Hey you! Don't eat that, eat this!

Every year, around late September or early October, pumpkin season starts. When I was a kid, there wasn't much pumpkin flavored foods... pie and bread were really about it.
Then at some point a few years back, somebody realized that pumpkin is a flavor that can be used for all sorts of wacky treats! This blog is primarily about those pumpkin items.
Typically, if it's pumpkin flavored, I will try it. If it has pumpkin in the name, there is a strong chance I will try it. The weirder, the more fun.
In order for this to not be a September - December only blog, I'll also highlight other weird foods (typically prepackaged, mass produced stuff) as well. There will also be a healthy dose of beer reviews.
Wanna suggest something? EMAIL Fido!

Sunday, November 30, 2008

McCutcheon's Pumpkin Butter

Pumpkin Butter. What the heck is pumpkin butter? It's too soupy to be jelly and too fruity to be a cholesterol laden dairy product. I was always curious but was never sure what I'd use this for.
I actually tried it on waffles. It tasted good, but seemed weird. I liked the pumpkin flavor, but it was just wrong for waffles.
Central Market helped me out. They had a display going with samples of the pumpkin butter and they used gingersnap cookies as a way of getting the butter to your mouth. That was awesome. Pumpkin butter as a dip! I bought some gingersnaps and will definitely use this combo at my next party. Kind of like a holiday chips and salsa.

Golden Temple Pumpkin Spice Cereal

Central Market, my primary source for pumpkin related foods, has a wide variety of bulk cereals. These cereals are basically granola with some dried fruits and sweeteners and such. Still, I was excited to see a cereal/granola concoction that had pumpkin in the name without also including "flax" or "seeds."
Golden Temple Pumpkin Spice Cereal is granola, clusters of unknown make-up, and raisins. It actually tastes like pumpkin, which surprised me a bit. The raisins were annoying though, and unnecessary. I don't like raisins much anyway, but in this case, they really felt extraneous and took away from the pumpkin and spice flavor that worked really well in a bowl with milk.
Next time, I'll just pick out the raisins.

Jell-o Pumpkin Spice Pudding


I love pudding. Not as much as I love ice cream, mind you, but pudding still rocks. So, when I saw this little box of yum, I was giddy.
Pudding is easy to make. Pudding is easy to eat. What's not to love about pudding? And when that pudding has an awesome pumpkin spice flavor, it's fanamatastic!
It tastes like pumpkin pie, except in a creamy, gooey form. You can, if you want, make a pudding pie out of it and there are instructions on the box.
But I'm just fine with a bowl of pudding!

Little Debbie Pumpkin Muffins

Little Debbie makes some pretty tasty snacks. I find it slightly odd that a muffin is their second trip into pumpkin flavored treats (the other being the Pumpkin Delights). All the same, it's a pretty good muffin. It's not spectacular... but it is a tasty treat. My favorite part is that when you open the cellophane, it has this great aroma of cream cheese. While it doesn't taste like cream cheese, sadly, the smell alone is enough to make me completely forget the "creme" cake that Walmart claims to sell.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Archer Farms Pumpkin Pie Yogurt


This is the third year I've seen this Pumpkin Pie yogurt from Archer Farms. The last two years, it sucked. It wasn't good pumpkin and it wasn't even good yogurt.

For whatever reason, I decided to try it again this year. Maybe I'm crazy (quite possible) or they've improved this thing this time around. It's still pretty tangy, but the pumpkin flavor shines through. It's thicker than most mass produced yogurts. It's almost a custard. This is pretty much a dessert. I thoroughly enjoyed it this time around. I might even buy another.

I found two other flavors when I got the pumpkin. Caramel apple was okay, but it lacked much apple flavor and the caramel reminded me more of some kind of mocha. The apple cider largely tasted like a light apple flavored yogurt. There is also a sugar cookie flavor that I found recently, but I haven't gotten to that one yet. I'll let ya' know.

Pumpkin Cookie with Cinnamon Chips

Inevitably, my co-workers at whatever company I work for find out about my pumpkin food obsession. Then they start telling me they are going to make me something... usually some bread recipe or maybe a pie. So when one of my co-workers told me she was going to make the pumpkin cookies with cinnamon chips, I was intrigued. Pumpkin cookies are still a bit of a rarity, particularly good ones, and I had never even heard of cinnamon chips before.

It took her awhile to find the chips, but she finally brought some to work. Very tasty! They are soft, almost doughball like, with a tasty pumpkin flavor with little shots of cinnamon. I ate way to many of them.

I'm trying to get the recipe and if so, I'll post it.

Gingerbread Pumpkin Bundt Cake: Corner Bakery

It seems that we've hit a point where we're running out of just plain pumpkin flavored stuff and now we're finding more and more blends. Blending pumpkin with gingerbread is becoming more common and the two fall/holiday flavors work well together.

The Corner Bakery's Gingerbread Pumpkin mini-bundt cake is a good blend of pumpkin and gingerbread. I love gingerbread anyway, so this sounded pretty good. And it was. It was pretty moist and spicy. Really the only problem I had was the excessive use of the glazed icing stuff. A light drizzle is good, but I don't need a pool of icing in the middle.

It's a pretty healthy serving so it's perfect to share... or pig out. That's what I did. It would probably be better to slice it though. Otherwise, you look like some cro-mag going face first into some dead animal. And you'll get icing on your nose.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

See's Pumpkin Pie Truffle



See's Candies makes these seasonal truffles. I bought them, of course, for the Pumpkin Pie Truffle. Unfortunately, it was a bit disappointing. At first bite, my first thought was that it was very similar to the Bissinger's. But then the spice took over and it seemed more like a chocolate and cinnamon truffle. The pumpkin part of the truffle doesn't come through. In fact, this one falls into the trap that many pumpkin treats fall into: lots of spice but little pumpkin. Pumpkin Pie isn't all spice so I fail to see why other pumpkin concoctions should be overwhelmed by the spices.

Oh well. I tried the apple pie truffle. It was pretty good. Really tasted like apple pie. Haven't tried the cranberry orange or pecan pie ones yet.