Special Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Coconut Bars

A tree, and Timon, during the 10 seconds of The Lion King where he's dressed in drag and doing the hula.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

As a mother, who has pulled more things out of her ear at the last minute invented a number of memorable meals based entirely on what's on hand in the fridge or pantry, I get this statement.  It doesn't apply only to food--you want to be a tree for Halloween?  They don't sell tree costumes in the store.  You need a Wilbur Wright costume for social studies tomorrow morning?  Which one is Wilbur anyway?*

The recipe I am posting today is one of those such inventions.  I'd roasted a pie pumpkin merely because I had some in the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve (don't rush to eat all your CSA winter squash--it will keep for a few months in a cool dry place) and I had the oven on already.  Truthfully, I tossed it in the oven after baking some muffins (that will be up in December, when you've got Band Fruit Fundraiser Citrus) and utterly forgot about it for a few hours.  I stuck the very-roasted pumpkin in the fridge until I could decide its fate--then fate stepped in, in the form of an email requesting parents bring a sweet treat for the band concert.

I had a cake mix, and I knew we always have success with Cake Mix Doctor® recipes, so I checked the Cake Mix Doctor® website and found this.  I hesitate to use peanut butter in anything for a school function, in case of allergies, so I swapped in my roasted pumpkin and made Chocolate Pumpkin Bars instead.  Actually, I made the pumpkin part, and I took photos of my tree sapling daughter making the rest.  Check it out!

Chicken Cider Stew (from Kitchen Parade): My Personal Fall In A Bowl!

Kristy of Gastronomical Sovereignty is on vacation in Merrye Olde Englande, so I'm sharing with her readers how I get two 'storage amounts' of my favorite cook's crops--garlic and basil--out of one garden plot over the course of a year.  The time to start this endeavor is now, and if you like to cook with garlic and pesto, you need to check it out!  You can read all about it here.

I'm doing this whole "I've got a guest post up, go see" thing completely wrong. Instead of just directing you to Kristy's blog today and calling it good, in fact I'm sharing the second installment (but first post) of my Food Bloggers Change My Life series.  Confusing?  Yes, sorry--I shared Rebecca at Foodie With Family's Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala previously, but I started the series because of Alanna of Kitchen Parade and A Veggie Venture.  She is my friend and Food Blogging Mentor (and I'm so grateful last year that she didn't laugh at my email of 'I'm thinking of starting a food blog').

Chicken Cider Stew is a savory stovetop dish that comes together quickly and uses the great stuff I'm getting from my CSA and my garden right now:  sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, onions and apples.

We like this served with a hunk of sharp cheddar cheese.

Every time I read a food blog, I get inspired to try all sorts of new flavor combinations, and sometimes I actually follow through with my ideas.  Rarely, though, does a recipe--exactly as written--become part of my regular menu rotation.

I'll digress at this point and say by 'menu rotation' that would imply that I actually have a menu plan.  Ha!  During the CSA farm share season (mid-May to Thanksgiving-ish for me) I never know what I'm going to get in the farm share crate.  And other than the cow in the freezer I never know what protein I'll have on hand.  So I just kind of wing it on a daily/weekly basis.  However, there are some meals that, when the right elements collide, I already know what I'm making for supper.

This recipe is one of those.  I read it when Alanna put it up on Kitchen Parade in 2007, had almost all the ingredients--still don't have savory--and made it.  Loved it.  The following Fall when it cooled off and my thoughts turned to stew, my farm share box had sweet potatoes, apple cider appeared in the farmer's market and the stores, I craved it again.  The next year, again.

And so it goes.  Reading that recipe six years ago made a permanent change in my Fall menu rotation. See, food bloggers are making a difference!

Cheddar Apple Onion Bacon Pizza

Two notes!  First, I've installed a print button, with options to remove images and non-recipe verbiage, in case you'd like to print a recipe.  It's down at the bottom of the post, let me know if you like it.

Second, I wrote the CSA Cookoff segment this week on HOMEGROWN.org, since I was merely walking a half marathon while Jennifer was having a blast at Farm Aid.  You can check out my Slow Cooker Sweet Potato and Chicken Curry recipe here!

In the pre-braces life, a favorite 'I don't want to cook' supper when it was just me and the kids was popcorn, apple slices, and cheese cubes.  I liked to make it with Gala apples, though my favorite apple is the delicious Larry variety from the Shenandoah valley that I got in a fruit share in our first ever CSA farm share. That easy meal satisfied the sweet, the salty, the need to chew and the desire not to be hungry in an hour.
Until we embark on the post-braces life, I will miss that meal . . . and corn on the cob, and everything bagels with lox, cream cheese, red onion, capers, and summer tomato.  Note to self, sneak out and get a bagel with the fixings before all the tomatoes are gone.  I never was a fan of Laffy Taffy, so I can't say I'm missing it.
Last week my mom brought me a red delicious apple, and since I'm not a fan of eating red delicious plain, I was primed to think of pizza.  When I saw this Apple Harvest Cheddar at Costco (with apple pieces and cinnamon--how cool does that sound?), I thought it would be good on a pizza with apples and something else, so I bought it.  I didn't really think I wanted to try corn on the pizza to recreate my easy supper, but caramelized onions and bacon sounded like good replacements.

Conveniently, I'd caramelized a mess of onions in the crock pot (I used and love Dorothy's method, though I'm going to try Alanna's Sweet, Dark and Dreamy method next time.  For research purposes) and froze them in recipe-size portions, so it was easy to grab what I needed.  I also had bacon baked and frozen.  My freezer can be a magical place.  Is yours?

In the interests of full disclosure, in addition to my mom giving me the apple, my neighbor gave me a big bag of onions that I used to make these caramelized onions.  I bought the rest of the stuff.

It's possible I'm becoming a foodie.  The jury is still out, but go ahead and try this pizza (with any type of cheddar cheese, of course, if you're not near a Costco) while the deliberations continue.