Sunday dinner

I am not always alone in the kitchen - and that is a good thing. With the onset of Fall, Sundays Dinner has once again become a weekly tradition in our kitchen. These are the meals that take hours of preparation - shopping, roasting, simmering, sauteeing - and they are most often prepared by my husband.

Currently the smells of Jaeger schnitzel are wafting from our kitchen.

My husband prepares his pork schnitzel by pounding it thin, dredging it in flour seasoned with garden herbs, pan sauteeing it, and topping it with a mushroom sauce that can only be described as swoon worthy. Tonight, we're having it alongside homemade spätzle with rainbow Swiss chard.

And I am on call for taste-testing....

In & out of the kitchen

As much as we enjoy spending time in the kitchen, we do love a good meal out every now and then. The problem is, more often than not, we leave feeling dissapointed, thinking: I like ours better.

But sometimes I leave with a sense of inspiration. I want to recreate a dish, or explore it in a new way.

Today we lunched at Besitos. My husband remembered a fabulous pork dish I'd ordered on our first visit, and we suddenly had to have it.

And it was good. Dollops of well-seasoned, fork-tender pork with cactus paddle and yucatan salsa served atop tiny little corn tortillas. Savory, spicy, delicious. I must recreate something like these! And I think I will. We are bound to have another Mexican-themed party sometime soon....

Pumpkin pancakes? Yes, please.

This morning, just for something extra special, we made pumpkin pancakes. Pancakes (or "pan-a-cakes" as our 5-year-old insists on calling them) are typically made on Sunday mornings in our house. But today my husband has the day off, and with our son up at 5:30a and giddy with Halloween festivity anticipation, we figured why not make it an extra special morning? He was thrilled.

stack of happiness

Like all of my muffin recipes, our pancake batter begins with whole wheat pastry flour. Today I added pumpkin, flaxseed, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and apple cider. The kitchen smells like the epitome of Autumn.

Weekday mornings

Weekday mornings in the Price household are fairly regimental: Soy lattes and one of my notorious oat bran muffins with a tablespoon of almond flaxseed butter.



perfection

 Lattes are strong, with a good amount of froth and a dusting of cinnamon and nutmeg. We Prices are not fans of flavored coffee, but I have been known to add pinches of allspice, cardamom and clove for a special pumpkin spice latte.

As for muffins, I am often asked for the recipe - it begins with basic ingredients including whole wheat pastry flour, oat bran and flaxseeds, then I add goodies such as:

• applesauce & apricots
• banana & carrot
• butternut squash & maple
• mango, ginger & pear
• pumpkin
• pumpkin & banana
• zucchini

Really, the possibilities are endless.

Yes, I am a self-described muffin baking addict. At any given moment, you could open our freezer and find nine to 18 frozen muffins, lined up neatly in their airtight ziplocks waiting to be toasted and slathered with nut butter. And that makes for a good morning in our kitchen. 

mango-ginger-pear muffins