Banana breakfast hummus (Secret Recipe Club)

Banana Breakfast Hummus

It's time for another installment of the  Secret Recipe Club (SRC).

Here's how the SRC works: each month I am assigned another member's blog (a different one each month). I then pick any recipe from that blogger's site, make it and write about it here. There's also a link hop at the end of the post so that I (and you) can check out all the other participating blogs and their great recipes.

I joined this group a few months ago and it's been really fun, giving me an opportunity to check out a lot of blogs that normally wouldn't appear on my radar.

My assigned blog this month -- The Mommy Bowl -- is a great example of that.

You see, Deanna of The Mommy Bowl cooks a whole lot of gluten-free, dairy-free and often vegan dishes.

(Yes, if you know The Ninj, you are laughing hysterically at this point, because you know I like to throw bacon and cheese into nearly everything and have more than once referred to myself as The Meatasaurus.)

But come, come, I am nothing if not flexible. And I do like to try new things.

Savory olive bread

Savory olive bread

It's funny that this bread ended up as the star of its own post.

You see, it began its life -- well, its life in The Ninj's kitchen, anyway -- as an afterthought, just a little somethin'-somethin' to go with a corn chowder recipe I was testing (stay tuned).

And yet, as wonderful as the chowder was (still stay tuned), the bread really deserved some solo props.

I needed a side for the chowder that would suffice as both bread (because I wanted it) and a vegetable or salad (because I needed it). That's a tall order, I know. But I was willing to stretch the truth a little if I found something even close.

Browsing through my Pinterest food boards, I came across a recipe I had pinned a while ago for a quick bread loaded with greens: perfect.

Then I read the recipe.

It involved a whole lot of onion carmelization before you could even start thinking about the bread batter. That wouldn't work, as I needed a quick bread, not a stand-around-and-carmelize-till-the-cows-come-home bread.

Homemade ranch dressing (and Brussels sprout slaw)

Brussels sprout slaw with buttermilk ranch dressing

As a food blogger, I'm finding that it keeps my job interesting to interact (virtually) with other cooks and bloggers; it helps me see what kinds of recipes and techniques are trending and exposes me to ingredients or dishes that are outside of my regular repertoire.

To that end, I've been participating in Grow It Cook It Can It's Cook It 2012 challenge, as well as the monthly Secret Recipe Club. My latest venture has been to join the From Scratch Club's virtual book club, in which club members not only read and discuss but also cook from Alana Chernila's Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying & Start Making.

This book is cleverly divided into chapters based on supermarket aisles: dairy, cereals and snacks, canned items, condiments, soups, baking needs, frozen foods, pasta, breads and crackers, drinks and candy and sweets. Each chapter includes a few recipes for making your own version of things normally found in those aisles. Every two weeks, the FSC book clubbers read two chapters and are encouraged to test out one of the recipes (member's choice).

For the last "meeting", I made nutella toaster pastries: seriously good. I even made them again, substituting a savory filling of ricotta and parmesan cheese mixed with pesto: perhaps even better!

The focus of the book club's second "meeting" is canning and condiments. Since I have done a boatload of canning and preserving, I decided to focus on condiments.

I was pretty darned excited to find an easy recipe for buttermilk ranch salad dressing.

For the most part, I've moved away from bottled salad dressings and simply make my own. However, I've never been able to part with bottled ranch dressing (organic, at least, to avoid the HFCS).

Until now.

Crockpot turkey chili with butternut squash & apples ... and best-evah cornbread!

Easy crockpot turkey chili with black beans, butternut squash and apples -- plus the best-evah cornbread muffins!

Turkey chili and cornbread

Cold, rainy days just scream out for a big pot of chili.

What makes that pot of chili even better is when it's cooked in a crockpot all day long so you can go off and do other things.

Winner!

Speaking of winners, I made this chili a few years ago for an employee chili cookoff when I was working at a large security software firm (they called it the "Super Bowl of Chili" -- yeah, that's what passed for funny and clever to software developers). I did not win (so I guess the "speaking of winners" segue was a bit misleading -- sorry) but believe me when I tell you that I taught that group of geeks a thing or two about food presentation.

I like this chili recipe because it is loaded with veggies and the rest of the ingredients lean a bit to the lighter side; it has plenty of spice and flavor without promising to give you heartburn ... or worse.

Dried watermelon slices

Dried watermelon slices

It's challenge time again!

I hope you've been following along these past nine months. If not, here's how it works: Caroline over at Grow It Cook It Can It challenges us to make a pantry staple each month and then showcase the final product and how we used it in a recipe, if appropriate. So far, we have already tackled pasta, bread, butter, cheese, lactofermented veg, jam and canned fruit and pickling.

This month's challenge was to dry fruit.

This is right up my alley as I am the proud owner of an Excalibur food dehydrator -- what I like to call the Ferrari of dehydrators.

You don't have to own a dehydrator to dry fruits, veggies, meats and more; you can dry most of those things in the oven at very low temps (if your oven will go that low) for a very long time. But, if you're paying through the nose per gallon for propane to fire your oven as I do, a dehydrator may make a lot more sense ... and cents (the Excalibur folks claim it costs about as much to burn a light bulb as it does to run the dehydrator).

And there are many entry-level models that won't cost you an arm and a leg, either, if you want a low-cost way to give dehydrating a try.

There's great variety in what you can whip up with the dehydrator, some of which I've even posted about on this blog:

• Chicken jerky (people love it but dogs go bat-shit crazy for it!)
• Veggie chips
• Fruit leathers
• Fruit chips
• "Sun-dried" tomatoes

But to stay on topic, our challenge this month was to dry fruit. I thought about some of the usual yummy suspects -- apricots, peaches, apples -- but then I remembered something.

Green tomato cake

Green tomato cake

I don't know about your neck of the woods, but here in Vermont, it's definitely fall.

I enjoy the change of season and the feeling of turning inward that it brings. While my wardrobe moves from t-shirts and flipflops to fuzzy sweaters and boots, my mind changes gears from gardening to loading up the bird feeders, reading by the fire and pots of chili and soup.

But when I put the garden to bed, there are always unripened tomatoes. Sadly, they never got their chance to shine and be the star of some salad, sandwich or jam. It seems a shame to just get rid of them, doesn't it?

So I don't. I let them have their moment in the sun, so to speak.

Maple ginger cookies

Two sweet recipes in one week: y'all are so lucky, I swear.

My posting options were mac and cheese, chicken stew or these wicked awesome cookies. Here's what I considered when choosing:

• It's a Friday before a long weekend (for some -- happy thanksgiving to our Canadian friends)
• The mac and cheese photos sucked
• The chicken stew involves prunes

So cookies it is!

No big story behind these cookies. I was just perusing some neglected cookbooks last week (I feel a little guilty if I ignore some of them for too long -- am I the only one?). I focused on my copy of Cooking With Shelburne Farms because, with its focus on seasonal Vermont foods, I figured I'd find something awesomely appropriate for fall (and more photogenic than the strata).

Aaaaaaaand I was not disappointed.

The authors called these cookies gingersnaps but I don't think that's really accurate: they're soft and not nearly as spicy as gingersnaps.

Regardless, they are wicked.

Nutella toaster pastries

Nutella toaster pastries

Regular readers will know that I've had some fun taking on cooking challenges this year.

For example, I've been cooking along each month with Grow It Cook It Can It's Cook It 2012 challenge, in which each month we're challenged to create a pantry staple and then use it in a recipe.

Additionally, I recently joined the Secret Recipe Club, which means I get to pick and cook a recipe from another blogger each month.

So when the From Scratch Club announced that its revamped virtual book club would be not only reading and discussing but also cooking from Alana Chernila's Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying & Start Making, I knew I was up for it.

This book is cleverly divided into chapters based on supermarket aisles: dairy, cereals and snacks, canned items, condiments, soups, baking needs, frozen foods, pasta, breads and crackers, drinks and candy and sweets. Each chapter includes a few recipes for making your own version of things normally found in those aisles. Every two weeks, the FSC book clubbers read two chapters and are encouraged to test out one of the recipes (member's choice).

This is the first "meeting", so we are focusing on dairy and cereal and snacks.

For me, I found quite a few of the same (or similar) recipes that we've been tackling in the Cook It 2012 challenge in these first chapters (ricotta cheese, butter and buttermilk) or that I've already made on my own (cereal bars).

But I haven't made toaster pastries.

(Which I guess we can't call pop tarts without some kind of trademark infringement, right?)

And certainly not Nutella-filled toaster pastries!