Category: Vegetarian Dishes

Jerri’s Pumpkin Nut Cookies

Halloween trick or treating can be a lot of fun. Mothers and fathers know it, even though they may not be the ones greeting folks at their doors with shouts of “Trick or treat!!” Even a shy three-year old Tinkerbell or Dracula soon starts running up sidewalks and holding out a plastic pumpkin or paper bag to collect the loot and hurry back giggling to mom or dad ready to move on to the next house.

Jerri and I look forward to Halloween every year. We enjoy the little kids, though sometimes we have to lean down close to hear the whispered “Trick or treat” and we certainly get a kick out of seeing older children participating, especially when they are shepherding a litter of little ones. When Jerri was giving piano lessons, one of the special treats was seeing some of her students in costumes and smiles.

My first few years as a trick or treater involved visiting the neighbors when we lived in Hayward, but we moved into the country when I was seven, and neighbors were far apart. There were only three houses besides ours in the first mile of the town road in front of our house, but they were all in the first quarter mile, so we made them our first stop of the evening. Then Mom and Dad would drive us into town. They would visit with friends for an hour or so while my sisters and I walked the streets on the north side of Hayward.

By the time I entered high school, however, I was feeling a little odd about trick or treating. Teen anxiety, perhaps, but a more sophisticated friend than I suggested that we might have some fun collecting money for UNICEF. To be honest, I don’t think that I knew what UNICEF was when she mentioned it. Once I understood that we would be collecting money for the United Nations Children’s Fund, however, I was all for the project and helped recruit a team.

There were six of us, and we worked in pairs, a guy and a girl, each of us carrying a can with orange construction paper taped around it. My partner and I were doing pretty well collecting nickels and dimes from homeowners happy to help children in need.

When we came to the Twin Gables bar at the end of Beal Avenue we saw quite a few cars in front, which prompted me to suggest that we try our luck for UNICEF inside. Since my parents were good friends of Fritz and Irma who owned the place, I knew them both and was confident that they would give us a chance to explain our reason for coming in.

Collecting for UNICEF in a bar was a brilliant idea. Irma started it off with a dollar bill and explained to the patrons what we were doing. My partner and I set up a squeeze play: She began at the south end of the bar and I took the north. We may have been lucky, but the first two people wiped their change from the bar and dropped it into our little orange cans, then proceeded to bully everyone else into doing the same.

As we walked behind the row of stools, the person who had just contributed encouraged his or her neighbor. The advice was blunt but good-natured. “Jake, Lois is wondering where you are. Just give ‘em the money and go home. You’ve had enough.” and “You missed a quarter, Phil, dump it in.” I think that we collected ten dollars from that one stop. That’s about $75 in today’s money.

When we rendezvoused with the other two teams, we told them what we had done. They had skipped the bars, which were downtown and away from the houses they had called on, so we split up and covered the Karibalis’, Anglers and Moccasin bars in just a few minutes with similar success. It was a fun night that we repeated for the next three years until I headed for the university at Madison. UNICEF did well.

Though we no longer walk the streets on Halloween, Jerri and I still look forward to greeting the trick or treaters who come to our door. We usually have a pretty good turnout. Perhaps they are attracted by the Jack O’ Lantern that I carve each year. While not as artistic as many in our neighborhood, I do think that trick or treaters appreciate the sight of a truly primitive carving. At least, they are often laughing when I open the door.

One extra benefit of carving a Jack O’ Lantern for Halloween is that you can turn it into pumpkin pies, breads and cookies. We used to do that. Today I just break our Jack O’ Lantern into pieces in front of my deer stand, but years ago I cleaned and peeled my work of art so Jerri could make mashed pumpkin.

She found this recipe when we were living in Kentucky and modified it to make cookies that were healthful as well as tasty. Hence the whole wheat flour, mashed pumpkin, raisins AND nuts. It’s a cookie that is almost a balanced diet by itself with dairy products (eggs), whole grains (whole wheat flour) fruits (raisins and pumpkin) and nuts. If, like many of us, you think pumpkins are really vegetables, you will feel even better about eating these cookies.

Since you simply stir stuff together to make a soft dough and drop globs of it on cookie sheets, these cookies are very easy to make. We use canned pumpkin today, but if you are cooking a couple of pumpkins for pies, save a cup of mashed pumpkin for a batch of pumpkin cookies to share with your family and friends this fall.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup shortening
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup mashed pumpkin
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ginger
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped nuts

PROCEDURE:

Cream the shortening and sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs and pumpkin and mix thoroughly until you have a smooth batter. Put the flours, salt and spices into a sifter and sift the dry ingredients into the batter by thirds, stirring well after each addition. Fold in the raisins and nuts.

Preheat the oven to 350º and grease the cookie sheets.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of batter onto the cookie sheets and bake the cookies for about fifteen to eighteen minutes until the edges begin to brown. You should end up with about four dozen cookies.

NOTE: Depending on the moisture content of the pumpkin and flour, you may need to add a small amount of water or flour to the batter. It should be stiff but not dry.

Linda’s Cranberry Salsa

Fruit salsas are examples of fusion cuisine, which combine recipes or ingredients from two different cultures. Rick Bayless, the Oklahoma kid who abandoned barbecue and took up with tacos, says that fruit salsas apparently originated in the United States but have been infiltrating Mexican cuisine. He should know, since he and his wife Deann spent over six years researching Mexican cooking before publishing Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico in 1987.

Linda’s Cranberry Salsa is a good example. It combines traditional ingredients of Mexican salsas—jalapeño peppers, cilantro, and onions—with fresh Wisconsin cranberries. I got the recipe from my sister Patsy in an email which began with a question: “Did I ever give you a recipe for cranberry salsa?”

She had not, but I am always interested in new family recipes. Patsy explained that she got the recipe from Linda, a friend who worked with her at the hospital in Hayward. Linda turned out to be a classmate of mine who shared some of my interests and was on the staff of the school newspaper and competed in forensics.

When I asked Linda how she learned to make this salsa, she told me that she wasn’t sure, but that she thought a friend of hers who lives in Green Bay gave it to her many years ago. Linda liked the salsa and told Patsy about how good it was, prompting my sister to ask for the recipe. Linda obliged, proving once again that we all benefit from an ancient tradition that is still a friendly custom.

To be painfully honest, I had my doubts about this recipe when Patsy sent it to me. Cranberries and jalapeños with cilantro and cumin? No way! But when she told me that she makes a batch every fall when fresh cranberries become available, I decided to try it. She’s a good cook. I now have to agree with her conclusion: “The salsa is sweet, but oddly enough the bite from the jalapenos and the salt from the chips (I use mulitgrain Scoops) made it taste good.”

When I offered a sample to our neighbor Jill, she hesitated before saying she would try some. Later she confessed to the same doubts I harbored, but she now wants to make more herself and has asked for the recipe.

Cranberries are plentiful now, and you can find jalapeño peppers and cilantro at your local supermarket. Now’s the time to treat your football fans to a batch of Linda’s cranberry salsa.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
4 cups cranberries
2-3 jalapeño peppers
1 T cilantro
2-3 green onions
1/2 tsp. cumin
Dash of salt
1 T fresh lime juice (half an average lime)

PROCEDURE:

Wash the cranberries and jalapeño peppers. Coarsely chop the cranberries.

Combine the water and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until all the sugar has dissolved. Raise the heat and bring the mixture to a boil Reduce the heat and boil slowly for ten minutes without stirring to make a thin syrup.

Prepare the vegetables while the syrup is cooking. Cut the stems from the peppers, slice them into quarters and remove the seeds and white membranes. Then slice each quarter in half and chop the peppers into a quarter-inch dice. Clean and cut the onions into eighth-inch slices, discarding the root ends. Wash and chop the cilantro medium fine.

After the syrup has cooked for ten minutes, pour it into a mixing bowl and allow it to cool slightly, four or five minutes. Wash a lime and juice half of it.

Add the cranberries, peppers, cilantro, onions, cumin, salt and lime juice to the syrup and mix lightly. Taste and adjust the flavors as you wish. You may want to add a little more cilantro, cumin or lime juice.

Refrigerate the salsa for at least an hour. Serve at room temperature with tortilla chips or dippers.

NOTES: The flavor improves if you allow the salsa to rest for several hours or overnight so the flavors can blend. When you adjust the seasoning, be careful not to add too much salt. Keep in mind that tortilla chips usually are quite salty.

My brother-in-law Patrick grew up around a lot of Scandinavians and acquired their preference for less spicy foods. He likes a mild version of this salsa with only one jalapeño. As Pat says, “You can make it exactly the way you like it.”

If you don’t have a food processor (like us) or a food chopper, you can just cut the cranberries into fourths.