Food
During the holidays, I always search for Italian-inspired recipes to try, as a way to connect to my heritage. Last year, it was Italian wedding cookies and Florentine lace cookies. This year, it’s homemade chocolate peppermint biscotti.
How this Green Bay, Wisconsin girl came to make Sock It To Me Cake from scratch is a bit of an interesting story. Jade and I were chatting about recipes that remind us of the holidays. He mentioned how Sock It To Me cake became a holiday tradition for his family because his mother loved it so much, his family often made it for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other special occasions. They even left it out for Santa one year!
Whenever I’m looking for interesting recipes, I always turn to Pinterest for inspiration. The other day, I pinned these pumpkin donut muffins and got pretty excited — the taste of a donut without the grease of frying and not having to buy a special pan to bake donuts. Awesome.
For me, Thanksgiving dinner is really about the sides. The turkey gets all the hype, but I could not care less about the bird (even though my hubby has a magical ability to make it really tasty). I’m a side dish gal all the way. As a kid, I would fill my plate with mashed potatoes (extra butter) and the fresh from the oven, still warm, dinner rolls. Yes, quite the healthy dinner plate.
My husband and I don’t eat very much candy. Our kids don’t eat much candy either — not just because we limit it, but mostly because they don’t like it. Crazy, right? This lack of candy-eating means that trick-or-treating yields a ton of leftover Halloween candy that we don’t really want around the house.
When October rolls around, I’m so ready for fall and all the flavors fall brings — especially all the pumpkin spice recipes I can find. I like me some pumpkin. I’ve shared my favorite pumpkin spice cookies, pumpkin nutella bars, pumpkin scones and pumpkin pancakes before, but I’m always on the hunt for different pumpkin spice recipes.
After researching homemade candy recipes, I couldn’t help but try making some myself. I haven’t met that many candies I didn’t like, but one of my favorites is junior mints — especially at movies.
I can’t believe it’s October already. But I’m happy it’s October because, in Phoenix, that means fall is here — the nights are the perfect temperature and days are a lot more bearable. Fall is also my favorite time of the year because it means Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner!
Do you have a fall obsession with everything pumpkin like I do? I’m not sure why we all go crazy for our #PSL the minute it’s available at Starbucks, but there is just this undeniable connection between fall and #pumpkineverything. Right?
