What do you use to mend a Jack-o-Lantern?

A pumpkin patch!

ZING!

Good one. Y'all know I love a cheesy joke.

Fall. Yes. I am going totally over kill with it but I cannot help it. Fall in North Carolina is magical. The leaves changing, the low humidity, the 65 degree weather? Love it! AND I get to wear what many would consider to be my uniform: shorts and a long sleeve shirt. Perfect mix. I don't mind my legs cold and prefer my upper body a bit warmer. Fall is the only time I can do this!

What? What is what you say? SSC! Can't you do that in the spring? NO! AND I am bitter. (I know surprise, surprise!) Spring has been robbed from our quatro seasons here for like the fifth year! It is 30 degrees for all of February with maybe a rouge snow snow, you get one week in March of it being 65 and them BOOM 95! 100% humidity! Frizz everywhere! And UGH! You're sweating and can't breath from all the pollen. This is not a transitional season. It goes from frigid to steamy. It is hell. Pure hazy yellow hell. I am thankful every year that I do not suffer from seasonal allergies. The hubs does though. Poor thing. Everyone in unison now: awwwww!

One of the quatro amigo's introduced me to this concept. While on her blog she is confused, there is no confusing this recipe, it is pure deliciousness. Truth be told Mama Shute introed this concept to me via brownies, and it works, but for the fall season I highly recommend this.

Ready? Buy a box of cake mix. 1 can of pumpkin. Mix with 1/4 cup of water. Put into a 350 degree oven.

Cook for 10-12 minutes, or until you can stick a knife in it and it comes out clean.

Mmmm. Yummy and so moist!

OK! Variation time. I have made these so many times that I am well versed in how to switch it up. All of these follow the same principle, 1 box, 1 can pureed pumpkin and 1/4 c water. Buy a box of gingerbread mix for a spicy seasonal muffin. This also works for spice cake mix too. Also try a yellow cake, with butterscotch chips and a splash of vanilla and cinnamon. And like Mama Shute Suggested, you can also do this with brownie mix, devils food cake and other boxed treats. When the flavors are that strong, you don't even taste the pumpkin. What a nice, healthy and delicious season treat! 

HAPPY FALL Y'ALL!

Happy fall everyone! Above is my pumpkin that I carved last year for my place of employment! Sadly... I lost the competition. And ironically another pig pumpkin won. I am not biased, or holding some type of grudge after almost 365 days or anything, but the pumpkin that won was a plain pumpkin, painted pink with a painted pink dixie cup, hot glued for the nose with googly eyes.... yup. The winner people. But I digress.   

With it people fall the produce box has continuously accosted my doorstep with apple upon bag of apple. So now I have 4 bags of apples. I sent a bag with the hubs to work... but le sigh.... what to do with the rest? 

We ate at the Flying Biscuit last week when I was feeling under the weather and the best part about eating there is that they give you fresh baked biscuits with cranberry apple butter. They are to die for! So good. Luckily when you google "what to do with massive amounts of apples" crock pot apple butter comes up. What better way to satisfy the craving with some homemade goodies? Let's get started. 

Pour 3 cups of sugar into your crock pot. Add to it 2 tablespoons of pumpkin pie spice. There was a specific spice blend that many of these sites used, but I just bought my pumpkin pie spice blend and was desperate to use it!

Peel, cut and dice ~8 medium apples and add to the crock pot.

 Stir to coat.  Cook on high for 1 hour. Reduce down to low and cook for 14 hours. You can cook it for less time if you don't like a rich developed flavor. I like mine a deep rich color. 

(Well... to be honest I put it on at 6 pm and knew I would be waking up at 8 so 14 hours seemed like the best fit for my sleeping schedule.) 

Holy cow. How yum does that look? I ate some on toast this morning and it was de-freaking-licious! 

SO GOOD!

That's all today. These next two weeks I'll show you my crispy kale fries, roasted chestnuts, stuffed eggplant, potato and kale soup, pumpkin muffins, spicy broccoli, easy crockpot chili, the Hub's buffalo burger AND roasted okra. AND we'll have a restaurant review of Sunflower's Sandwich Shop. Get hype!

Inappropriate Summer Meals

I love hot things. Why? I am routinely cold, and I am not talking a touch on the chilly side, I am talking my fingers or your bare skin results in frost bite. I’m talking there are throw blankets in every room of my house and in every car that I own. People: I have a space heater under my desk which has been turned on... in July! With record highs in North Carolina! Obviously I have to deal because I married a person who if I could harness their body heat into electricity I could power my house for free. It’s not natural how hot-natured he is and how cold-natured I am. It defies all logic. 

One of the ways I deal is I drink coffee like it is going out of style and eat soup for lunch on a daily basis. And yes I realize this is a totally normal thing-if you live in Sweden whose average temperature in July is 70. Pheft! 70? We’re lucky if it stays 70 degrees for 5 days in the spring. Which P.S.-- I would like to say I am officially mourning the loss of the season formally known as Spring in North Carolina. This year it went from 30 to 100 in a week.  Thou dost displease me weather! Make a note of it.

While I love a calm chowder, I wanted to make my own summery hot soup. So I did.

So it’s summer- this means summer squash and the last of those pesky acorn squashes from my produce box.
Preheat your oven to 400. Grab your food processor, one sauce pot and a saucepan and as P. Diddy says: LET’S GOOOOO!

Cut your acorn squash into 3-4 pieces and roast for 15 minutes. While this is roasting you can go ahead and cook the other vegetables.

Cut up 2 summer squash and add to a hot saucepan with EVOO. Cook on medium heat until soft. About mid way through add chopped onion and minced garlic. (I cheated and used already cut frozen onions) Once soft, add in shredded carrot and cook until all the vegetables are soft.

In your pan, cook down 2-3 chopped large field tomatoes on medium heat. I didn’t bother to remove the seeds, because usually this removed the goo that holds the seeds. I like to get all the moisture from the tomatoes that I can. Next: to this pan I add the scooped out flesh of the acorn tomatoes. I let these fuse together.

We’re ready for the food processor! Assemble and add the tomato and acorn squash mixture first. Turn on and mix until smooth. I then add the summer squash and carrot mixture along with 7-9 springs of FRESH basil. (You could also use cilantro if you were feeling funky) This will start to incorporate nicely.

This goes back into the pot where you can now decide how thick you want this to be. Dilute to your preference with stock (I wound up using about ½ cup of vegetable stock because I wanted this to be hearty soup.  Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.

Once finished, I knew I was missing something…you guessed it! TRADER JOES ROASTED CORN! Hate on it all you want- it definitely gave the finished product some needed texture and man do I love it’s flavor!

And there you have it! A soup that normal people could enjoy in the summer! And it was yummy!