Fridays of Intestinal Fortitude: Cheater, Cheater Pumpkin Eater

Note: Fridays of Intestinal Fortitude is a weekly(ish) feature about food, food and more FOOD. No, I am not an expert, but I do enjoy talking about food prep, cooking food, eating food and making sweet love to food.  Okay, maybe not the "sweet love" part. After all, this is not meant to be an homage to 9 1/2 Weeks.

Recipe Index can be found here. 
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After a really weird week of where nothing has gone right, I have a FUN day planned for us.  Team Chaos is out of school and I am letting them choose what they would like to do.  Thus far, they are choosing to hang out in their pajamas.   Since I am nursing a cold (and I have TWO 5ks this week that I will now probably have to walk.  Sigh.), I am totally on board with a Pajama Day Plan.

In the meantime, in lieu of a real post, I would like to share a few food-related links.

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Courtesy of a recipe from Dad Cooks Dinner, I made slow-cooker chicken stock and my world?  Has been officially rocked.  HARD. I had bought a rotisserie chicken on Wednesday for dinner and when we were done with it, I stuck it in the refrigerator.  Yesterday morning, I threw the carcass in the slow cooker, chopped up a bunch of green onions, minced FOUR cloves of garlic and threw in some dried parsley for good measure.  I covered the whole mess with water and let it cook cook on low for 8 hours.  It was SO easy and the stock smells AMAZING.  I feel silly buying canned stock all of these years.  The rotisserie chicken cost $6 AND I made over 4 cups of stock from it.  I poured the stock in baggies and stuffed them in the freezer (I am going to invest in some freezer jars, though)  Chicken stock in the slow-cooker - what a great idea!

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I have been in a cooking rut lately -- I pulled up the All Recipes Dinner Spinner app on my Kindle Fire and this Spicy Garlic Lime Chicken popped up.  And it was a WINNER.  I had a few tenderloins left, so I am chopping those up for the Curried Chicken Divan I am making tonight. 

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I am still playing around with my slow-cooker and cannot wait to dig into some of these slow-cooker recipes courtesy of Receipe 4 Living.

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Budget Bytes posted a round-up of pumpkin recipes and asked for more suggestions in the comments.  Of course, I could not resist linking to my own pumpkin curry recipe since it is my life's mission to expose people to the wonder of curried pumpkin.

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As I was digging through food blogs while on the hunt for new dinner ideas, I stumbled across US Masala.  Holy cow -- this site should come standard with an appetite suppressant.  Each recipe comes with lovely photography and simply stated instructions -- in particular, I cannot WAIT to try the Garlic Masala Baked Potato Wedges.  Enter this site at your own risk on an empty stomach.  You have been warned.