Remember this? It’s kind of how we feel right now.

I found this recipe on Baking Bites, a super yummy blog that is among my most recent obsessions. Now, no one loves peanut butter & jelly like I do. Though my mom wouldn’t let me or my brothers pack PB&J for lunch because she deemed it too unhealthy, she would sometimes let us eat it for dessert on whole wheat, and I remember going nuts over it (ditto Captain Crunch, which was NOT a breakfast food). Clearly, the apple is sitting obediently at the base of the tree.

The muffins came out beautifully. They were moist and soft and very muffiny, as in not too sweet, but so so good. I’m writing out our recipe here, because we modified them by subsituting whole wheat flour and smart balance. I actually really enjoyed the warm, wheaty taste, and the consistency was perfect despite the lack of butter. We even used reduced fat peanut butter. These are simple and delicious — much like the sandwich that inspires them.

Ingredients (makes about 12 muffins):
2 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup brown sugar
6 tbsp smart balance, melted and cooled
1/2 cup reduced fat crunchy peanut butter
2 eggs
1 cup skim milk
about 1/3 cup jam or jelly

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 375, line muffin pan with paper liners. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and brown sugar. In a medium bowl, combine the smart balance, peanut butter, eggs and milk, and wisk them together until the mixture is smooth. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry mixture and stir into a batter. For each muffin, fill the tin halfway with batter, then add a heaping teaspoon of jelly, and fill to the top with more batter. Bake for about 17 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean. Serve warm with a tall glass of cold milk.

We’ve been invited to a Philadelphia food bloggers dinner/meet-up! We are unbelievably excited and flattered that the bloggers whose sites we’ve stalked and admired for so long consider us legitimate.

The invitation is open to anyone who considers themselves a Philly food blogger. So, if you would like to join the group for this event and others in the future, please send your name, blog URL and email contact to taylorhigh24 (at) hotmail (dot) com. An invite will follow with event details.

Also… it’s potluck! We can’t wait to taste everyone else’s concoctions, but we’re flipping out about what to make ourselves! Suggestions? Please help!

Nothing says fall like _______.

I love this game. For me, it’s caramel apples and wool socks and roasted chestnuts.

We picked up a bundle of them at Reading Terminal Market this weekend. Absolutely no skills are involved in preparing them, and though my fingers are torn to pieces from shelling, it’s 100 percent worth it. They are sweet and the texture is great — kind of fleshy and chewy. Also, they look like miniature brains.

We prepared them for post-dinner, pre-dessert snack, but they are really perfect for munching at any time. Recipes for the best way to roast them are all over the internet, but we performed the method described in our lovely Bittman book.

Ingredients:
Chestnuts

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 450. Take a knife, and cut an “x” across the flat side of each chestnut, so that it doesn’t explode when heated. Assemble the nuts on a baking sheet and roast for about 15 minutes. Serve warm. P.S. You have to peel the shell off first, this should be relatively easy once they are cooked.

Roasted chestnuts

Shelling

Peeled, like brains

hearthy [har-thee]
-adjective, hearth-i-er, hearth-i-est
1. heart-healthy
2. warm and cozy, like the feeling you get when sitting around a hearth
3. filling (syn. hearty, as in a stack of pancakes for breakfast)

We had to invent this word because no other so accurately describes tonight’s dinner. Curried lentil soup is extremely hearthy — lentils are proven to lower cholesterol, and the dish is satisfying and filling despite being low in calories. Still need convincing? Here are the stats:

Cost: $20 (we doubled the recipe, which intends to serve 4)
Calories: 479 per serving, and it’s pure protein
Time: about an hour, start to finish
Difficulty: Easy

Check out the recipe here on Epicurious. We threw some chicken bullions into the water to add flavor, as per the advice of the reviewers. Also, be sure to add enough salt.

After tasting some delicious gnudi during brunch at Philadelphia’s London Grill on Sunday, we decided to attempt a re-creation.

Gnudi? You may be thinking. What IS that? A google search links to a thread on Chowhound.com entitled “gnudi- what is it, exactly?” and answers range from “I don’t know, but gosh it sounds like fun” to “A dish that is precisely ravioli without the pasta wrapper.”

We’re still confused. Even while eating them, we likened them to mozarella sticks, dumplings and spinach cookies. But here’s what we’ve devised: Gnudi are essentially dough balls of cheese and spinach. The recipe we found online called for boiling them, but skeptical, we divided the batch and baked half in the oven with far better results. These would make a great appetizer, but preparing them for dinner left us slightly wanting. Also, we dunked them in pasta sauce, but you could also dress them with pesto.

We found our recipe from the food network, but there are a few others floating around the interwebs as well. If you do use this one, instead of boiling the gnudi, bake them for about 30 minutes at 350. Additionally, to get the beautiful, round shape, put the each piece dough into a wine glass with a bit of flour and shake it around until it forms a ball. Happy gnuding!

Gnudi dough (egg, cheese, spinach, spices)

Forming gnudi in a wine glass…

Well-shaped gnudi, ready for baking

The final product! Crispy, savory gnudi

I am pleased to announce that a TFA recipe has facilitated the hook-up of a dear friend and loyal reader. The friend concocted our peanut-butter brownies, posted earlier this month, to top off a meal prepared for a potential suitor. Needless to say, he was swooning.

Read on for excerpts from the gchat: