Pumpkin and Olive Oil Challah – Thanksgivukkah Link up

thanksgivukkah challahThis year, Thanksgiving and Chanukah (or Hanukkah) fall at the same time. Everybody is really excited about Thanksgivukkuh, and we’re no different. Apparently, the two holidays won’t coincide for another 70,000 years or something! Of course Jewish Americans everywhere are eager to celebrate!  Continue reading

Stuffed Acorn Squash with Kale and Chick Peas

stuffed acorn squash with kale and chick peas {the kosher foodies}

It’s fall! And fall means winter squash! Wait… huh!? I guess it’s fall squash. Well, it’s not zucchini and yellow squash! It’s so much better.

Acorn squash is great, because it’s like a bowl! It’s nice and round, unlike its cousins delicata and butternut. So it’s often stuffed. Here, I stuffed the squash with kale and chick peas, along with a little bit of homemade tomato sauce. Continue reading

Double Pumpkin Biscotti

Can you believe tomorrow is already Thanksgiving!? It snuck up on me really quickly this year. Though I guess Christmas is already in the air here in New York, and on TV where I can’t avoid holiday shopping commercials.
We already shared a seasonally-appropriate meat main dish and a hearty fall vegetable with you this week, here’s a nice, light dessert to go with it.
Anyway, when Oh! Nuts asked if they could send me some dried fruits, nuts or seeds, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to make some Thanksgiving desserts. Thanksgiving = pumpkin, so I requested a pound of shelled pepitas (aka pumpkin seeds) and decided to bake some biscotti. Sometimes, especially after a day of eating heavy, starchy, meaty foods, it’s nice to have a light, crisp dessert.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread + Chipless Pumpkin Muffins

I got a pumpkin from my CSA! It’s a baby bear pumpkin, how cute is that! I had all sorts of ideas of things to do with this pumpkin, but since it was so little I had to limit the pumpkin recipes. I ended up roasting the seeds to make bizir and then getting about two cups of puree. With one cup I made this pumpkin bread and I froze the other cup with intentions to turn it into ice cream soon.

This chocolate chip pumpkin bread recipe has been in our family for ages. We have been making it at least once a year for as long as I can remember, always from fresh pumpkin. Jessica has the original copy of the recipe, which I’m pretty sure is a photocopy of a recipe that my mom used to use in her nursery school class. After going apple and pumpkin picking with her class she would always bring us a pumpkin to bake with; don’t we have the best mom!

I have memories of freezing the extras and being happily surprised a few months later to find pumpkin bread hiding among the ice cream in the back of the freezer somewhere. I think I’ll freeze some of this and then try to forget about it so I can find it later.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that the recipe is pareve? No need for adaptation here! Just make sure to use pareve chocolate chips (duh!). Because I thought I had in my freezer, but they ended up being dairy, which is why I made the muffins chipless (yeah, that’s a word).

Luckily, I just got another baby bear pumpkin from my csa! Maybe I will make pumpkin pie! And ravioli! Maybe some soup or risotto, too! I think I may be getting carried away, but for some reason the fresh stuff is so much better than the canned kind. I know it’s pure pumpkin, but why is it so orange?

Here’s a copy of our handwritten recipe for you: