Guess what? There is an official Pinterest Challenge that happens each season, organized in part by Sherry at Young House Love. I hope it’s OK that this food girl thought it would be neat to participate in this craft challenge. It just seems my 50-recipe challenge makes such a good fit …

This recipe challenge has been one of my best ideas.

It used to be that the idea of making something new was so much more appealing than the thought of making it happen.

We call those mental hurdles, right?

Luckily, all it took to get over this one was to publicly declare a 101-day challenge to make fifty new recipes. Now I keep track of tons of recipes I want to try on Pinterest (here’s my food board), pick and choose some each week that look fun, and make them.

Total recipes so far? Including these nine below: 24. I’m almost halfway there — and less than halfway through my 101 days! It’s looking good.

We have so many yarmy new foods in our life …

Simply Scratch’s Roasted Butternut Squash, Sausage, and Orecchiette Pasta in Brown Butter Sage Sauce

Hey, do me a favor: stop reading my blog. Right now (I know you didn’t finish; it’s alright). Make this pasta dish. Enjoy the aroma of browning butter. Discover the joy of crispy, pan-fried sage. Mix it with butternut squash and call it My Life Is Complete.

Shutterbean’s Coconut Maple Granola

I thought I was a clumpy-chewy-granola girl. I was wrong. This cereal is so delicately crunchy — the unsweetened coconut is paper-crisp! Next time I make this, I’m doubling the recipe. At a minimum, doubling.

… also her Cream Cheese Cinnamon Rolls

SWEET JEEZUS these are ridiculous little devilish angelic heavy puffs of buttery sweet spicy dough melty sugar-crunched-edged treats from heaven or maybe the devil.

Make these only if you plan to feed a team of people who will empty the pan for you. You will curse yourself if you make this entire pan for just you and your husband and put the leftovers in a fridge, where they will taunt you and you’ll take a bite and then “ooh, just one more bite” and then “oh lordy I’ve just OD’d on this stuff — oh well let’s eat more!”

They’re the best cinnamon rolls ever. Obviously.

Soup Addict’s Have It Your Way Beer Bread

I liked this a lot! Earthy sweetness (either from the bit of sugar in the dough or my husband’s American stout brew). Crunchy top (thank you, butter!). Next time I’d omit the sprinkle of salt on top (those just didn’t look well after the bread was kept in a plastic bag).

Otherwise, we’ll definitely be making this again.

101 Cookbooks’ Bake Quinoa Patties

Quick — go look at Heidi’s version of these patties on 101 Cookbooks. OK. Now look at mine.

Huh? Some things I’d do better next time: Chop all the fixins into smaller pieces; not forget the feta; take her up on that panfry option, which I think would make for a nicer looking pattie.

The flavor of these was great. Husbandman liked them, too!

… also, her Oatmeal Crackers

Yeah, so I said I’d make these crackers, but to be honest, they were a little too complicated for my taste and seemed less tempting after having identified the perfect Beeson cracker.

Eat Live Run’s Soft Baked Fig Cereal Bars

Fruit and cake, right? These are nice little treats to have on hand. However, I made these decisions which made these more like cake and jam than fig bar:

» I didn’t have apple juice on hand. But I did have apples! I replaced the apple juice with one chopped apple and 1/2 cup water.

» I followed the cooking instructions then processed the fig mix as directed. What I didn’t do was follow my own instinct and cook down the filling further … it was just much looser than what you see in Eat Live Run’s photos. Instead of paste, I ended up with something like jam.

It wasn’t really too big a deal — these were still tasty. I just have notes for next time, is all.

Eating Bird Food’s Fruit and Nut Bars with Chocolate

Look at me making simple little errors! Here, I overprocessed the dried fruit then overmixed the final dough. This is what I got. They kinda tasted like health food. That’s not really a problem, right?

In any case, it gave me ideas for a future version of my energy bar …

Indie Fixx’s Sweet and Salty Toasted Chickpeas

Oh. I won’t say too much about this.

Annie’s Eats’ Pumpkin Doughnuts

Aside from my electric stove failing to maintain the oil temperature, these were fun to make and tasty to eat! The dough is a little soft (even after spending an entire night in the fridge), so I had to use tons of flour to keep it easy to handle; I also floured the doughnut cutter (and should have done that before each time I used it).

This made a ton of doughnuts, so make these for a crowd!

I wrote about the first handful of recipes I made for my 50 Recipe Challenge. Read it! And if you like Pinterest, you can find me there, and the food board where I’m getting inspiration for the challenge.

Fourteen recipes down, thirty-six to go!

Jeremy & Kathleen’s Broccoli Quiche

Dang but this simple recipe was delicious. Things that were different for my quiche: I used my own pastry recipe (lots of butter!); I only had four eggs (not the five she calls for); my cheese of choice was white cheddar; I ended up with tons and tons of broccoli. The filling was creamy and rich. Next time I think I’ll use the same amount of broccoli but increase the egg filling by about half and use it to coat the broccoli (which dried up a little being exposed to the hot oven).

(NPR’s) Kitchen Window’s Pumpkin Bread

Hmm. There was no picture for this pumpkin bread to compare mine to, but this came out super dense and moist, almost pudding-like. The only adjustment I had to make was to replace the (fat-free) buttermilk with (whole fat) cream. Now, I know that added fat would have changed the crumb of the bread, but I’m not sure it’s what accounts for my results.

You know what? I’m one hundred percent happy with the pumpkin puddin’ bread I ended up with. Next time I make it, I might even bake it up in little mason jars and serve it with fresh-whipped cream.

Kath’s Oatmeal Snack Bars

Ahem. Apparently I never have anything but whole cream on hand, or the will to buy anything else. I made some adjustments to this recipe (whipping cream instead of skim, added in a little whole wheat flour), that didn’t bring anything special to it. Next time I’m going to pump up the spices (by about half); add in a quarter-cup of something sweet: honey, sugar, maple syrup; I might add some almond meal and omit the whole wheat flour.

I’d like to eventually incorporate these into my weekly midday treats.

Oh She Glows’ Easy Vegan & Gluten-free Crackers

I kind of killed the gluten-free thing when I chose whole wheat flour (to sub for the rice flour that I don’t ever have on hand). In fact, I used this recipe more as a guideline for a good dry-to-wet ratio. I didn’t have nutritional yeast in the cupboard and I left out the spices (since these need to pair well with salsa).

They turned out slightly grainy (whole wheat? Maybe I’ll try a half whole wheat / half all-purpose mix next time), and they lacked flavor dimension. We usually have hard Parmesan in the fridge, so I might grate a little into the dough next time.

Simple Bites’ Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

I wasn’t expecting this to be so sweet, but I loved that about it. End of story.

Eat Live Run’s Zucchini Pasta

Umm, let’s not talk about my attempts at this recipe. The recipe is good, I just had an off night. Moving on …

Recipes I plan to try this coming week

I set myself a little goal: 16 recipes done by October 30. I need to get makin’ and bakin’! Here’s what I’m thinking …

» Simply Scratch’s Roasted Butternut Squash, Sausage, and Orecchiette Pasta in Brown Butter Sage Sauce
» Shutterbean’s Coconut Maple Granola
» … also her Cream Cheese Cinnamon Rolls
» Soup Addict’s Have It Your Way Beer Bread
» 101 Cookbooks’ Bake Quinoa Patties
» … also, her Oatmeal Crackers
» Eat Live Run’s Soft Baked Fig Cereal Bars
» Eating Bird Food’s Fruit and Nut Bars with Chocolate
» Indie Fixx’s Sweet and Salty Toasted Chickpeas
» Annie’s Eats’ Pumpkin Doughnuts

The reason I started this fifty-recipe challenge was that I find it so easy to set aside recipes that inspire me (usually on Pinterest), but so seldom (never?) actually do anything with them. I might as well have been packing them into a box in an attic this whole time.

The nicest surprise to come out of the challenge is how easy it is to cross that line from “inspired by” to “inspired to do.” My tastes are simple, so the dishes often call for items I have on hand. And I have enough experience in the kitchen to carry me through the various recipe instructions.

What had I been waiting for this whole time? Here are the recipes I’ve used so far …

1. Maple Cinnamon Almond Butter with Flax Seeds, Oh She Glows

Almond butter was the first of my fifty recipes. I even wrote about it. And I’ll make it again. What would I change about this recipe? Nothing. I didn’t have the hemp and chia seeds also called for in the recipe and it turned out fine; but if I come across them, I’d like to add them next time to boost its yummy goodness.

2 & 3. Cuban Black Beans, Eat Live Run; and Zucchini Cheddar Biscuits, A Cozy Kitchen

Both of these were incredibly simple to make — the most trying part of the meal was washing the food processor after grating the zucchini. (Boohoo, Lindsay! It’s a magic machine that grates an entire zucchini in three seconds. Get over yourself.)

Recipe notes:

1. I might play with spices for the beans next time (this seemed like a great base for experimenting with future batches).

2. I ran out of all-purpose flour for those biscuits! I ended up having to use about half AP, half whole wheat; and the biscuits were still delicious. I might even do that on purpose next time (and add just a minute or two to the baking time to help the heavier whole wheat flour finish up in the oven).

4. Carrot Apple Ginger Soup, Joy the Baker

{No photo.}

Joy is one of the food bloggers I’ve been following since I discovered food blogs. And (ridiculous, I know) this is the first Joy recipe I’ve tried. And it’s soup. Go figure.

No notes on this perfect recipe, but a question: Does anyone know why my food processor would happily and perfectly smooth the first mini-batch of soup I ran in it, but leak like hell for every single other batch, even teeninsy ones?

5. Crispy Rosemary Flatbread, Smitten Kitchen

The first. Smitten Kitchen is THE FIRST food blog I ever found — accidentally, after I’d done a search for pie crust and came to this recipe.

In any case, another of the challenges I’m taking up is Unprocessed October, during which time I hope to find a substitute for the tortilla chips we eat every single day in the Beeson home. This was the first recipe I tried to that end.

It doesn’t quite pair with the salsa we make (that’s a must), but it was such a simple bread that I’ll be making it again. It plays especially well with our hummus. And hummus is something I could eat nearly every day. (Here’s the hummus recipe.)

6. Macaroni Salad, 101 Cookbooks

And with this recipe, I discovered I love arugula. I’d never had it before, but I found myself snacking all week on the leaves I hadn’t needed for the recipe. I added them to my leftover black beans; I thought about (but for some reason never ended up) adding them to my eggs at breakfast. I ate them raw and solo.

Oh, and the pasta salad was tasty. No need for mayonnaise when you have so many fresh flavors mixed in the bowl.

7. Apple Butter, All Recipes

This was a simple way to fill our home with sweet autumn smells. And the apple butter on the other end of a twelve-hour slow-cook was delicious. I included some recipe notes when I wrote about it (and our apple-picking adventure).

8. Healthy No-Bake Almond Cookies, Eating Bird Food

I made these into bars with the idea that Patrick could take them on bike rides. The recipe is a little too dry for these little guys to hold together (even after I added about an extra 1/4 cup almond butter), but they’re tasty (I crumbled them over apple for a really nice post-workout snack).

I have a protein-bar recipe in my files (from Patrick’s cousin Jill; thank you Jill!), and I’m going to see if I can borrow from it to make these bars more handy.

… Eight recipes down, forty-two to go!