Recipes Inspired by The Hundred-Foot Journey - What Bite Takes You Home?

Helen Mirren stars in the DreamWorks production of The Hundred-Food Journey, coming to theaters on August 8. When an Indian restaurant opens in the French village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val just 100 feet from an established French restaurant, it seems at first that the two cannot peacefully co-exist. We'll have to see the movie to find out whether they can resolve their differences, but in the meantime...

A theme in the movie is "every bite takes you home", so what foods remind you of home or take you back to a special memory or time of your life?

For me, it would probably be my Aunt Char's potato salad and noodle salad. I typically do not care for this type of food, but when my aunt makes these two dishes, they are divine. They take me back to Easter dinners of my childhood, when we always knew Aunt Char's potato salad and noodle salad (as well as her rainbow Jell-O) would be on the menu. These days she doesn't make her specialties as often, but when she does, I am in heaven. I don't even have the recipes, so I can't share them with you. Maybe someday I'll bite the bullet and try to make them on my own. Somehow I don't think they'll taste quite the same.

Food Network star Chef Bar Arneson has been inspired by The Hundred-Foot Journey to create six new recipes, and you can find them all right here. To get a better view of a recipe, click on it and then use the CTRL and + buttons on your keyboard to magnify the image.

I Saw it on Pinterest: Pumpkin Crumb Cake

Pumpkin Crumb Cake

I actually started this post last week, and never quite got around to finishing it. Since then I broke my beloved green cake stand, pictured above, while I was washing it, which makes me very sad because my grandma gave it to me. And I made this cake for the second time in a week...because it's that good.

 

I love Pinterest, and I love all things pumpkin. I've been trying to keep cans of pumpkin in the house at all times, just in case I come across a tasty looking recipe like this one. Speaking of which, I should carry a notebook with me and take notes at all times, because I seriously can't remember anything. Like who pointed me in the direction of this autumnal divinity, which my kids and I have eaten way too much of this week. I'm pretty sure a Pinterest link was posted to Facebook, and that's how I found it. Nonetheless, however I came about finding the recipe, it is on Pinterest now. And HERE is a link to the website where the full recipe can be found.

I'm not going to type out the ingredients and directions here, so just go ahead and get all that pertinent info from the link above. 

The recipe might look a little complicated, but it's truly not bad. Then again, I'm of the mindset that a little extra time and effort is well worth it when it comes to baking from scratch. But this recipe is just a matter of following the directions - no special skills required. Since the recipe calls for only half a cup of pumpkin, one small can of pumpkin is enough to make about two and a half pumpkin crumb cakes. I used my spring form pan, just cause I think it looks prettier, but I'm sure it would taste just as good coming out of a square baking dish.

The end result is a somewhat rich, not overly sweet, coffee cake with a hint of pumpkin flavor. The crumb topping is crunchy and wonderful, and not a crumb of it has gone wasted from a single plate. There is just something about this pumpkin crumb cake that makes it difficult to resist every time I find an excuse to pass through the kitchen.

I've also tried modifying a couple recipes using canned pumpkin. After seeing a post from Life After I "Dew" (whether it was on Facebook or the blog itself, I couldn't tell you), I decided to give two-ingredient pumpkin muffins a try. Maybe you've seen the recipe floating around the internet. Just combine a box of cake mix (I used spice cake) and a small can of pumpkin, and bake as usual. Really - no need to add anything else. My kids really liked these muffins, I'd have to say they were a big hit. 

I was telling a friend of mine about the pumpkin muffins, and she said the same can be done with a box of brownie mix and a small can of pumpkin. Having nothing to lose, I decided to give the brownies a try too. They tasted good right out of the oven, but the more they cooled the less I liked the pumpkin brownies. The kids liked them and ate quite a few, but they didn't devour them as they did the pumpkin muffins. My friend told me her kids preferred the brownies over the muffins, but my kids were the opposite. So who knows? Go ahead and try both "recipes"* and let me know whether you and yours prefer the muffins or the brownies. Don't forget about the pumpkin crumb cake either! Or if you have another pumpkin recipe that you love, please share in the comments.

*In quotes because it's only two ingredients, does that really constitute a recipe?

Progresso Recipe Starters

I've been in a major cooking rut for awhile. I'm frazzled, unfocused, and uninspired when it comes to meal planning and execution. Every day I have this general idea that I'm going to need to provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the troops, but each meal is successively more traumatic*. Breakfast is pretty easy. Lunch is a little more complicated. Dinner is a nightmare. Since I turned vegetarian, and Chris drastically cut his meat consumption, the situation has become all the more dire. Chris and I often end up eating our meals after the kids have been fed, and it's very disjointed. My goal is to find more meals our whole family can enjoy together, even if they involve simple tweaks so that Chris and I can modify our plates to fit the vegetarian bill.

Tonight, like every other night, I was rummaging through the cupboard looking for inspiration when I spotted a can of Creamy Parmesan Basil Progresso Recipe Starters that I had recently received from BzzAgent. Thinking quickly, I took out a box of pasta, then a large carrot, a pepper, Parmesan cheese, and some frozen broccoli. And voila! Dinner came together in a snap. Here's what I did, easy peasy:

1. Put a large pot of water on high heat to boil
2. Chopped up 1 large carrot and 1 green pepper while the water was boiling
3. When the water was boiling, I added about half a box of spaghetti and cooked as directed on the box
4. I poured a bit of olive oil into a skillet (enough to thinly coat the pan) and added the carrot, green pepper and some frozen broccoli. Then I covered it and cooked on low/medium heat while the spaghetti was cooking.
5. Drained the pasta and returned to the pot
6. Added about half a can of Creamy Parmesan Basil Recipe Starters to the cooked and drained pasta
7. Mixed the vegetables and some Parmesan cheese to the pasta and sauce mixture, and heated it all on low heat

And the verdict is...

The Good  Chris, Connor, and I loved it. We cleaned our plates, and Chris and I both had seconds. The Creamy Parmesan Basil flavoring was really good, and complemented the vegetables quite well. Other vegetables could be used in place of the carrots, pepper, and broccoli; making this a versatile recipe. Plus it was easy, which makes it a big fat winner in my book. No special ingredients were required. Simply. Easy. Tasty. I will be making this again.

The Bad  Lucy was in a "mood". In this case, being in a "mood" meant a blatant refusal to so much as try her dinner. As parents know, these moods are contagious. So as soon as Lucy started carrying on about how disgusting her food was; before she took a single bite, mind you, Mathilda caught the mood and pushed her plate aside before taking a single bite. So two girls were sent to bed without supper. I was really annoyed, because I'm pretty positive they would have liked it if they had tried it. Bethany was at a friend's house, so she's off the hook this time.

Despite the reaction from Lucy and Mathilda, I stand firm: I'm making this again. It was too easy and too good not to make it again. It's vegetarian, so we can all eat the same meal together. It's inexpensive and versatile. Most importantly, it's simple and requires no special trips to the grocery store to pick up weird ingredients that I don't keep on hand. And now I'm intrigued to try the other flavors of Progresso Recipe Starters, which include: Creamy Portabella Mushroom, Creamy Roasted Garlic, Creamy Three Cheese, and Fire Roasted Tomato.

Have you tried Progresso Recipe Starters yet? If so, which one did you try, how did you incorporate it into your meal, and did you like it? For more meal ideas, additional recipes can be found on the Progresso website.

Thank you BzzAgent and Progresso for providing me with a free can of Recipe Starters. All opinions are my own.



* Traumatic might be a bit of a dramatic over-statement.