Is It Really Mid-November Already?! :)

 I can't believe it's mid-November! Can you? As you can probably tell from my lack of blog posts lately (my last one was 10 days ago!), life has been pretty busy. The hubs and I are moving soon, and as everyone knows, moving is stressful! And it's time consuming. I just haven't had the time, nor the energy, to focus on blogging. Hopefully after the move and we're feeling more settled, I'll be back to baking and blogging!

In the meantime, I thought I'd just share a fun blog post with you...a little of this and a little of that!

First thing? Mike and I celebrated our one year anniversary on November 3rd! I can't believe it. That year flew by. :)

We celebrated by going out for a nice dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants in Jamaica Plain, Ten Tables (I've actually blogged about it before). It was amaaaazing. We rated it in our top three meals ever! Now that's pretty good.

Needless to say, after we ate all the food pictured here, we were pretty full! :)

What else, let's see...

Tea! Now that it's gotten much colder, I've been having tea at least once or twice a day.

One of my favorite kinds is Yogi's Kava Stress Relief. I love that each tea bag has a quote on it too. This one was one of my recent favorites: "Mental happiness is total relaxation." It's a delicious tea too, flavored with cinnamon, sarsaparilla, ginger, and cardamom. I highly recommend it!

During the month of October, Mike and I joined the October Unprocessed pledge with Eating Rules, where with thousands of other people, we pledged to eat as many unprocessed (and as few processed) foods as we could. It was a great challenge! We really enjoyed the experience. I plan to write a blog post about it at some point...

Lastly...eggs! Mike and I cook eggs all the time, and we've recently made a couple delicious egg recipes, one of which was eggs poached in tomato sauce. Oh. My. Goodness. So good! And so easy too. We enjoyed this as an easy weeknight meal. I followed this recipe in case you want to try it yourself! And we added some crumbled feta on top. Because feta makes everything bettah!

I hope you don't mind the randomness of this post, but I thought it would be fun to share with you some bits of life outside the blog!

Oh, and TGIF ;)

Spicy Pumpkin Hummus

Pumpkin season is here and has been for a while. Personally, I wish it was here all year round. And I know people say that we wouldn't appreciate it as much if it was here year round, but I don't know... I still think I would love pumpkin just as much and be just as excited to make recipes with it! But that's just me. :)

I'm excited to share with you a pumpkin recipe that's not a baked goodie for a change! I think that this delicious pumpkin hummus could be a great addition to your Thanksgiving appetizer spread.

The recipe came from Hollie's Hobbies blog.

Ingredients:

-1 can (15 oz.) chick peas

-1 can (15 oz.) pure pumpkin

-4 garlic cloves

-2 tsp. chili powder

-1/2 tsp. cumin

-1/2 tsp. ground ginger

-1 tsp. cinnamon

-1 tsp. salt

-3 to 4 Tbsp. olive oil

-2 Tbsp. honey

-1/4 cup beer (I used Sam Adams Harvest Pumpkin Ale)

-2 Tbsp. lemon juice

-1 Tbsp. pepitas (optional)

Instructions:

Combine all ingredients, except pepitas, in a food processor. Process until the hummus is smooth. Taste it, and if needed, add more spices (of your choice) and olive oil. Put hummus into a serving dish, top with a tablespoon or two of olive oil and pepitas. Serve with veggies, pita chips, etc.

As you can tell from the photos, I didn't add the pepitas, as I didn't happen to have them on hand. Otherwise, I had all the ingredients on hand so this was a breeze to make - no need to go to the store for anything special!

And although I used a pumpkin beer, I bet many different styles of beer would work well with this, so feel free to use your favorite. Or, if you'd rather, you can omit the beer; just add a little more olive oil.

This hummus definitely has a kick to it! I am not a huge fan of spicy foods, and for me, the spice amount was just right. It had a kick, but it wasn't too strong. Definitely taste as you go. If you don't care for spicy foods, you may want to add less of the chili powder to start. And if you love spice, go ahead and add more!

In addition to being a great dip for veggies or pita chips, this hummus would be an awesome spread on a sandwich too!

It was so easy to put together. In less than 10 minutes, you have a delicious, healthy appetizer. As I said earlier, this would be a fantastic addition to your Thanksgiving appetizer spread this year!