Archive for the ‘Home And Family’ Category

Pumpkin Baking Recipes

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008
Jill Seader asked:


The smell of pumpkin baking always conjures up memories of Thanksgiving for me. The day always started early with mom bustling about the kitchen to prepare our feast. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade would always be playing in the background as she’d prepare the meal. We’d stop to watch or listen to some of the marching bands and acts they had. But always, always, would we stop to watch Santa coming down the street on his sleigh. To this day, the smells of turkey, cranberry, potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and pumpkin all blending in a beautiful medley of smells brings a smile of memory to my face. Those special Thanksgiving feasts and that special time with mom are memories that last a lifetime. I hope you enjoy these fun and unique pumpkin recipes during this holiday season.

Golden Pumpkin Cookies

1 1/3 cups sugar

1/3 cup shortening

3 beaten eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon grated lemon rind

1 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped nuts

1 cup canned pumpkin

Cream together sugar and shortening. Add eggs and vanilla. Add in flour, baking powder, salt, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Mix in lemon juice, rind, raisins, nuts, and pumpkin. Drop by teaspoons on a greased baking sheet. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes.

Double Decker Pumpkin Pie

4 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 tablespoon half-and-half

1 tablespoon sugar

1 1/2 cups thawed whipped topping

1 (6 ounce) graham cracker pie crust

1 cup cold half-and-half

1 package (4 serving size) vanilla flavor instant pudding

1 can (16 ounces) pumpkin

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Whisk the cream cheese, 1 tablespoon half-and-half, and sugar in a large bowl until the mixture is smooth. Add in the whipped topping. Spread this mixture over the bottom of the crust. Combine the 1 cup half-and-half and the pudding mix in the bowl. Beat well for 1 to 2 minutes (the mixture should be thick). Add in the pumpkin and the spices. Mix well. Spread this mixture over the cream cheese mixture already in the crust. Put in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours. To serve, add a dollop of whipped topping to each slice and a few toasted pecans. Serves 8.



Joseph

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Thanksgiving Check Off List

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
Victoria asked:


Thanksgiving is celebrating the fall harvest with friends and family. If you are planning a Thanksgiving dinner, it’s important not to forget anything, so you can your guests can have fun celebrating the holiday. Follow this Thanksgiving Check off List, so you can be sure that you don’t miss a thing.

Table Decorations

First of all, you must make sure that your table decorations have appropriate fall or Thanksgiving theme. You want to look for fall colors such as red, orange, yellow, or brown and patterns like pumpkins, squash, pilgrims, leaves, Native Americans, turkey, etc. Then, you can easily mix and match your dishes, flatware, serving wear, table cloth, etc. You want your guest to experience the fall spirit.

Drinks

You want an assortment of both alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks. To start off the evening, you want to offer your guests ice tea, soda, beer, or wine. Then at dinner, you want to serve ice tea, soda, or wine. Make sure you offer both red and white wines to your guests at dinner. Wine drinkers usually prefer one over the other. At dessert, you want to serve either hot tea, coffee, blush wine (white zinfandel), or port wine. If you want to get creative with drinks, you can add some Thanksgiving spice by making pumpkin lattes or pumpkin martinis.

Turkey

Eating turkey is a tradition on thanksgiving, and it’s delicious. You can deep fry turkey, which is the newest trend. Or for a more healthy turkey, you can use olive oil instead of vegetable oil and add some zesty herbs and spices. If vegetarians are attending your Thanksgiving celebration, don’t forget to pick up a tofu turkey, so they can join in on the eating celebration.

Side Dishes

Depending on how many guests are attending and what their preferences are, you can determine how many side dishes and the type of side dishes you want to serve. First, you want to have the typical thanksgiving side dishes such as stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy (for the turkey of course). Then, you would need a few potato dishes such as bake potatoes, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, or sweet potatoes. You can get a little bit creative with potatoes by adding some marshmallows and brown sugar to sweet potatoes, throwing in some garlic and cheddar in mash potatoes, or getting a few fixings like bacon, chives, sour cream, butter, and cheese for your guests to create a loaded bake potato. After, you want to get some veggies for health conscious guests. Some good options are green bean casseroles, broccoli, brussel sprouts, asparagus, or winter squash. Don’t add any butter or cheese beforehand to the vegetables, so you can accommodate the healthy eaters. You can always have sides of butter and cheese for other guests to add. Last of all, you need some warm bread or rolls to complete the side dishes. You can pick up some easy to bake bread or croissant rolls. Or if you are adventurous, you can even make homemade bread.

Dessert

The typical Thanksgiving desserts are pecan, apple or pumpkin pies. You can also add a few other desserts for guests who don’t care for pies such as cookies, fresh fruit, cupcakes, or cake. For an added bonus, you can incorporate thanksgiving foods such as pecans, apples, and pumpkins to create other fall desserts like pecan cookies, pumpkin bread, or apple cake. Regardless of how many guest you invite, make sure that there is an assortment of desserts that they would like.

Now, you have your thanksgiving check off list, so you wouldn’t forget to miss anything. You can purchase thanksgiving decor as well as food for your Thanksgiving meal by visiting Online Store Coupon Thanksgiving section.

Thanksgiving Deals & Thanksgiving Sales

Online Store Coupons post the latest coupons all year round including Thanksgiving. So Enjoy your Thanksgiving Celebration!



Robert

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What to Serve at Your Halloween Costume Party

Monday, March 17th, 2008
Robert asked:


There are traditional Halloween foods and food items: pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie, candy corn, assorted chocolate and candy bars, and more. But this Halloween, you want to whip up something different for your family and friends. Whether it is for a Halloween costume party or for your kids Halloween costume adventures (trick-or-treating, school parties), here are some wickedly tasty Halloween recipes!

Amazing Appetizers, Monstrous Munchies

Last year, my friend held a Halloween costume party. For her Halloween costume, she decided to be a Black Widow spider, the poisonous spider with a telltale red hourglass on its belly. She coordinated a lot of her Halloween costume party cuisine with her spider costume. For an appetizer, she served Spider’s Nest Dip, which sounds a bit gruesome but is a definite crowd-pleaser. It also went perfectly with her spider Halloween costume! For this recipe, mix 16 ounces Cream Cheese with ½ a packet of taco seasonings and a cup of sour cream. Next, spread a layer of refried beans on the bottom of a oven-safe dish and sprinkle a handful of cheddar or jack cheese over the top. Place dish in oven at 300 degrees until the cheese has melted. Use either homemade or store-bought salsa and guacamole for this next step: layer salsa, then some of your cream cheese mixture, and last, some guacamole. Continue to layer your items until you run out of ingredients: beans, shredded cheese, salsa, cream cheese mixture, and guacamole. Last, when you have used up all of your layering ingredients, place a spoonful of sour cream in the middle—the “spider’s nest.” Place about ½ a cup of sour cream in a plastic bag—Ziplock, grocer bag, whatever you have on hand. Cut a hole in one corner and, carefully squeezing the bag, draw concentric circles around the spoonful of sour cream. Put as many circles as you can without them blending together. Finally, use a pointed object like a toothpick to drag lines from the “nest” to the outside of the web. It will create a lovely web design. Serve with your favorite chips and garnish with plastic spiders. It’s a great addition to a witch, spider, mummy, or vampire Halloween costume!

Devilishly Delicious Eggs at Your Halloween Costume Party!

Deviled eggs haunt many a picnic, brunch, and family gathering. But little do we realize how great these are for fare at a Halloween costume party! And like the Spider Nest dip, you can coordinate this next recipe with your devil Halloween costume—or even your witch or werewolf Halloween costume. Boil one dozen eggs until hardboiled, cool, peel, slice in half, and remove the cooked yolks. Using a hand blender or chopper, blend together the yolks with 4 tablespoons mayonnaise, 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar, two cloves minced garlic, a dash of hot pepper sauce, and, if you like spicy, throw in a few slices of jalapeno pepper. Blend until completely mixed together and creamy. Using a spoon, stir in a few drops of red food coloring and stir until the mixture has become your desired shade. Fill the empty egg white halves with the red yolk mixture, garnish with parsley or peppers, and enjoy! It’s a festive dish, and it works well for Halloween costume parties, holiday gatherings, and potlucks.

You can also substitute other food coloring—green, blue, yellow, whatever you wish! After your Halloween costume party, everyone will be asking for this recipe.



Jerry

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An Infrawave Oven Helps You Enjoy Every Holiday Meal Faster & Easier

Sunday, February 17th, 2008
John Mann asked:


When Fall starts to be our season, most people begin to think about upcoming feasts including Thanksgiving. This year choosing an Infrawave oven will help you prepare the best meal ever. Not only can you prepare great tasting family favorites but you can do cook them in half the time.

This will not compromise the taste of your recipes at all in fact many may ask what changes you made to improve on the already great taste. Having one of these products may even let all the cooks enjoy more of the holidays.

Cooking the family turkey may not be entirely possible in one of these products depending on the size, but there are a few sizes that will fit. Some families may cook their small turkeys, chickens, ducks or ham for their family feasts.

When you are preparing meat dishes for your meals you will want to make sure you not only follow that famous recipe but the cooking instructions found in the infrawave oven instruction manual. You’ll be able to easily convert old family recipes to the super-fast Infrawave cooking times.

Maybe you have heard of these products and how great they are for meats but what about your side dishes? Once you cook your favorite recipe of sweet potatoes in one of these items you may not go back to the conventional oven. Purchasing this time saving product that cooks food evenly and gives it great taste will let you get every side dish cooked quicker than any holiday dinner has ever been cooked.

In fact when family and friends take a taste of dinner they will want to know how you out did yourself so quickly. It will be entirely up to you if you let them in on your secret or not.

The infrawave oven system will not only let you cook the best tasting meats and side dishes but also that secret pumpkin or cherry pie recipe. You’ll have more time to spend with your family because your new Infrawave oven will prepeare your food better than ever in less time as well.

Products that give us more time are important because we all value our time but when you find a product that does that and gives a great tasting dish you will use it over and over again.

Enjoy the holidays more than ever before you can start now and enjoy them clear through the New Year. You’ll probably see more uniform cooking results with the Infrawave. Not only will that time you would normally spend waiting on food to finish cooking not be wasted because cooking times are cut in half.

This will allow you to clean up and be on your way to enjoying family and friends for any holiday. You”l save so much time, you’ll probably want to add another dish to the feast. Add an infrawave oven to your must have appliance list for every holiday.



Joshua

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