have you come to sing pumpkin carols?

I wish there were pumpkin carols. Fall carols, if you will. I know all this talk about pumpkins is making people sick; it's all anyone talks about. Especially the single working women, the young moms, and the newly marrieds. What is it with this demographic and our obsession with everything pumpkin related? I'm pretty sure my grandmother enjoyed baking with it, but I don't know if she ever talked about it. She definitely didn't Instagram about it...

But with the twerking and the non-government and the chaos that has ensued as a result of both, we have to have something to fall back on for excitement. So herein lies something for you to bake.

I made it today, and it was simple and delicious and sugar-less. The recipe calls for sugar, but don't feel any obligation. I substituted for pure maple syrup. It should look like this below. And your coffee and your dog should look like this.

 Enjoy!

as summer ends...

The past few weeks have been lonely. Not in an "awwwww" sort of way. It's creates a time of some reflection and lots of thinking. It also allows for enjoyment of simple things like pulling out sweatshirts again, the last few fresh tomatoes of summer, watching my broccoli babies become adolescents, cooler mornings, having options for what to do with my weekend afternoons but feeling very little pressure to start the day before I really want to. As I wait for my husband to come home from school, work, or DC Habitat, I get a chance to consider the following things:

• cooking full meals can be over rated.
• it makes so much more sense to get almost everything you own at yard sales
• if I had a bottomless supply of underwear, I might be completely happy.
• I will miss summer, but sights like these at the grocery store are still heart warming: