There’s a new cook in the house. Baby Boogie insisted on cooking her own eggs the other day. She didn’t do a bad job either.

Both girls helped me with the pumpkins yesterday. Which was good because even with all their help it still took me all day to do all the cooking and canning I had planned. Because of all the cooking I did, I’m able to share 2 recipes with you today.

Cranberry Dressing (jelly, sauce, relish, whatever you want to call it)

Makes 1.5 pints

1 - 12 ounce bag of Cranberries.
1/2 cup of water
1/4 cup sweetener (rice syrup, cane juice, not honey that changes the flavor)
1/2 orange pureed (skin and all)
1/2 cup of Apple sauce

Dump everything into a large sauce pan. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat by half. Stir frequently for about 30 minutes. The cranberries pop as the cook, though it’s not wild popping so you don’t need to worry. You’ll be able to tell when the sauce is done because the cranberries will have popped and it’s an amazing red color. Remove from heat - the sauce will thicken as it cools.

I canned my sauce and I quadrupled this recipe so I’d have lots to can. This is a good way to bring it to Thanksgiving dinner and it can be a gift to the host or it can be eaten that day. It’s also good muffin filling. Remember this because I’ll give you a recipe for “surprise” muffins soon.

The Reason for the Pumpkins
Pumpkin Pie

Vegan, no soy, no gluten. And now that I’ve said what’s not in it:

3 cups of pureed cooked pumpkin
2 cups of Cashew milk
nutmeg, cloves, allspice, cinnamon (I only used a pinch of each but you know what you like)
a pinch of salt
3 flax eggs

I put everything but the “eggs” into the saucepan and reduced the pix just a bit. There was a lot of water in my pumpkin and I didn’t want it to take forever to set up. So I cooked it on med-low for a while until it started to thicken. If you use canned pumpkin you might not need to do this.

Then mixed in the “eggs” and I poured it all into 2 dishes. One dish was just greased, no crust and it came out more like a pudding. Because of the flax it was nutty to begin with and a really good pumpkin pudding. The other pan was a pie pan that I used a walnut crust. The crust is simple walnuts that I crushed into flour almost and moistened it with cashew butter so I could spread it over the bottom of the pan.

The pie came out a little too nutty with the walnut crust. When I make it again I’ll come up with a different less flavorful crust.

We canned a ton of pumpkin yesterday - we do a lot with pumpkin throughout the year. Finally my canning is done for the year. This is what the shelves look like:

Not too shabby. My Mom is storing all but a few jars of the stewed tomatoes. So all you see there is what I was able to can over the year. Oh, yesterday I also pureed a more oranges and canned those in the tiny little jelly jars. I didn’t know you could do that. It will be perfect for when I forget to get oranges at the store and I need one for a recipe.

And now, I got some spinning done.
I had ordered a massive box of feathers and I had to make this:

Falkland wool, Pheasant feathers, Crochet cotton in gold sparkle.
I’m in love with this yarn. It’s hanging at the shop right now, though I think it needs to be a hat.

The other bit of spinning I have done that I can show off is my Aftur sweater.

I still have about half of a pound of the main color (not shown up there). I don’t think I’ll need it though. I started the sleeve for the sweater only to really realize that I need to be finishing up deadline projects. It’s that time of year….

Speaking of which, my “what to buy” edition will be starting next week. I’ve been collecting links for weeks. There’s some cool stuff that you NEEEEEEeeeeeeed. Or that you need to have bought for you.