Friday Faves and Pumpkin Manicotti

This week heralded a week of pumpkins featuring both a savory and a sweet recipe option. As it should! Eating local and in season gives a bump in stimulating the local farming economy and its also just being plain healthy. Keeping it simple and unprocessed as often as we can.

So to end out the punkin’ posts I’ll leave you with this tasty ditty of a recipe featuring my favorite orange orb all mashed up in my Pumpkin Manicotti. I know! Will I ever get tired of pumpkin and sage together? Bear with me friends because it’s highly doubtful.

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5 from 1 vote

Pumpkin Manicotti

Ingredients

• 1 8 ounce package manicotti noodles
• 3 cups milk
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 8 tablespoons 1 stick butter, divided
• ⅛ cup fresh sage leaves thinly sliced
• ¼ cup flour
• 1 ½ cup Ricotta cheese
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• ½ teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 ½ teaspoon salt divided
• 1 cup Mozzarella cheese shredded
• ½ cup Parmesan cheese grated

Instructions

• Preheat oven at 350°F. Bring a large stock pot of water to boil. Once water comes to boil, add oil and salt water well and cook noodles for 5-8 minutes or until al dente. Drain and rinse noodles and set aside.
• In a saucepan, bring milk to a boil, lower to simmer and add garlic. Simmer for 15 minutes until garlic flavor infuses milk. Remove garlic from mixture and discard.
• In a separate small saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons butter, add sage leaves and cook until crisp. Remove sage leaves from butter pan to drain and set aside. Add 6 tablespoons butter to remaining sage butter in pan, and melt over medium heat. Whisk in flour and cook for 2 minutes. Add reserved garlic-infused milk mixture and cook until thickened, about 10 minutes, whisking so sauce does not stick or burn. Season with ½ teaspoon salt, remove from heat and let cool.
• Layer a 13 X 9 inch pan with ½ cup of sauce.
• In a large bowl, mix Ricotta, pumpkin puree, egg, nutmeg and salt. Add ½ cup Mozzarella and mix. Fill a large Ziploc freezer bag with pumpkin mixture, clip one corner with a ¼” cut and pipe manicotti tubes with Ricotta cheese mixture so a little bit overflows on ends.
• Place manicotti tubes side by side in pan, repeating until you run out of shells and filling. Spoon remaining sauce on top of shells, top with remaining Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Sprinkle sage leaves on top of cheese, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes, remove foil and bake for another 10 minutes.

Recently I’ve been busily working on a new e-books with some amazing food bloggers, creating original content showcasing their delicious recipes, thought provoking health advice and inspiring photos. Creatively it’s infections to work with such a passionate group of content creators. I can’t wait to share their talents and hard work with you.

But until then….

1. It’s that time of year when we’re all still trying to keep focus on Halloween but tinkering with plans for the onslaught of the real foodie-focused holidays: Turkeyday and Jingle Bells. Get inspiration and start making plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas cooking before the rush (the rush to the kitchen, the rush to the store, the rush to buy bigger jeans.) To add to the crest of the new fallen snow, the next FoodieCrush holiday issue will be coming your way just in time to slightly sing out of tune, “Up on the housetop reindeer paws…”

2. Back to the topic of unprocessed: Becky has taken the 30-Day Unprocessed Challenge and encourages the rest of us to follow suit.

3. It’s American Cheese month and I’m diving in whole hog. Or should I say whole cow. Next week I’m heading to the land of milk and cheese: Wisconsin. That’s where I’ll be basking in the glow of fresh cheese, brewed beer and spirited spirits. And cows, lots of cows. As a cheese and butter fan I can’t wait. It’s a good thing I had a primer last week with some of my fellow food bloggers thanks to the Dairy Council of Utah where we sampled artisnal cheeses at Heber Valley Cheese. Ever heard of Juustoleipa? With banana peppers? It’s haloumi on crack. And I’m addicted. Holiday gift boxes anyone?

4. You thought you could escape the tomato overatures didn’t you? Well the frost hasn’t hit the fruit yet so I’m still clawing at the last vines of sweet, red love. Follow Megan’s cheesey tomato dip recipe, turn on a weekend football game and start scooping away.

5. Did you know October is one of the biggest months of the year for cookbook releases? Congrats to the bevy of blogging cookbook authors with titles out this month including:
Katie’s gorgeously graphically designed food tome
Jenny and Terri who are serving it up mini style
The Muy Bueno gals who deliver authentic spice
Meredith’s pictorial contribution to all things Trader Joe’s ala lunchbox
Jenna’s chronicle of transitioning from culinary student to a grown-up blogger
and Shauna’s collection of vanilla themed recipes that are everything besides bland
I showed you this fashionable family of bacon a few weeks back (poor souls) but I’m sort of falling for Spam this Halloween

6. It’s not often that I give a high five to Fox News but this time I’ll give ‘em a pass.

7. Russell once again clears up any confusion thanks to his  latest oh so well designed cooking methods cheat sheet. And get ready, there’s more to come from him in the holiday issue of FoodieCrush.

8. Finally! National retailer West Elm opened this week in Salt Lake City. Yes the store is gorgeous, inspiring and led me to covet about 632 items, but even cooler than the covet factor is this location is the first in the U.S. to partner with Craft Lake City and local Etsy artisans to sell their accessories and art within the store. What a great example of big and little working, and inspiring each other and benefiting the consumer in the end. Don’t live in SLC? Check out the SLC artists and their West Elm wares here 

9. Twitter quote of the week: “No one says w00t! anymore. Not that this is a bad thing; it’s gone the way of Ugg boots.” (via @amandahesser) *Oh great. Guess I’ll have to find a new catch phrase. Comment if ya got ’em.

10. Bonus Twitter quote of the week: “I think that there should be a Disney drinking game. Drink every time you see a kid in tears. #bananasummit”via @bakedbree

Happy weekend everyone! Clink!

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