Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

So the news of the week: it's fall.  It's definitely fall in Atlanta.  Highs have been in the mid-50s-low 60s, but that means we don't see those highs until late afternoon.  The rest of the day is, well chilly.  Plus the sun hasn't been out much lately.  It feels like October in Wisconsin for goodness sake.  So I've been feeling fall-y.  And my old aversions to things like pumpkin and fall type spices are disappearing (as witnessed by the apple spice cake trifle I have yet to post about).  But this means I've really been craving pumpkin lately.  However, Publix has been out of pumpkin (they just restocked VERY recently) and then because of the reduced pumpkin market, Target was also out.  So I ran to Kroger and grabbed a can without much though.  I brought it home and opened it and... it was a little runnier than usual.  And it smelled like... spices.  It was pumpkin pie mix, oops.  So this works in cookies, but now I'm stuck trying to figure out other sweet things I can make with pumpkin pie mix (I was planning on using it to make pumpkin black bean soup this weekend, but I don't think I want pumpkin pie mix in that!)

In spirit of fall, I think I might attempt an apple cake with pumpkin carmel (and yes, "carmel" is a two syllable word in my world) sauce.  I just need to find someone to feed it to.

But anyway, here are the pumpkin cookies.  I brought them around in the math department and everyone really liked them.  I grabbed the AXO recipe, but it's pretty much the same as all the others you will find out there.

Description:
This one is from Maura O'Beirne-Stanko and these cookies are fabulous!! I know pumpkin and chocolate aren't an obvious combination but at my house these are a favorite year round - not just in the fall. Maura just made them for ZU Initiation last week and the sisters raved about them.

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup shortening (or butter)

1 cup pumpkin

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla
6 oz bag chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Directions:
Cream together the sugar, egg and shortening. Add the pumpkin. Blend well.

Stir together flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder and cinnamon. Add to pumpkin mixture.

Add vanilla, chips and nuts (if using).

Drop in rounded teaspoonsful on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Do not overbake. Cool and store in an airtight container.

Root Vegetable Soup

The rainy weather last week made me feel like fall was really here, so I was craving fall type foods. And I thought, what better than making a root vegetable soup? I was going to follow a recipe and then didn't really follow it at all. I was at Whole Foods, appreciating the selection of vegetables they just don't have at Publix (at least not the tiny one I do most of my shopping at). Rutabaga? Sure, I'll figure out something. Parsnips, they're kind of like carrots, right? So I found a soup recipe, after buying these things, that called for turnips, so I ran to Publix (turnips are normal enough to have at Publix, especially at this time of year). The recipe I was following didn't have any seasonings besides onions and garlic, and I just didn't that would do. I had some leftover fresh thyme from my ratatouille (which I still need to post, oops), added that, but it didn't seem, fall-y enough. So I dug up a little fennel (my spice cabinet is full of useless spices), but only put a little in because I'm not a huge fan of the fennel flavor, I just wanted enough to make it taste like autumn. And what else tastes like autumn? Cinnamon of course! (Actually considering I put cinnamon in everything from chili to chocolate pudding to stews, cinnamon tastes like all seasons, but I guess I especially associate it with the cooling temperatures). And I also added my other go to ingredient when something is bland: red pepper flakes. Oh, one more thing, I forgot to buy celery, but I happened to have a can of tomatoes with celery and green peppers, so I used that instead of regular tomatoes, but more celery would have been better.

The soup is decent, I'd say it was better today then Saturday when I first made it. If the pot had been larger, I could have added more water and hence cooked up some Trader Joe's Harvest Grain Blend in it, but there just wasn't room in my 5 quart pot.

On a more personal note, I've never cooked with rudabagas before and had little experience with them. I did not try a raw piece, but they smelled very much like colarabi, which I think I remember liking last time I had it. But my goodness is rudabaga hard to chop. Definitely get small ones so you have less to cut through.

Root Vegetable Soup
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 small rudabaga, peeled and cubed
3 turnips, peeled and cubed
3 parsnips, peeled and sliced
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
2 russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 vegetable boulion cubes
1 can tomatoes with celery and green peppers with juice
5+ cups water
Fennel, to taste
1/2 tsp+ cinnamon
Red pepper flakes, to taste
Thyme (optional)


Prepare veggies
Heat up oil in large pot, then add onion and garlic and cook for a while. Then add tomatoes, veggies, boulion cubes, and enough water to make a soupy consistency (I didn't have room in my pot to add enough to make it true "soup" rather than stew). You might want to add more boulion if you are adding lots of water. Add spices and cook until vegetables are tender (my recipe said 45 minutes, but it was less than this because I cut most of the vegetables pretty small). Check the taste midway through to determine if you need more of any spices. I always can go for more cinnamon personally, and I think I added extra garlic powder midway through because it wasn't garlicy enough (even though I upped the recipe from one clove to 3).