Ricotta Cheesecake with Caramel Apple Sauce

Boy has been asking me to learn to make cheesecake for a long time now; so when I spotted this recipe browsing through Cuisine at Home I knew it would end up on our table pretty quickly. This recipe is amazing, and even if you don't like cheesecake you must try this caramel sauce poured over something, it really is to die for!

Meatballs from Cuisine at Home

These are a family favorite, and the good news is they are not challenging to make, it's a lot like making cookies! This recipe can be easily scaled up to fit your crowd, or your freezer, because they freeze quite nicely too! Nothing like homemade meatballs in your freezer ready to be pulled for any weeknight dinner! My experiment with this recipe was substituting wheat bran for 1/3 of the bread crumbs and nonfat milk rather than whole. Result: no impact on flavor, but I'm guessing there must be some improvement on the nutritional information. These are great with pasta, in submarine sandwiches and in soups!

Roasted Cauliflower with Mustard Butter and Sausage

Yes this recipe is a spinoff off last time's recipe. Again this is adapted from the year 2000 Sep/Oct issue of Cuisine at Home magazine. While we were eating this the first time, with no sausage or modifcations, Boy expressed that while he was willing to eat the recipe again he wasn't excited about eating the recipe again. So of course I asked what he thought would have made it tastier, he responded that bacon or sausage would improve it. So I turned right around and added some sausage to it! The following recipe is what I came up with, I used a chicken apple chardonnay sausage from Trader Joe's but fell free to use any mild chicken sausage you like.

Roasted Cauliflower with Mustard Butter

Today I am introducing you to my absolute most favorite cooking magazine, from which this recipe comes. This is from the 2000 Sep/Oct issue of Cuisine at Home. I love this magazine, the recipes are great, the pictures are both beautiful and informative as they often demonstrate at least a few steps of the recipe; and the articles that preface recipes are engaging. It is a joy to read, even when the recipe they are discussing is something I would never normally eat or make. As a result I own all of their issues for the first 12 years of publication and greatly enjoy going through them as the seasons change looking for seasonal recipes and new inspiration. Their roasted cauliflower with mustard butter recipe is a delicious side dish, but we used it as a filling vegetarian meal and loved it, although Boy thought it would be better with some meat in it as a main dish.

Devil May Cry by Sherrilyn Kenyon Book Review

I found this book as an awesome bargain book at Dollar Tree, they had messed up on cutting the pages so couldn't sell it for full price I suppose but I could read it just fine. I really enjoyed this book as a pleasure reading book,

Honey Vanilla Pear Cake

Have you ever bought pears from the grocery store? Then you’ll understand how you can completely forget about them ripening forever on your counter until suddenly they need to be used right now. Well using smitten kitchen's nectarine brown butter buckle as a starting point and with modifications from The Flavor Bible I ended up with this cake,

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins from Closet Cooking’s recipe

I wasn't kidding about the giant zucchini last time, I used this recipe to use up the other half of the monster. Boy is big on all things chocolate and told a guest that they were brownies, so yes these are delicious! I again borrowed from Closet Cooking's solid recipe.

Blueberry Zucchini Muffins from Closet Cooking recipe

A coworker gifted me with a lovely homegrown zucchini from his garden, which was just a bit too big for eating straight in my opinion. So, I of course went looking for zucchini bread recipes and found this one on Closet Cooking.