Yum! Need I say more? I love baking during the holidays. I love to bake and share with my family and friends. Baking something for someone is an inexpensive way to say you thought of them, you care about them.  Homemade from the heart~It’s basically a great gift idea!  

There are also many recipes that make great holiday gifts that require no baking at all. That’s why I love the recipe I’ll be sharing with you today. It requires no baking at all. It can involve the kids in the kitchen. It is an easy recipe for any time of the year.

This is our first year participating in 4-H. The kids are old enough now to participate in the individual clubs they are interested in. Our 10-year old son is participating in Archery and Rifle Shooting, and our daughter is just as eager to participate in this club, but unfortunately she misses the cutoff starting age by just a few months. She has signed up for the Creative Arts Group, where the kids will be learning cooking skills, recipes and sewing.

Individual No Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake

 This week they learned how to make a No Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake. Each club member made their own individual small cheesecake (2-3 servings) from this recipe (filling ingredients doubled). This is a very kid-friendly recipe that’s safe for the young ones to participate in and doesn’t require the heat from the oven or stove. Our daughter is excited to make this dessert again for our Thanksgiving dinner.

Baking for others at the Holidays can become a sweet traditions for all involved!

Today I’m sharing that super easy recipe for No Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake.

Here’s how:

I also re-made the recipe without layering the filling. So for our Share Our Holiday Table today, I thought adding these individual cheesecakes to our family holiday sharing list and deliver them to the Food Bank and Abused Women and Children’s Shelter.

Do you have a baking tradition? What do you bake? What No Bake Recipes are your family’s favorite? Does your family share your holiday table with others? When do you deliver? I would love to know what you do and how!

Is there something that you would like me to write about?  If you need to get caught up on day(s) you missed they are all listed below:

Share Our Holiday Table~A Season of Sharing With Others

At our most recent PTC meeting at the school, one of the topics on the adgenda was Holiday Meals for Families in need. This time of year has always been inspiring to me to start thinking about ways our family could continue to help other family’s, our community and write more about my passion for sharing family meals with others!

One of the ways I’m excited to participate again this year is join in Share Our Strength No Kid Hungry to help raise awareness childhood hunger in the U.S. during this critical holiday season. I couldn’t think of a better cause to donate my time to.

I have to admit, I’m not quite sure about the details and how exactly it will all happen, but throughout the holiday season,  I’ll be committing to writing about sharing a family meal “hopefully” almost everyday. At first I was a little worried about working full-time outside the home, and not having that extra time to sit and write about one specific topic everyday much less come up with individual posts. But family meal sharing is my passion, so I’m going to give it a try.

Share A Family Meal With A Family This Season

During my Share Our Holiday Table Series, I will share with you new recipes, re-visit some old traditional family favorites,  and I will share ways our family is helping others this holiday season.  All the recipes will be “family friendly”. I will also show you how you and your family can get involved this holiday season in family meal sharing.

 Nearly 17 million children- that’s almost one in four – face hunger in the U.S., not knowing where their next meal will come from. That is a stunning statistic! During this holiday season, when we are all scurrying around buying gifts and enjoying celebratory meals with our families, I would urge you to take a few minutes to reflect on those less fortunate, including the 17 million hungry children. Please spread the word about ending child hunger, and if you find it in your heart, consider making a donation to Share Our Strength No Kid Hungry, no matter how large or small. Just $1 can connect a child to 10 healthy meals, and $25 provides 3 meals a day for a child for 3 months.  Share Our Strength No Kid Hungry helped provide 4.5 million more meals to needy children in 2009.

I hope you enjoy my Share Our Holiday Table Series, but even more importantly, I hope you will help spread the word on childhood hunger so we can help solve this crisis together. If you want to tweet about this campaign, please use this hashtag #NoKidHungry.

I am so pleased to be able to provide community service, recipes and sharing family meals with you, knowing that it is in support of such a worthy cause.

Coming Up Next: No Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake…Yum!

I am not quite back into the groove this week as I had anticipated. It was a very exhausting past week with some devastating family issues going on. We found out mid week that my sister-in-law was in a tragic car accident caused by a washing machine falling off the back of a truck. Details on the accident are a little sketchy still but we know she was hit head on by another vehicle. The accident totaled the car and caused some serious injuries to her. She was in surgery for six hours Thursday morning where they tried to put her legs back together. She has broken ribs, cracked vertebrae, her leg (compound fractured) and foot (bone severed at the ankle). She had another surgery late yesterday on one of her knees and all went well. We found out this morning, she goes in for more surgery on Friday for her ankle. It will be a long journey to recovery. She’s in our thoughts and prayers every day. She has lots of family and friends supporting her. Just thought I’d ask  all of you to say a little prayer for her.

Family at Last Year's Thanksgiving

Our 10-year old son, had tubes placed in his ears on Friday. As a baby and until recently, he is prone to ear infections.  This caused some damage to his hearing and he is on the borderline of having hearing aids. He was having difficulty hearing people speak to him and failed his hearing tests. It was an easy procedure that lasted literally 10 minutes and he is recovering well.  The results of whether or not the tubes work will be determined at his post op appointment later this month.

Dante (middle) and friends having fun at the school walk-a-thon

On a much lighter note, I’m so happy it’s Fall. Every year, I wait for Fall to come around. Not just for the cooler temperatures or the beautiful foliage, they are just the icing on the cake. I wait for those satisfying flavors of fall: creamy pumpkin soups, easy savory stews, Apple Butter, pumpkin bread, yummy desserts like apple pie or pumpkin cheesecake are all top recipes to celebrate fall flavors.

Yummy Apple Pie!

Cooler autumn weekends definitely bring on bigger appetites so I’m sure I’ll be happily cooking in the kitchen.

You all know how I love to be involved in the community. My involvement with Share Our Strength’s Great American Bake Sale raising money to help end childhood hunger in America has been a huge success in previous years. A good foodie friend of mine, The Spiffy Cookie is hosting another type of wonderful Bake Sale for her friend’s brother Dave, who was in a tragic motorcycle accident this past August.  He sustained multiple injuries including a fractured left ankle and a right below the knee amputation. Currently, he is in rehabilitation and once his legs heal, David will need a prosthetic leg to walk again.

I couldn’t help but say yes to this wonderful cause. You can read more about the bake sale and Run for Dave  on her website. I believe she is still looking for more bake sale donations.

Doof-A-Palooza sounded like a storybook character to me when I first heard about it. It’s actually a kid-friendly family event that’s fun for the entire family. It’s a totally free celebration of healthy and sustainable food. My good friend Michelle Stern from What’s Cooking With Kids will be there cooking on stage. The event this year is tomorrow (Sunday, May 22, 2011) from 10 AM – 5 PM at Jack London Square in Oakland.  Here are some details on the event:

The 3rd annual DooF-a-Palooza, is a free admission food and family festival for children of all ages and adults. Like the wildly successful prior two festivals at Google Headquarters, DooF-a-Palooza, a food-backwards, table-to-source, food educational experience, includes contests, games, entertainment and fun hands-on activities with growers, chefs, purveyors, businesses, and cookbook authors all filmed and streamed live online.

Check out DooF-A-Palooza’s  website HERE for more detailed information.

Stay tuned for our family’s adventures there and photos. It’s our first year going and I can’t wait!

A Quick Note From Noel: Just a quick announcement to let you all know that I am having my site designer Christa Jensen from Affordable Web Designs  make some improvements to my site to allow my readers a more pleasurable experience when visiting the kitchen. If you happen to stop by and can’t find something on the site– not to worry it will be back to normal soon!

Stay tuned..

In the meantime, you can still follow me:

• Subscribe to my RSS feed
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