I mixed up this tasty bourbon pear punch over the weekend when we celebrated Halloween outside with a few friends (I feel the need to add, everyone had masks on unless we were sipping cocktails, safety first!). You may notice in the picture that there is snow on the ground, mixed with crunchy fall leaves, and I’m wearing a t-shirt — New England at it’s finest, a jumble of seasons in just a few short hours. With the election day this week, I think I may be mixing up another round of these — we can all use a drink, right? Prep the spiced pear simple syrup in advance so it has time to chill before you mix up a batch of this seasonal spiced bourbon punch, cheers!
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I love to play around with different ideas for decorating a holiday table, it’s one of my favorite ways to get inspired for the season ahead! My friends at Christmas Tree Shops andThat! asked me to pull together a fresh look for the turkey day table, and I hopped right to the challenge! My approach to a table design is to find an inspiration piece and build around it – sometimes that means filling my shopping cart up with tons of affordable and stylish items and then narrowing down what works together. That’s something that I love about visiting Christmas Tree Shops andThat! – it’s a bit like a treasure hunt.
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I was reminiscing recently about how much I missed going to a bar and having a draft pumpkin beer poured with that delicious cinnamon sugar rim. It’s a taste of fall that I enjoy for a few short weeks every year. I took an informal poll of my instagram followers, calling for everyone to share with me their favorite fall pumpkin beers. A few people felt strongly that pumpkin beer does not even qualify as real beer and several others sent passionate votes for the classic Shipyard Pumpkin or specialty pumpkin varieties from breweries across the US. I decided to tally up the votes and do a taste test of the top recommendations with some friends outside on a warm fall day for the purpose of blog post research! I’m sharing our very scientific findings in this best of fall pumpkin beers and ciders review: 
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Have I mentioned how much I love cheese? I like really really really love cheese. So when my friends at Martha Stewart Living challenged me to create a tasty Fall-inspired recipe Kerrygold Dubliner Cheese I was on board. Kerrygold Dubliner Cheese is made with milk from grass-fed cows that are raised on small, family-run Irish dairy farms, and that milk makes their cheeses so flavorful and creamy. I particularly love the Dubliner Cheese because of the balanced sweet and nutty flavors – similar to a cheddar in texture but with the bite of parmesan. Are you hungry yet?
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I keep a long list of blog post ideas in my phone, all organized by season and event. I was scrolling through the list last week and an idea for buffalo roasted chickpeas I was saving for the Super Bowl jumped out at me. Life is short, and if this year has taught us anything, it’s that we can’t make plans that far in advance. So I grabbed life by the chickpeas and said let’s jump on this idea right now! Instead of serving them as a stand-alone snack, I roasted them and served them over a rice bowl with crumbled blue cheese, scallions and celery. I also mixed in a little leftover shredded chicken that I tossed in the same buffalo sauce, but you could easily omit that to make it a vegetarian meal. I love a little spice this time of year, but also pulled some of the chicken and chickpeas aside to serve buffalo-free for a kid-friendly dinner too. Get the full recipe below!
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If I’m ever stumped about what to make for dinner and ask my husband if he has any ideas, 100% of the time he answers with “what about tacos or fajitas?” It’s the perfect answer because everyone is happy when tacos or fajitas are on the menu! I like to take some inspiration from #DomestikateGrazingBoards series and turn taco night into a big, serve-yourself, DIY fajita salad board so that everyone can pick their favorite ingredients and assemble their own fajita salad bowl, served on top of my favorite Little Leaf Farms lettuce!
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We did the autumn in New England thing last weekend and hit the orchard for some picturesque apple picking! It was perfect weather and so early in the season that the trees were bursting with big red apples. Every year we come home with a big bag of apples, and I stare at them wondering how we’ll manage to eat them all! It’s a great creative challenge though, to brainstorm ways to use them in smoothies and crumbles, baking them into pies and turning them into sweet apple butter. This year I decided to work on an apple muffin recipe and managed to sneak some shredded zucchini in for a certain veggie-resistant toddler. The muffins were topped with dark chocolate chips, a peace offering for sneaking that zucchini in! We’ve been grabbing these for snacks and breakfast all week long; scroll down for the full recipe.
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I am craving alllllllll the fall flavors, and I may have found a way to jam pack them into a single bite of this flatbread pizza! The inspiration for this tasty autumnal slice was leftover goat cheese I had taunting me in my fridge — what to do with it, what to do with it? I’ll tell you what I did with it: I popped it in my food processor and blended it with pumpkin puree and honey to make the most deliciously sweet pumpkin goat cheese that I spread out over the flatbread crust. For the crust I used a pre-made flatbread (this brand!), but any crust would work. Then I topped my creamy pumpkin-goat cheese base with crumbled sausage, sautéed onions, roasted delicata squash, and some fresh sage to finish it off. The best part is that it was easy to make, perfect for a shareable weekend snack or easy weeknight dinner! 
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It’s been quite a few weeks since my last download, so I have lots to share! Kicking off the new season with some fun recipes, a few mini book reviews from my reading list, a guilt-free educational kid’s iPad game we have been loving, and lots of affordable (and cozy) fall style finds — scroll down to read more! 
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I shared a picture on my instagram page recently of my end-of-summer veggie garden bounty, and the thing that I’ve been most proud of are the eggplants I grew this year! Also in my garden basket was a handful of leaves cut from freshly planted kale and a few last juicy summer tomatoes. The combination of ingredients plucked fresh from the dirt was my inspiration for this dish. I crisped up the eggplant with a light breading and then layered it with a flavorful, seasoned parmesan and ricotta combo. Then I topped it with the burst tomatoes and kale that had been sautéed with garlic. It was so simple, so good, and I love how the dish brought out the flavors of each of the veggies (the crispy eggplant — that I’m so proud of — was the star of the show). Scroll down for the full recipe!
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