Fall Festivities!

Last Saturday was a nice fall celebration for me. My boss, Dusty, invited me to her house with a few other of her girlfriends and we ate fall fool and carved pumpkins. I wanted to bring something that went with the theme so I decided on vegan pumpkin muffins.

Here is the recipe that I had planned on using. Unfortunately last weekend my apartment didn't have internet connected so I ended up working with a few recipes out of Joy of Cooking and making it up on my own too!

http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=4569.0

Pumpkin Muffins

Ingredients (used vegan versions):

1/4 margarine
1 cup brown sugar (or white sugar plus 1 tablespoon molasses)
1/2 cup applesauce
2 cups pureed pumpkin or squash
1 teaspoon cinnamon and nutmeg
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 and grease muffin tin. (This recipe makes 12 muffins.) Cream together margarine and vegan sugar. Add applesauce, pumpkin, and spice. Mix well and add flour and soda. Fill muffin tins and bake for about 20-25 minutes. The muffins don't rise much, so don't be shy about piling the batter in.

These muffins are great warm, but keep for days. Most people don't believe me when I tell them these muffins are vegan, because they cook up so light and fluffy. Also, people are shocked to find they are made with 100% whole wheat flour.





I was so proud of my little pumpkin after the party and was trying to think of how to prolong it's life. I carved it on the 9th and that is means it has a few weeks to hold out until Halloween. I don't think it's going to make it considering it is now one week later and it is already falling apart. I decided to keep it outside since it had been getting colder earlier this week. Today it is sunny and warmer so I don't think that is helping my pumpkin's life either. Either way, here she is:



If you can't tell, she's a witch!

After the party, I spent some time going through the pumpkin innards and digging out the seeds from the 5 pumpkins we had all carved. I took about half of them home in a tupperware that I brought just for that purpose. The following day I talked with Mom, since I had no internet, and she gave me a few different recipes for pumpkin seeds. I remember a few years ago that I made a variety of spiced seeds and wanted to try a few new ones. I ended up going with a spicier one with paprika, a rosemary-garlic flavored batch and a sweet batch that had pumpkin pie spices on it!

Spicier seeds
2t garlic powder
1t alt
1/2 t black pepper
1 t chili pepper
1 cup seeds




Rosemary-garlic seeds (I split this recipe in half because I wanted 1 cup of each of the three flavors)
2T oil
2T garlic
2T rosemary
thyme
2t salt
2 cups seeds



Sweet seeds (again, in 1/2)
4T butter
4T brown sugar
1t cinnamon
1/2t nutmeg
1/2t ginger
2 cups seeds

Oven at 350F.
Bake 15 mins, stirring half way through.