Chew on these stories...

When I'm looking to eat a quick healthy meal and I'm cooking for one, I turn to oatmeal. And with Autumn upon us, adding roasted pumpkin to a bowl of rolled oats is very appropriate. This recipe for single-serving pumpkin oatmeal not only tastes good, but is good for you. With all those raisins and pecans nestled in creamy oats spiced with cinnamon and cloves, it's really beside the point that this filling one-bowl breakfast (or lunch) weighs in under a measly 400 calories and takes less than ten minutes to make!

I grew up believing the myth that a box of Jello and a can of ginger ale were necessary for a decent homemade cranberry sauce, when in all actuality, the key to a good cranberry sauce lies within the berry itself. Y'see, cranberries are packed with pectin, which given the right amount of heat and a proper ratio of sugar just happen to "sauce up" marvelously. You don't have to use red wine in this recipe; the original Ocean Spray recipe that this recipe is loosely derived from uses water; which means you can experiment here if wine ain't your thing. However, I gotta say that for this recipe,…

Just as important in our household as the evening ritual of family taco night is pancake night (the "family" part should be implied at this point, right?). Even the dog looks forward to pancake night, and while plain pancakes are fine, in our house pancakes from a box are not. Nobody's being presumptuous here; we just happen to think that quality time with loved ones deserves proper pancakes, and for us, this recipe for whole wheat and honey buttermilk pancakes is a shoo-in.

Whole white wheat keeps these pancakes tender, and surprisingly light and fluffy for…

For the theme cake diy-types out there, the Interwebs is and absolute god-send; and in the age of Pinterest, you'd think it'd be super-friggin' easy to find a proper pattern to use to magically transform a couple of nine-inch rounds into a dolphin. Well, apparently that isn't the case; and the one blog post that kept popping up on everyone's pinboards didn't have a pattern. Well, one thing that I can do after 8+ years of a science degree is document; and so y'all don't have to go thru what I did, I've outlined exactly what we did to assemble a dolphin-themed birthday cake, including a pattern(!) you can download and print.