You Can Has Autumn Noms!

Fall Baking With Pumpkin

Here in Colorado we’re enjoying crisp air, blue skies, and brilliant, sunset colored trees. Autumn has arrived, and with it, fall baking time! By the end of the season, my family will be thoroughly sick of pumpkin-flavored everything, but for now it’s a tasty treat with some novelty left to it. For the first fall goodies, I decided to go with a classic pumpkin bread. I’d normally use my favorite Pumpkin Pie Bread recipe from AllRecipes.Com, but since this blog is supposed to be more personal, I chose a recipe from the family treasury my grandmother gave me last year.

This recipe produces a delightfully moist, cake-like bread that tastes as good smeared with cream cheese icing as with a dab of butter. The nuts are optional, personally I prefer it without.

Grandma’s Pumpkin Bread

 3 C Sugar

1 C Salad (Vegetable) Oil

4 Eggs

2/3 C Water

2 C Pumpkin

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

2 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Cloves

1 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp Nutmeg

1 tsp Allspice

3 1/2 C flour

1 C Nuts

 Mix together all ingredients. Bake in loaf pans at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes. Makes 3 loaves.

Organics and Generics

This amazing treat will soothe sweet tooth cravings from early Autumn through the Winter holidays. I serve it at gatherings from Mabon through Yule with zero complaints. For my test loaf this year, I used super fancy pumpkin from Natural Grocers. Organic Sugar Pie pumpkin tripled my normal cost for this recipe, but the improvement in the texture of the pumpkin puree was definitely noticeable. Ordinarily a lot of generic brands go into my cooking, because my palette isn’t refined enough to taste a difference between Kroger brand and Morton salt, for example. However, springing for higher quality for a main ingredient was definitely worth it.  I would highly recommend checking your local Whole Foods or Natural Grocers for organic pumpkin.

Minnow in the Sea

The Internet is kind of a nightmare. As much time as I spend wading through it, I still find myself lost, navigating an overflow of information. I grew up online, part of the first generation to have home access to this technology. I trolled electronic bulletin board systems (BBSs) when AOL was still in its infancy. So there you have my geek cred. Let me tell you, it's really not doing me any good.


You see, a week ago, I handed in my resignation at my day job, cashiering for a major discount retailer of particularly evil reputation. Yes, in this economy. Trust me, I have my reasons. (One being the sheer volume of customers who spouted "Be grateful you have a job!" at me on a daily basis.) The general idea is, I'm a smart young woman, I'll find me some of that online employment. However, when I began this seemingly simple task, I discovered that finding legitimate, non-scamming employment is a bit more challenging than finding a new web comic or the latest dose of cute from www.icanhascheezeburger.com.

This blog represents both an attempt at gainful employment, and a documentation of my search for it.