The squirrels here have taken a noteworthy turn for the insane. One nearly ran into my leg this morning, nut in cheek. Oddly, I’ve noticed that Alex and I have begun to exhibit similarly frantic behavior. Saturday morning we left the house for a walk, and we accidentally returned with enough food for a 15-person dinner, plus leftovers to freeze for the winter. It’s in the air.

The recipe for turkey chili is not a recipe. It’s a method, learned by Alex from the source himself, which means you should let the recipe be more of a guidebook than an instruction manual. It’s tradition to make it in the late fall, and it’s hot enough to warm the soul as well as the body. It’s perfect for both curling up with a bowl, and for serving with beer and guacamole to your favorite people, which makes it truly the most versatile and wonderful dish in our repertoire.

Ingredients (serves 10):
2 onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, diced
3 bell peppers, chopped
1/2 jalapeño pepper, seeds removed, chopped
1 large cans chopped tomatoes (the 29 oz. ones)
1 15 oz. can tomato puree
1 large cans black beans
1 large cans red kidney beans
1 large cans pinto beans
1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
1 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tbsp oregano
6 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
cheese and cilantro for garnish

Instructions:
Saute onions and garlic in 3 tbsp olive oil in a large pot for 5 minutes, then add the peppers. Meanwhile, saute turkey in 3 tbsp olive oil in a large pan. Add the turkey to the onion mix, then add the tomatoes, beans and seasoning. Simmer for about 30 minutes. Garnish and serve.

Just pretend this isn’t weird: If reincarnation exists, I was Maya. Maybe Inca. And if my computer background (Chichen Itza) doesn’t prove it, my passion for drinking chocolate absolutely does. Alex is practically South American Indian in this life, so he shares the love.

Drinking chocolate is like hot chocolate, but thicker, richer, and often spiced or flavored. Since tonight marked our first attempt to create it ourselves, we decided to go classic. We swirled bitter dark chocolate and sugar into steaming milk, and topped it with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. All together now: Sigh.

Ingredients:
2 cups milk
3 oz. bitter chocolate, chopped, plus a bit extra for shavings
1/3 cup sugar, or more to taste
whipped cream

Instructions:
Heat the milk on low heat over a stove. When it’s sufficiently hot, add the chopped chocolate, and stir it into the milk. Stir in the sugar, and remove from heat. Top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

Here is a recipe that’s been in my family ever since Bon Appetit first published it in 1997. It’s soup that people who don’t cook soup can cook, and that people who don’t like soup will like slash love.

This dish is healthy and fresh — perfect for a cool night when you are looking for something to warm you, but not stuff you to oblivion. Besides, everyone loves toppings, and they absolutely make this meal.

We’d cooked it before, but we were still surprised at how easy it was. Really, all you do is heat chicken, pour chicken stock and lime juice over it, and let it cook. (Quick brag: We made homemade stock for the first time from the chicken we roasted two nights ago!) Also, if you prepare the toppings while waiting for the soup to cook, everything should be ready to serve in about 30 minutes.

Here is the recipe from Epicurious. We give it a guarantee, so if you try it and hate it, we owe you 3 beers.

While preparing dinner tonight, we found out that a friend was accepted into medical school! We convinced her come over, and a boring eggplant dinner immediately became a celebratory feast — complete with a bottle of wine and a simple spaghetti dish that we threw together in 10 minutes. We always feel guilty skimping on carbohydrates when there are guests to feed.

Stuffed vegetables generally mean heaps of cheese and breadcrumbs, but we thought we could do a healthier version with a fresher taste. My mom sometimes bakes eggplant innards with just cheese and tomato sauce, and we figured we’d add some peppers, onions and mushrooms too. Fueled by this idea and a kiss of guidance from recipes on the interwebs, we created our very own stuffed eggplant. For a pasta side, we simply mixed some cheese, mushrooms and peppers into the sauce and tossed it over spaghetti.

Ingredients:
2 eggplants
1 pepper, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 cups mushrooms, chopped
1 cup tomato sauce
2 cups cheese (we used a part-skim mixture of mozzarella and asiago)
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper

Instructions:
Preheat the oven 350. Slice the eggplants in half, and scoop out the insides, leaving about 1/2 inch around the rim. Place the eggplant shells in the oven for 10 minutes. In the meantime, chop the remaining eggplant into small pieces. Cook the eggplant, peppers, mushrooms and onion in the oil for about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat, and mix the vegetables with the tomato sauce and almost all of the cheese. Scoop this mixture into the eggplant shells, and top with the remaining cheese. Bake the stuffed eggplants again for about 15 minutes.

Oh my god, we accidentally made over 100 cookies tonight. The recipe belongs our friend Dave’s mom, who apparently makes cookies in batches of 100s. He fed them to us once, and they are AMAZING amazing. We’ve been begging for the recipe for weeks, and this morning I received the following email:

Hey Alanna, I’ve got my mom on the line, and she is running to the kitchen at top speed to get the recipe. It’s hand-written on paper that’s probably older than me (note the use of the word “oleo,” before they knew to call it margarine). I’ll type up the transcript best I can, then add some of my mother’s finer secrets, as indicated by the asterisks.

The email goes on. The best part about these cookies is the texture, which is soft and melty, thanks to the ricotta. Second to the texture, however, is the fact that you decorate them with sprinkles. And did we mention that they taste amazing? Like warm vanilla sugar deliciousness.

We modified the recipe to make the cookies slightly healthier, and I’m posting our version here. Honestly, we couldn’t tell the difference. So yeah, over 100 cookies, and they may be gone by tomorrow.

Ingredients (makes about 100 cookies):
cookies
1 stick butter, melted
1/4 lb. smart balance, melted
3 eggs
4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
1 lb. fat-free ricotta cheese (except Dave’s mom uses slightly more, so we did too)
icing
1/4 lb. smart balance
3 1/3 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp skim milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350. Cream the butter and sugar together in a small bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients. Add the ricotta and vanilla, and mix everything together. Spoon the cookie dough onto baking sheets, making each cookie only about the size of a quarter and keeping at least an inch or two apart because they spread out. Bake for about 12 minutes, or until brown on the bottom (they will still be fairly white on top). To make the icing, add the melted smart balance to the powdered sugar and mix. Mix in the vanilla and milk. When the cookies are cool, ice them and top with sprinkles. Dave says extra points for bakers who decorate in the colors of the Italian flag.

Chatting with my friend Danielle before class today, I mentioned that I planned to roast a chicken for dinner tonight. Her eyes widened: “But isn’t that hard?,” she asked.

Actually, nope. Roasting a chicken is cheaper and often easier than dealing with parts. We love this recipe; our moms (and yours) have been making it for years. Simple and classic, this is absolutely something to try for dinner this week. Just to note, though, if you haven’t cooked a whole chicken before, be aware that extra parts are stored inside of the chicken. The first time I prepared one alone, I screamed and almost dropped the entire bird when I stuck my hand inside and found gizzards. Oops.

Ingredients:
4-5 lb. chicken
3 medium-sized onions, cut into chunky pieces
4 carrots, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
2 lbs. small red potatoes, quartered
2 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp thyme
3 tbsp rosemary
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 lemon
salt and pepper

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 375. Wash and pat dry the chicken. Remove its insides, if they are there. Place it in a roasting pan. In a bowl, combine the vegetables and pour the olive oil over them. Add half of the rosemary and thyme, and mix it over the vegetables. Rub the rest of the rosemary and time over the chicken and beneath its skin. Do the same with the garlic. Squeeze the juice of one lemon over it, and place the lemon itself in the cavity of the chicken. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the chicken, and then add the vegetables around the chicken in the roasting pan. Cook the chicken for about 2 hours, or until the juices run clear when you cut into it.