Pumpkin pie tartlets.

The husband and I are going to an early Halloween party tonight and I decided to put the homemade pumpkin pie filling I made a couple of weeks ago to good use.

I used my friend Hilary's recipe as a jumping off point and tweaked it to suit my tastes

Sangria.

Yesterday was the one night only touring performance of "Legally Blonde: the Musical!" in my area, and I went to see it with my mother. It was a genuine girls-day-out with shopping, dinner and a show, and afterward drinks in our jammies in front of my TV. I experimented with a sangria recipe you've gotta try.

1 bottle cheap red wine
1 can (12 oz) of lemon-lime soda
1/3 cup of brandy
whatever fruit you want (I used pineapple, orange, lemon, lime and what was probably the last ripe peach of the season)

Basically dump it all in a pitcher, stir to combine and pour. Really, really tasty stuff. You cannot taste the brandy except in a vague, aromatic sort of way - almost like drinking mulled wine.This would probably be better the longer you let the flavors steep together. I'm making it again tonight and I've left the fruit from last night in the pitcher, added the brandy and have it soaking in my fridge.

Snickerdoodles.

One of my best childhood memories is of making snickerdoodles in my grandmother's kitchen. My favorite thing to do was pop one of every three balls of dough I rolled in cinnamon sugar into my mouth without Grandma noticing. Snickerdoodles are also one of the foods that I am so picky about it borders on a bit scary. I won't buy them at those cookie stands in the mall, or bake sales, and rarely I'll try one from a professional bakery but almost always am disappointed. For the record:

- Sugar cookies rolled or dusted in cinnamon sugar, or with cinnamon mixed into the dough, are not snickerdoodles.

- Butter cookies similarly treated are not snickerdoodles.

- Neither are shortbread cookies, etc.

I have a trusted favorite snickerdoodle recipe that my grandmother passed on to me that interestingly enough wound up more or less in its original form on allrecipes.com. Mrs. Sigg's Snickerdoodles have that wonderful balance of soft, pillowy insides to crispy, chewy outsides that a good snickerdoodle should have. They also bake up with the picture-perfect crackles that one envisions snickerdoodles having every time. This recipe also contains my #1, never deviate from it rule for cookie baking; an equal ratio of butter to shortening. Trust me on this one, if you want cookies that bake up soft and tender as well as chewy, you will listen and obey.

Butternut squash soup.

It's autumn and that always puts me in the mood for soup! Warm, aromatic, heavy-cream-laden calorie bombs.

This recipe popped up on allrecipes.com as the recipe of the day about a week ago, and I decided to give it a shot. Roasting vegetables deepens and preserves their flavor a lot better than boiling them, so I did things a little differently than what the recipe calls for. I halved my squash and roasted it along with half of an onion and two cloves of garlic at 350 for about an hour.