Fall

Who thought reduced calorie pumpkin bread could be so good? Well, I'm hear to tell you it is. Aren't you lucky? Anyway, my bestie's mama, Sharon (Hi Sharon!) tweaked up a recipe and came up with this little gem (I tweaked it a tad bit more as well). Anyway, it's moist, it's pumpkin-ee and a perfect fix with coffee.

So here's the thing, I was looking at nutritional information for regular, full-calorie pumpkin bread and it averages about 179 calories per slice. Now, they consider one slice to be 1 ounce in terms of weight. I can tell you right now that no one ever cuts a 1 ounce slice of pumpkin bread and considers that a serving. It's minuscule and definitely wouldn't hold a slab of butter. This means that a regular slice, one that you would just normally cut and looks like "normal size" weighs about 2.4 ounces (based on a 12 serving loaf made in an 8 x 4 pan). So one slice of regular pumpkin bread is about 429 calories. OUCH!

So this lovely recipe will cut your calories in half, coming in at only 228 calories per 2.4 ounce slice.  That's a huge savings.  Now, since you are saving so many calories, you can slather on the butter..he-he. Or cream cheese, or...or...

I stopped at two grocery stores today and both were completely out of Libby’s brand canned pumpkin. Years ago, when I first moved to Fargo, I had a young neighbor (we were both young at that time) who grew up in a small town not too far from Fargo. She often talked about the wonderful things her mom could whip up in the kitchen. Once, when we were discussing some kind of pumpkin dessert, this neighbor told me the only kind of canned pumpkin her mom would use was Libby’s. That was enough for me. I’ve been buying Libby’s ever since, except for the times I buy an organic brand of pumpkin. But today, with no Libby’s on the grocery store shelves, I wound up buying the store brand.

I used the store brand to whip up this pumpkin mousse. Guess what? It tastes perfectly delicious when mixed up with pumpkin spices, whipped cream and vanilla pudding.

I like to layer the creamy pumpkin mousse with crushed cookie crumbs. Today I pulled a box of Trader Joe’s Almond Butter Thins from my freezer. I crushed some of them in a large zip-top plastic bag, using my fist as a hammer. In the past, I’ve used ginger snaps in the parfaits. But, I think I’m sold on the Almond Butter Thins.

One of my favorite things about Fall is apples…and trips to the apple orchard. This year, without a trip to one of my favorite apple orchards in the Twin Cities area marked on the calendar, I was beginning to think it would be the first time in many, many years that I didn’t get to an apple orchard. The sign along Highway 10 that made me turn my car down a winding country road in search of my favorite fall fruit, turned into a wild goose chase. But then, an angel appeared and offered me all the apples I could possibly want or need.

With the big bag of apples I brought home, I made an apple tapioca sauce with a handful of the fruit. I could have moved on to the apple crisp that has been a family-favorite for years. But, I decided to pull a church cookbook off my shelf. I have a bunch of them that I’ve collected over the years. I randomly pulled a book from the tightly-packed row lined up on the shelf. I paged through the one that wound up in my hands: The Centennial Cookbook (1887-1987) from St. Olaf Lutheran Church in Devils Lake, North Dakota. I stopped at Swiss Apple Pie Cake that was submitted by Berdelle Nelson.

Kohlrabi, a vegetable that sounds just as foreign as it is alien to most people, is a subtle-flavored vegetable in the cabbage family. In fact it's German name translates to cabbage (kohl) turnip (rabi). Varieties include purple and pale green. It often gets confused with rutabagas or turnips, but it's actually much more attractive than both. Kohlrabi can be eaten raw (its taste resembles that of radishes) or cooked (where its taste is similar to boiled broccoli stems). This creamy soup is the perfect recipe for kohlrabi, because the vegetable turns sweet and tender.

This recipe is based on my mother's version. Her soup is a Hungarian specialty. It's wonderful for a first course before an elegant dinner. When you match it with a big chunk of bread or crackers, it's even great as an entire meal. Its creaminess and sweetness always hits my comfort spot. And even though, as a kid, I never thought of kohlrabi as much of a vegetable, I still always asked my mom to make this soup in the fall and winter.