Pumpkin Muffins with Walnuts, in our new place!

      Hello hello again! It was so hard to be away from the blog for so long, especially since there's so much I've been exploring and wanting to share. Long story short, I occasionally have the worst luck in the world, which I like to think of as a bad luck waterfall downward spiral up a creek without a paddle sort of event. I'm not always this unlucky, but when it hits, the luck is BAD. This time my bad luck manifested in my ability to be in touch with the world. Between my cell phone and connecting to the internet, I've experienced enough "Well it should be working, wonder why it's not..." moments in the last six weeks to last me...a long time.

      I've done so much exploring, reading, watching Gilmore Girls, and frugally shopping for dishes, kitchen utensils, and furniture in the last few weeks. At first it was really fun, like living the best version of life, but after a few weeks it's gotten hard to handle! Starting anything anew is always exciting at first, but the excitement has faded a bit as I've started to get accustomed to our new home and this big city, and realized...I need something to do with my time!

      Taking a break from job hunting, I decided I'd work on a few blog posts today. And of course, I've started with the most delicious one! It's turned to fall here so quickly! These cold, cloudy days are just begging for all the fall comforts, including everything pumpkin.

      I have a long history of a tumultuous relationship with breakfast. For most of the past five years or so, I've struggled to want to eat breakfast. Don't get me wrong, I love breakfast food! I just seem to prefer it, well, mostly for dinner, ha! My stomach seems to strongly dislike waking up. This has been problematic, specifically for functioning at work, eating before running events I'd signed up for (pretty much ruined a 10 mile race for me), visiting people and going out to eat for breakfast, and generally it's just never a good thing. Over the years, with my gastroenterologist, we've figured out a routine that helps and a few of the reasons why, which maybe I'll get into another time, but one of the strategies I use to entice my stomach in the mornings is by baking whatever I'm craving in muffin form.

      This brings us to pumpkin muffins! With the stress of moving, even when I haven't felt stressed about it, my gut has reverted to it's old ways and I've just not been into breakfast here. It's meant I get late starts to the day and feel like I'm missing out on time I should be using more productively. So, since I'm craving all things fall, I made these wonderfully simple pumpkin muffins from a German blog called "Esspirationen" which translates, essentially, into "eat-spiration" and which I think is beyond adorable. I'll leave a translated version below, but feel free to use your web browser to translate the page from Germany.

      I had to make these little darlings in my new toaster convection oven, because this is my life now.  My kitchen situation, as compared to previous living arrangements, is quite sparse, and I've just got the basics. For example, aside from only having a small convection oven, I mixed everything by hand because I don't yet have a mixer! And I don't have great counters for baking prep, so until we get a table I'm confined to tiny counter spaces which I promptly make a huge mess. At least they are delicious!

Thanks for tuning in, and look for more posts soon, I've so much to share from my "offline" time! 

Pumpkin Muffins with Walnuts and White Chocolate
Translated from Esspirationen
*I omitted chocolate from mine- I KNOW crazy- but that's the way it was! I encourage you to follow the original recipe for yours :)

Ingredients for 12 muffins
200 g Hokkaido pumpkin
150 g spelled flour Type 630
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
100g sugar
1 packet Bourbon vanilla sugar
75 g butter or margarine
1 pinch of salt
50 g walnuts
100 g white chocolate
1 pinch of gingerbread spices

Preparation 
Cook the Hokkaido pumpkin throughout for 15 minutes in a large pot in plenty of water. Then remove and let cool slightly. Roast the walnuts in a dry frying pan and chop. Chop chocolate (up to 2 ribs) coarsely too. Cut out 200 g of pumpkin flesh and puree. Preheat the oven to 200 ° C (top / bottom heat). Beat butter and sugar until creamy, then add eggs and a pinch of salt and beat for 2 minutes. Mix flour with spices and baking powder and stir. Add to butter and sugar mix and stir, then add the pumpkin puree. Stir in chopped nuts and chocolate. Prep a muffin tin and spread the batter evenly in it. Bake 20 minutes. In the meantime, the remaining chocolate ribs melt in a small bowl in a water bath. Leave the finished baked muffins to cool slightly in the mold, then release them from the mold and decorate with the melted chocolate and powdered sugar.

Pinterest Soup Round Up

It's been a while! I was so excited to share my blog link with Facebook friends...and then I apparently fell off the face of the Earth. But really I just got sick. I'm finally feeling better and feeling way behind on many of my regular habits, including blogging. I've also gotten behind on: running, my rec soccer team, work at school, my baking challenges, socializing with people, pretty much everything. So I'll probably have several posts in the next few weeks as I try to get caught up.

Since I've been sick at the exact same time that the world is freaking out over how it feels like fall (y'all), I've been making a lot of soup. My husband is not entirely a "soup person," and he also hasn't been sick, so I'm sure he is tired of it by now. But if I'm cooking and I'm in the mood for soup, well then by golly that's what I'm making. He'll make a bagel if he doesn't want to eat it, which just means more soup for me, so I won't complain. Here are some of the soups I've seen on Pinterest and made in the last month, with a little review of each.

Red Thai Curry Soup (from Amuse Your Bouche)
Rating: Make again with revisions
Review: Everything I wanted in a curry soup, and the red curry paste added a nice change in flavor from the traditional curry flavor. I wanted it to be spicier (thanks, sinuses) but didn't add anything to spice it up aside from the ingredients listed. Next time maybe I'll add some red pepper flakes.

Sausage, Spinach, and White Bean soup (from Damn Delicious)
Rating: Make again with revisions
Review: I like soups with beans and a little kick, and this fit both of those categories because I used hot sausage. My husband and I both agreed we didn't care for the celery in this soup. It just didn't really fit in. I also did not make this in the slow cooker, and instead made it on the stovetop and let it simmer for about an hour. I really like the idea of this soup, but would definitely leave out the celery next time

Cheddar Ale and Bratwurst Soup (from Baked by Rachel)
Rating: Make again
Review: This was SO delicious. Probably because I put extra cheddar in it. Or maybe because it was the beginning of October and the world was all "Oooh Fall! Ooooh Oktoberfest! Oooh pretzels!" I had made some pretzels for my baking challenge that week and with Bratwursts in the freezer, I just had to make this soup. We ate it with the pretzels instead of out of bread bowls. Hubs said this was definitely a winner, and I agree- the flavors were strong and combined well to make a hearty soup.

Sweet Potato and Coconut Milk Soup (from Katie at the Kitchen Door)
Rating: Make again for me, not for Hubs
Review: I loved everything about this, but the texture of it was not something my husband enjoyed. He said it seemed like it should be a bisque instead of a "hearty" soup, and I agree. I might use a canned coconut milk next time, to thicken it a bit more, but having grown up on my mother's potato soup, the texture of this soup felt familiar and comfortable to me. The recipe suggested serving the soup with brown rice and lentils. I went with plain rice and lentils; didn't bother me one bit! Adding the orange juice is an interesting idea for this soup, and it gives it a surprising citrus after taste. This was excellent sick day soup.


Soups up next on my list: 
- Chili, still deciding my favorite recipe
- Ribollita (from Erren's Kitchen)
- Spicy Shrimp and Bok Choy noodle bowl, one of my all time favorites from Rachel Ray that I haven't made recently and I'm craving it again. My dad's wife made it at a family gathering several years ago and I've bookmarked that recipe and made it several times since then.


The "make again" rating system is something my husband and I use to avoid the debacle of having to say food we make is either not good or lying and saying that it is good even when we don't like it. He told me he was afraid he'd have to say everything I make is delicious, and then risk me continuing to make things that he hates. I felt the same way about when he is cooking, since he cooks less often (and I don't want to discourage it!). So if we don't like something the other one makes, we'll say "It's good, but not really a 'make again' good." No hurt feelings, all honest, and keeps us both looking for new things to make instead of eating the same things all the time.