Pumpkin Passion

Today is the big day! It is the season opener of “Pumpkin Eatin’ Season 2009.” Can you feel the excitement in the air . . . wait, that’s not excitement; that’s ash. The sky over Los Angeles is ugly and dirty with a temperature of exceedingly HOT. However, I did leave the office for a quick lunch and walked over to Starbucks. Today is the first day of the seasonal pumpkin latte and the pumpkin frappacino. They are also now stocking the mediocre trio of bakery items: pumpkin cream cheese muffin, the pumpkin scone, and pumpkin loaf. I did order a tall pumpkin spice latté with soy milk. It tastes exactly as mediocre as I remember. Hopefully the 2009 season will bring more exciting pumpkin treats rather than the same old stuff.

To commemorate the kick off of “Pumpkin Eatin’ Season 2009″ I’ve got a first ever Pumpkin Passion’s giveaway. From my blog stats, 90% of you probably found my blog while looking for the Pure Simplicity Pumpkin Mask. While it seems to have been discontinued–it’s a crying shame!– you can still occasionally find it for sale on eBay. I have 1 container left over from my last eBay purchase and I’m offering it to one lucky blog reader. To win it, simply leave a comment telling me about me your favorite pumpkin item. The winner will be chosen at random unless there’s a really interesting favorite pumpkin item related comment and then I’ll just choose the winner. You have until September 14, 2009, at midnight PST to leave your comment. Be sure to leave me an email address where you can be contacted. Sorry to any international readers but this is for those in the continental U.S. only. Good Luck!

I’ve already ruined my personal goal of posting a blog entry every Monday for all of the 2008 Pumpkin Eatin’ Season. My excuse is as follow: Last week was the craziest work week ever in my entire working life. I could have used a case of pumpkin wine and have still not forgotten my troubles. It feels a little like the sky is falling and my only hope is that on November 5th we’ll see some actual change.

To forget my troubles, I’ve recently had some excellent pumpkin filled weekends . . . . . but for this post I’m forgoing the excellent. Oftentimes, I’m quick to post about the really awful pumpkin finds or the really awesome pumpkin finds. The mediocre ones get pushed to the side and forgotten. Not this time! This is my mediocre pumpkin post.

First off….

Name: Jack’s Pumpkin Whoopie
Purchased At: West Coast Whoopies in Calimesa, CA
Price: $2.50
Availability: Year Round

From the first moment I was told about Whoopies I’ve wanted to try them. The one thing I possibly love almost as much as pumpkins are cupcakes and since Whoopies are a variation on the cupcake I was totally excited to hear about them. A Whoopie is like a crème-filled cookie but it’s more like if you took the tops off two cupcakes and used them for the cookies but put the frosting in the middle, which sounds great. The only thing wrong with cupcakes are the wrappers and this eliminates that step.

We set out to get ourselves a Whoopie and when we pulled up to the shop I noticed the sign outside read PUMPKIN Whoopies. Yea! We got one pumpkin and one chocolate with peanut butter frosting. I took a bite of the chocolate one right outside of the shop but was unimpressed. They seemed dry and ordinary. The pumpkin Whoopies are frozen so we decided to take them home and have them later in the day.

I was hoping that my patience would be rewarded but it wasn’t. They aren’t horrible but they’re nothing special. They made the classic mistake of using a vanilla cream cheese frosting, which I have bemoaned frequently on this blog, and the cake was dry and uneventful.

Yawn, we probably won’t be going back but it did spawn the idea that if I’m going to ask the bakers of the world to STOP using cream cheese frosting then I have to come up with an alternative. Keep watching because I’m going to try out a variety of frosting recipes until I come up with the perfect one for pumpkin cupcakes.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Name: Phenomenal Pumpkin Spice Cookie
Purchased At: Nearly Every Independent Coffee Shop in Southern California
Price: $3.00ish
Availability: Year Round

I buy the “Phenomenal Pumpkin Spice” (their use of the term “phenomenal,” not mine) cookies made buy the Alternative Baking Company too often. I see them year round and I’m always thinking that I really should blog about them but they’re just too boring to say much about. The taste is decently pumpkinish but the cookie ends up feeling like a ball of lead in my stomach. It’s probably because it’s vegan but the texture is Dense with a capital “D.” Another mark against it is that one cookie has 440 calories and it is sooo not worth it.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Name: Mini Pumpkin Pie
Purchased At: Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
Price: $2.25
Availability: Seasonal

The mini pumpkin pie at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf looked cute in the pastry case but was a yawner. It’s mostly crust and the dollop of whipped cream is rubbery and artificial.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Name: Pumpkin Latte
Purchased At: Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
Price: $3.75
Availability: Seasonal

It tasted better than the Starbucks’ version but not by much.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Name: Pumpkin Loaf
Purchased At: Starbucks
Price: Forgotten
Availability: Seasonal

There is nothing new at Starbucks in the way of pumpkin treats. It’s all the same old stuff that they’ve had for the past few years. Maybe they think they can trick us into thinking the pumpkin loaf is new because this year because they put crushed pumpkin seeds on top instead of the cream cheese frosting with the tiny candied ginger pieces like every other year but it’s soo not new. I prefer it the old way.

Blah, Blah, Blah . . . it’s fine but boring.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Wow! I’m kind of caught up now. I’ve also made some great pumpkin finds and I’ll post them soon. Hopefully you are still awake after all this boredom.

I still give it only a 2.

Name: Three Lakes Winery’s Pumpkin Wine
Purchased At: It was a gift
Price: $9.95
Availability: Seasonal

I’ve always considered September 1st to be the official kick-off to Pumpkin Eatin’ Season. To celebrate the arrival of another pumpkin season, I would like to propose a toast with Three Lakes Winery’s Pumpkin Wine. WTF, did I say pumpkin wine? Yup, I did.

This was given to me by a friend from work who also deserves a toast because he was married over Labor Day weekend. Congratulations Andrew! I wish you nothing but happiness. He got it for me on a trip to Chicago but if I’m not mistaken it was purchased on a drive to Milwaukee at a location I can’t remember.

The Three Lakes Winery is located in Three Lakes Wisconsin and specializes in fruity dessert-like wine. They have other interesting flavors like blueberry, cranberry, and apricot. The website says that the pumpkin wine was originally made only for the Three Lakes’ PumpkinFest. They currently offer it in limited quantities during the fall season.

The winery describes the pumpkin wine as “It IS actually made only from pie pumpkins, and the smooth, pleasant flavor surprises all who try it at our Tasting Counter because it DOESN’T taste like pumpkin pie. It has been described as having qualities of a semi-sweet Chardonnay, and we have yet to find another Pumpkin Wine made by anyone.” Well, they weren’t kidding about the “DOESN’T taste like pumpkin pie.” Unless you saw the bottle, you would never know it was made from pumpkins but I can’t really begrudge them. Pumpkins don’t have a particularly strong taste. However, I wouldn’t have described it as a semi-sweet wine. It’s really sweet but I like sweet wines.

I shared it with three other people. One person hated it and described it as GROSS (she’s super picky) but everyone else, including myself, gave it was a lukewarm good. It tastes different than what you’d expect. There’s an indescribable aftertaste that isn’t bad but not great either. It only took one glass to get my cheeks red and to make me a tad bit tipsy.

I think the novelty factor of serving a pumpkin wine at Thanksgiving or at a fall dinner party is this wine’s best asset. I would purchase and drink this wine again but it’s not something I’ll hope becomes available all year round.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Name: Pumpkin Agua Fresca
Purchased At: Mitsitam Native Foods Café at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC
Price: $3.99ish
Availability: Year Round

There are lots of reasons to envy Harry Potter: he has magical powers, he gets to go to school at Hogwarts, he has a Nimbus 2000, and he gets to drink pumpkin juice. Of course there’s the whole Voldemort trying to kill him thing but the rest of it is all pretty awesome. After reading several references to pumpkin juice in the series, I did a little research and tried to find out if pumpkin juice really does exist. I couldn’t find anything other than references to pumpkin juice in the Harry Potter books.

It was on a trip to Washington DC that I made the amazing discovery. A friend of mine (Hi Alli) told me that the café at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian was the best she’d ever visited, which is kind of a strange comment. Who says a museum café is an absolute MUST to visit? I’d been to the museum a few times but never to the café. So, when my stomach started grumbling at the National Arboretum we walked across the street to have lunch.

The café was PACKED but the food was great. It’s called the Mitsitam Native Foods Café and it features Native foods found throughout the Western Hemisphere , including the Northern Woodlands, South America , the Northwest Coast , Meso America , and the Great Plains . The food is somewhat more expensive than most Smithsonian cafes but it was soo worth it. While I was waiting for my roasted vegetable tamale I saw it on the list of beverages “Pumpkin Agua Fresca,” aka Pumpkin Juice!!!

The taste is extremely difficult to describe. It’s not at all like drinking a pumpkin pie. The taste is fairly mellow but very unique and the texture is somewhat thick. I’m sure the pumpkin is mixed with other fruits. In fact, the bottom of the cup was covered in tiny black seeds that I think were from a fig.

I enjoyed it. I would have it again but if it was available at my local grocery store I probably wouldn’t buy it very often. It’s hard to knock it when drinking the Pumpkin Agua Fresca is the closest I’ve come to being enrolled in Hogwarts.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Name: Odwalla’s Super Protein Pumpkin Beverage
Purchased At: I think she said Vons Grocery Store
Price: about $3.50
Availability: Seasonal

I miss fall and I miss pumpkins. There are NO pumpkin products to be found anywhere anymore, not even on the clearance racks. It’s sad. Spring is my least favorite season. The bunnies, the chicks, the pastel colors, and the overly floral scents just don’t do it for me.

I was going to make a joke that maybe I have the opposite of seasonal affective disorder (SAD). You know, SAD is that condition caused by decreased exposure to sunlight causing fatigue, weight gain, and difficulty concentrating. When I looked it up I found out that there is a rare form of SAD known as “summer depression,” which begins in late spring or early summer and ends in fall. The symptoms are weight loss (nope, that’s not happening), trouble sleeping (that’s year round), and decreased appetite (not at all).

Too help elevate my spring ennui, I thought a pumpkin post might help. Let’s reminisce about a much missed product, Odwalla’s Super Protein Pumpkin beverage. It was a surprise gift from Terrye. I would never have thought to look for a pumpkin product among all those Odwalla juices.

This stuff is simply liquid Fall in a plastic bottle. Images of multi-colored maple leaves danced in my head while I drank this yummy beverage. I considered that it might taste too much like an extremely undercooked pumpkin pie but that wasn’t the case. If too much nutmeg or cinnamon had been added, it might have tasted too much like pie but the only ingredients listed are soymilk, pumpkin puree, banana pure, and less that 2% of 9 other vitamins and flavorings.

I must admit, however, that I didn’t finish the entire thing. Each bottle is 2 servings, making it a total of 340 calories and it did not leave me feeling as though I’d eaten an entire meal. I drank half and ate some oatmeal one day and then had the same thing the next day for double the goodness.

I wish they made this stuff year around. Physicians could prescribe it to all their summer SAD patients. I’m sure it’s an undiscovered cure.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Name: Pumpkin Spice Latte
Purchased At: Starbucks
Price: $4.25 (grande)
Availability: Seasonal

How awesomely amazing is that picture?!?! You didn’t think I was going to say “How awesomely amazing is Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte” did you? Uh Oh! If you did you may not like this review. I’ve procrastinated this blog post for WAY too long and now that I’m not in the mood to rave over the pumpkin treats I found over the weekend, I guess I’ll get this over with:

Starbucks has a Pumpkin Spice Latte yeah, they do. Hmm, I don’t have much to say about it. I think it’s alright. The taste is a little funky and the color is a strange yellow/orangey color. When they bring back the PSL in September I purchase a couple and enjoy them but soon go back to my regular soy latte. I’m not 100% sure that my dissatisfaction with the drink is due to the sticky sweetness of it or that I like my lattes unsweetened.

I know that this blog will be heresy to some. I have friends (Hi Alli!) who go completely gaga over this stuff and, according to the “Starbucks Gossip” blog, was partially responsible for an 11% increase in sales a few years back but I’m just not thrilled with it. There’s definitely a pumpkin flavor to it but the taste is just indescribably off. The Chicago Tribune was also not overly happy with the flavor, giving it a “C” rating in their pumpkin spice coffee tasting.

So to those of you that enjoy it, keep on loving it! I’ll just make my own pumpkin spice by sprinkling a good amount of cinnamon and nutmeg on top of a regular latte.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Something I can get enthused about is DBTabasco’s “Pumpkin Latte Art” photoset over at Flickr. Through his generous usage of a creative commons license is how I got the photo featured above. Check it out.

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

Name: Coffee-Mate Pumpkin Spice Creamer
Purchased At: Ralphs Grocery Store
Price: appx $3.50
Availability: Seasonal

Yawn…..I’m sleepy. Basically, I had no coffee today because I’m too sleepy to even walk to the breakroom and pour me a cup.

If I had some Coffee-Mate Pumpkin Spice Creamer would I be more eager to grab a cup and enjoy a refreshing reflection of a pumpkin patch on a cool crisp Fall day? Yawn……NO!

This creamer is b.o.r.i.n.g. Even their vanilla creamer has more flavor. Occasionally you may catch a whiff of some sorta pumpkin smell but only rarely and ixnay on any pumpkin flavor.

For a year-round pumpkin coffee fix, mix about a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice with enough coffee grounds for a pot of coffee and then brew. Use can then use a simple vanilla flavored creamer and you’ll still have an enjoyable cup of pumpkin flavored coffee…. now that’s an eye opener!

Rating: 2 out of 10