Pumpkins and Procrastination

Deadline? What deadline? Let’s talk about pumpkins.

Clearly, I am in denial. Or just perfecting my procrastination technique.

But I did see the most beautiful pumpkin patch this month. For years I’ve bought my pumpkins on the coast, somewhere between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, but I think I might have a new favorite pumpkin destination now.

I mean, really, wouldn’t you want to buy your pumpkin here?



And the gourds themselves—gorgeous.* I loved that they weren’t all the same standard orange pumpkin, which is fairly boring, really, when you think about it.



This is the United Nations of pumpkin patches—all races and colors welcomed, a diverse melting pot of squash.

I’m not sure I’ll be carving a pumpkin this year, but if I were I’d be tempted to do something like this (I voted last week and it felt momentous; I highly recommend it).



The other pumpkin fun I've had around here has to do with a certain pumpkin bread pudding that I made yesterday with the niecelets. I've been gone for the past three weeks and there's something mighty addictive about little kids—I missed those girls so.

While I was gone, my sister-in-law decided to make cookies with the girls. When she told them they got so excited—the older one said she wanted to stir the batter, the younger wanted to measure the ingredients. My sister-in-law had to explain that—unlike cooking with Aunt Ti-ti— making cookies with Mommy consists of slicing the dough off a pre-made Pillsbury log and putting it in the oven to bake.

I laughed so hard when I heard this story, secretly delighted. The next day I rewarded the little tykes with all the batter stirring and ingredient measuring they wanted.

What can I say, the excitement of a two-year-old getting to hold the measuring cup warms my heart.





Do you think I could get a T-shirt that says: Subversive Auntie?

Bread pudding is a great recipe to make with kids. The girls got to mix the batter, toss the bread cubes in butter, and grease the pan. And when it was all baked and golden, we sat down and had a little indoor picnic.



The recipe is from Gourmet. It's a fine and decent recipe, but if I were to make it again I would jazz it up. It's a bit too same-same and I wanted some textural complexity, or at least a little more excitement on the flavor front. I realize that exciting and bread pudding might sound like an oxymoron, but I recently had the best bread pudding of my life at Boat Street Cafe in Seattle and now have higher expectations of this dish. Boat Street's version is Amaretto Bread Pudding with Rum Butter Cream (be still my pulsing arteries!). Let's just say that I now know bread pudding can be transcendent.

If I were to make it again, I might add pieces of lightly steamed or baked kabocha (my darling kabocha) mixed in with the bread cubes, it would match the sweet richness of the pudding. Alternately, I always like brandy and pumpkin. And the thought of bits of dark chocolate strewn throughout did pass through my mind as well (only to be quickly shooed away; it might be too devilishly good). At the very least, there's always crystallized ginger.

I'm leaving the experimenting to you, if you so wish. My procrastination can only last so long. Here's one last shot of pretty pumpkins. Now it's back to work.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding from Gourmet



*okay, so pumpkins are not technically gourds, the alliteration was too good to pass up.