intense pumpkin pie.

I know Thanksgiving passed, but I heard a Christmas song today that referenced pumpkin pie.

"When they pass around the coffee and the puuuummmppkin pie."

So this pie is still relevant. The "intense" part of the name is a reflection of how I like to live life - intensely. Running the Big Chill (5K) in the freezing cold at 9am on a Saturday? Intense. Breaking down 50 boxes and getting a major paper cut on my wrist at work? Intense. Brushing my teeth this morning? Intense.

Whether you agree with me on the above is irrelevant - just know that making this pie is not a simple process. It is totally different from the pumpkin pie recipe I posted 2 years ago. [Wow has it been two years?!] This one involves a cooked filling, ginger, candied yams, and heavy cream. Sounds pretty good to me so far ..

homemade pumpkin puree.

I've had two baby pumpkins forever (only one is shown above .. the other was already chopped). They've been waiting patiently on the counter for about a month, while I've been watching them decline into what was soon to be foul fish-smelling, melting, rotting orange flesh (I hope none of you have ever experienced a severely neglected pumpkin).

Fortunately, recently I was able to come back to the apartment in time to make dinner! A rare occurrence mind you. 

And before I starting sauteeing onions, mushrooms, corn, and alfalfa sprouts with farro and egg, I prepared these pumpkins for a nice toasty visit to the oven.

pumpkin pie bars.

Let me tell you about a fantastic baked good I recently had. I would say it is the best pumpkin item I've ever had.

Okay. Imagine a homemade yeasted bread. Sort of like really fresh bakery bread. It's not too sweet, which works in this case. Now imagine a ton of crumb pieces the size of ping pong balls (maybe a little smaller, but not by much) embedded on top of the bread. The crumbs are brown sugary, cinnamony, and buttery. What with the crumbs and dusting of powdered sugar, you don't notice the inside until you cut into the loaf. What do you find?

Swirls. Thick, massive indulgent swirls of straight up pumpkin pie, in the bread. Sometimes you get a slice that is more pumpkin pie than bread. You find that good things finally happen to good people.

pumpkin chocolate chunk oat muffins.

This past week was so odd.

Hurricane Sandy hit. And believe it or not, it barely rained! It was mostly wind damage, by where I lived. I know the Jersey shoreline suffered severe damage, as did parts of New York. The subway system was flooded! All that salt water corrosion!

I won't add to how much you've been hearing about this natural disaster on the news and other social media networks. Instead I will give you my narrative of what I did during these last 7 days.

chocolate pumpkin pie bars.

So I had the weirdest dream ever. If you could care less about my random mental thoughts when I sleep, go down to just before the recipe for a review. If you do care (AW THANKS), keep reading.

Quick preface: I have had lucid dreams before. I dream quite a bit. My dreams are usually vivid. But this one was particularly unusual.

I was home for the weekend and taking a nap. I quickly entered dream-mode. I was at my university, in the library. The usual dream sequence passed, but then something weird happened.

pumpkin oatmeal + veggie burger.

So the other day I woke up early, by break standards - 7:45 am - and drove about an hour to the greenhouse where The Garden of Eden meets to plant, water, and harvest organically grown lettuce. I ate breakfast around 9 am, as I was driving. We worked at the greenhouse till around 2 pm.

At the end, I was eating the arugula that had been picked because I was hungry and wanted to munch on something, even if that meant eating these really bitter (the flavor was much more pronounced) tiny leaves.

With the knowledge that Thomas Sweet was in close proximity, I proceeded to spend about 15 minutes getting lost on Route 18 and going who knows where to park in a spot that was most likely illegal. But I mean, I wasn't going to be long or anything.

whole wheat pumpkin cinnamon rolls.

What is the difference between cinnamon buns and rolls? I feel like the icing is different for both. Otherwise, they seem to be pretty interchangeable, from what research I've conducted on the good old world wide web. Which is kinda annoying, I feel like there should be a difference but whatever, who am I to start an occupy Cinnabon movement .. speaking of which, I guess they're also called cinnabons at Cinnabon. What the hell man! It's so important it needs three different names?!

Anyway, let's talk about these pastries, oozing with heavenly glaze and exuding cinnamon-y enticement.

pumpkin pie.

I'm aware it's December (isn't that crazy?! it's already the end of the year!) and that pumpkin pie is a more fall thing. Frankly, I don't give a damn.

Look at me going all Rhett Butler.