Tis the season...For all things pumpkin

Let’s kick off my jobless-isms with my wicked culinary skills, shall we? I found a recipe for carrot cake pancakes with cream cheese sauce. While I thought it sounded delicious, my mom wasn’t too keen on veggies in her pancakes, so our recipe morphed into the illustrious pumpkin pancakes with sliced bananas and cream cheese sauce. Ooooh yum. And they were nothing but easy.

You start with your standard Bisquick pancake recipe (2 c. Bisquick, 1 c. milk, 2 eggs), to that you’ll add about half a cup of brown sugar, 1/3 c. canned pumpkin, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp cinnamon and a splash of rum extract.

The sauce is just half a block of cream cheese, 1½ c powdered sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla and about 2-4 T milk mixed well.

We served them up with banana slices drizzled with the cream cheese sauce, and I tell ya. These made me wanna go nom nom nom.

So it was Halloween last week. I’ve never been a fan of the ever-present “girl dressed as the slutty version of a fuzzy animal” costume (obviously demonstrated by my Legends of the Hidden Temple costume from a few years ago), so I decided to celebrate privately this year. Well, that reason plus the fact that my social life has decreased incredibly since I’ve moved back home... But yeah, anywho. I’m still cool.

Halloween Eve I had an overwhelming urge to carve a pumpkin. And not just any pumpkin; an Office inspired pumpkin. Anyone who’s spent more than 30 minutes with me knows what a huge Office fan I am. Own all seasons, quote it like a champ, am the one they make those episode commentaries for, and when the Target dollar section went Office-centric it was like Christmas. Back on track: I found these awesome Office stencils on Office Tally (http://www.officetally.com/the-office-halloween-ideas/2) and I couldn’t not use them. And so I present to you: Andy Bernard and Dwight Schrute. Ri-dit-dit-dah-doo!

Of course, me being me, I was a complete struggle. Because I waited so late to actually get into the spirit, I had to scour the town to find a store that hadn't disposed of its pumpkin display, so my starter pumpkin was just a teeny bit sad. I think the carving process took a good three hours to get done. Pretty sure it took half an hour just to cut the lid off. Whoops. Also, I don’t plan ahead so I had no fancy carving tools…Did have a lemon peeler though. But it worked in a pinch, so I can’t really complain. I’m quite the crafty jack-o-lantern-er though; had several eyebrows and nose tips fall off, but with toothpicks and determination you can’t even tell.