The Great Pumpkin

This week has been very pumpkin-y. On Sunday, I carved pumpkins with Sarah, Jonathan, and our friend Georgia. This is my pumkin, which I named Zohan Homer after Sarah's cat Zoe (who would have been Zohan, had she been a boy) and my cat Homer. I brought home a bunch of pumpkin seeds and baked them with cayenne, cinnamon, sugar, and salt. I liked the flavor profile but it wasn't strong enough. Also, the pumkin seeds were nice and crispy straight out of the oven, but as they cooled, they got less crispy and harder to enjoy. I think that the seasoning mixture would be good on popcorn though. (Too bad I don't care for popcorn!)
On Monday, I opened up a can of pumpkin and mixed half of it with skim milk, garlic, vermouth, and shriracha (sounds strange, but makes a great sauce). I ended up mixing the sauce with some quinoa. I served it inside half a microwaved heirloom squash (I was going to roast it but I couldn't cut through the raw squash!), topped with strips of roasted red pepper and goat cheese (with the rest of the grilled Italian turkey sausage on the side). It was really good.
I ended up dipping a grilled cheese sandwich in the leftover pumpkin sauce for lunch the next day.
As for the rest of the canned pumpkin- I used 1/4 of the can in some oats for breakfast, along with brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice. This was delicious and tasted exactly like pie, but it didn't fill me up as much as I would have liked. I usually put almond or peanut butter in my oatmeal as well, so I think I needed a little more protein in this breakfast.
I remedied the hunger situation the next morning by making a pumpkin smoothie with 6oz of vanilla greek yogurt, 1/4 can of pumpkin, a banana, some milk, ground flax seeds, and some pumpkin pie spice. This was tasty and filling, but it didn't really taste like pie. Maybe I needed more pumpkin and spice.
Is anyone surprised that I'm not orange at this point? :)
Finally, after all this fall food, the weather seemed to get the hint to cool back down. It's been really depressing to have temperatures in the low 90's all week, given that it's the middle of October! It is supposed to be cool and sunny for the next week though, so I am really looking forward to the runs I have coming up. I have a 10 miler to look forward to this weekend so wish me luck!
Other things taking place this weekend include drinks at the new Sazerac bar in the Roosevelt hotel tonight, shopping at Macy's for charity tomorrow, and seeing Yo-Yo Ma play on Sunday!! I am really excited about Yo-Yo Ma!
I also plan to make a Lime Tart on Sunday b/c someone brought a giant bag of limes to work today- I grabbed several! (But I'll bring the tart to work, so it all evens out.)