Pumpkin Pasta with Sausage, Cauliflower, and Green Beans

The next dish that I discovered in my seasonal autumn food hunt, landed me with pumpkin pasta. Honestly, I've only heard of using pumpkin in drinks, curries, ice cream, pies, pancakes, and other baked goods. So, the idea of using it in another savory dish was totally intriguing to me. Neat! I ended up adapting Paula Deen's Pumpkin Baked Ziti dish. To me, it was like October on a plate. Normally, I associate all of the elements in that dish with pre-Thanksgiving season. So, to have them all jumbled into one dish was unique and tasty.

Modifications:

-use chicken maple sausage

-add a head of chopped cauliflower (it's really delightful when baked and goes well in this dish)

-add chopped green beans

-use fat-free half and half

Chocolate Strawberry Stuffed French Toast, Turkey Bacon, Herbed Egg Scramble

Raquel and I decided to try our first free Vinyasa yoga class offered by our gym over the weekend. Wowie! Even though it was a beginner class, that seriously tired both of us out. And I've been finding it interesting how the two of us are focusing on different points of the class. I was partial to how the whole time felt like a very long, calming stretch for my muscles that get tight after runs. So, even though I was tired, I was also relaxed.

On the flip side, as a climber, Raquel saw it as a workout and it helped her to focus on teaching her climbing muscles better control. Apparently, she felt like the class was an hour and a half of slow brutal push-ups. Thus, she was exhausted, sore and sweaty by the end.

Either way, we felt like a hearty brunch after class. So, I thumbed through my recipes and settled on Ellie's Chocolate Strawberry Stuffed French Toast. I decided on adding a side of 97% fat free black peppered turkey bacon, and herbed scrambled eggs made from my herb garden. My favorite part of this meal is that it was indeed hearty, but it didn't have a ton of calories. Hopefully, it didn't add on the calories that we lost from the yoga session.

Chiles en Nogada, Chiles Stuffed with Caramelized Sweet Potatoes

Ever since the weather started to turn cold, I've been on a hunt to find original seasonal autumnal food. So, that search lead me to the autumn cuisine from our Mexican neighbors. A couple of days ago, I came across these amazing recipes on the SF Gate website: Chiles en Nogada (chiles with walnuts), and Chiles stuffed with Caramelized Sweet Potatoes. The recipes are creations from Jacqueline Higuera McMahan and they are simple delicious!

Chiles en Nogada is a traditional dish from Puebla. In this version, the chile is stuffed with roasted pears, toasted nuts, and chipotle-marinated roast pork tenderloin. It's topped off with a mexican crema sauce combined with toasted walnuts, and drizzled with fresh pomegranates. I have to say that just the idea of those flavors made me drool.

Both dishes are similar to chile rellenos, however I've always kind of shied away from that because chile rellenos are traditionally fried. But, these stuffed chiles are baked! Even the ingredients that were stuffed into the peppers were so creative, healthy, and packed with flavor. My own twist was to mix the sweet potatoes with okinawan sweet potatoes. All I have to say is I've found a new favorite fall dish, and this was it.

Chicken Apple Sausage Scramble, Sweet Potato Hash, Pumpkin Walnut Chocolate Chip Pancakes, Pear Bellini

I had some special guests from highschool staying with us this past weekend, so I wanted to create a really special brunch for them. My main goal was to use seasonal ingredients with a Fall theme. So my final menu became: Chocolate Chip Walnut Pumpkin Pancakes, Chicken Apple Sausage Scramble, Sweet Potato Hash, Roasted Pear Bellini, and fruit. I was also lucky enough to have fancy photos from the brunch, since one of my guest's friends decided to bring her fancy camera and send me the pics.

As you can see, the pics came out great! And now I'm seriously considering getting my own fancy camera. I think everything came out great, since I made enough food to feed about 10 and we nearly polished off all the food between the 6 of us. Although, I must say that I'm convinced the pancakes were a crowd favorite having seen everybody have nearly 4 pancakes each. But, it wasn't anything a nice brisk fall hike couldn't take care of post-meal.

Chicken Apple Sausage Scramble

-eggs

-cream or milk

-yellow onion (chopped)

-green onion (chopped)

-tomatoes (seeded and chopped)

-mushrooms (sliced)

-chicken apple sausage (diced)

-gouda cheese (grated)

-salt and pepper

Whisk eggs with a bit of cream or milk and season with some salt/pepper. Heat pan to medium high. Saute yellow onions, 1/2 the green onions, and mushrooms. Toss in sausage and brown. Lower heat to medium, pour in egg mixture. After 2 minutes or so, add cheese and tomatoes. Gently stir eggs until soft scrambled. Garnish with rest of green onions.

Note: I toasted walnuts, then ground them to put in the original pancake recipe. I also added chocolate chips to the batter.

Macadamia Nut-Crusted Mahi Mahi over Sauteed Spinach and Garlic

The first meal I ever cooked for Raquel was Macadamia Nut-Crusted Mahi Mahi, and I guess it was good because she's stayed with me for over two years and counting. This recipe is a Surfrunner original recipe that's been morphing into it's present state since my starving college days. I've always thought it was the perfect date meal, because it's semi-fancy, fast, flavorful, and not overly heavy. So I decided to make it last night, because she's been craving it for weeks. I served it over a bed of sauteed garlic spinach and a side of the leftover garbanzo zucchini salad. And now that her craving is finally satisfied, I re-hashed the leftovers to make a killer mahi mahi sandwich on toasted whole wheat bread for lunch the next day. yum.

Macadamia Nut-Crusted Mahi Mahi

-mahi mahi filets

-wasabi mayonnaise

-panko bread crumbs

-macadamia nuts (ground to approximately the same size as the bread crumbs)

-sea salt and pepper

Heat pan to medium high with a bit of extra virgin olive oil. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Mix panko, mac nuts, salt, and pepper together. Season the fish with salt and pepper. Lightly spread the mayo on the filets. Dredge the fish with the nut/panko mixture. Pan-fry the fish on both sides, until fish is seared and crust is golden brown. Bake seared fish on greased pan for 12-14 minutes.

Spice Rubbed Salmon, Tzaziki, and Garbanzo Zucchini Salad

Lately, Raquel has been making a solid effort to get into better shape. I'm not sure if it's because I inspired her with my race, or if she's attempting to look better for our beach vacation next month. I'd vote for the latter. Anyway, to support her effort I decided to make a light and healthy meal for us: Spice-rubbed Salmon, Tzaziki, Whole Wheat Pita, and Garbanzo Zucchini Salad. I'd like to say that I pulled this off successfully, but I hit road blocks the whole night, ie. spending half an hour trying to get our broken grill to work. Grilling is probably my favorite method of cooking, because it's healthy, the meat gets a crust/sear which traps in flavor, and it's outside. So as a compromise, I decided to pan-sear it, then cook it on low. But, somehow the texture didn't turn out quite right, and now my whole house smells like fish. Not only that, Raquel apparently didn't like the flat-leaf parsley that I used to season most of the dinner. So, note to self: don't use parsley next time, and bake the salmon. Oh well, at least Raquel appreciated the effort.

Spice-Rubbed Salmon

Rub salmon filet with convenient spice rub, and grill on high: 4 minutes per side.

Tzaziki

Throw garlic, mint, parsley, greek yogurt, lemon juice, salt, pepper in a food processor and mix.

Stuffed Pasta Shells

To celebrate the first pruning of my basil plant, I wanted to showcase the basil. My top pick was a simple tomato, mozzarella, basil salad. However, Raquel veto-ed it because she doesn't care for raw tomatoes that much. So, it morphed into Giada's Stuffed Pasta Shells, since that's one of her favorites. I love it too. Now, I have to admit that it was such a trip to wander over to my planter in the middle of cooking, snip off some leaves, and throw them into dinner. It's making me a huge fan of eating what you grow, and some day I hope to have a huge garden where I'll never have to go to the grocery store to buy produce.

The main difference between my homegrown basil and store-bought basil was texture. My basil was still packed with flavor, but somehow the leaves seemed thinner and crisper. I'm not sure if later on it will develop a deeper, earthier flavor/texture, but I hope it does. It wasn't bad, it was just different. Although, I don't think Raquel could tell the difference, because she had three plates full.