Pumpkin Passion

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

Congratulations to sherry who left the following comment:

I can’t wait to try the pumpkin blizzard you recommended. I had no idea.

You’ve won the Pure Simplicity Pumpkin Mask. I’ll be contacting you soon.

Thanks to everyone who left a comment. All comments were appreciated and a pleasure to read!

I may be the only person who takes New Year’s Resolutions seriously. The big major resolution I made this year (truth be told, last year as well) was to have my own Etsy site up and running. If you don’t know about Etsy, click here immediately and check it out. For those of you no taking my advice I will tempt you more by explaining that Etsy is a site filled with handmade stuff off a wide variety. Different artisans have their own page where they sell anything from crocheted penis pillows to felted cupcake pin cushions that even your grandmother would love.

With everything being handmade, all the items are unique and the sellers are amazingly sweet. When was the last time you made a purchase from Amazon and they sent you a handwritten card saying thank you and if there are any problems with your purchase please contact them and they’ll make it right? I’ve even worked with one seller, Atlantis Designs, to make a one-of-a-kind birthday present for a friend. The gift was a melted glass replica of the cover from the book Stargirl and then I had her make two necklaces of the same cover. It was awesome and my friend loved it. Here’s another necklace I purchased on Etsy from MetalSugar that I absolutely love.

Currently, I’m working on creating some items for my own page. I want to have at least 9 items completed before I open. So far I have a purse, some zipper pouches, and some onesies completed. This weekend I’m working on some zipper pouches for Halloween. I just found the most amazing pumpkin ribbon at Jo-Ann’s Fabric Store that I’ll share once I finish the pouches.

This story was just for background purposes on this week’s Photo Friday. Heather saw some pumpkin chocolate truffles on Etsy and thought they might interest me. Not only do they look completely delectable, it’s also a beautiful photo and so I share it with you at the top of this entry.

Jane of All Trades tends to sell out of them but it seems like she restocks quickly. Yummy!

Name: Kashi’s TLC Fruit & Grain Bars in Pumpkin Pie
Purchased At: Target
Price: $5ish
Availability: Year Round

Finding pumpkin products on the shelf of my supermarket in the month of May is always a little strange but nice. This was true of Kashi’s TLC Fruit & Grain Bars in Pumpkin Pie. I wasn’t that surprised to find them in Spring because Kashi also has a year-round TLC Crunchy Granola Bars in Pumpkin Spice Flax (omg, how many names can a company give one granola bar), which I like but think the pumpkin flavor was nearly nonexistent—it seems like more than a stretch to call them “pumpkin spice.”

This previous experience squelched my excitement to try the TLC Fruit & Grain Bars in Pumpkin Pie but I figured I give them a shot. After all, pumpkin products in May are slim pickings. The wife tried them first and gave it a poor verbal review. She thought the top layer was a strange texture and the flavor was all wrong. I was subsequently even less excited and left them in the cupboard for weeks before a search for garbanzo beans turned them up again.

Begrudgingly I ate one at my desk at work in a moment of 3 o’clock hunger. After all, it’s a healthy snack back with only 120 calories but they’re so not worth it. Yuck!

From the picture on the box you can see that these bars are in two layers. The first is a dry oat layer and the second is a spongeier layer-of-mystery with pecans on top. I have no idea what the mystery layer is about. It’s somewhere in texture between a very firm jell-o and a nonsticky caramel but tastes similar to licking a cinnamon stick. The picture on the box also shows a generous amount of pecans on the top layer of the bar. In reality there’s only about 5 small pieces of pecans stuck into the top layer.

I’m beginning to think that Kashi considers “pumpkin” to be synonymous with cinnamon. I checked to see if there possibly some pumpkin seeds in the bar. I’ll forgive a product that tastes nothing like pumpkin if it includes pumpkin seed–the seeds don’t have a very distinctive flavor. The check turned up actual pumpkin puree and dried pumpkin but both were down towards the bottom of the ingredient list.

Rating: I give it a 1 out of 5. However, I will finish off the box so they must not be entirely disgusting.

I found this treasure in my inbox a few days ago. Now if I could just find it in my grocer’s freezer! Here’s the word from the Ben & Jerry’s website:

Fall is right around the corner. Doesn’t it make you start craving foods like apple cider, butternut squash, and Pumpkin Cheesecake!? That’s right!

This favorite seasonal flavor can be found in select retail stores for a limited time.

It seems as if others are just as eager for the return of fall and pumpkins as I am. Comments have increase this month and I appreciate every one of them.

Also, people have been sending me some interesting looking pumpkin finds. Coincidentally, they’ve both been found in other countries.

The first is from Kat who found Pumpkin Beef flavored Soup mix at a grocery store in Barbados. It’s from a company out of Jamaica called Grace. I’m not sure if she tried it or not but this website describes it as “This spicy noodle soup is great eaten by itself or to enhance the flavor of your favorite beef, chicken or vegetable soup.”

Another PumpkinPassion.com visitor, Randy, pointed out a Japanese product Pumpkin Pretz. When he first mentioned them I thought of Pumpkin Pocky, which are like a stick cookie dipped in chocolate. But the Pretz sound more like a savory cracker rather than a cookie. Randy describes them by saying, “I spend a fair amount of time in Japan and found a crunchy snack treat called ‘Pretz’. Along with regular flavors such as basil, and tomato, they make a pumpkin version as well. The taste was curious to me at first and I thought maybe I didn’t like it. But after chowing down a few, I could not put them down so easily.”

I’ll have to go on the hunt for both of these soon.

Name: Pumpkin Pie Flavored Jelly Belly Beans
Purchased At: Oak Glen, CA
Price: Forgotten Again!
Availability: Seasonal but I found them in July

I adore me some Shannon! She found me a community that’s practically stuck in the fall season the whole year round. It’s the community of Oak Glen, CA. Located in the San Bernardino Mountains, Oak Glen is primarily a series of apple farms.

In the fall months, you can pick your own apples right off the trees and shop for a ton of country related nic-nac crap at the many gift shops. Most of the points of interest are open only in the fall months but others remain open continuously.

The great thing about a Fall obsessed community is that there’s plenty of homage given to our favorite squash-like fruit, the pumpkin. In fact, at the very first orchard that you come to while traveling up Oak Glen Road has an entire section of its store dedicated to the pumpkin.

It was here that I came across the Pumpkin Pie flavored Jelly Belly beans. I later found out that these are a seasonal item but I guess they had some left over from the 2007 Pumpkin Eatin’ Season, which could explain why they were so blah. The flavor was off, tasting very artificial but mostly not tasting at all. They made me sad. I finally find a pumpkin product in the middle of July and we didn’t even finish the tiny bag that we bought.

I’ll be back to Oak Glen in the fall and hopefully there will be more and better pumpkin finds.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Name: Pumpkin Cheesecake Caramels
Purchased At: Olives Gourmet Grocers
Price: $8.99 a pound
Availability: Seasonal

I purchased these in the evening when it was much too dark to take a picture for blogging posterity purposes. By the morning I had only 3 little Pumpkin Cheesecake Caramels left.

These were quite yummy! The pumpkin factor was strong and the originality of the flavor combinations was high. They really did taste like pumpkin and cheesecake.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll be seeing these again until next October.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Yogurt? This is the first year that I’ve found pumpkin pie flavored yogurt. Pumpkin stuff that I can have for breakfast is always a welcome surprise.

Name: Archer Farms Pumpkin Pie Yogurt
Purchased At: Target
Price: about $1.00
Availability: Seasonal

The Archer Farms yogurt was fairly benign. It had a tacky sticky texture that was slightly unsettling and the flavor was extremely sour. The pumpkin pie flavor was there but the tacky texture and sour tang overpowered any yummy pumpkin taste.

Rating: 1 out of 5

Name: Lucerne Pumpkin Pie Yogurt
Purchased At: Vons Grocery Store
Price: about $1.00
Availability: Seasonal

The Lucerne yogurt was much better. This is your basic yogurt, slight tang and creamy texture. I enjoyed it. The pumpkin taste wasn’t overpowered and could therefore shine through.

Rating: 3 out of 5

We had a pumpkin decorating contest at work yesterday and this one was mine:

I never said that I have a LOVE of decorating pumpkins ;0)