Plays well with stouts

I've been cooking less often than usual, but what does get made has been pretty tasty, if I do say so myself. Now's the time of year for hearty comfort food, which I usually don't feel like taking the time to make. Here's the last few months of standout cooking.

For Thanksgiving I was planning some fancy pies, but when a six-year-old requests a classic pumpkin you can't say no. So I made pumpkin and pecan. Lucky for me I married a man who loves to make pie crust, so he did the heavy lifting.



A while back I made Sunday pot roast. I didn't get the chance to take a picture of the final product, but here's the meat looking all delicious:



And here are the other ingredients:


Notice the Founder's Breakfast Stout, an inspired suggestion from my beer- and meat-loving brother-in-law. The roast turned out so well Jim gave me permission to make it again, which is really something since he usually despises hunks of meat like this.

And finally, tonight we had $5 foot-longs from Subway, which is not the most satisfying dinner in all the land. So I did a mental inventory of our cupboard and realized we had all the fixins for bread pudding. Here is the rough recipe:

2 cups milk
hunk of butter
3 eggs
2/3 cup brown sugar
vanilla
cinnamon
nutmeg
3 cups of torn up pieces of French bread

Heat up the milk and butter until sightly warm and the butter is melted. Whisk in the eggs, sugar and seasonings. Pour over the bread pieces in an 8x8 buttered pan. Sprinkle in some pecans and chocolate chips. Bake for 45 minutes. Eat that shit!

See, I clearly got the last bit of the instructions right: