Butternut Squash Pie

I love the Southern Heritage Cookbooks. I have several. They have great recipes and bits of food trivia interspersed with vintage labels, photographs, advertisements, and postcards.
(I recently saw the whole set at a used cookbook website listed at $400.00!)

Mine are interspersed with smudges of butter and crumbs, and cocoa here and there.

Most recently I have made

- to wide acclaim -

Butternut Squash Pie

1 C. (or more) butternut squash, pureed

3/4 C . half and half

1/3 C. white sugar

1/3 C. brown sugar

2 eggs

1 t. cinnamon

1/8 t. nutmeg

1 t. ginger

1/4 t. cloves

dash of salt

2 T. bourbon ( or rum or optional)

1 unbaked pie crust

3/4 C. chopped pecans

1/2 C. brown sugar

1/4 C. softened butter

Combine, squash, half and half, sugar, 1/3 c. brown sugar, eggs, spices, salt, and bourbon. Mix well .Pour into pie shell. Bake @ 375 20 minutes. Combine pecans brown sugar, and butter. Remove pie from oven and sprinkle pecan mixture over the top. Return it to the oven for 25 minutes.

(about 10 minutes into the second baking, I noticed that the crust was getting real brownish, so I made 3 aluminum foil protectors and set them on the crust.)

Christmas Pepper Jelly

Our plan is to make one thing each week for our Christmas Gift Baskets. Today it was Pepper Jelly!!!! We used the directions on the liquid pectin package, with some alterations.

Christmas Pepper Jelly

3 Large Red Peppers (we used Ancient Sweet)
6 Medium Orange or Yellow Peppers
2 Medium Pablano Peppers (to add some heat)
2 Cups Cider Vinegar
1/2 Cup Apple Juice
6 Cups Sugar
2 Pouches of Liquid Pectin
1/2 tsp Butter

Pulse the peppers in a food processor in small batches (you should have small pieces...not puree).
Drain in sieve for one minute.
Mix together peppers, vinegar, apple juice, sugar, pectin and butter in large pot.
Stir over medium heat until sugar disolves. Cover and boil for 2 minutes, them remove lid and continue boiling for 8 minutes.

Ladle into sterilized 4 oz canning jars, seal, and process for 10 minutes in a water bath.

Makes 12-14 jars of deliciousness.

For a wonderful appetizer, pour one jar over cream cheese and serve with crackers.

Concerning Hobbits and Apfelkuchen

I am completely in love with the Lord of the Rings (books, movies, mythology, geeky merchandise--I love it all), but my dear boyfriend, codename: Pierogi, had never seen the movies. So, over the summer we watched the Fellowship and Two Towers. In an ideal world, we would have watched all three movies over one weekend, while eating exclusively food mentioned or eaten in the movies. However, not everyone has my stamina or enthusiasm. So, for my birthday (which is on Thursday), we decided to celebrate by (finally) watching the Return of the King and spending an entire day eating like Hobbits.

There is something completely wholesome about Hobbits. They are content with the details of their little lives, and unconcerned with the big world, which has always managed to keep existing without their help so far. As long as one is comfortable, well-fed, and has a few nice things to look at or play with, they see no reason to look for adventure or confrontation. In the introduction to The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien writes that Hobbits are now rarely, but that their favorite places are in the "well-ordered and well-farmed countryside," where life moves slower and they are less likely to encounter loud and unpleasant machinery. In many ways, they could easily be the poster-species for the modern slow food and back-to-the-land movements. Though not pretty, hobbits have good-natured appearances, their faces being designed for laughing, eating and drinking: "And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them)."

The six meals a day part was the biggest challenge of our day of Hobbit food. By checking out this list of foods in the books and movies, remembering a few things of my own, and using my imagination, it was easy to think of several days worth of Hobbit food, but we had to keep it down to 5 (we couldn't handle 6) meals, and somehow find time to eat those 5 without exploding. So, here's what we did...

Biscotti

BonBon and I started our Christmas baking today. We made biscotti. We made Almond-Cherry, Triple Chocolate, Chocolate-Orange, Chocolate-Peanut Butter, Lemon-Poppy, Traditional Almond, White Chocolate-Macadamia, and Christmas Biscotti with cranberries and pistachios (All Red and Green!). We mixed up the doughs and will bake them off just before Christmas.

But Obviously we needed

to taste them so we baked

up some samples.