Is it just me, or does anyone else get super bummed out after daylight savings ends and we are forced to set our clocks back another hour? I know it’s only one hour and in the grand scheme of things, I really needed that extra hour of sleep on Sunday, but now that the sun is setting earlier, the days are feeling really short. I’m finding myself rushing to get home after work just so I can enjoy the precious 20 minutes or so of light I get in my kitchen before night sets in. And taking food photos after work? Not going to happen anymore. When we lived in central time zone Saskatchewan, we didn’t have to change our clocks, so even after 3 years this time change is still throwing me off.
Luckily we’re still yet to get all the snow my prairie friends have been dealing with, so I’ll take a little time change over having to pull out my winter boots any day. As a kid, I remember trick-or-treating in the country with my winter jacket under my costume and this year’s Halloween was pouring rain. These city kids don’t know how good they have it. Winter is definitely looming and the one thing I’m not looking forward to the first city snow fall. So in an attempt to hold onto the goodness of fall for just a little bit longer, I’m bringing you another pumpkin recipe. An actual pumpkin recipe.
I’m pretty sure I’ve filled my apple baking quota for the year. Of course, we still have a fridge half full of apples, but now I’m setting my sights on my other favourite fall flavour – pumpkin. I only have two other pumpkin recipes on the blog and one of them wasn’t even posted during the fall season. So for the remainder of fall (or at least until it turns bitterly cold), I’m going to attempt some more pumpkin recipes.
I realize now that in saying this, I’m actually cheating a bit on this first recipe. There is no actual pumpkin in these cookies because I wasn’t sure how to combine egg whites and pureed pumpkin and come out with a meringue cookie that was still light, airy and look appealing enough to eat. Instead I made meringue cookies by replacing the white sugar with brown sugar and adding some pumpkin pie spices (cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg). Originally, I was a little worried that the egg whites wouldn’t peak properly because of the higher moisture content in brown sugar verses white sugar, but I was pleasantly surprised when these cookies came together. While they were baking, the kitchen was wafted in a nice pumpkin pie smell and once they cooled, the first bite was sweet and chewy with a crisp outer shell. Perfection.
For a couple of years, I’ve been fighting the urge to buy a doughnut pan. The main reason I didn’t want one was because doughnut pans really only have a single purpose – making doughnuts. I love doughnuts just as much as the next person who has a baking blog, but I could never picture myself making them very often. To own a baking gadget with only one purpose seemed pretty pointless unless you plan on using it a lot.
Of course, this changed last week when I spotted this cute little mini doughnut pan at Kitchen Stuff Plus. I can’t say that it was love at first sight because it took me several days to make the purchase, but now that I have it and made these doughnuts, I’m definitely smitten.
It’s been two weeks since we returned from the farm and we’re still making our way through all our apples. Yesterday was a landmark day in that we finally managed to fit them all in the fridge. Our crisper is full to the brim and we have apples spilling over each shelf. We’ve been keeping our grocery shopping to a minimum as to not disrupt the current organization of the fridge. Even at our rate of eating 2-3 apples per day, we realized that we’re still not making much headway.
I realize that this may sound a little complain-y, but I don’t mean to be. In a few months, we’ll miss these apples especially when I have to resort to going back to the grocery store to pick up some tiny, flavourless ones probably shipped in from somewhere in the States.
October holds a lot of fun memories for me. Besides being my favourite time of year (fall weather, pretty leaf colours, Halloween, cozy sweaters, pumpkin-flavoured everything), it’s also the month that Trevor and I got engaged. If you read back in my old posts, I mentioned spending Thanksgiving at Smith’s Apple and Farm Market in 2011 and then a couple weeks later making a post with a vague mentioning of the engagement along with a quick apple related recipe. At the time, I was averaging about 50 visitors a week, so I was not sure on what level I wanted to share personal things and who, if anyone, was going to read them.
It’s taken me a while, as I’ve been reading through my old entries, but I’m slowly opening up and trying to become more personable. I discovered that my favourite food bloggers are the ones who not only post great photos and recipes, but also share a little bit of themselves in their writings. It could be a childhood memory, a personal story, or a small insight to their week and I love this because it allows the reader to get a little glimpse of the person behind the blog. You do have to watch what you share online, but at the same time it adds a bit of a personal touch among the hundreds of thousands of other bloggers who are out there who are all sharing variations of the same recipes.
I realize now that this sounds like a lead-up to me telling our engagement story. There is a bit of a story, but now that it’s almost two years old, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. Instead, I will show some photos from last weekend when Trevor and I drove up to the apple farm, now as newlyweds, to visit family, pick some apples and to remember that time almost two years ago when we decided to get married.
Canadian food blogger, baking and eating her way through life. Musical theatre fanatic. Personal finance nerd. Sometimes runner/yogi. Green smoothies are pretty amazing.
