Pumpkins, Punting, & More Pumpkin!

Tags

Cambridge, dog walking, London, London Bridge, London Eye, pumpkin pie spice, pumpkin spice latte, punting, River Cam, shar-pei on a walk

It’s October!!!! Time for the switch from apples to pumpkins!!! So far, its only the 11th and we have been super busy here! Mei is making strides in the scooshing department and working on crawling everyday! She has decided that she can’t hang on the sofa with me and play with her toys but she has to be on the carpet where she can roll and stretch and scoosh around, so baby gates here we come! The house is slowly becoming more and more baby proofed as she becomes more and more mobile.

Patella went under the knife for her 7th & 8th surgeries, entropian on both her eyes. Entropian is when the eyelids roll under themselves causing the eye lashes to rub on the corneas which is terribly uncomfortable and can cause blindness, so of course, we got that fixed. She gained enough weight to cause a wrinkle to develop on both her eyelids just like when she was 9 months, but those wrinkles she was born with. Patella is happy and enjoying the fall though, so we play with her lots and let her explore all the falling leaves (which she growls at) on her walks. Here are some photos from a nice morning walk Patella and I were able to enjoy through our neighborhood while Mei slept with her daddy at home, giving us plenty of quality Mama and Patella time!

Then to mix things up some more, we had some friends visit from Italy for a two-day whirlwind tour of London & Cambridge!!! We were really busy! The house had to be cleaned up since we had re-arranged all our furniture in all the rooms to make some room for all of Mei’s toys and to open up space for a couple new bits of furniture, etc. Which of course we were doing right up until the last-minute before our friends arrived, and what would a vacation, even a short one, be without good food? So I had to bake cookies and prepare some yummy foods to be enjoyed while our guests were here so I didn’t have to waste any time cooking after they got here so we could maximize our visiting time. For these reasons I had to (reluctantly) abandon my blog these past few days but now we are back!

Just to get in the spirit of fall, the time for crisp pages in a new, good book, apples, pumpkins, hay bales, corn mazes, warm scarves, cozy sweaters, piping hot cups of chocolate and cider, the house smelling like spices, the kitchen enveloped in the warmth of fresh bread coming from the oven…. I LOVE it, I have decided to make as many pumpkin recipes as I can!

But before we get started with that, I want to share some pictures from this past weekend. We went to London to eat fish n’ chips in a pub, ride the London Eye, see Westminster Abbey, and other sights around town. Then we went punting on the River Cam in Cambridge – one of the best things we have done in such a long time and a great way to see Cambridge University. It was so great that we almost fell asleep on the ride! Well, Mei had some lunch and then she did fall asleep during the ride!

Once our company went home, I mixed up a bit of pumpkin pie spice. It’s so easy, I had all the spices on hand already and its much cheaper than buying the little canister of it in the store. I needed a couple teaspoons for my pumpkin spice latte. This is possibly the most popular way to greet fall due to the mass consumption of Starbucks worldwide. This is one of their fall favorites, although it doesn’t quite reach to the Starbucks in the UK, so it was a nice treat for my husband and I, a little after-dinner pumpkin spice latte! Look for the recipes after the pictures from this weekend.

pumpkin pie spice!

warming the milk and pumpkin puree with the spices!

ahhhhh!!!!

Back to the pumpkins! Here is my list of pumpkin recipes that I have been storing up all year in my notebook and want to try out. So many sound so good but I know I wont get to them all, so I’m going to try to make the ones I have been dreaming about first, and making my way down the list as much as I could (these are in no particular order).

• Pumpkin Gorgonzola Flan (a French Friday with Dorie catch-up from last year)
• Pumpkin Pie with Caramel Brandy Sauce
• Pumpkin Whoopie Pie
• Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
• Caramel Pumpkin Bars
• Pumpkin Spice Scones
• Pumpkin Butter
• Pumpkin Cheesecake with Bourbon Cream
• Pumpkin Ice Cream
• Pumpkin Risotto
• Pumpkin Bourbon Tart with Marscapone
• Soupe au Pistou
• Pumpkin Cookies
• Pumpkin Muffins with Cream Cheese
• Pumpkin Swirl Brownies
• Black Bean Pumpkin Soup
• Pumpkin Cupcakes
• Pumpkin Bread Pudding
• Pumpkin Donuts
• Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake with Creamy Pumpkin Glaze
• Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes with Meringue
• Pumpkin Streussel Cheesecake Bars
• Pumpkin Blondies
• Pumpkin Pie Biscotti
• Pumpkin & Chocolate Brownies with Cream Cheese Swirl
• Bourbon Pumpkin Cheesecake
• Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Ok, ok, here are the recipes you have been waiting for! I hope you have enjoyed this post!

Ingredients for the Pumpkin Pie Spice:

makes about 5 TBS of PP spice

• 3 TBS ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1-1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1-1/2 tsp ground cloves

Combine all the spices in a small bowl, mixing well to combine then store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.

Ingredients for Pumpkin Spice Latte:

makes two 8 oz servings

• 2 C of half and half, whole or skim milk
• 2 TBS canned pumpkin puree (you can certainly use more, I used 3 heaping TBS)
• 1-2 TBS sugar, to taste
• 2 TBS vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1-4 shots of espresso or very strong coffee

First, brew the coffee or espresso, using double the grounds if you are brewing regular coffee.

In a small saucepan, combine the half and half or milk of your choice with the pumpkin puree, sugar and spices heating until the mixture is very hot but not boiling. Remove it from heat and then add the vanilla extract, transfer the mixture to a blender and blend until frothy if you like; otherwise, pour 1 cup of the warm milk mixture into the coffee mug and add 1-4 shots of coffee, dust the top with spices or add some whipped cream and dust the cream with spices before serving. Enjoy!

Rhubarb Vodka & A Visitor in the Kitchen

Tags

alcohol infusion, Around My French Table, Dorie Greenspan, French Fridays with Dorie, rhubarb, rhubarb vodka, vodka infusion

So, you might recall from a previous post that the rhubarb vodka was supposed to be ready on or about July 8th. It is now July 27th and I believe it is ready, most of the chunks of rhubarb that were once red are now a pale pink, green or white and every last drop of rhubarb-ness has been sucked out of those chunks! It is also a red-colored, infused vodka but different from strawberry in two ways – first its rhubarb (doh!) and secondly, most people will not be interested in rhubarb vodka.

Just put a funnel into the neck of the bottle the vodka originally came in, line the funnel with a piece of cheesecloth or butter muslin and if you would like a finer strain, lay in one coffee filter under the cheesecloth and slowly pour the infusion in, discarding the chunks of rhubarb as they come out. You may use the chunks to beef up a batch of jam – although all the flavor will have been extracted and it will just leave the pulpy body to add more body to the jam.

 

a nice pale red color!

 

I regret that I will not be making a label for this bottle of vodka as it is going straight into the fridge to await my husband’s arrival so that it can be much appreciated on a cool night when we are together again. I might even pull out some cocktail recipes to try it out on – it would make a very nice spritzer anyways! Maybe with some roasted rhubarb Panna cotta, this would be a nice accompaniment. At any rate, I have now bottled another little bit of summer to be enjoyed in the fall and winter! Horrah!

These alcohol infusions are very simple to make and require mindless, daily tending and make me want to make some more – but I think I will save it for next year so that I can truly enjoy it myself. A lemon infusion so that I could make my blue lemon drops would be particularly amusing!

lifeless bits of rhubarb

Onto the visitor! Who is visiting you might ask? Dorie Greenspan is coming to dinner! In fact, she will be dining with us every friday and a couple other days in between! While perusing her blog I came across a cook-along of sorts, a promotion for her newest cookbook, Around My French Table, you can create a profile and cook recipes out of her book until they have all been tried at least once, and post about your experience and process on Fridays. You leave your link on the post on Fridays with some comments and the editors and moderators of the page will comment back, check out your blog – as well as other cook-along-ers and readers! During the week leading up to each recipe, there is a problem and question page so that as you are working through the recipe or gathering ingredients, you can clarify any of the directions, etc you may need more information for. It’s a great idea and the plan is to keep the site up and going until every one of the over 300 recipes has been cooked through!

This is very exciting to me and caught the interest of my husband who was stoked to realize that we would know at least one day out of the week for certain what we would be having for dinner (even though it may not be savory or a “meal” per say); and I am genuinely enthused for this project because this will have been the first cookbook that I have truly “cooked through!” Most cookbooks, save a handful of favorites, often have somewhere between 10-20 recipes that I might try, or certainly mark for future attempts, so it is pretty outstanding!

So far, there are 44 recipes that have been posted about on the site, starting from October 2010, so those I have marked and plan to cook through as I work through each week, adding accompaniments to the meal or baking a dessert in the middle of the week. Oh and did I mention that you are not required to cook every recipe, just those that you are interested in, your level of participation is completely up to each individual cook! I am going to push myself though, and regardless of whether I think I will like the recipe or not, I am going to make every recipe!

While my husband is gone, having some people over on Fridays to share the meals would be fun, so consider this an open invitation to have dinner at my house, in our kitchen with Mei, Patella, Dorie Greenspan and of course, me! The cook! You can check out this blog/ cookbook project here. Please note that Ms. Greenspan would like participants to refrain from posting the recipes as the book and posts themselves serve to inspire other cooks to join in the fun!

This friday will be a citrus terrine - my first terrine, and what a great one to get my feet wet with!