This month, we wanted to focus on what’s readily available to us – pumpkin, of course! We wanted an easy way to incorporate pumpkin into not just dessert – although this would certainly be a sweet dessert, it can also be eaten as breakfast. And, it is very easy to put together.

Turn on your oven to 350.

Cream together your sugar and your butter. Let that run for about three minutes.

Next, add your eggs, one at a time, and let them mix well.

Sift together your flour – I used whole wheat, to make it a little more healthy. Sift in your baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, and salt.

Add about half of your dry ingredients to your wet. Mix. Now, things get interesting.

Add the pumpkin. You can used canned, or use your own – depends on the kind of time you have.

That, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

Now dump it into an oiled, floured loaf pan. Stick it in the oven for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out of the middle clean.

It should look like this.

Friends,

Welcome to our new site. Again. Just a year ago, Jeff pushed us to switch to our own URL and tackle the big world of owning web space. He helped us transfer the site over and take advantage of all the great things that WordPress has to offer over at WordPress.org. Only a few months later, he was giving us photography lessons and pushing us to take better photos (read: our own photos so we’d stop needing him in the kitchen so much!)

Then, when we decided that pre-canned themes just weren’t doing it for us anymore, Jeff was the one who offered to help. After brainstorming for a few days and having a long video chat with me and Corelyn, Jeff designed us a beautiful site for which we can’t thank him enough.

Now, again, for the second time in the two years we’ve had this blog, we’re introducing the improved Garlic, My Soul. Take a look around, and you’ll find some new features: new project pages devoted to our cooking challenges – both past and current, an author’s page for each blog contributor, and a dedicated page for our recipes when you need a meal (or a snack!) in a hurry. We also want to call your attention to our gorgeous new header image, courtesy of Mary Costa Photography, and the new Garlic, My Soul logo, designed by Jessica Kucinskas. We owe them big time for their contribution, and we hope they’ll accept payment in food!

We hope you like it, because Corelyn and I love it. Take a look around, get to know the place, and be sure to check out Jeff, Jessica, and Mary’s work.

You can find Jeff Hayford here.
You can find Jessica Kucinskas here.
You can find Mary Costa Photography here.

One of the first famous chefs I cooked recipes from was Ina Garten. My mom’s way of cooking almost always involved half recipe, half make-it-up-as-you-go. But she faithfully followed (mostly, usually) Ina’s recipes when she used them. Her book brought me comfort when I moved to Boston, and realized how much I didn’t know about cooking. Her recipes helped me when I moved to California and didn’t really understand the versatility of avocado. She taught me how to make a grocery list, for God’s sake! (Which by the way, I split into five categories: dairy, produce, meat, freezer, shelf.) Ina, to me, is equal parts perfectly snooty (calling for good olive oil in many of her recipes) and realistic (her recipes usually can be made with only little preparation of specialty ingredients.)

Anyways, so when I’m busy and need to cook something, I know I can trust Ina’s Barefoot Contessa At Home to help me make something delicious and easy. So when Scott asked me to make him stuffed shrimp for his birthday, I knew that I needed a dessert that would be quick.

Ina’s Chocolate Cupcakes and Peanut Butter Icing was the recipe I needed.

A recipe that starts with two sugars can’t ever be bad.

And butter. Butter makes everything better.

Some eggs. Like I said: the usual suspects.

Add some sour cream to your buttermilk.

Give it a whisk.

Now we’re going to sift our dry ingredients together.

Is that some cocoa I see? Yes, it sure is…

Sifted. Ready to add.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

We’re going to add our buttermilk mixture and also our flour.

Hi Cricket’s legs! Thanks for taking photos!

Look how delicious that looks. Time for cupcakes.

Delicious. Now, I took a break and iced them the next day, since by the time these were done it was late. But let me tell you, they were sure lookin’ like they were ready to be eaten at this point.

Let me also say this: I didn’t give them huge tops, since the red velvet disaster of 2011. In Ina’s book, they have a little more top to ’em. That said, this recipe told me it’d make 14 or 15 cupcakes. I ended up with 26. Be warned.

Frosting: peanut butter, butter, sugar, vanilla, heaven.

Serve with candles to the birthday boy/girl. Enjoy!

**Thanks to Cricket for the photos of the cupcake making process – your help in the kitchen is always delightful. **

When I was first diagnosed with Celiac, I bought myself a breadmaker. I was petrified that I was not going to be able to find bread that wasn’t those dense rice loaves in the refrigerated section that I hated SO much. I did a little research across the gf forums and ended up ordering this bread maker off of Amazon along with some gf flour, and basic gf cookbook.

I had high hopes of baking my own delicious bread on a regular basis, filling my house with the aroma of freshly baked bread.  The reality fell short of this ideal.   I am sorry to report that I used my bread maker exactly once after I bought it to make a not so successful or delicious loaf of bread that I quickly tired of eating.  I honestly think I ended up feeding half the loaf to some birds.  I did not use my bread maker again for a full two years.  However, this past weekend Jennie and I brought out the bread maker out from deep inside my kitchen cabinets and were successful in baking a thoroughly delicious French bread loaf!

We used a prepackaged mix by Glutino and were pleasantly surprised with the result.  We decided to choose a prepackaged mix for a number of reasons 1) They have already done all the math, trial and error, and mixing for you.  Baking, especially gf baking, tends to warrant exact measuring and many test runs in order to be successful. 2) We were curious how a prepackaged mix would stand up to mixing our own from scratch.  3) I happened to have some in my house.

Finally, I carved out a little hole for the yeast to sit in upon the dry ingredients.  You have to be careful at this step to not let the yeast make contact with the wet ingredients.

Then you close the lid, plug in the bread machine, and adjust the settings to your directions.  We used the basic loaf setting with the medium crust.  Then you turn it on (and it will just sit for the next long while mysteriously “preheating”.  I say “mysteriously” because heat does not come into this dynamic for quite some time.  Who knows what it is doing, but we just let it be.)

Eventually it will start mixing the ingredients and this will start to form dough.  Our directions suggested that during this kneading phase to check on the dough to make sure it was the proper consistency (not too dry or crumbly) and to use a plastic spatula to scrape the dough from the sides if it was sticking in order to help the bread machine thoroughly mix all the ingredients.  We did do this step, but the dough was a good consistency and wasn’t sticking too much, so it probably would have survived without our intervention.

After that we let it do its thing for the remaining 2.5 hours.  The bread slowly rose and eventually the heat turned on and started baking the loaf.

When the bread machine said it was done, the crust was not to my liking.  It was too pale, it looked like it was uncooked, though I suspect it was not.

Our solution was to throw the whole baking pan into the actual oven for an additional 15 minutes.  We put it in for 10 minutes, then an additional 5 and it came out looking like this:

Much more appetizing!

Overall, using a bread machine and a mix has many advantages.  It is very easy and passive.  The hardest work is to throw in the ingredients in the right order.    The 3.5 hours it is in the bread machine you can be doing other things and it doesn’t even get hot until the last 45 minutes or so.  I think that next time we would also probably set the bread maker to dark crust to get it to brown whilst in the bread maker itself.

Some of the disadvantages of this particular bread mix are the fact that the bread is rather crumbly.  It is gf so that is somewhat to be expected, but this mix was also for french bread which is even more crumbly.  This is all by way of saying that the bread is delicious, but not structurally sound enough for say, sandwiches.  It can’t hold up to vertical toasters or being thinly sliced.But having to have a thick slice of freshly baked bread?  I’m alright with that!

Without a doubt, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. This is mostly because Thanksgiving has become the unofficial holiday of Garlic, My Soul over the last few years, and a GMS Thanksgiving is the best kind.

Some people like to start Christmas shopping as early as August, but we think that’s for the birds. However it is not at all unusual for Jennie and me to have Thanksgiving on the brain all year round.

This year we sent out the official invite on October 24. A month of intense planning is pretty standard for us, but we usually try to keep our Thanksgiving excitement under wraps for a few weeks, so as not to frighten anyone with our overzealous approach to holiday planning.

Well guess what. Today is the day to get excited, folks. Check out that countdown on the right side of the page. We’ve only got 2 weeks to go!

The oven schedule is nearly complete.

17 people have RSVP’d yes with 6 maybes. So, this year will be a smaller affair.

The gluten-free portion of the menu is set.

The free range turkey has been ordered. 26 pounds, in case you’re curious.

Oh, and did I mention that I am planning to fly back to Los Angeles for the holiday!!!!

That’s right. This Thanksgiving will be our first Garlic, My Soul reunion since we went bi-coastal back in April.

When I told Jennie, we had this conversation:

Jennie: WHATTTTTTTTTTTTT, shut up
me: yes
Jennie: shut up.  SHUT UP
Jennie: WHEN ARE YOU COMINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

Then she cried. Literally, she cried. And Jeff made fun of us. That’s just how we roll in the Garlic, My Soul family.

I am so excited you guys. I don’t even care that I’ll be flying on the two biggest travel days of the year, sitting in middle seats for all of my flights, and missing the opportunity to earn time and a half at my job by working the day after Thanksgiving. I don’t care about any of it, because I am SO excited about….

Starting the day at 7:30 AM to get up, get showered, and get our whole cooking operation over to our friend Paul’s house.

Jennie and me, shoving our hands inside a giant turkey, our favorite party trick for 4 years running.

Coffee and crossword puzzles, and Iny’s Prune Cake, for the second year in a row.

Wine and snacks all day long.

Rubbing the whole turkey in butter 30 minutes before we take it out of the oven. Then, waiting until Jennie isn’t looking and adding even MORE butter.

Holiday decorations courtesy of the talented miss Mary Costa

Not being able to finish my plate. Trying anyway.

Rebecca’s homemade pumpkin pie.

Live blogging, throughout the day.

Dinner at 3:00, Leftovers at 7:00.

The post-dinner walk around the neighborhood.

Boardgames and more wine late into the evening.

An entire day, one that starts before sun-up and ends well after sundown, of feeling the love of some amazing friends and giving thanks.