Fall has officially arrived in Nashville, with temperatures dropping, sweater sales in full force and leaves annoyingly falling all over my walkway, causing me to almost slip daily. Get a broom and sweep it up, you say? Pshaw. I like the danger. It makes me feel alive.
One of the best things about fall is the arrival of fall foods. I love all things squash, especially pumpkin, and once pumpkin treats start appearing in local grocery stores and bakeries I MUST HAVE THEM. I was especially anxious this year after reading about the potential pumpkin shortage. A season without pumpkin treats? Blasphemy! So when I saw this beauty in the store, I knew I had to snap it up immediately.
When they got out of the oven they both looked and smelled delicious and I could hardly wait for them to cool down so I could dig in.
Unfortunately, they didn't quite taste as good as they look. I've never baked muffins with oats in them before, but I don't think I'm a fan. The texture is too chewy and dense for my taste. I could perhaps blame the bum texture on my substitutions, but those are really basic subs that I use every time I bake muffins and this never happens, so I'm going to go ahead and blame the oats. Good in a bowl, not so much in a muffin.
Despite the muffins not tasting perfect, they certainly made my house smell lovely and fall-like, and all I wanted to do was snuggle up and read a good book. So, the rest of the afternoon I sat here.
And read this.
The smell of pumpkin muffins baking was not unlike the smell of lovely Lolita...okay, I just grossed myself out. Sorry.
A few hours later I got hungry for some dinner and heated up some soup I had made earlier in the week using these ingredients.
Have any of you ever used this stuff? It's freaking amazing. I use it on everything.
Not pictured: onion, garlic, salt and pepper. All I did was saute some onion and garlic until the onions were translucent, then dump the rest of the ingredients in. (I didn't add the grains until the mixture was boiling.) Once the grains were cooked, the soup was done! 30 minutes to home cooked, awesome soup. The tomatoes were definitely the star of this dish: fire roasted with green chiles, yum.
Considering I made a big deal on my last post about how I avoid processed foods, I can hear clean eating devotees teeth being gnashed all over the interwebs after seeing those ingredients. Yes, all of those things are technically processed, but let's be reasonable. I'm not going to grow my own Israeli couscous in the back yard (How is couscous even cultivated? I have no earthly idea.) and I am way too lazy to make my own vegetable stock. And sometimes I eat Oreos, which are totally worse. So take that!
I served the soup alongside half of a pumpkin oat muffin. Why half, you ask? Well, because I had big plans for that other half. Big plans indeed. Those big plans involved this bucket of awesome.
Pumpkin ice cream, how I love you so.
The muffin is under there, I swear. It was as delicious as I anticipated -- way better than the muffins on their own. Do you think I could get away with eating this for breakfast tomorrow morning? Yeah, I didn't think so.
The muffins, while disappointing, did leave me with this.
Tons of leftover pumpkin puree! I see more pumpkin dishes in my immediate future. Which is awesome.
Post title from "Autumn" by Paolo Nutini
Ok - lets talk about how your apparent love for all things pumpkin could be construed as roughly analogous to my love of banana flavored food items. Think about it.
Posted by: Mike | 11/04/2009 at 11:19 PM
Touché, Mike. Touché. ;)
Posted by: Carrie | 11/05/2009 at 04:24 PM