It smells and tastes like Fall!

We came home this afternoon in the rain...and I love it!  We stopped off at Mollie Stone's for a Duraflame log (yes, probably not the best place to buy single Duraflame logs) to celebrate the season. 

This is their newest log: extra crackle and "more robust flames"

We walked into the store at the hot soup entrance and were instantly tempted by the wonderful smells of a fall meal (and at 4:15pm, it's easy to be tempted by everything at Mollie's)....but at $5 a pint, I decided to make my own.



eat -em cold in salads or hot in soups

 Once home, (after backing into a decorative rock in the parking lot and counting down from 10 100 to calm down) we quickly got the log into the fireplace and headed to the kitchen to figure out dinner. I haven't been to the grocery store in a while, so I needed to be creative with my soup. I started with sauteing an onion and 5 cloves of garlic in olive oil (in my stock pot)& cooked about 7 minutes. Added 5 stalks of chopped celery. Cooked about 4 minutes. Added maybe 1 1/4 of chopped fresh tomatoes and a box of Trader Joe's steamed lentils (in the refrigerator section).



great as a side dish or in soups

 Then I poured in about 5 cups of broth (half veggie, half chicken). Then I added about 2/3 the bag of Trader Joe's Harvest Blend Grains (couscous, orzo, baby garbanzo beans, and red quinoa). I cut about 10 sprigs of thyme from my window herb garden and added lots of salt and pepper. Let it all simmer with the lid on for about a half hour while we worked on the next fall yum yum: pumpkin muffins!



Lentil soup, as good as Mollie's, with 15 min. prep and in-house ingredients.



add 2 eggs, 1 cup water, 1/2 cup oil
(or apple sauce instead of oil)

 

The Pumpkin Muffin mix from Trader Joe's is SO good!  I love it cause it doesn't come with nuts already in it, you can chose to add them or not.  One box makes about 15-ish muffins. 

Now it smells and tastes like fall in my house!



Buy yourself several boxes, they are GONE after Thanksgiving!

GO GIANTS!!!!