Crunchy Cranberry Pie

My office always has a luncheon the day before Thanksgiving, so I took the opportunity to make something from A Thyme to Celebrate to share with my coworkers.  I decided on crunchy cranberry pie, because I love cranberries and I cannot resist buying the fresh ones that are in stores around this time of year.

I don't have a food processor (and I recently broke my blender while trying to use it as a food processor), so I chopped the cranberries by hand.  I'd say it only added 5 minutes to my prep time at most. Other than that, the preparation was straightforward and did not take much time.   I used a deep dish pie shell just to make sure the filling would fit.  

This pie was beautiful and tasted delicious.  Needless to say, my coworkers happily ate the whole thing.  My only complaint is that the pie fell apart when it was cut, but no one really seemed to mind.  I plan to add this into my rotation of fall/Thanksgiving desserts.   

Thanks for sharing Martha!

Market Days

Thank you Market Days for allowing us to sell our cookbooks at your event!!

League members volunteered to sell Pepsi products at Market Days this past weekend. We also passed out samples of our Very Best Blonde Brownies. Everyone loved the samples :)

Tomato Sauce

I rarely buy tomato sauce from the grocery store anymore because homemade sauce is really easy to make, I usually already have everything I need to make it, and it tastes SO MUCH BETTER than store-bought sauce.  I was in a pasta mood, so I thought I would try A Thyme to Celebrate's tomato sauce and serve it over pasta for dinner. 

 I made a few changes from the original recipe.  I substituted diced tomatoes for half of the crushed because I had a surplus of canned diced tomatoes in my cabinet.  This made the sauce a bit chunkier than it would have been otherwise.  I also opted for fresh basil instead of the Italian seasoning.  I added the basil to the pot with the rest of the seasonings.  I let it simmer on low for a good portion of the afternoon.  

This sauce has a great kick to it from the red pepper.  I ended up making chicken parmesan with it and it was fantastic!  The sauce tasted even better the next day.  I froze the leftover sauce for a future pasta/Italian night and I can't wait to use it!

Thank you Martha! :)

Pumpkin Roll

On the range of level of skill required to make a dessert, the pumpkin cream cheese roll would probably fall into the intermediate category. In terms of putting the ingredients together properly so that it tastes good, it's very easy, but making it pretty is a little more difficult!

 The batter is simple with few ingredients and bakes very quickly. I was concerned about it falilng apart when I tried to roll it up, but I was pleasantly surprised when it held up beautifully!  I encountered a challenge with rolling it up into the elegant pinwhell shape that these types of roll cakes are supposed to have.  I think I will have more success next time if I use a  larger baking sheet so that the cake comes out a bit thinner and less ungainly to roll up.  It's also possible that it would have looked prettier if I had used less of the cream cheese filling, but it was so delicious when I tested it that I just couldn't stand to part with any of it :)

I think this dish would be a very elegant choice for a fall brunch to go with coffee. The finished product is very similar in flavor to a carrot cake, only less sweet.

Thanks Brittany O'Connor!