The Sunshine of My Life

This weather is too beautiful. Almost unbelievably so. Thank you, God!

I love it when the laundry dries in a few short hours out on the washline.

I love having the windows open and the fresh air blowing into my house.

I love being off work on the same day as my husband. And then going about our household tasks knowing that we're just a quick shout apart.

I love the excitement of preparing for a fun trip and all the scurrying around that comes in the days before leaving.

A beautiful day!

Preview of the beautiful paint job my hubby is doing to our house!

I was off of Tuesday so I spent most of the day in one of my favorite places, my kitchen. I'm prepping for my trip next week, trying to make sure Walter has enough to eat while I'm gone. Not that he would starve if left to his own devices, I just like to take care of him.

For lunch, I made Curried Cauliflower Soup. I had a recipe but didn't have everything it called for (as usual!). We ate some, put some in the fridge, and I froze 2 containers worth. Six cups of cauliflower and I still have 2/3 of the head left. Those things are amazing.  I tried to have homemade crackers (with wheat flour, not spelt, only because sadly I had no spelt) done to go with it, but he came home for lunch a little sooner than they could bake.

I cut up 2 baby canteloupes we got at the farm market on Saturday. They were really cute. We also had a mango that just wasn't ripening. Solution: I pureed it and froze it into nice little heart shaped ice cubes. Who knows what I'll use them for, but at least it's not wasted!

Next up was bread and cookies. Wheat Bread & Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies to be exact. There's something wonderful about watching and smelling yeast as you're prepping the bread. Mmmm... I used whole, cooked wheat berries instead of cracked ones for the bread so they were spotted throughout, like nuts or something. The cookies were a little more work than I expected because the recipe calls for you to melt the butter in a pan until brown and bubbling. <Sidenote: I remember as a little kid we'd make browned butter for on popcorn at my grandparents. It makes the popcorn DELICIOUS. If you haven't tried it, do. But that's the first and only time I'll promote butter.>  I almost skipped that step, but remembered how good the brown butter was on the popcorn so I thought it might be worth it. It wasn't. The cookies are full of peanut butter flavor and deliciousness, though!

We had my mom over for dinner. She was going to have to eat alone because Dad had a dinner meeting, so we saved her from that tragedy. Broccoli, twice baked potatoes, fresh bread with baked tomatoes, and a huge salad were dinner. I still have all these tomatoes laying around, with more still ripening on the vines!

And for dessert - Almond Pear Tart. With much less sugar than it called for. I used non-hydogenated shortening for the crust and no butter in the filling. I also skipped the glaze. It was delicious without it!

Why can't every day be like Tuesday?

Mystery Solved! It's Pumpkin!

The last time we emptied our compost bin (about 1 1/2 months ago), there were lots of little seedlings growing inside. They were so cute and my curiousity took hold, so we planted them in a pot to see what they were. Lots of seeds end up in the compost and these little guys were so small it was tough to tell. My hope was for canteloupe. One seedling flourished, so we planted it in the empty spot of the garden where we had just harvested the potatoes. Mystery plant started to grow bigger. And bigger. And then on to HUGE.

 The plant is longer than both our gardens combined.

This pumpkin solved the mystery of what kind of plant it was.

It has taken over the world.

This pumpkin got too big for the slot it decided to grow in. I moved it and it just keeps getting bigger!

See the battle scars the poor thing got from fighting with the wood frame?

I still had pumpkin puree leftover from last year in the freezer. Last year, I bought 1 pumpkin, baked it, pureed it and froze it in 2 cup portions. Read that again: 1 pumpkin. And I still had a bag now, when the new pumpkin plant (grown out of the seeds from that 1 pumpkin) is promising many many pumpkins. So I made cookies and experimented with a pumpkin spice latte. It was ok but the pumpkin sort of sunk to the bottom. I wonder how Starbucks and the Cocoa Beanery do it? Probably fake pumpkin flavoring. Argh. According to this copycat recipe, they use pumpkin spice syrup.

Pumpkin Spiced Latte

adapted from TipHero

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Makes 1 drink. (I think their recipe was to make 2 but I only wanted 1.)

1 c Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze milk

1/2 c very strong coffee

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp maple syrup

1 tsp cinnamon

1 T (heaping) pumpkin puree

Mix together in a small pot over medium heat until it starts to steam. Pour into a big mug and savor the delicious smell.

I would recommend putting the milk and pumpkin into a blender and pureeing it extra fine so that your pumpkin doesn't end up in the bottom of the mug when you're done drinking. I think mine just wasn't pureed quite enough. This may not be an issue if you're using the canned kind.