Pumpkin Passion

We took a short trip to Seattle about a month ago and it was a life changing experience. I completely fell in love with that town. We had so much fun: the food was incredible; the people were so nice; and the scenery can’t be topped.

I have a friend who is equally in love with Seattle and visits frequently. She gave us some restaurant suggestions that proved phenomenal. One of the places was Thai Ginger. I was wary of having Thai in Washington because I’m fairly certain that the best Thai food on the continent can be found in Los Angeles. Why go elsewhere?

We ended up near Thai Ginger and decided to try it. I had a pumpkin curry that was grand! It was one of their specials. Actually, a shrimp pumpkin curry was one of their specials but they made me one with chicken. It was the perfect amount of spice and the pumpkin was cooked just right.

Not only was the food good in Seattle but the coffee went above and beyond. The connection between Seattle and coffee is seriously no joke. I had no idea coffee could even taste that good. Hands down, the best cup of coffee I have ever had was in Tacoma at the Babblin’ Babs Bistro. The owner mentioned that they get their coffee from a local roaster 2 to 3 times a week. It is super fresh. They had no pumpkin but their menu is ever-changing and I’m sure pumpkins make an appearance but I simply had to give them a shout out!

We did have some good tea also. Tully’s Coffee has a Pumpkin Spice Tea Latte, which was good and unique. They are located near Pike Place Farmer’s Market where we also purchased three little pumpkins: one was made by a local crafts person, one was purchased at a store that only sells windup toys, and one was from a toy store and is made out of wood but didn’t make it into the pictures.

Someday we will be back and hopefully it will be for a more permanent stay.

We began our exterior decorating for Fall this past weekend. I almost wrote “finished” instead of “began” in the previous sentence but we tend to collect pumpkins for the porch display throughout the month of October. This is our first year with the blow-up cat in the shoe. I love how it looks a little like a retro Halloween postcard.

Lowe’s home improvement store has a few pumpkin airblown decorations this year. They have a single 3 foot tall pumpkin, a skinny 9 foot stacked pumpkin display and a 12 foot fat stacked pumpkin display. I wanted the 12 foot tall pumpkins but it seemed a little much.

Anyway, I love how the decorating turned out. We even got the seal of approval from one of the neighbor kids. About 5 minutes after getting it blown up a young kid walked by and said, “I saw you putting the cat up from across the street and I think it’s hilarious!” So cute.

Name: Desert Essence’s Pumpkin Hand Repair Cream
Purchased At: Under my Christmas Tree
Price: $8.99ish
Availability: Year Round

My brain is so very fuzzy! I’m in a post holiday funk and my brain wants to nap and watch HGTV and Season 1 of Glee on dvd. The focus necessary for work has been hard to come by these last few days. The holidays were so fun that I haven’t accepted that they are over. I refuse to take down my Hello Kitty holiday lights handing in my office until it’s humiliatingly necessary . . . perhaps Easter.

My wonderful holiday included being gifted several pumpkin themed gifts and the Desert Essence’s pumpkin hand repair cream is one of my favorites. I’m obsessed with lotion, especially at work because I wash my hands numerous times throughout the day . . . probably because at my desk in where I drink my 8 cups of water a day. This lotion smells really unique and it took me a day or two before I decided that I really liked it. The smell is strongly vanilla and slightly caramel but it is still reminiscent of pumpkin. It’s also not greasy. Good stuff and Thank You Lynn!

Rating: 4 out of 5

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.

Finally! After two year’s worth of New Year’s Resolutions, my etsy shop is up and running. I’m still working on filling out the multiple profile information but I’ve got a couple of items listed. Take a look!

I recently saw a recipe for pumpkin waffles and thought I’d give it a try and maybe even blog about it. Now, I’m hesitant to review the recipe because I made the waffles early in the morning before I’d had any coffee and I went out and bought the only waffle maker left on the shelves of a local department store that was a total cost of $6.98 plus tax plus and I had to use LIBBY’S Easy Pumpkin Pie Mix instead of the pureed pumpkin that the recipe requested. With all that stacked against it, the pumpkin waffles were a disaster. They were flat, runny, and burt in the middle.

I can’t blame the disater on a bad recipe until I at least try the recipe again using all the right ingredients and with a decent waffle maker. I ended up salvaging them by adding an extra cup of flour and making pancakes out of them instead. The texture was a little funky for pancakes but the flavor was delicious.

So, I’m blogging about not wanting to blog about this recipe in order to tell you that this was the first time I’d discovered there is a serious pumpkin shortage in the United States. WHAT?!?! Yes, just go to your supermarket and try to find canned pumpkin. For a good number of places the cans are missing!
My extensive google searching capabilities have solved the mystery: a chilly, damp summer in the Midwest and Northeast has hurt the pumpkin crop. There’s a great two-part series on the shortage at the “Daily News Transcript.” Their conclusion is:

Nationwide, the shortage of warm, sunny days has caused spotty pumpkin growth. Some pumpkin patches were ruined by the rain and many farmers had to re-plant, delaying the peak season in some places. Also, pumpkins are pollinated by bees, farmers said, and bees don’t fly in the rain.

The difference, local farmers have said, is in the soil – if the soil is heavy to begin with, the added rain will drown the pumpkins. However, if the soil is dry, the pumpkins turn out OK.

Now that I can find any canned pumpkin, everywhere I turn I keep finding delicious looking pumpkin recipes: Pumpkin Flat Bread with Caramelized Onions; My Best Pumpkin Bread; Pumpkin Spice No-Bake Cheesecake; and Pumpkin Hummus.

I’ve heard that organic canned pumpkin is easier to find. I must go on a search this weekend! Pumpkin Eatin’ Season 2009 cannot be a total bust!

Rating for Pumpkin Shortage: 0 out of 5
Rating for the article on the pumpkin shortage that can be found here and here:
5 out of 5

Name: Sexy Hair’s Pumpkin Shampoo & Conditioner
Purchased At: Marshalls
Price: $10 each
Availability: Year Round

A few years back, I found the pumpkin line of Sexy Hair products. I was so thrilled at the thought of my head smelling like a pumpkin pie that I was willing to overlook the incredibly high price tag. I chose the Pumpkin Whipped Soufflé Styling Crème. I think I went home that very night and tried it out. It was utterly disappointing. My hair was a gooey mess and didn’t smell anything like pumpkin. No, pumpkin smelling head for me, bummer!

With this history in mind, when I first heard about the Sexy Hair Pumpkin Shampoo and Conditioner was on sale at Marshalls ($10 each instead of the regular $20) I wasn’t inspired to promptly run down and buy them.

A year ago I was a firm believer in paying top quality for hair Bumble and Bumble; Redken, etc. My naturally curly hair demands moisture either to keep the curls from frizzing or to protect it from the super high heat of the flat iron. However, when Shannon and I moved in together and then had to plan a wedding in two weeks, money was tight and so I started using her $1.99 Suave hair conditioner. I honestly can’t tell the difference in my hair and so I’ve stuck with the cheap stuff.

First off, the stuff is still overpriced even at 50% off. It’s a big bottle but my hair still feels and looks the same as when I was using the cheap stuff. It doesn’t leave my hair any softer. Second, the scent is pleasant and does smell somewhat like pumpkin…more like a pumpkin pie. The shampoo smells better than the conditioner, which has a somewhat sour scent (Shannon disagrees, she feels the conditioner smells better). Lastly, my favorite part of the product is that the scent lingers but is not overpowering. Directly out of the shower the scent is strong but after my hair dries and I style it, the scent gets faint. Then, eventually I can’t smell it at all until I fluff my hair or it gets wet again. I don’t want such a strong scent so that by the end of the day I can’t stand the smell but I want to catch an occasional whiff of my hair and wonder who’s baking the pumpkin pie.

Overall, I enjoy the Sexy Hair Pumpkin Shampoo and Conditioner. However, once it’s gone I’ll probably go back to my $1.99 conditioner. Maybe not if it’s still $10; the more I use it the more I like it. Thanks for finding it, Chris!

Rating: 4 out of 5

This Labor Day weekend has been spent crafting and pumpkin searching. I even managed to combine the two with this zipper pouch:

I was going to make it for my future etsy shop but it came out a little louder than I wanted. It kinda screams “PUMPKINS!!!” I’m working on a similar zipper pouch but this one will only strongly state “pumpkins.”

More Etsy goodness:

In part to having been raised Mormon, I have some skill in several different types of crafts including needlepoint, cross-stitch, sewing, quilting, jewelry making, appliqueing, macrame, and knitting. One method I have not fully learned is crocheting. I can make a decent granny square but that’s all I’ve ever made. Recently I’ve started finding some really cute crotchet patterns that may inspire me to pick back up a crotchet hook.

For instance, I found this pattern on Etsy today:

How freaking adorable! There’s also a cupcake pattern and a candy corn pattern. Check out Lilla Dolce’s etsy shop for more information on the Pumpkin Sugar Cookie Crochet Scarf Pattern.