Nothing says fall more to me than pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and cranberries. I bought a couple of weird looking pumpkins the other day (a Sweet Dumpling Squash and an Organic Delicata Squash). So when I cut them in half and scraped their seeds out into the sink, I had an idea. Why not roast them in the oven along with the pumpkin flesh that I am cooking? The seeds turned out to rather intensely nutty, roasted, and caramelized. Perhaps a bit too much… but not bad for an experiment!

Had my first attempt at making breakfast tacos. With a quarter of a cup of fat, I split it between butter and lard. Which made the tortilla yellowish looking when raw. But it whitened up after cooking.

I had a bit of a panic when I couldn’t find the tortilla press. So I just rolled the dough out by hand. Fortunately, with that much fat in it, there was no problem of sticking…

I finally got a chance to make this recipe from Cook’s Illustrated after being sold on it by Adam. These cookies are pretty good and are a step above sugar cookies because of a couple of factors. Both the molasses from the brown sugar and the browning of the butter give this cookie extra depth. And I chose to add another complementary flavor of toffee bits.

Sadly, it was almost a non-start. After browning the butter in a pan, I poured it off into a metal bowl. When I moved the bowl to set it aside, I changed my grip from the top of the bowl to the bottom. Where it was hot enough to make me jerk my hand away. The bowl fell on the floor and sprayed hot, melted, slippery, butter everywhere. I waited a couple of days before I tried the recipe again.

Now, is this post really a surprise to you? I mean what do you do with four bags of peaches? And a love of cobbler? Make peach salsa? What is this, New York city?

Now isn’t that a commercial? The interwebs, why do they fail me?

When I was making the calzone, I remembered that its been forever since I have had stuffed shells. And that made me start Jonesing for some. I whipped together some whole milk ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, roasted garlic, roasted Poblano and Jalapeño peppers, caramelized onions, spinach, Italian sausage, and a couple of scrambled eggs. Stuffing the shells was not hard but it proved to be extremely messy. I poured my tomato sauce over the top and then topped it off with a layer of mozzarella cheese. I baked it at 350 minutes until it was bubbling and the cheese was melted.

Last time when making the calzone, I had way too much filling left over. But tonight was very close. So I was proud of myself.

I make a batch of dough for three pies on Saturday or Sunday. I store them in these ziplock containers in my refrigerator over the week. I very lightly oil the container so that the dough does not stick. The tops are only loosely tightened (to let any carbon dioxide escape). Then, when the weekend comes around, I am ready to make pizza.

About five or more hours before dinner, I take a container out of the refrigerator and put the ball out on a silpat sheet. The dough has not risen at all over the week. Now, the dough will warm up and start to rise. I occasionally flip it over so that both sides dry out evenly (the dough is very moist).

I will also cook down some pizza sauce. I open up a can of Cento’s pizza sauce and cook it on a heat diffuser on the lowest gas setting. This cooks the sauce at a temperature of around 130. I also add Italian seasoning and chopped garlic. After two hours, I add another can and cook it for half an hour or so (I want a mix of both fresh and caramelized tomato sauce).

I finally got around to making a calzone, at least on purpose. I just winged it with the ingredients by mixing: whole milk ricotta, spinach, caramelized onions, caramelized garlic, mozzarella cheese, and a scrambled egg. It came out pretty good.

I made a bunch of gyozas today with the classic recipe: ground pork, cabbage, scallions, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, and egg whites. The only problem was that I forgot just how boring and tiring the process of filling, crimping, and freezing 60 gyozas is.

But now that I am done, I am happy. Frozen gyozas make a quick meal. And they last a long time in the freezer.

I was kind of curious as to how a competitor’s pizza would cook up on my oven grill. So I stopped by the new pizza restaurant called Papa Murphy’s. I bought a medium two-topping pizza with Canadian bacon and artichoke hearts and cooked it on the pizza stone. Turned out pretty nice, actually. So it seems that I have a ways to go.

The only problem was that I had to transfer the raw pizza to the screen. Fortunately, they had wrapped the pizza in saran wrap. So I flipped it over, cut out the bottom, removed the cardboard tray, placed the screen on the bottom, re-wrapped it, flipped it back over, and removed the wrap.

I have always felt that eating breakfast foods at dinnertime was extravagant. And, boy, was I in the mood for some comfort food tonight.

I started out by cooking some of the bacon that Marty bought for me at Cooper’s. I have found that the easiest way to cook bacon is in the convection toaster oven. Yeah, you heard me right. Just place it on the top rack of the oven and put a pan on the bottom rack to catch the drippings. Set the temperature to 200 and leave it alone. That strategy makes it pretty hard to over cook it and the fat helps baste the bacon. I made extra for a future BLT.

Next up was biscuits. I used Alton Brown’s biscuit recipe. And was shocked when I forgot just how incredibly sticky that recipe was. What is frustrating is that you really want to combat the stickiness by folding the dough and using lots of extra flour. But that is the last thing that you should do. If you overwork the dough, the biscuits will loose their fluffiness and turn tough. So I ended up with some rather interesting looking biscuits. But that doesn’t matter much in your stomach.

After the biscuits were in the oven, I made some white hominy grits. With butter…

And last, but not least, was a cheese omelet with poblano peppers. Don’t forget to add half ‘n half or whipping cream to your scrambled eggs! Very important.

The biscuit recipe makes far too many biscuits for one person. So, after eating one, I threw out the rest. So sad in a way to waste food. But a necessary evil to enable my indulgence.