Tipsygiving! The pregame show

It's Tipsygiving, which means it's cookin' time! And time for drinks. AND time for football! I don't know how this holiday weekend can be topped. Halloween is pretty badass but it needs to up the football content to compete next year.

So here are pictures since you like pictures.

I'm glad I didn't look at the price of rhubarb before deciding to make a strawberry rhubarb pie, because ohmygosh, $8.98/lb for what looks like red celery is pretty steep. Does this stuff cure impotence or something? This pie required almost $8 worth of rhubarb and about $3 worth of organic strawberries (They didn't have any non-organic ones, that's the only reason I got the organic ones. I know some of you people are giving me that look like "Oh well of course she'd get organic produce because she's one of those hippie granola girls").

Anyway, PIE:

My mom has a habit of exploding pies, so I'm doing my best to follow in her footsteps. Step one: overfill the pie! CHECK.

Step two: Check to make sure the pie is asploding as hoped in the oven. CHECK.

Just look at that caramelized goodness. I'm a firm believer that the messiness of a pie has a direct correlation to how delicious it is. Step three: OMNOMNOM. That will be after dinner if we can wait that long.

Alright, then there were the pumpkin bars. These are pretty simple. I used this recipe but doubled the cinnamon, also added three or four teaspoons of allspice, and some nutmeg too, I think. Oh! And I used one of those big 29oz cans of pumpkin instead of the sissy 15oz ones the recipe calls for. You don't have to add anything else to make up for it. It just takes a bit longer to cook off the water from the pumpkin, and I'm hoping they'll taste twice as pumpkiny.

Pumpkin bars!

With the addition of cream cheese icing, these pumpkin bars now have to be served with a warning to sit down before eating them. They have been known to make people weak in the knees.

Cranberry sauce is so easy to make. One little bag of cranberries, a cup of sugar, and a cup of orange juice. I recommend adding allspice, cinnamon, and some nutmeg, too. Heat it all up in a pot until the cranberries pop. That's what the recipe says. I like to heat it a little more til all the berries have definitely popped and I can smoosh them a little with the spoon so the liquid turns that seductive wine color. Mmm....oh yeah, then let it cool and chill it in the fridge. Serve chilled.

Cranberry sauce! Or, is it cranberries in the snow?

Ok now it's really cranberry sauce. All done and cooling.

I guess this didn't include much about the drinks. Ah well. It's morning, so...screwdriver? Gotta get my Vitamin C somehow.

Vegetarian meal: Spaghetti and salad

It's vegetarian recipe time! Spaghetti is a pretty standard meal around here. We used to get the "whole wheat" pasta but I (we?) really prefer the texture of the regular semolina, so we've gone back to that version. While we make spaghetti pretty often, it's seldom that we've paired it with salad. But this salad? This one has won us over. We hardly ever made salad before I stumbled on a Greek salad recipe one evening. Now we look forward to this mixed greens salad, and we've had it three weeks in a row. This meal is quite hearty and has excellent leftover potential.

Delish! Those big chunks in the sauce are portobello mushroom.

Spaghetti
The spaghetti noodles are just regular semolina spaghetti pasta; we get it at Costco. For the sauce, we start with Classico's Tomato and Basil sauce (yes, I am Italian and I use tomato sauce from a jar, whatever). Then we add a little canola oil (to saute the garlic and onions), freshly chopped garlic, sweet onion, black olives, a big portobello mushroom, a few smaller white mushrooms, and some dried oregano. Top it off with Parmesan cheese!

Salad + Dressing
Our favorite produce market sells a blend of salad greens where you just pile them in a bag. The blend has arugula, baby spinach, some of those weird viney greens, and some purple lettuce/spinach. I don't know all of the types in there, but it's like "mixed greens." We chop up red onion and soak it in cool water for five minutes, then drain; it's way easier to eat raw this way. After adding the onion, we'll add kalamata olives and feta cheese.

For the dressing, we use a modified version a recipe I found online. Mix 2 Tbsp lemon juice, 2 cloves minced garlic (or more! Yum!), 1/3 cup olive oil, oregano, black pepper (freshly ground is best), and a sprinkling of salt. I like to prep it before the salad veggies so the garlic can lose a bit of its bite. If you plan on having salad leftovers, only add the dressing on the portions you're serving. Olive oil congeals in the refrigerator, so it's best to keep the veggies and dressing separate until you're ready to eat them.

Enjoy!