Pumpkins

I love pumpkin season. There are so many yummy variations on what you can do with pumpkins, so I will share just a few of mine from this pumpkin season.

Yummy homemade pumpkin soup made by Sorina. She received major points for presentation, but it also tasted great. The best pumpkin soup I've ever eaten in fact. Post soup, we had a deliciously made Romanian pastry made from pumpkin, which was the actual inspiration for the evening. The soup only came to be because of extra pumpkin! Thank goodness :)

I've also been enjoying many types of pumpkin seed breads, bagels, and pretzels. I even had a pumpkin seed bagel for lunch today. Here's the pumpkin seed pretzel I scored for my train ride back to Hamburg.

This next one is kind of a stretch, but we are in Germany after all. I don't often shop at Lidl, but they do have some "American" things there from time to time. I found this in the Halloween section. Yes, Halloween Würstchen. Can you see the little pumpkins on the hot dogs? Yum.

Here's a view of the pumpkin stand at the weekly market. I spent a solid ten minutes here trying to decide which pumpkin had the most potential as a Jack-o-lantern. Some of the big ones were just too big. As I explained to my colleagues, usually you find the biggest and best pumpkin and then roll it to the car -- either actually roll it or roll it with a wagon. I had neither of these, so I had to resort to the smaller ones. The medium ones didn't quite sit right.

As per usual, I ended up overthinking my pumpkin carving experience and ended up running around the city on Saturday in order to find a new pumpkin. I ended up with my last resort. Talk about commercialized Halloween. Don't worry, there were other options out there since Halloween does seem to be picking up steam over here.

For my small "carving" party, I wanted to serve something somewhat healthy. It was kind of hard. So many cute recipes I found called for some ingredient that couldn't be easily obtained (or made...) over here. Sorry, not making any graham crackers. I was pretty happy with my veggie pumpkin. However, I did buy quite a few (kilograms of...) carrots and just can't seem to eat, cook, or give them away fast enough.

Of course, we did also eat cake and chocolate and drink wine and hot apple cider while we carved away. With our crew of two Americans, two Germans, and one Canadian we were pretty successful.

Yes, one is a squash :)

Photo from Kristi's camera...thanks Jodi!

And, of course, we roasted the seeds. With four varieties of pumpkin/squash, we had quite the assortment of seeds.

Lastly, my mom sent me a lovely Halloween package that was sadly delayed in the mail and arrived the day after my party. Sad. But it did include wonderful gifts and a sensational card (front and center) which went nicely with my other cards (thank you, everyone!). And, of course, a card from my brother...complete with fake spider (not pictured).

So, this meant I had to act fast in order not to waste the package's contents. I quickly set up my sprinkle "lab" and made chocolate -covered pretzels to bring into the office on the 31st.

OK. That sums up my pumpkin and Halloween experience...for now.



Happy Halloween!