I made this pumpkin coffee cake again last Monday. It turned out even better this time! I didn’t get a chance to take a picture, but this might be my favorite coffee cake recipe!

My parents are out of town this last weekend and we have been dog sitting their puppy, Gracie (also known now as the ’shop dog’ according to this article). We love little Gracie – she is just so sweet! And let’s be honest, it’s probably because of the way she was raised…that’s right, before Gracie permanently became my parents’ little baby, she was mine. When I was very little, before my brother was born, we had a boxer puppy named Spot and when Michael was born my mom decided that it was too much to have a toddler, a newborn, and a puppy, so Spot had to go live somewhere else Needless to say this traumatized me and I wanted another boxer for a long time. So one day several years ago when Jeremy and I were still just dating, we saw a litter of boxer puppies for sale and in a total impulse purchase, I bought little Gracie! They let me take her home at just 5 1/2 weeks and she was so tiny! But she was a wonderful little puppy who slept in my bed and potty trained with little help from me! When Jeremy and I got married and moved into an apartment we knew it wouldn’t be fair for her to be without a yard. And as our family dog had been put sleep just a couple of weeks before our wedding, we left Gracie with my parents to fill the empty space. Now she is their baby and I know they love her very much. Sometimes I still miss her (even though I have my sweet little Turner), but it was nice to have her around the last couple of days. Here are some pictures of us lounging around with the puppies (I don’t think she’s allowed on the couch at home!).

Lately I had been making muffins out of a box mix for my Monday morning staff breakfast treats, but I saw this recipe in December’s Bon Appetit and really wanted to try it. I made it the night before so I wouldn’t have to mess with it in the morning. These were so good! I think these would be could with dried cranberries as well!

I normally just provide a link to the recipe, but this one was not on the Bon Appetit website and I think it’s because it was in the section R.S.V.P. (readers’ favorite restaurant recipes) and therefore comes from Chestnut Cottage Restaurant, Port Angeles, WA.

Giant Apricot-Walnut Scones
Bon Appetit, December 2009 (pg. 20)
Makes 6 (very big scones)

2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 T baking powder
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup golden raisins
1 1/3 cups heavy whipping cream
Powdered Sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Whisk first 3 ingredients in large bowl. Stir in walnuts, apricots, and raisins. Add cream; stir with fork just to blend. Transfer dough to work surface sprinkled with powdered sugar. Knead dough until smooth, about 10 turns. Form dough into 1-ink thick round. Cut into 60 wedbes. Sift powdered sugar over. Transfer to baking sheet.

Bake scones until golden brown and toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, about 18 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature. DO AHEAD Can be made 8 hours ahead. Cool completely, cover, and let stand at room temperature.

I made this casserole earlier this week from my Rachel Ray cookbook. I thought it was ok but Jeremy didn’t like it very much. One thing I would definitely do differently is take half the cheese and mix it up rwith the noodles and turkey to help hold all that together – there would still be plenty of cheese on the top. Also I think it needed a little more flavor…

I don’t talk about them much, but my parents are pretty much awesome. When I think of people that are ready to do whatever God asks them and be radical about what they believe in, I think of them. It amazes me that as a young couple they decided to take their two little kids and move to a country where they didn’t speak the language or understand the culture! Several years ago, they felt God was calling them to plant a church in Marble Falls. Again, they sold their house and moved this time to another city and started planting a church. I guess it didn’t surprise me at the time, but Jeremy brought to light how ‘crazy’ it is to just sell your house, uproot yourself, and go somewhere to do something that could be a potential failure! But they did it anyway! There is now a church in Marble Falls and its doing great. As my dad was working in the community during the initial phases of the church plant, he began working with the school system by helping with an automotive program. This ministry continued to grow and now he has moved to doing that full time! His work is based out of Falls Garage in Marble Falls and he teaches teenagers how to work on cars so they can get good jobs. I bring all this up because there was an article recently in the Highland Lakes Business Journal about Falls Garage and I wanted to share it with you! You can read it here. You can also check out the Falls Garage blog here.  Mom and Dad, I think you’re the best!

No picture for this recipe…too bad because I think it would have photographed well! On Tuesday night I made Rachel Ray’s Mac-n-Cheddar with Broccoli. It was pretty good but I don’t think it was quite as good as I was picturing in my head – don’t know why. My aunt used to make homemade mac and cheese when I was younger and I remember it being really good, but she used a white cheese and I think it was baked – this one wasn’t baked. It says it makes 4 servings, but those must be huge servings! Of course we didn’t eat it alone, I also cooked some small porkchops to go with it (Jeremy loves mac and cheese with pork chops…). Once again, I am convinced this recipe book will be a kid-pleaser! Right now it pleases me that dinner can get finished so quickly!

I am writing my senior thesis on Martha Washington. It wasn’t something that was actually planned, but I had to switch topics at the last minute and in trying to figure out what to do, I saw that I had this biography on my bookshelf. It became part of my inspiration for my research into the life of this incredible woman. We know very little about Martha Washington. Some of this is due to the fact that she destroyed the correspondence between herself and George before she died. She wanted to keep their private life private. There has been relatively little written about her and in my research this has been the best biography I have read. Brady did an excellent job in her research and it is an enjoyable read. It’s not very long as biographies go and gives a great glimpse at Martha’s life. She was such a great wife! She was very supportive even when it was difficult for her. She did not want her husband to become president and even more so didn’t want him to take on the 2nd term, but she always rose to the challenge just to be at his side. I’m sure there’s more I could write, but I’ll contain myself. if you are looking for a biography on Martha Washington, this is definitely the one I would recommend.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly event hosted by  Should Be Reading. To play, check out the Teaser Tuesdays link for rules. (I ran across this over at Alita Reads, a reading blog that I came across a while back and started reading – it’s my inspiration to keep reading!)

My teaser is from The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (this month’s bookclub book):

Pg. 315 – “The exposition by day might wear a chaste gown of white staff, but at night it danced barefoot and guzzled champagne.”

“‘If Congress does not give us the money we will have riots that will shake this country,’ he said.”

I may have mentioned at some point that I got Rachel Ray’s 365: No Repeats – A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners, A 30-Minute Meal Cookbook. This is actually the 2nd recipe I have made from this book – see below for more details. I made this Smoky Turkey Shepherd’s Pie last night and am actually eating some leftovers as I type. I think this took me more than 30 minutes to make…I must not be as fast as Rachel! I liked that it used turkey instead of beef and I know that Jeremy likes shepherds pie. It was pretty good. I think after looking through the recipes in this book, it might be one that I use a lot when we have kids – the recipes are simple, fast, and crowd pleasers. They may not be recipes that would make their way into Gourmet but I think kids would probably really like them.

Like I mentioned, this is the second recipe I’ve made from this book, the first one was the Scramblewiches and these were a big hit! Sounds kind of silly, but we really liked them. I used ham and I think that I didn’t bother buying Swiss cheese and just the Monterey or Colby Jack that was probably in my fridge already. One thing I did was purchase frozen loaves of Hatch Green Chile baguettes from HEB, although that might be a Central Market Brand. Since I normally shop on the weekends, if I’m going to make a recipe later in the week, it’s hard to have fresh bread for it. So like in the recipe I shared for the Bruschetta I either use Pillsbury bread dough and bake it up that day or I buy it frozen – I thought it was fun having the chile taste in the bread for this particular recipe!

Lately I have been making mid-week treats for Jeremy to take to work and share with his co-workers. I’m not ashamed to say it – I bake in the hopes that this might help in maintaining job security for my husband and let’s be honest…I may do this for my own job too (I try to bring Monday morning breakfast treats to the office on a regular basis). Anyway, my mom gave me a stocking stuffer a couple of years ago. It was one of those check-out counter purchases – a small  cooking booklet if you will from Nestle Toll House entitled Best-Loved cookies and honestly my best cookies come from that baby!

So this week I made the Frosted Double Chocolate Cookies pictured above. Chocolaty and delicious – I especially liked the frosting!

Here are some others that I have made in the past couple weeks:

• Chocolate Turtle Brownies -  these were quite good and very gooey
• White Chip Chocolate Cookies – these cookies baked up perfectly
• Frosted Maple Pecan White Chip Cookies – I so wish I had taken a picture of these because they really looked great – and they tasted even better! These were the cookies that Jeremy thought I shouldn’t make (mostly because of the pecans) I made them anyway and came home after I had made them to find Jeremy sitting at the table with the cookies exclaiming, “these are amazing!” So we were very happy with them and they remind me of fall.