chicken cashew pasta salad.

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Chicken Cashew Pasta Salad from Kathi:

1 box big shell pasta
1 can chicken
1 can pineapple chunks
1 apple
green onion
grapes
celery
cashews
Coleslaw dressing (1 bottle)

Boil pasta, cut remaining ingredients into bite sized pieces. Drain pasta, cool. Add rest of ingredients and toss with dressing.

two ingredient chocolate pumpkin muffins.

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Two Ingredient Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins (or Cookies) from Kathi:

15 ounces canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie mix)

18.25 ounces chocolate cake mix

2/3 cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips (optional)

Makes 12 regular or 36 mini muffins or 36 cookies

Position an oven rack in the center of the oven. For muffins, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line muffin tin with paper liners or coat them with non stick spray. For cookies, preheat oven to 350 degrees and line cookie sheet with parchment paper or coat with non-stick spray.

Make batter in a large bowl by mixing the two ingredients together, ignoring the instructions on the cake mix. This will take some effort and the mixture will be very very thick. Stir in the mini semisweet chocolate chips, if using.

For muffins, place batter into the prepared tins. Bake at 400 degrees until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes for regular muffins, 12 minutes for the minis.

For cookies, drop by tablespoonfuls, 2 inches apart, onto prepared cookie sheets. Bake 9 to 12 minutes or until the edges are firm and the centers are just barely set when lightly touched. Remove from the oven and cool for 1 minute on the cookie sheets and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

dinner in a pumpkin.

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Dinner in a pumpkin from Kathi:

1 chopped onion

2 T oil

1 1/2 - 2 lbs ground beef

2 T soy sauce

2 T brown sugar

1 4 oz can mushrooms (drained)

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 1/2 cup cooked rice

1 can sliced water chestnuts

1 cleaned out pumpkin with top cut off

Cook ground beef with onion. Add soy sauce, sugar, mushrooms and soup. Cook 10 minutes. Add rice and water chestnuts. Spoon into pumpkin, replace top and put on baking sheet. Bake for one hour at 350 degrees.