Cranberries and Pumpkins

Yes, another couple of autumnal treats to share today.  I wasn't sure what I was going to make until my mom came back from her walk with a scarf full of wild cranberries that she picked in the woods!  When I checked on my favorite food blog and found a scone recipe that called for 1  1/4 cups of cranberries, which was exactly what she had, I knew it was a sign! 

I still stand by my statement that working with scone dough is the worst. It is sticky and you aren't supposed to touch it too much or you will melt the cold butter that you cut into it.  Today the recipe was a bit different though: instead of using my pastry cutter, I was able to do it in the food processor.  It was certainly much easier.  But the ease stopped there.  In other recipes, you pat the dough into a circle and slice it.  This one called for you to put a 3-inch round cookie cutter on the pan, fill it with dough and pat it down.  Sounds easy enough, but try then removing said cookie cutter after you have filled it with sticky dough!  Not so easy.  It was also probably hard because we do not have any small round cookie cutters.  Since today is my parents' 34th wedding anniversary, I decided to use a heart-shaped one.  It wasn't the easiest shape to work with, but I still think they came out cute. 

Besides being cute, they are really good.  The tartness of the cranberries plays with the bite of the lemon zest and the sprinkling of sugar on top.  Mom, Mark and I are the only ones who ate them so far, and we were all big fans.  As an added bonus, they made the house smell delicious!

Then tonight when Maggie came over, we were discussing what treats she could eat because she is on Weight Watchers (and down 6.5 pounds!).  I remembered pinning a pumpkin spice smoothie that was healthy and sounded pretty good.  We didn't have all the right ingredients (no protein powder or frozen bananas - or raw, for that matter) but I was pretty pumped to use my new immersion blender (thanks Marky! We learned how necessary it was after he burned himself on that soup last week). In the end, I would say these are okay, but they need something.  I am not sure what yet.  Mags added Splenda to hers and loved it.  I put 1/2 teaspoon of sugar in mine but I still think it wasn't sweet enough.  Probably the banana would have helped sweeten it up a but.  Either way, they were healthy and not awful, and I definitely drank my whole glass!

No work tomorrow :)

Recipes:
cranberry scones
pumpkin spice smoothie