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Served with bacon, these filling pancakes were a comforting breakfast-for-dinner on a cold, snowy winter night. I took a photo of this one because I thought it kinda looked like ... something ... maybe a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Princess Leia or Nancy from the old comic strip. But instead of selling it on eBay, we ate it. SPICY PUMPKIN PANCAKES 2 1/3   cups Original Bisquick® mix 1/3   cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix) 1 1/4   cups milk ...

I have waited a whole year to show you this cute idea for a place card on your Thanksgiving table! I found this idea online somewhere last year -- on Thanksgiving Day. It was super easy to pull off with things I had around the house. Take a brown paper lunch sack. Fill it about 2/3 full of popcorn -- I used kettle corn. Twist the top of the bag tightly. Make the frilly white paper "booties" for the end of the drumstick by folding a length of white cardstock or copy paper in half -- about 2 inches wide by 8 inches long. Use scissors to cut through the folded side -- don't cut all the way. Make cuts every 1/4 inch or so. Eyeball it. Roll the strip of slashed paper around the end of turkey leg and hot glue the end to secure it. I wrote each guest's name on the little paper bootie. Here's a close-up: Happy Thanksgiving!

The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. -- Psalm 126:3 This year, we are doing Thanksgiving a whole new way. At least it's new to us. We've been talking about doing something like this for a couple of years. Our first Thanksgivings we prepared our share of the big meal and schlepped it 20 miles across the county to my mother's house, where my home-bound uncle also resided. When he died in 2009, we decided she could come to us. Besides, no one really wanted to spend Thanksgiving there without him. On Thursday, we will hold another first: We'll join with two other families and host a free community dinner at our church. We have wanted for a couple of years to serve food at a soup kitchen. This will not be a soup kitchen, nor will it feel like a handout. Organizers have worked hard to make the church multipurpose sanctuary/fellowship hall feel like a home. The tables have centerpieces. Crayons are on the tables for children to color the place ma...

We had this for lunch Saturday, actually. Everyone -- even the 7-year-old and her 11-year-old cousin -- liked it. I picked up the ingredients for it partly in celebration that Walmart in Oakland, Md., has Boboli now and that my daughter discovered she liked feta and black olives. I didn't have lemon-pepper seasoning and I saw no need to buy it for one recipe so I used Cavender's Greek Seasoning. We still had some chicken, onion, spinach, sauce and cheese left over so on Sunday I made mini versions using tortillas. They needed to bake for only 5 minutes. Easy Greek Pizza 1 prebaked 12-inch pizza crust 1/2 cup pizza sauce 1 teaspoon lemon-pepper seasoning, divided 2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh spinach 1 small red onion, thinly sliced and separated into rings 1/4 cup sliced ripe olives 3/4 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese Place crust on an ungreased baking sheet; spread wi...

I'm not flawless in the kitchen, but we rarely waste food or have to eat my mistakes. I can usually save whatever I've flubbed. One recent weeknight dinner is a good example. I was making Chicken Balsamico with hot orzo, a recipe I learned at this fall's Taste of Home Cooking School. I'm sure I heard the culinary expert say to cook 1 cup of orzo in 1 can of chicken broth. Maybe she said a half cup of the rice-shaped pasta? Maybe I was supposed to put a lid on it? Reduce the heat? Remove it from the heat? Stir frequently? Maybe I was supposed to add a can of water to the chicken broth before boiling? Whatever I did wrong left me with undercooked orzo that stuck to the bottom of the pan. Hating to waste food, I stirred in water -- about a cup -- hoping to deglaze the pan and get the orzo al dente. It worked and the water either cooked off or was completely absorbed. Disaster averted. Dinner was served. Dinner was all right. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't left craving...

If you need something to fill in your Christmas Eve dinner party buffet or if you were asked ot attend a holiday potluck at the last minute, try these elegant and supremely easy little wonders. Buy some whole pitted dates, some goat cheese and some walnuts. I'm assuming you have powdered sugar and orange juice on hand. Split one side of the whole date. Grab a little piece of goat cheese and stuff it in the date. Plop a walnut half or piece (depending on the size of the date) on top. Drizzle the whole batch with some icing you whip up by mixing a little orange juice into some powdered sugar.

I almost added the word "easy" to the headline on this post. The recipe for Christmas Spice Butter is easy. Admittedly, the other technique -- for making dinner rolls shaped like doves -- requires some time and an eye for detail. If you like the sweet, spicy butter at Texas Roadhouse, this is a good knock-off. It is great on rolls and sweet potatoes. CHRISTMAS SPICE BUTTER 1 cup unsalted butter, softened 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice 1 tablespoon sugar Place all ingredients in a mixing bowl. Beat with an electric mixer until fluffy and well-combined. Transfer to a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate until needed. Makes 1 cup. Shaping the doves is the hardest part of making the rolls because you're using thawed frozen rolls. It's no harder than rolling the bread dough into a rope and tying a knot. You'll need clean kitchen shears to snip the tail into feathers. Whole cloves are the eyes and sl...

There is something hollow and phony to me about going around the dinner table at Thanksgiving and telling what we're thankful for. If that is your tradition, that's fine for you and I am not belittling it. It is not my tradition as I strive to give my thanks to God every day or at least every week at church. Specific thanks for His general goodness and for instances where I believe I have seen His handiwork in my life, such as divine appointments and deliverances. When I am a guest somewhere and pressed to share what I'm grateful for, I usually say something flip but honest like "four-wheel-drive and coffee." But it is immensely important to me to be real (and I am thankful for go-in-the-snow ability and the caffeine that gets my motor running every day of the year.) Being real is so important that when I hear children at my table singsong "God is great, God is good" seemingly without contemplating the words' meaning or, worse, rushing through it or ...

Wow. Tonight's dinner was special and awesome. I consoled myself for missing tonight's firemen's parade at the 67th Annual Preston County Buckwheat Festival by making a fully-cooked-just-heat-and-eat glazed ham with from-scratch summer squash cornbread and sweet potato, dried cherry, Madras curry and bleu cheese dressing. (That's dressing as in a casserole-style side dish that can also be used to stuff turkeys and game hens, not salad dressing.) I'll get right to the recipes and photos. Yum! SQUASH CORN BREAD From Taste of Home's Simple & Delicious Sept./Oct. 2008 This recipe makes two -- one to eat now and one to freeze. If you're trying it for the first time, you can halve the ingredients make just one, as I did. I like that it packs in extra nutrition and uses up some summer squash. 5 medium yellow summer squash (about 2 pounds), chopped 2 packages (8 1/2 ounces each) cornbread/muffin mix, such as Jiffy 4 eggs, lightly beaten 2/3 cup 4 percent cottage...

This is a tasty way to sneak in a vegetable and stretch a pound of ground meat. BURGERS WITH MUSHROOMS AND ZUCCHINI 1 pound lean ground turkey 1/2 pound mushrooms, wiped clean, trimmed and finely chopped 1 cup whole-wheat or Italian breadcrumbs (see bonus tip) 1/2 cup grated zucchini 1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 2 heaping tablespoons ketchup 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper Nonstick cooking spray 1 tablespoon oil 4 bagels, split and toasted Steak sauce or ketchup for topping Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Use a food processor to chop the mushrooms and grate the squash. In a large bowl, mix the meat, mushrooms, breadcrumbs, zucchini, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, salt and pepper until well-combined. The mixture will be moist. Form into eight patties. Coat a large nonstick ovenproof (like cast-iron) skillet with cooking spray and set it over medium-high heat. When the skillet is hot, add the oil. Add the burgers and brown on one side for 4-5 minutes. Turn the burgers, then ...

Tuesdays are dance class nights and my 4-year-old isn't the only one who has to shake a leg. We get home about 7:15 p.m. and I have to make dinner fast under the looming deadline of 8 o'clock bathtime. Soupbeans and cornbread have been in my repertoire of quick meals for years. But I've just found a way to make it even faster. Some folks might cook their own beans but I haven't tasted any better than Randall's Great Northern Beans in a jar. I use the cornbread recipe on the back of the Quaker corn meal box, but I bet Jiffy mix would work OK, too. The timesaver is in how you bake it. Use the waffle iron!!! I can't take credit for that tip -- I read it in Cook's Country magazine. But it works great in a couple of ways: it saves time and eliminates wasted leftovers. In the past, we've had lots of leftover cornbread that went to waste when the beans ran out. Baking the batter into waffles lets us easily freeze the extras and because of their shape and unifor...

There are simple, inexpensive ways to make every day elegant and special. Candles are a must in my house. Sometimes just doing something different makes the house or the evening feel special. Use the good dishes on a tablecloth with real napkins. Float the blossom of a flower, even fake, in a wineglass of water. Light a couple of inexpensive candles and you've got instant ambience without spending extra money. Same goes for the food if you choose out-of-the-ordinary recipes that can be made with pantry staples. Weather conditions on Valentine's Day this year were blizzardlike so it was good we hadn't planned to go out. Instead we ate my favorite dinner [right now anyway], spaghetti aglio-olio. And I know I mixed cultures but because I had some Manchego to use up, I made a starter of julienned Granny Smith apples and the Spanish sheep's milk cheese. Chunks of mild, nutty/salty, "crunchy" Manchego are great topped with membrillo aka quince paste, too. I've ...