Pumpkin Passion

Disneyland has gone pumpkin crazy! There are pumpkins nearly everywhere you look from the entrance gates, down Mainstreet, all the way to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. There are simply too many items to mention. Some highlight are the giant Mickey Mouse head at the beginning of Mainstreet (pictured above) and the pumpkins carved with Disney characters surrounding the Walt Disney statue at the center of the park.

They even had a pumpkin Mickey Mouse Hat. Of course, I had to get one with my name stitched on the back. I don’t think I’ve had one of those since I was about 6 years old.

The Nightmare Before Christmas Haunted House is the #1 reason to go to Disneyland this season. It’s simply awesome.

While you’re feasting your eyes on all the pumpkin decorations you can also treat your tummy. There’s a pumpkin latte and a pumpkin cupcake at Blue Ribbon Bakery on Mainstreet. The latte was descent but cold and the cupcake was good but the frosting was similar to what you get with grocery store cupcakes. At California Adventure in the Wine Country Trattoria there was a tiramusu with a pumpkin mousse in a take-home ceramic Mickey Mouse mug. It was simply delicious but didn’t taste much like pumpkin. It tasted much more like banana. I wanted to eat 4 of them for a complete set of mugs to take back home. I probably could have eatten them all because the portion is teeny tiny–there’s a disposable plastic cup inside the ceramic cup. The whole thing is little more than the size of a shot glass but it was yummy and super cute.

Since I could never adequately describe all the many pumpkin items, here’s a little montage:

Name: Pumpkin Eggnog Ice Cream
Purchased At: Scoops
Price: it was under $2.50
Availability: Seasonal

Scoops is this really small ice cream shop on an obscure L.A. street. They sell only about 10 or 12 flavors collectively of ice cream, sorbet, and vegan ice cream. The store looks somewhat worn but not in a dirty/not well kept kind of way. It’s more like an establish mom and pop store that’s been around for a while but with a hipster feel to it. There are only a few tables available and the place is almost always packed

What really sets this place apart from all the other ice cream/frozen yogurt stores is their unique flavors of ice cream. Actually, “unique” does not even begin to describe the flavors. For instance, their repertoire of flavors has previously included avocado pale ale, brown bread, pomegranate and yuzu, blueberry and ricotta, pistachio and black pepper, sea salt malt, and pear and lychee sorbet.

I’d been there once before and really liked the ice cream. So, I went back this Saturday after having visited 2 pumpkin festivals in 90 degree weather. I needed something cold and yummy. The place was packed, as usual. While I was scoping out the flavors, Shannon pointed to one of them at the end of the row and my jaw dropped. It was pumpkin eggnog!

If there were more eggnog flavored items in this world I would probably have a blog titled “Eggnog Enthusiast.” I freaking love eggnog! To have pumpkin and eggnog combined in one item made me giddy.

I knew instantly what I was getting. So, I used my taster to try the strawberries with balsamic vinegar flavor. Yum! Shannon tasted the brown bread which she said was good but got a scoop of their chocolate peanut butter. Their scoops are a good size; one is definitely enough.

With eager excitement I sat down to eat my pumpkin eggnog ice cream. I defiantly enjoyed every last bite but it was difficult to taste the pumpkin flavor. The extra nutmeg in the eggnog overpowered the pumpkin. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed because a solo eggnog ice cream would make me jig for joy but I did want more pumpkin flavor.

Even with my minor criticism, I would still recommend Scoops with no hesitation at all. Enjoy!

Rating: 3 out of 5 for the pumpkin eggnog ice cream
Rating: 5 out of 5 for Scoops

“He’s Cute” photo by EJK41

This weekend was jammed with pumpkin events. It was so full that we had to get up early Saturday and Sunday just to fit them all in.

First off, early on Saturday morning we drove over to the Cal Poly Pomona Pumpkin Festival. When we drove past the crosswalk in front of the event, we realized that we may have forgotten an important item, a wagon. It seemed as though everyone had a wagon or a wheelbarrow and those that were headed back from the event had pumpkins piled high.

The pumpkin field was brimming with pumpkins. However, upon closer inspection the pumpkins weren’t growing out of the ground. They’d been gently placed all over the grassy hills. I saw a few people with pumpkins that had vines attached. So, maybe there was a section of the pumpkin patch where pumpkins were planted.

They also had a few craft and food booths but none had anything pumpkin to eat. What was surprising was seeing people eat the craziest foods at 9:00 a.m. like kettle corn, cotton candy, ice cream, and funnel cakes.

It’s a fairly small festival. The main event is picking your pumpkin—$5 each or 5 for $20. We picked out a good sized pumpkin but then had to carry it back to the car which was far, but could have been really REALLY far had we been shoved in one of the Timbuktu parking lots. Did I mention that it was close to 90 degrees this weekend. Walking in 90 degree heat, while carrying a large pumpkin, with not enough sleep, and PMSing is not exactly fun. By the time we got back to the car, I had a road rage break down while trying to back out of the parking. There was much cursing and screaming involved…it wasn’t pretty.

The best part was the Farm Store at Kellogg Ranch. The Agriculture Department at Cal Poly Pomona seems fairly large, which surprised me. They grow fruits and vegetable on the campus fields and then sell them at the Farm Store. It’s open year round and it has good prices on produce. We stocked up on butternut and acorn squash for only $1 each. They also had several products that are pumpkin oriented and by oriented I mean that they have Poprocks with pumpkins on the packaging but they are orange flavor—SOO very annoying. Those pumpkins that were not chosen over the weekend (So SAD!) can still be purchased at the Farm Store. Please give them a good home! In the end, I was glad that we went to the Cal Poly Pomona Pumpkin Festival in order to discover the Farm Store.

Other weekend pumpkin events included the Calabasas Pumpkin Festival, the best pumpkin eggnog ice cream ever, and a pumpkin tiramisu in a pumpkin head Mickey Mouse cup. Stay tuned as I attempt to blog each of them!

How’s your Pumpkin Eatin’ Season going? Been to any good pumpkin festivals lately?

We decorated this past weekend with all the pumpkins we’ve purchased. There have been lots of pumpkin purchases lately which is why we may need to resort to eating Top Ramen until pay day. Most of these pumpkins were purchased from the Live Oak Canyon Pumpkin Patch in Yucaipa, CA. Others are from Trader Joe’s and Home Depot. Home Depot?!?!?

If you just want a simple carving pumpkin Home Depot is your best bet. Each pumpkin is only $2.99 but they tend to sell out quick!

Where have you found cheap pumpkins this year?

Name: Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Muffin & Bread Mix
Purchased At: Trader Joe’s
Price: ???
Availability: Year Round

I hope everyone has a Laurel in their office. She’s the person who you bring in something scrounged up from your own cupboard shelves for the office potluck because you want access to her dish and no one else’s. Sometimes, she’ll forget that there even is a potluck and just walk to the grocery store and come back to create the most wonderful salad with items you never would’ve put together yourself. In other words, she’s an awesomely amazing cook.

Today was the end of a big project that several staff members have been working on and to celebrate the completion, she made a full lunch for everyone: salad, pasta, bread, and pumpkin cake. The cake was absolutely delicious (along with everything else, of course). When she told me the cake was from a Trader Joe’s boxed Pumpkin Bread & Muffin mixed I was seriously surprised. This is someone who could take bologna and make it taste gourmet but she swears she just follows the recipe on the box and adds some pecans. The frosting was whipped cream cheese and pumpkin butter. The pumpkin butter really cut the tang of the cream cheese. So yummy!

While I haven’t always enjoyed the pumpkin treats I’ve found at Trader Joe’s, this mix has a great mix of spices and is something you should try if you want a quick but delicious pumpkin cake.

I originally found this post on EpiCute: The Cute Food Blog. These are oh-so-very cute!!!

You can find out how to make them yourself over at The Decorated Cookie.

Can you even imagine how adorable these would be sitting on top of a pumpkin cupcake?

Update: Epicute is giving away a Hello Kitty Mimobot. Go sign up quick before the contest ends.

If your computer needs some help getting into the spirit of the season, here are some fabulous desktop wallpapers for the month of October.

I recently finished reading the book Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen. I’d say that it was mostly fluff and read more like a movie script than a novel but it was an enjoyable lazy summer read. Mostly I liked the whimsy of it. There was a woman hiding in a closet for almost the entire story, books that would appear out of nowhere and follow one of the characters around town, a possibly magical red sweater, and some fantastical romances.

One of the main story lines is a secret closet. In the main character’s closet is a small entrance to another closet that’s located in a different room. The main entrance to the secret closet is blocked by a giant armoire. No one else uses the closet or remembers the other entrance. In the closet, she stores travel magazines, romance novels, and lots and lots of candy that she has to sneak into the house and hide from her controlling mother. It got me to thinking about what I would hide if I had my own secret closet. There’s no use in storing candy in my secret closet because I’d eat all of it the same day I brought it in. Cupcakes wouldn’t preserve well and neither would pumpkin pies. I think I’d want to fill it with a collection of babushka dolls and Maneki Neko Beckoning Cats mixed with a few garden gnomes thrown in for the sake of being eclectic. A secret closet has so many possibilities!

I picked up the book while at Costco, mostly because I liked the cover and the title. I’d never heard of the author before. When I flipped open the book to peruse its pages, I opened it to this page:

Of course I had to buy it.

I actually had no idea what a pumpkin mellowcreme was until I did a google search. I was imagining something likes those Idaho Spuds candy bars; something fluffy with pumpkin flavor inside covered in chocolate with a sprinkling of pecans on the outside. Nope! It’s those tiny candy pumpkin that taste like candy corn. They’re only available around Halloween time. Those things make my teeth hurt just thinking about them. My initial guess was that it only takes four ingredients to make the pumkin mellowcreme: sugar, high fructose corn syrup, green food coloring and orange food coloring. I was close; they also contain honey. They taste absolutely nothing like pumpkins.

What I also learned from my google search is that people actually go nuts over these things. There’s even an entire website devoted to the pumpkin mellowcreme. Their tagline is “Debunking the myth that eating them incessantly will kill you.” They have a poem, discussion board, photos, and information on the tiny-pumpkin-looking-tooth-decayers. I thought my blog was super nichey but this one makes me look like a generalist!

Sugar Queen is a thumbs up as a mellow read and pumpkin mellowcremes are a thumbs up only as a cute pumpkin cupcake topper.