Pinterest experiments

I decided that for September I wanted to try out some of the things I had "pinned" on Pinterest. For those of you that don't have this wonderful app, first, you should get it because it's AWESOME, second, it's an app where you save categories of things to "boards", like a virtual organizer. Most people have a food board, or even further separated boards into things like "dinner, lunch, dessert" etc. I realize that I have so many recipes that I just look at and do nothing with and that I wanted to actually try some of these. Well, yes, it is a little over a week into September so I'm starting a little late, but better late than never right?.. sure.

So. For the month of September, I hope to dedicate these posts to my Pinterest discoveries, even if they are not food related. To start, what a better month than to bring out the pumpkin! Fall always brings a somewhat nostalgic feel to it with the smell of dead leaves and the crisp air in the morning (or in the case of my morning, the snowy downfall mixed with frost and rain - why do I live in Alberta again?). There are always memories of Halloween and of course with Halloween there are pumpkins! Pumpkin pie of thanksgiving, squash soup and - of course - pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks! Well, I'm trying to save money so I did what I could with a can of pumpkin puree and spices from home. I started with Crock-pot pumpkin spice lattes (cuz who wouldn't rather save money and KNOW exactly what's in their drink?)


The pin:

(unfortunately there was no picture of the finished product on this blog BUT I have the link here to the recipe if you want to check it out!

Then, while this was brewing in my slow-cooker, I decided to try out the pumpkin scones. The pin (below):

don't those just look delicious! Well.. I'll have you know that the final product of both actually turned out quite well. Though, of course, they don't look as perfect as in the picture (and I didn't have any whipping cream for the latte unfortunately so it's difficult maybe to tell what kind it is but here it is!

They both tasted pretty good but the only thing I have to say about the latte is to not let it overcook. I kept mine in over 2 hours and it tasted a bit burnt.  Also, there is no way it makes enough for 3-4 cups. Not the cups my size anyway! Finally, it probably would have been better if strained a little because there were floaties in it at the bottom.

Still, end result was pumpkin-tastic! Still have lots of those scones left though and I'm trying to limit myself to only one a day. Finally, because I still had lots of pumpkin left I decided to make some pumpkin creamer. Here's the pin vs my result. Recipe here:

Ignore the pickle jar and terrible label. I realize now this isn't the greatest picture but you see the color on the bottom looks a bit different. It said not to drink it until it was cool so I didn't try it until today. My biggest critique with this one is that it did not strain well AT ALL and I think I wasted half of it just trying to strain it. Not sure I will make this one again.




So that was my pumpkin spice everything evening. I also made pasta salad from a recipe I got on Pinterest but unfortunately did not take a picture of that. It tasted good though and I used a lot of spices and vegetables from our very own garden! This evening, I will try out a dinner recipe of some sort. Keep posted on how it went!

PS. All of my pumpkin recipes were made with not even a full can of pumpkin puree! Here's what was left:

Till then, enjoy the crisp fall weather and I hope you don't have frostbitten fingers like I did after riding my bike home at 1 degree Celsius weather. Yup, drinking hot chocolate, wearing sweatpants and feeling like doing NOTHING today! Cheers.