Craft Project: a Sugar Pumpkin and a Candle

Several blogs have posted craft projects gluing candles to sugar pumpkins as an easy way to decorate your home for Fall. I love this idea and so I decided to do this with one of my pumpkins that I bought. Then as I was digging through my craft box, I found some black ribbon and it sparked another idea. Check out how I did it:

(Excuse the mess of the apartment. It is finals week after all.)

Butternut Squash & Pumpkin Soup

I am so stressed out right now. I have a midterm in my Research Methods class on Tuesday and I want so badly to do well. I've been studying, going to/having review sessions, and doing my best to prepare. But today, I hit a wall and had to do something to release the tension I'm feeling right now. When my study group comes over, we all contribute something and have a very nice meal in the middle of our studying. So I think I used today's break to do some stress relieving via cooking. I made a quiche, a salad, and soup. Nothing too crazy and involved, but in complete silence, I just spent 2 hours in my kitchen cooking, cleaning, and generally being as calm as possible.

I had some leftover squash and needed to make something with it so created a soup recipe based off of one in my Barefoot Contessa cookbook that Nick got me for Christmas last year. It is Butternut Squash and Pumpkin and it came out much better than I thought.

Ingredients:
- half of a Butternut Squash
- 1 sugar pumpkin
- 1 half of an onion
- 2 tablespoons of butter
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 1/2 cup of cream
- 2 1/2 cups of chicken or vegetable stock
- 1 1/2 tablespoons of brown sugar
- 1/2 tablespoon of cinnamon (or more depending on taste)
- 1 teaspoon of nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves

1. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Cut your squash and pumpkin in half and scoop out the pulp and seeds. Place directly on oven rack and roast for 45-60 minutes. You'll know it's done because the insides will be soft when you poke it with a fork.
2. When you have about 10 minutes left for the squash to cook, melt butter and olive oil together in a medium-large pot (you don't need a soup pot for this). When the butter is melted add your sliced up onion and cook.
3. Once the squash and pumpkin are done cooking, remove from the oven and scoop out the edible insides (ie. you don't need the skin).
4. First put the butternut squash in a blender and add the cooked onions (leave the butter and oil in the pot). Add one cup of stock and blend until liquified. Once this is done, dump it back in your pot. Next take the pumpkin and repeat the same process with one more cup of stock.
5. When everything is back in the pot (and the heat turned on low), add the last 1/2 cup of stock and the 1/2 cup of cream. Then add your seasonings. (I didn't add salt because the stock itself was very salty.)
6. Taste test and see if you need to add any more seasonings. Nick and I thought it needed a bit more cinnamon, so we did another sprinkling, but not everyone likes their squash soup with that much.

We cut up some sourdough bread and dipped it and it tasted so good. I'm not a big fan of broth soups, and I made chicken soup last week, so I'm really happy to have something else in the house. The fall and winter are obvious great times for soup eating, and what better soup to celebrate Halloween with than with the seasonal vegetables of pumpkin and squash? I guess my stress was good for something!

Hope you enjoy it!

It's Fall, Shouldn't I be able to Pick my Own Apples?

In the North East, the moment September hits so does fall. The leaves start to change, you break our your scarves, and of course you start thinking about fall foods. New York is famous for its Apples (among other things), so as a friend from college and I planned out a mid October visit for this weekend, we decided that since we both miss New York we had to go apple picking. I immediately went to the website Pick Your Own.org and found an orchard about 45 minutes away from us and we were set. However, this morning when we went to look up directions we discovered that they ended their apple picking season early so we were out of luck. After doing further research on the website, we couldn't find anywhere within an hour that still had apple picking open (which was really disappointing as Nick and I go apple picking every year and I planned a ton of apple themed food for tonight and tomorrow). We ended up at Webb Ranch's pumpkin patch where we picked our own pumpkin and then bought some produce (including apples) from their farm stand, but it still wasn't as good as picking it ourselves.

The Pickyourown.org website is really great, though. It's a nation wide directory of many different farms that offer pick your own fruits and vegetables. It's organized by state and county. You can search through to see what's offered in your area, and then there is also a listing of local farmer's markets and stands. I think a section has also been recently added for farms in other countries.

Why should you pick your own? Besides the fact that it's a fun activity that the entire family can enjoy, the produce is often better quality because you're picking something when it's in season and it's not traveling thousands of miles to get to your plate. It's also fresher, cheaper, and most importantly you're supporting a local business. Nick and I do our best to participate in pick your own all year round. One year we did raspberries, I've done currants and strawberries too, and every year we do apples. Just call us The Appleseeds...

From two years ago at our favorite orchard near where I went to college in upstate New York: