Pumpkin Passion

Being one of the many lactose-challenged, I have suffered for my love of pumpkin: pumpkin soups with cream; pumpkin ice cream; and so on. This time soy lovers have one up on all you soy haters (you know who you are)! It looks like Silk Soymilk will be making a pumpkin spice flavored soymilk! Yippee!!! I love their eggnog and now this?!?! This may just be the best pumpkin-eatin’ season EVER.

Below is the article from Hungry Girl:

Silk Pumpkin Spice Soymilk – The creative geniuses over at Silk are at it again. This fall, expect to see a holiday-tastic Pumpkin Spice version of their super soymilk. It has 170 calories a cup (and 3.5g fat), so while we don’t recommend guzzling it straight, it’ll certainly zazzle-up coffee drinks like nobody’s business. We know — we’ve tried it. It’s head-explodingly fantastic. And luckily, a little of the stuff goes a loooong way!

Keep and eye out for it!

Photo by Julianne Gentile

Name: Spiced Pumpkin Soup
Purchased At: Olives Gourmet Grocer in Long Beach, CA
Price: $5.99
Availability: Seasonal

I love Olives Gourmet Grocer! Their food is freaking delicious and with their being a lack of places to eat near where I live Olives gets many of my $$$. It’s not cheap but it’s all sooo worth it. They are similar to Whole Food, which we don’t have in the LBC, but MUCH smaller. Their sandwiches ROCK and so do their desserts, especially the chocolate chip cookies.

So, I was very happy to see this Spiced Pumpkin Soup on their shelves. I saw it in January but had never seen it before nor since. I’d already ordered my turkey and brie sandwich on olive bread when I saw it.

The soup did not displease :0) It was creamy and tasted like pumpkin but could also passed for a creamy carrot soup. There was a strong nutmeg flavor but it went well with the flavor.

I’m not a big fan of creamy soups. I prefer mine with some big chunks of noodles and vegetables. However this soup was quite good. Olives has yet to disappoint.

Olives is located at 3510 East Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90803

Rating: 8 out of 10

This summer I took my ultimate dream vacation! Since my undergraduate days, majoring in Women’s Studies, I’ve wanted to visit Seneca Falls, New York. Seneca Falls was the site of the first Women’s Rights Convention back in 1848. The site is now a National Park consisting of a Visitor’s Center; the Wesleyan Chapel, the actual site of the First Women’s Rights Convention; Elizabeth Cady Stanton home; and a statue near the river bank commemorating the meeting of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was truly a dream come true.

What does all of this have to do with a blog about pumpkins? Well, at the Visitor’s Center we saw a display on the gender gap. This is the text of the display:

Apples and Pumpkins and Cans of Worms

In 1990, women earned 68% of what men did for the same job. Two plans to lessen the gender gap in wage earning are equal pay for equal work, and pay equity (or comparable worth). Equal pay for equal work means the same wage for the same job regardless of who does it. In pay equity, elements of a job are given a number value. The total scores of various jobs are compared. Jobs with similar scores earn similar salaries.

Civil rights legislation passed in the 1960′s and 1970′s forbids wage discrimination on account of sex or race. But pay equity encountered strong opposition. In 1977, Washington State Governor Dixie Lee Ray denied a request for pay equity because she felt the study proving inequity compared “apples and pumpkins and cans of worms and they are not comparable.” Now Washington, Minnesota and other state governments are required by law to use pay equity to determine wages.

Name: McCutcheon’s Pumpkin Butter
Purchased At: Not Sure
Price: ?
Availability: Year Round

Mmmm, pumpkin butter. I love this stuff. It’s like spreading pumpkin joy on ordinary every-day food. You can use it on toast, waffles, bagels, and even turkey sandwiches! It’s mucho less fat that butter and it quickly satisfies a pumpkin pie craving.

McCutcheon’s Pumpkin Butter is particularly tasty. At first bite it weirded me out a little because of the texture. It tastes SOO much like pumpkin pie that I expected it to have a firmer texture. Runny pumpkin pie doesn’t sound good but it sure does taste good.

This stuff has a nice mixture of spices and pumpkin flavor. Give it a try. Seriously, try a little on a turkey sandwich it’ll remind you of a late night Thanksgiving snack.

I got this item as a gift so I’m not certain of the price or the location where it was bought but I do know that it was purchased somewhere near the Gigantic Duck in Flanders, NY.

Rating: 9 out of 10
A little less sweet would be nice