31 Days of Pumpkin

Hello!  I'm back!  I've been on a not-so-brief hiatus due to life getting a little crazy with a baby who is now growing into a toddler.  I had tried to keep up there for awhile, but it just got away from me.  Who has time to cook around here?  For example, we moved to a new house five months ago and I still haven't finished unpacking.  Needless to say, we've been eating a lot of pizza and burritos (no cheese for me of course.)

So now it's October, my baby is almost 14 months old, I've been back to work full-time for a year, and it's time to get back to cooking and writing.  Let the insanity begin (continue?) I have decided to come back with a bang by attempting to post each day this month with my theme of 31 Days of Pumpkin.  I'm just going all out with this pumpkin craze and will make or buy something pumpkin each day this month.

I thought of this idea at exactly 6:00am today, AFTER being awake for an hour already.  Clearly super optimistic about this and ready to start asap.

First, I was intent on making a vegan pumpkin spice latte since the one at Starbucks is infamous for being NOT dairy-free even if getting it with soy milk, and the one at Peets was disappointingly NOT good the other day when I tried it.

Well, my first attempt at a homemade pumpkin spice latte was an epic failure.  Way too much cinnamon and something else... not enough coffee?  I don't know, but it was bad.  I'll try again tomorrow.

Since the can of pumpkin was already open, I added a spoonful to the steel-cut oats I was making for Baby R.  That was actually delicious!  Score, 1 for 1.

 That was just breakfast.

I had grand plans for my dinner... Pumpkin Mac and Cheese!  Oooohhh Yeaaaaaaahhh.

We all know how much I love my vegan mac and cheese, and if there's one thing I come back to time and time again it's that.  Each time it's a new version of one of my favorite recipes.

Today I made the one from the Skinny B cookbook.  I've always made it with a yellow squash puree, but I just substituted that for the pumpkin puree of course!  I also added garlic powder, nutritional yeast and mushrooms.

The result?  Creamy rich delicious pumpkin cheesy goodness!  Score now 2 for 1 for day 1.