The Sweet Smells of Fall
Cinnamon, maple, nutmeg, brown sugar.
That’s what it smelled like in my apartment last night ❤
I came straight home from school and tackled dinner because I was determined to have daylight for my dinner pictures. Apparently it gets dark at 5 pm now!
Maple Butternut Squash and Apple Casserole (compliments of Angela)
Modifications:
- brown sugar instead of maple syrup because I ran out of that $11 bottle long ago 😦
Okay, so that’s the only change I made. It was awesome!
The resemblance between butternut squash and cheddar cheese in uncanny.
I popped the b-nut in the oven for 20 minutes on 375* and dashed out the door for a little two miler. I fought the wind the entire way and it was awful. Hence me skipping my run this morning…
Oh and I tried to bake my pumpkin seeds from Saturday and burnt them instead. Oops, but you better believe I’m still eating them.
I did, however, throw this clump away.
Thankfully, dinner turned out much better than the seeds.
Once it was back into the oven for half an hour I waltzed down to the work out room and did some quick lifting and lunges. My left hamstring is so sore today and I don’t know why! It’s not like I’ve never done lunges before.
By the way I feel like a million bucks walking around in my Denver Rock’n’Roll Half Marathon shirt. Yeah, that’s right fellow work out room users you can stare at me in awe because I ran 13.1 miles last week 😛
Pre-bake
Post-bake
Are baked apples not one of the prettiest looking things? I would like a framed picture in my house, please.
Joey and I were pretty impressed with this recipe. It was the essence of fall.
Oh and after the casserole came out yet another pumpkin went in the oven. This time for pumpkin pie.
I cut the pumpkin into about 6 pieces and baked on 400* for about an hour then scraped out the insides. And no I didn’t wait till it cooled off. I’m sure it was annoying to listen to me yelling “ouch” and “hot hot hot” in the kitchen for 20 minutes.
Then I tossed the pumpkin in the food processor and blended it all up. It was a little liquidy so I let it sit in the strainer with the paper towel for 45 minutes.
It’s SO bright colored! I did a little taste comparing with my Libby’s this morning and real pumpkin tastes nothing like it. I’m praying my pie doesn’t taste you like you know what…
On the agenda for tonight:
- Jambalaya
- Sleepy Hollow — Johnny Depp makes the sexiest Ichabod Crane 🙂
- Pumpkin Pie
All with the family. Can’t wait!
Soup Sunday
We have a new Sunday night tradition, known only as “Soup Sunday” but you’ll have to wait till the end of the post for that.
Sundays are best when they involve going out to breakfast with your family. Especially when the restaurant is one you’ve been hearing about for months!
Lucile’s Creole Cafe? Say no more, I’m there.
There’s four locations, all in Colorado, Boulder obviously being the closest but we figured like everything else in Boulder, it would be crowded so we headed into Longmont. No wait? I think it’s safe to say we made a wise location choice.
An order of beignets was brought out.
Despite being covered in powder sugar, I didn’t think these were sweet enough for my liking. If I’m going to eat a donut the dough better be sweet. I passed this on to my mom.
House Spice Tea on the side. Whoa, spice is right!
I ordered the Eggs New Orleans.
Fried eggplant, creole sauce, poached eggs and hollandaise, which I had them hold. For some reason I’m not a fan of that sauce, yuck! Oh and potatoes and a giant BUTTERY biscuit on the side.
Did you know they put parsley on your plate so you can eat it post-meal to sweeten your breath? I had no idea, but my mom assured me it’s true.
Sampled this and brought the rest home.
Side note: The little kid at the table next to us brought his butternut squash to breakfast. I thought this was too funny!!
I would like to pretend I went home and got some reading out of the way but we all know I saved that for the very end of the night. Plus I was busy meal planning/grocery list writing!
Around 2 I realized it was one of those “I need a classic PB&J” days and made one up for lunch.
This Rudi’s Organic Country White Bread has a weird texture… Almost like it’s not bread…
We made a trip to the grocery and okay, fine, I did some reading and then it was time to scoop out some more pumpkins. We will have roasted pumpkin seeds for the rest of FOREVER.
I’m sure you know by now what we made for dinner.
Chili in Pumpkin Bowls (compliments of Emily)
Modifications:
- Nixed the butternut — because I didn’t want to cut it open and because we have a butternut on the menu for tonight already
- Used a tri-bean blend instead of black beans — I think the can came with kidney, pinto and black
- Put the chili in the pumpkins and returned to the oven for 40 minutes instead of 45-60 minutes — there was no butternut to cook so I thought it was safe to cook for a shorter amount of time, plus I was HUNGRY
Oh yum. Emily is a genius because eating out out of a pumpkin couldn’t have been more fun 🙂 The pumpkin softens up so you can scoop it out with your chili — like a bread bowl but much better for you!
Despite that I woke up at 5:30, drove to work in the dark, had leftover chili spill in my school bag and and had 2 co-workers show up to work WAYYYY late I’m in a pretty good mood. For a Monday, especially!
Hope your in good spirits today too 🙂
Punkin Patch
Yesterday was all about Halloween festivities. We had to do it this weekend since we’ll be at the Cowboys game on actual Halloween.
Started off with the annual trip to the pumpkin patch. It was sad to go without Puppy though 😦
Last year all the pumpkins froze early in the year and were complete mush by October. This year was a MUCH better turn out!
Snagged these two mini pumpkins for dinner tonight. Any guesses on what we’re making??
I bought a pumpkin to make pie from scratch with then discovered carving pumpkins are not the best pie making material, oops! I’m gonna try my luck anyways.
These were so cool, but I couldn’t really think of a reason why I’d need any.
We came home and emptied out the two pumpkins we had planned on carving because I wanted to seeds for candying!
I’m not going to provide a recipe because I wasn’t really impressed with how these came out. I’d definitely use hulled pumpkin seeds next time because these weren’t crunchy enough. I cooked them on the stove then added brown sugar, honey, cinnamon and ginger.
They sure did smell good, though!
I wonder if baking the seeds would make them crunchy? I saw recipes that suggested using the oven but I was in a hurry because I wanted to put them on top of my salad for lunch.
Lunch = spinach + red onion + dressing (balsamic, olive oil, salt, pepper, honey) + candied pumpkin seeds. Oh yummm. AND a pumpkin bagel on the side — thanks Hannah!
We also took Tonka on a little 3-mile run, which turned out not to be such a good idea. He kept crossing in front of me and I thought he was going to take me out with that leash! Otherwise, it was a wonderful run sans Garmin. We thought it was going to be rainy and chilly but the sun was shining and we had nice temps all day 😀
Napping may have ensued post run.
Dinner involved a spaghetti squash.
The little sister joined us for dinner, carving and Halloween movie watching.
If you haven’t already tried Emily’s Spaghetti Squash and Vegan Mushroom Cream Sauce recipe, you really need to. It’s phenomenal.
Pretend these aren’t the worst pictures ever.
The sauce is so rich and creamy, you would never guess it was vegan!
While dinner was a-cooking, Joey was carving away.
We both took a break to eat. Our squash yielded soooo much “spaghetti” — we each had plate full, Joey went back for seconds and there were still leftovers!
We popped in Practical Magic and finished carving.
Skill.
Do you still carve pumpkins?
Lauren Loves Good Food 
