Pumpkin Fest 2011- Pumpkin Cheesecake

1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs 

5 tablespoons butter -- melted 

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar 

24 ounces cream cheese -- softened 

1 teaspoon vanilla 

1 cup pumpkin puree 

3 eggs 

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 

1/4 teaspoon allspice 

whipped cream 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Make the crust by combining the graham  

cracker crumbs with the melted butter and 1 tablespoon sugar in a medium bowl.  

Stir well enough to coat all of the crumbs with the butter, but not so much as  

to turn the mixture into paste. Keep it crumbly. Press the crumbs onto the  

bottom and about two-thirds of the way up the sides of a springform pan. You  

don't want the crust to form all of the way up the back of each slice of  

cheesecake. Bake the crust for 5 minutes, then set it aside until you are ready  

to fill it. In a large mixing bowl combine the cream cheese, 1 cup sugar, and  

vanilla. Mix with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the pumpkin, eggs,  

cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice and continue to beat until smooth and creamy.  

Pour the filling into the pan. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes. The top will turn a  

bit darker at this point. Remove from the oven and allow the cheesecake to cool. 

When the cheesecake has come to room temperature, put it into the refrigerator.  

When the cheesecake has chilled, remove the pan sides and cut the cake into 8  

equal pieces. Use dental floss to make a clean cut. Serve with a generous  

portion of whipped cream on top.  

Pumpkin Fest 2011- Pumpkin Ricotta Stuffed Shells

Recipe from Country Living
24 Jumbo Pasta shells
1 Tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
22 oz. Fat-Free Ricotta 
15 oz. Pumpkin Puree
2 1/2 oz. Pecorino Romano, grated (3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons)
1 Large Egg White
2 cloves Garlic, minced
1 cup Fresh Basil, chopped
1 tablespoon Finely chopped Fresh sage
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 jar (26 oz) tomato sauce

---

Directions

1. Cook pasta shells according to package instructions; drain. Transfer to a baking sheet and drizzle with oil. Set aside and let cool.
2. Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, stir together ricotta, pumpkin, 3/4 cup pecorino Romano, and remaining ingredients, except tomato sauce.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spread sauce in bottom of a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Fill each pasta shell with about 3 tablespoons ricotta-pumpkin mixture and arrange in pan. Cover pan with foil and bake for 30 minutes.
4. Remove foil, sprinkle shells with remaining pecorino, and bake for 15 minutes more. (If desired, stuff shells the night before and refrigerate overnight in an airtight container, in between layers of plastic wrap; arrange shells on sauce right before baking.)

Pumpkin Fest 2011- Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

That glorious time of the year is back! Pumpkins are for sale and my heart is content to purchase them.   If you and I haven't met, you might not know about Pumpkin Fest.

Pumpkin Fest began in a little apartment kitchen in Peru in 2007 (click here for my first post about it) and has just continued growing every year since.  See, my family has always boiled down our own pumpkins to get the pumpkin puree- canned pumpkin be damned!   And what does one do when you suddenly have an entire pumpkin's worth of pumpkin puree?   You start making pumpkin things of course!

And make pumpkin things I have.   I've got my collection of pumpkin recipes and generally I just go into high-octane pumpkin mode to bake and cook all things pumpkin related.  So this year, I will start posting my recipes to this blog.  And I appreciate your pumpkin recipes as well.  

I will go ahead and post my first recipe which is what I'm currently waiting on to rise.  Enjoy!

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

    * 1 cup pumpkin puree 

    * 2 large eggs 

    * 2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup lukewarm water* 

    * 1/4 cup soft butter 

    * 2 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour 

    * 1 3/4 cups King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour 

    * 1/4 cup Baker's Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk 

    * 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 

    * 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 

    * 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, optional 

    * 3 tablespoons brown sugar, light or dark 

    * 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 

    * 2 teaspoons instant yeast 

    * *Adjust the amount of water by the time of year or your climate. For summer, or in a 

humid enivronment, use the lesser amount of water. In winter, or in a dry climate, use the 

greater amount. It's always best to start with the lesser amount; you can  

Filling 

    * 3/4 cup Baker's Cinnamon Filling* 

    * 3 tablespoons water 

    * 1/2 cup minced crystallized ginger, raisins, or dried cranberries, optional 

    * *Substitute 3/4 cup granulated sugar and 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon for the 

Baker's Cinnamon Filling and water, if desired. If you use sugar and cinnamon, DO NOT 

ADD THE WATER. 

Glaze 

    * 1 cup glazing or confectioners' sugar 

    * 1 tablespoon butter 

    * 1 1/2 tablespoons milk, or enough to make a "drizzlable" glaze 

Directions 

1) Mix and knead all of the dough ingredients together — by hand, mixer, or bread machine 

— until you've made a soft, fairly smooth dough. 

2) Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover the bowl, and allow the dough to rise for 

1 1/2 hours, until it's almost doubled in bulk. 

3) Turn the dough out onto a lightly greased surface. Roll it into a 14" x 22" rectangle; the 

dough will be thin. 

4) Mix the cinnamon filling and water. Spread a thin layer over the dough, leaving one short 

edge free of filling. 

5) Sprinkle with crystallized ginger or dried fruit (or both), if desired. 

6) Starting with the short end that's covered with filling, roll the dough into a log. 

7) Cut the log into nine 1 

8) Place the rolls into a lightly greased 9" x 9" pan that's at least 2" deep. Set aside, 

covered, to rise for 1 hour, or until the rolls look puffy. 

9) Bake the rolls in a preheated 375°F oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until they're lightly 

browned and feel set. Remove them from the oven, and set them on a rack. Turn them out 

of the pan, and allow them to cool for about 15 minutes. Towards the end of the cooling 

time, make the glaze. 

10) To make the glaze: Heat the butter and milk together till the butter melts. Whisk into 

the sugar. 

11) Drizzle the warm rolls with the warm glaze. Sprinkle with chopped nuts, if desired. 

Preach it, Andy

Are you ever just struck sometimes with how entirely big the world is, and how entirely big you are not?  Tonight as I was cleaning up my room a bit, I was just thinking about my mundane task on a Sunday night.  Somewhere else in the world, maybe in multiple places, at the exact same moment, someone was having a different sort of moment.  What was that moment? I'm sure I'll never know.  Perhaps it was a sad goodbye, perhaps it was a terrible moment of fear, perhaps it was a moment of personal revelation.  Whatever it was, I was just struck with how the world works.   Though I would never purport that I have an iota of insight into how the world works,  I do know that life is made up of moments.  And my mundane task moment is someone else life changing moment.  To me, it is truly awe-inspiring to think of the wonderful orchestration that God executes in all of these moments.  He is with me in my menial chores, He is with the person that is going through a major upheaval in his or her life.   And that is fascinating to me.

Don't you hate it when you make sense?

I found this old post on my Peruvian blog tonight.

I think I should pay attention more about the enjoying the not so enjoyable moments in my life.

Thursday Night Musings of a girl with Everything and Nothing to talk about 

Michael Weinberg Photograph

Sometimes I feel like I can't keep up with myself. All these changes that I have gone through, am going through, and will be going through seem to hit me all at once, and I think- What are you doing Gillian? Why on earth would you get involved in all the things you've gotten involved with in your life? Why would you leave your home to go to a university on the other side of the country; and then why would you leave your home and university again to go live on the other side of the equator? Why did you pick the major you did? Why did you leave the career path to do non profit work for 3 years? Why are you leaving that life soon too? Why why why? And these questions start to weigh on me, and I think...Gillian, You don't make any sense.


But then, I remember why I did all that and why I will do a lot of other crazy things in the future that may not ever make sense to me, let alone anyone else.


God chose this path for me. I am exactly where God wants me to be right now. Everything that has happened in my life has been ordained by God and I all I have to do is enjoy it and enjoy Him. And then my new question becomes "Why are you even asking why?"


So enjoy life I will. I will enjoy the small things, the quiet moments, moments like walking by a beautiful garden that smells of roses and honeysuckle; listening to the summer sounds in my neighborhood; holding a puppy; going to the beach; short friendly conversations with people that I don't know, but already consider them friends.


I will enjoy the big moments too, the life-changers; the graduations, the goodbyes, the moves, the not knowing where I will be a year from now, the not knowing where I will be two months from now, the milestones of new family members, new friends, and everything in between.


And by golly, I will enjoy it....whether I like it or not.

Decisions, Decisions

I've been sitting here for the past 10 minutes just trying to think of something worthwhile to post.

Do I talk about how productive I was this past weekend?   Nah.

Maybe I should mention how my ESL classes are going?  Nope.

Perhaps I can discuss my latest baking endeavors?     I don't think so.

Nothing is really popping out at me, so I think I'm just going to leave you with this photo instead.

Yep...that'll do.

May I tell you a story?

This is a story of a heart attack that nearly was.

This past week I went to drop off the final payment for the immigration lawyer we've been working with.   You know- the immigration lawyer that currently has all 600 pages of evidence and has just about total control of the applications we turn in to the department of immigrations?  Yep, same one.

So this week, I drove downtown to his office to drop off the final payment check and check how things are going.  Though there is only so much that you can check on when the government is involved and gives you a window of a 5 month wait time for a response.   It's kind of like the cable guy telling you he'll be there sometime between 8am and 6pm.  Thanks, cable guy...that's extremely helpful.  And thanks to you too, department of immigrations, you're specificity is simply meritorious.

Back to the story.   So I drove straight to the lawyer's office, parallel parked my Kia Sportage like a champ (p.s. I'm getting back into the groove of parallel parking), and got out of the car to walk up to the converted Victorian house that the lawyer's office occupies.

At this point, there are only 3 things wrong with this.

1.  There is Caution tape stretched across the gate.

2.  There is absolutely no furniture inside the house.  How do I know this?  There are no window treatments which give me a complete view into the entirely empty house.

3.  There is a large "For Rent" sign very thoroughly attached to the ground.

Enter the near heart attack.

A long string of words that I shouldn't say and certainly cannot type out on this blog immediately entered my head.  If my thoughts had subtitles... you would have seen a lot of this:  #*!&%**@!!!!!!

Now, I don't have a lot of experience with gypsies but at this point, I was pretty sure I had just had my first encounter with one, and my lawyer was currently dancing around a gypsy campfire in the forest with his gypsy wagon posse, celebrating their latest victory.     Either that, or my lawyer was wearing a Hawaiian shirt  and swinging peacefully in a hammock, sipping a very large fruity cocktail with all sorts of paper umbrellas in it somewhere off the coast of Bora Bora and smugly thinking about how he ripped off another one.

I probably should mention at this point that he technically hadn't charged enough to escape to Bora Bora or to buy a gypsy wagon and posse, but my imagination wanders.  I can't help it.

Somewhere in all this, a brief second of rational thinking peeked through, and I decided to call the main number.  I was so relieved when someone answered, and even more relieved when they answered with the name of the law firm.  

I casually asked "so where's your new office located?"   And the receptionist casually gave me the address of a building about 3 blocks away.  

I drove over to the new location, parallel parked like a champ again, and got my heart rate back down to normal once I saw the sign on the front door.  Silly lawyers.  They might be really good at complex interpretations of the law; however, they're pretty terrible at spreading the word to their clients about minor things...like when their entire office changes locations.

And that my friends, is the heart attack that NEARLY was.