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How-to Make Homemade Pumpkin Pie Spice
It’s pumpkin spice season and before we dive head first into all the fall baking and making, let’s get down to the basics. Homemade pumpkin pie spice takes but 5 minutes to make and while buying a pre-made blend is just as time effective, I often find the pre-made blends aren’t made to my liking. It’s also more cost effective to make your own, especially considering you probably have all of the ingredients in your pantry, already.
Other benefits of making your own: You can also make it in smaller batches, if you prefer, to keep it fresher, keeping it’s strong flavor, for longer. You can tweak the blend to make it to your liking. Adding even more cinnamon or nutmeg if you prefer, dropping the allspice if that’s not your thing, you can fully customize this spice blend to be your own.
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How-to Make Restaurant Style Salsa
As summer’s end nears, we are left with the last few bites of the season to savor. I feel like a bit of a hoarder whenever I go to the markets this time of year and I see the beautiful heirloom tomatoes, the beautiful Hatch chiles, fresh herbs and all the other goodness. I can’t help myself. I want it all.
What better way to enjoy the final tastes of summer than a perfect fresh homemade salsa. For me, though I love a chunky, classic-style pico de gallo, what I don’t love is the amount of time all of the chopping takes. This restaurant-style salsa is a smoother, classic salsa and it is a cinch to whip up.
When Blendtec offered to send me one of their beautiful high-powered blenders, I immediately became excited about all of the possibilities. The middle of the road KitchenAid blender we got for our wedding 7 years ago, was nearing the end of it’s life and though it’s made literally hundreds and hundreds of smoothies, it also never overly impressed me, it was no powerhouse and it definitely couldn’t handle anything too thick.
