Failure Fajita Soup, Delicious Pumpkin Pecan Waffles, and a Pantry Clean-up

Hi everyone! It is so hard to believe that fall is in full swing when it's in the high 70s here. So I broke out the slow cooker. I really wanted to make taco soup, but I didn't have taco seasoning or any pinto beans so I figured I'd substitute in other ingredients, cross my fingers, and hope for the best.

This is what I got:


My recipe:

1.5 pounds ground beef
1 chopped onion
1 bag stir fry vegetables
2 cans of corn, with juice
2 cans of baked beans, with juice
1 can rotel
1 28 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 8 ounce can tomato sauce
1 packet fajita seasoning
1/2 packet ranch dressing mix


1. Brown the ground beef and onion together in a large skillet. Pour the mix into a colander and cook the stir fry vegetables for 2 minutes in the remaining grease.

2. Put the meat, onions, and vegetables in the slow cooker. Add all the other ingredients finishing with the seasoning mixes. Mix well and cook on low for 8 hours. All done!

My honest opinion:

There are very few times I have disaster in my kitchen and this, unfortunately, was one of them. My advice, don't try it! Stick to my regular taco soup recipe which is the same as above except pinto beans instead of baked beans, taco seasoning instead of fajita, and NO stirfry vegetables. Ugh, one bite and that stuff went straight to the bin!

Instead, we had pumpkin pecan waffles!

The basic recipe comes from Here.

Ingredients:
1 cup white flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
 1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup pumpkin butter
1/4 cup pecans, chopped

1. Mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients in separate bowls.
2. Mix the two together slowly until just barely combined.
3. Allow to sit for about 5 minutes to thicken before pouring into waffle maker...in batches! Not all at once. Fill bottom side of waffle maker until it is barely full, not heaping, otherwise it'll just leak out when it cooks.
4. Cook until waffle maker isn't steaming a lot and the top is crisp. Then you eat!

Oh, and finally, a before and after of my pantry. Before it was a mess and I had no clue what we had. So after months of just throwing more stuff in there, I finally decided to clean it out and organize it. Surprisingly, it only took about 30 minutes!

After, I found out we had 17 jars of peanut butter, 5 bags/boxes of rice, 20 cans of tuna, and 7 boxes of cereal. But it's clean!

How exactly does one use 17 jars of peanut butter? If you have any recipes, I'd be so grateful!

Blessings,
Miranda

Pumpkin Butter

I told y'all I'd be back with a yummy recipe today. We made pumpkin purée yesterday and today we'll be turning it into pumpkin butter. It's similar in consistency to apple butter, so it can be used as a spread (and it is delicious that way!) but one of my favorite ways to use it is to replace the oil in muffins and cakes with it. It gives them an awesome flavor. This is an easy recipe to make and it is flipping delicious if I do say so myself.

This is adapted from a recipe at Oh She Glows

I had 2 pumpkins worth of purée, so this recipe will assume you do too.

You'll need 10 cups of purée:

1/2 cup apple juice and 1/4 cup cranberry juice (I had a bit of cranberry cider from Trader Joes I wanted to try!)
2.5 cups of granulated sugar + 3 T molasses (you can use brown sugar, I just personally prefer the taste of freshly made brown sugar so I don't keep it on hand).
1/4 cup pancake syrup
3 T cinnamon
1.5 T pumpkin pie spice
1 good shake of nutmeg
1 T lemon juice
1 T almond extract (this was a happy accident, I realized halfway through that my vanilla was empty! But I am so glad, the almond definitely gives it a delicious, distinctive flavor.)

1. Mix together your sugar and molasses if you're making your own brown sugar. It will get clumpy for a minute, but I swear I'm not crazy! Keep mixing it up and it's brown sugar very quickly!

2. I simply dumped all the ingredients into a medium sized pot and got it bubbling. Mine had to simmer for about 20 minutes to reduce as much as I wanted it to. Keep your pot covered, but vented so the moisture can escape. After I took this picture, I covered the top of my pot with aluminum foil and left about an inch on either side open.

I ended up with 7 jars of pumpkin butter and I'll definitely be playing with this recipe some more.

DIY pumpkin purée...super easy, super simple!

Pumpkins are the best part of fall in my opinion! They're cheery and bright...and UT orange! :) But mostly, they are delicious. Today I'm making homemade pumpkin purée. Be on the lookout for a recipe using the purée tomorrow morning. Please excuse the lack of professional quality photos, I'm just an amateur photographer, using my iPad for now. :)

To make pumpkin purée, you'll need a sugar pumpkin, sometimes called a pie pumpkin. You could use a jack o lantern pumpkin, but I wouldn't recommend it...they are super pulpy/stringy so you pay more money for less usable pumpkin.

Anyway, start out with a pie pumpkin like these:

Then, cut them in half, like this:

Next, you'll want to scoop out the seeds (save these for roasting, yum!) and scrape the stringy pulp out. Now your pumpkin should look like this:

Place them cut side down on a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil, like so:

Bake them in a 350 degree (200 celscius) oven until a fork easily penetrates the skin. For me, this was about 30 minutes. If you have a toddler, they must be sitting like this for the baking experience to work!:

Let the pumpkin sit for at least 10 minutes before touching. Speaking form experience, they're WAY too hot to handle before that.

Peel off the skin, I used my fingers. The skin should easily and cleanly pull away. You'll be left with this:

Put them in a food processor or blender and blend until puréed. Voila! Pumpkin purée!

Be on the lookout for a great recipe using your pumpkin puree tomorrow!

Blessings!

Miranda