Julia and LuLu?

I asked for "Mastering The Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child for Christmas and my wonderful cousin got me this gorgeous two volume set! Ya, I opened it before Christmas. So what??

Just look at how beautiful it is! I can't wait to start cooking out of this. You'll be seeing lots of recipes from this.

Holiday Pie Baking

Recently my friends, Holly and David, moved into a beautiful home with an especially beautiful kitchen. A kitchen of which I am very jealous. For the most part I love my apartment, but it's lacking in the kitchen department. I have roughly a foot of counter space. Holly and David, on the other hand, have what feels like a million feet of granite. My first reaction was "I would make so many pies if I lived here!" There's so much space to roll out dough. Thankfully they both love to cook so they took me up on it.

Yesterday we had an awesome day of pie baking, egg nog drinking and listening to Christmas music. Could I be happier? (Read that in Chandler voice.) David made all the crust from scratch and it was awesome. I've made scratch crusts before and they're fine but not spectacular. I've said before that I don't think they're that much better than store bought, so I gave it up. David may have swayed me back. I was always worried about over working the dough and making it tough. I learned from David that I wasn't working it at all. His crusts were so smooth and gorgeous, but still tender and flaky when baked. He also sold me on a french rolling pin. I always hated those ones with the handles so I quit using them. I'll confess I've been using a glass rum bottle. We made five pies and it was hard not to cut them all. It was such a lovely day and a wonderful addition to my holiday season. Thanks guys. xo

Classic apple. The perspective with my feet is ridiculous in this one.

Apple Sausage. Totally over stuffed. David made homemade sausage for this. It was so much more delicious than store-bought and rather easy. I'll blog it soon.

Toll House Pie. I had to walk away from this one so I didn't cut it too.

Old Fashion Cream Pie. This a family recipe of Holly's. It blew my mind. You'll probably hear more about this too.

And the coupe de gras...Cherry with a lattice top. I love making a lattice top and this one turned out so nicely. I was worried it wasn't full enough and look how much it overflowed! Oops.

Roasted Butternut Squash with Onions and Curry

The cut squash I had leftover from making the hummus was one of the few edible items in my fridge tonight which made it the obvious choice for dinner. These moments when you think "what can I throw together?" are when some of my favorite things are invented.

Butternut Squash Hummus

When I saw this recipe on Craft I knew I had to make it. It's a delightfully simple recipe from Delighted Momma. (see what I did there?) I had some friends over for dinner on Saturday and figured it was a great chance to try it. This is one of those recipes to add to the "ridiculously simple yet impressive" pile. 

What you will need:

• 2 cups of butternut squash

• 1 can garbanzo beans

• 1/2 cup of tahini (sesame seed paste)

• 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. 

• 2 cloves of garlic. 

• The juice from half of a lemon

• A dash of cumin

• 3 dashes of cinnamon

• 3-4 dashes of pepper

Slice the butternut squash into small pieces and boil for about 8-9 minutes or until soft. Throw all the ingredients into a food processor or blender and pulse until smooth and creamy. I told you it was simple.

It's very delicious and was a hit with my guests. My food processor is really little so I had to do it in batches. It's also not that great, so mine wasn't perfectly smooth. A better, larger food processor or a blender probably yields a smoother hummus, but mine was still yummy. I served it with soft pita triangles, but you could use it all the ways you use your favorite hummus now. I plan on putting it in a sandwich with veggies tomorrow. The jar of tahini was kind of expensive so I'm going to look for other recipes it can be used in.