The Spice Satchel: September 2011

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

pumpkin practice

What do you do when you have a huge can of pumpkin, and your husband asks you to make pumpkin bread for his math club? It's never too early to start practicing for Thanksgiving! That huge can of pumpkin made 2 loaves of pumpkin bread and a practice pumpkin pie. Since I was practicing, I also wanted to try using the Coconut Dream I recently bought to try. Usually we use Rice Dream for our milk needs, but I love coconut, so when I saw the new product, I had to try it. It has more fat in it than rice milk, so it is thicker. This makes my morning coffee more creamy, and lightens it more like cream than rice milk does. It also gives the coffee a slight cool coconut flavor. Yum.

We also recently bought a pie crust edge protector, so I no longer have to fight with the foil to keep my crusts from getting too brown. The one we got is silicone, and works great!

My Practice Pumpkin Pie has a nutmeg crust, coconut dream, real maple syrup, and double the amount of ground ginger. It's good. I'm not positive that the coconut dream did anything particularly beneficial for the texture or the thickness/creaminess of the custard. Which means I can use either coconut or rice milk, whichever is handy. Pretty nice. For my real Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie this year I want to use a real pumpkin, and possibly fresh ginger.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Who am I?

I am short, and often cold. I love to cook, crochet and take pictures. I have a degree in photography. One day I hope to be running a photography company with my friend, Angela. I love coffee. When I met Paul in 2002, I didn't like coffee at all, but he loved it. I also didn't know what I wanted to do with my life- I was an advertising major. Basically, there was a lot I didn't know about myself then. Now, I love coffee, the taste, the smell, the beans covered in chocolate. I love it so much that I work at Starbucks until I can achieve that other goal I mentioned. My boss loves my photography, and hangs it in the store! When I was in college, I had to do a self portrait, and this was mine. I'm creative and clever, and I didn't want to have to show myself in my portrait at all. This is actually still one of my favorite pictures. I smile every time I see it, and I guess that says something about myself too.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

camping

Yes, I love camping. Always have. When I was little, I would go camping with my dad and family every summer. Fishing, swimming, tubing down the river, running through the woods, hunting for fire wood, cooking over the flames. So many memories. I also loved camping with my mom, friends, and now I still love going camping. This summer I was lucky enough to go twice. Once with Amy on our 5 year Anniversary (our campiversary) and once with Jami and Sam shortly after their wedding. Jami has been one of my best friends since 3rd grade, and I love that we still have fun. I'm actually very lucky with a lot of very long very great friendships. (Maybe that will be a blog post one day...). Also, we are hoping to go camping again one time this fall.