T Stands for Home Cooking

Update: For those of you who asked, I've inserted the mac and cheese recipe as well as for the Boston Brown bread.

 Happy Tuesday everyone! 

Today I am going to annoy some of you who are hungry because my post is full of food!  I'm giving you fair warning! Smile.

Last week was a fairly low key week. I puttered around the house doing some much needed tasks and had  a couple of art days. I also spent some creative time in the kitchen. 

First I made this pan of butternut squash macaroni and cheese last week. It was a new recipe and quite good.  I think I should have added a little less cheese because I added a bit more than the recipe called for and the squash wasn't as dominate a taste as I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, you can still taste the squash.  You never go wrong with mac and cheese in my book. And it has to be cheesy to be mac and cheese. I used ziti noodles rather than the small elbow noodles, and it made it more of a pasta meal. 

Mac and cheese recipe  can be found here at this website (Sally's Baking Addiction):  Butternut squash mac and cheese

Early in the week I also made these Boston Brown bread muffins.  Boston brown bread is a quick, non-yeasted bread made with molasses and usually with raisins. It is traditionally baked in a coffee can (or some kind of large can) and then taken out of the can and served. Yes a round, can shaped bread with lines, just like canned cranberry sauce.  You would pour the batter into the empty can, open on one end and then bake it. Once baked, you would use your can opener on the other end of the can and then use that end to push out the finished loaf. You can buy round bread molds, but I don't have one. You can also buy canned bread in the grocery store which you reheat and eat.  I did, however, find this recipe for  making the bread in muffin form.  This one was another winner too. They were moist and had a nice molasses taste. I will definitely make these again.

I found this recipe in an old Williams-Sonoma muffin cookbook. I was actually going to get rid of the cookbook, but not now.

I also bought myself a new cookbook last week. I stopped at Trader Joe's after a beach walk trip on Tuesday. It was such a beautiful day that no one was in the stores in that strip mall.  After Trader Joe's I decided to take advantage of the empty stores, and I dropped into Barnes and Noble, the book store. It was a well enjoyed treat to browse. 

I've been looking for a good sourdough cookbook that wasn't just about bread. I also wanted a cookbook that had some recipes for some more unusual breads. I think I found it.

I tried one bread from this new cookbook. It was a  sourdough butternut squash and dried sour cherry bread. I had some squash leftover from the  mac and cheese (plus winter squash is the tastiest so I always keep a couple on hand). I enjoy munching on dried sour cherries, so I even had those in the cabinet. I  decided it needed some crunch too so I added some walnuts. 

This bread was also a winner!  I've been having it toasted for lunch for several days now.

And since it is Tuesday and T day, I need a drink photo. Here's mine. Awhile back I met my daughter one evening after she was done with work  so we could go to Costco.  Before we went to do a stock up, we stopped at  Chick Fil-A for dinner. They are only doing drive through or take out (you can't even go into the restaurant), so we went through drive through to get dinner and ate it in the car.

Be sure to stop by   Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog.

Here's our drinks. My Diet Coke on the left and her lemonade on the right.

And my fries on the left and my still wrapped chicken sandwich on the right.  It's fast food but better than other chains.

I am linking these photos up to Art Everyday Month. It is day 17.

Lastly, some of you last week asked about showing a photo of the elephant my daughter picked out on our visit to Annalee Dolls.  Here she (or maybe he) is.

Thanks so much for visiting. I wish you all a Happy T day too!