefer to use milk in.)

Day old biscuits should be dry and those are great for frying, using as shortcake or crumbling for breadcrumbs. But fresh-from-the-oven-biscuits should be light and fluffy and moist even before you butter them.

Last week's Desperation Dinners Column:

I thought I knew what a good ham and cheese sandwich was all about until I tasted my first Croque Monsieur. If you’re not familiar with the Classic French toasted ham and cheese sandwich, then you are in for a real treat.
What makes this sandwich so special, you ask? The secret is in the sauce. Before you turn the page, let me explain just how easy this sauce is. Using a technique from Barbara Kafka, author of the Microwave Gourmet (1998), I’ve perfected a small batch Béchamel sauce that is so easy, you won’t believe it. That’s right!
 

I'd much rather eat my pumpkins than carve them these days. But even if you've got the spookey or funny jack-a-lantern sitting on your porch today, It needn't  worry. All these recipes use canned solid packed pumpkin for ease.

Breakfast, brunch, lunch, snack, dinner and dessert - it's all covered. So have a pumpkin-filled day. And Happy Halloween!