Jennifer's 365 Project

Today I've spent some time in the kitchen. First I started by baking a batch of apple-strawberry oatmeal. Super tasty. Below is a modified version of a few recipes I found online.

Recipe

• 1 and 1/3c steel cut oats
• 1c milk
• 1/6c brown sugar
• 1 apple
• 5-6 strawberries
• 1tsp cinnamon

Directions

• Preheat oven for 350 degrees
• mix oats, milk, fruit and cinnamon in a bowl together.
• divide evenly among 4 containers
• place in pre-heated oven. Bake for 40 minutes.
• top with preferred toppings (raisins, nuts) or add splash of milk

Pumpkin Puree

• Pie Pumpkins uncut

  http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8193/8106984774_6546e16f9f_z.jpg
  

• using a hacksaw

  http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8333/8106975051_3fabd21369_z.jpg
  

• scraping out

  http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8465/8106974929_1dcb3fa692_z.jpg

  removing the seeds and pulp

  

• ready to bake

  http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8463/8106975147_ec8e7ce1dc_z.jpg

  removing the seeds and pulp

  

• done baking!

  http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8323/8106974729_8fda2278f8_z.jpg
  

• pumpkin skins

  http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8469/8106974587_796b6081c5_z.jpg

  the pile on the left is from the normal pumpkin I could slice with a knife. I could easily peel the skin away from the pumpkin, similar to how you peel a banana. On the right are the hard shells from the hacksaw pumpkin.I could not peel those pieces and used a knife to cut the pumpkin free.

  

• ready for the freezer

  http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8043/8106974469_c60c0eed52_z.jpg

  3 and 3/4 cups of pumpkin puree for the freezer

  

While the oatmeal was baking I started working on the next project - pumpkin puree. I used the Pioneer Woman's directions for making puree. 

I used the recipe on the back of the box, although the recipes I found online were all basically the same and involved using a wine of some sort. If I know Chris might eat something I'm making, I use a substitute like fruit juice. In this case the recommended substitute seemed to be pomegranate juice.

A lot of the recipes I read alternated between pan frying in a deep frying pan (which I dont really have) or deep frying. I opted for deep frying.

Aside from filling the entire house with smoke and making my eyes sting, the deep frying went alright. Although next time I may try pan frying and see if that makes a difference.

I ended up frying about half the shells and froze the rest of the dough for later.

The single cannolo I ate tasted fine, although the shell was a little tough. Of course, like I said before I've never actually had a cannolo, so I have no idea if it tastes right or not.