The Bunny Box

So, funny story. I know how much you guys look forward to reading my posts and somehow I just got so caught up in school and other wastes of time that I completely forgot to post about the single greatest baking day of the season so far: Thanksgiving! Let me start off by letting you guys know that I'm not a big Thanksgiving celebrator. Before this year, I hadn't had a Thanksgiving dinner (well, not a REAL one anyway. Last couple of years, we had tacos) for about 6 or 7 years. I didn't mind, really. I missed my father's Thanksgiving cooking (he makes the best stuffing and gravy!) but that was about it. This year, however, my grandmother is back in town. She moved back here around March and unfortunately had some health problems (which are now resolved, thank G-d) and as November approached, it seemed to be taken for granted that we would have to provide her with a Thanksgiving feast. Okay. No biggie! It's just an excuse for me to try my hand at pie baking. ...

A couple posts ago ( here ) I wrote about a creamy pumpkin sauce that I had made and mentioned the changes I wanted to make to it. I'm now ready to post the completed recipe and a (sad, blurry) picture. The second time around preparing this sauce, I made the changes I wanted to make, but mostly I played it by ear. The resulting product was creamy and a perfect mix of sweet and savory. I piled it on my pasta (in a most unhealthy fashion) and was really satisfied with the taste. The pumpkin gives the sauce a slight nutty taste and a richness you don't find in your average tomato sauce. The main thing you need to know about this recipe is that I am seriously approximating all measurements. While cooking this, I didn't measure a thing. So if you choose to make it (which I strongly recommend) taste it often while cooking and be prepared to adjust. At one point while throwing it together, I accidentally added a bit too much salt. I balanced that out by adding more pumpkin...

Well, here I am in the midst of what would be midterms if I had any. Instead, I've got more than my fair share of papers to write before Thanksgiving. But that doesn't mean I'm not more than happy to distract myself by cooking something interesting for dinner and then blogging about it. So come on. Enable my procrastination and read on. On Monday I announced on Facebook that I had made pasta with a "creamy pumpkin sauce." I also mentioned that I hadn't perfected the recipe and wouldn't blog about it until I had. Here's the problem with that. I'm unlikely to remember to perfect it later on if I don't blog about it now. So here goes: I wanted to make pasta, but I didn't want to make boring ol' pasta with cheese. I wanted something quick and easy, but interesting and tasty. Well, let's say I got 3/4 of it right. It was quick and easy and definitely interesting, but it was definitely bland. In the following recipe, I'm ...