Care to Eat Making a difference one bite at a time.

I realized that I’ve used a lot of spoons today.  At least 10.

Last night I was inspired to make pumpkin pancakes.  I’ve never had nor seen pumpkin pancakes, but I knew that they had to exist.  So, I consulted my favorite cookbook: Google.com  Lo and behold, I found several recipes to choose from.  Obviously, I picked the one that looked the easiest and required only 1 cup of pumpkin since that’s all I had left.  I woke up extra early this morning just to make them!  Funny how I can wake up early for pancakes, but not to go to the gym

The picture sucks because I had to take it with my camera phone.  Chris wasted the last of my battery power this morning taking this picture:

Sometimes he can be a real ass to the dogs.  If you can’t tell, Basil is “wearing” Chris’ t-shirt.  He couldn’t get out of right away so he just stood there looking pathetic until one of us helped him.

Anyways, the whole wheat pumpkin pancakes turned out great despite the fact that I had to make them from scratch!  Thick and filling like buckwheat pancakes, but a little sweet from the pumpkin and spices.  If you’d like the recipe, you can check it out here.  I used hazelnut milk instead of cow’s milk and I think you could omit the eggs all together since pumpkin is a natural binder and the batter was pretty thick.  I had three of the smallest pancakes and just topped it with maple syrup.  Yum-O.

For lunch, one of my coworkers was going to pick up some Chinese takeout and asked if I wanted anything.  At first I didn’t, but then the more I thought about it, I changed my mind.  I brought the other half of my “calzone” for lunch, but it just didn’t sound good.  So, I was really bad and asked her to get me some egg drop soup and a couple crab puffs.  I say bad, because I’m sure the soup wasn’t vegetarian and obviously crab puffs aren’t even if they are made out of imitation crab.

I only had two of the crab puffs and that whole bowl of soup before I moved on to my lunch dessert:

I like this cherry soy yogurt, but instead of chunks of cherries, there are chunks of what appears to be cherry skins.  It’s weird, and slightly gross, but I’ll continue to eat it nonetheless!

For my PM snack, I had a not-quite-ripe-enough-for-my-tastes banana.  No pic.

You know how I was planning on cooking a spaghetti squash last night?  Well, good thing I didn’t because I got the new issue of Sunset magazine today and found a great recipe for s. squash I that I had to try.  They also had three really simple apple recipes in the issue – how apropo!

While my squash was roasting I made one of the apple recipes as a little appetizer.  It’s basically grilled apples on grilled bread w/goat cheese and rosemary.  I know, right?!

I didn’t plan on eating all five of these, but I totally did.  I wish I had used more rosemary though.  They weren’t super filling which was a good thing because I still had my squash dish!

So, the recipe is Spaghetti squash with jalapeno cream.  I made some modifications to the recipe so it didn’t turn out quite right.  If I were making this for guests, I would go balls to the wall and make it with heavy cream and real cheese.  But, since it was just for me, I made it with only half a squash, half rice milk (all I had!) and half cow’s milk and topped it with soy cheese.

Even though it came out a little liquidly, it still tasted pretty darn good.  It had a strong jalapeno flavor without being spicy or overpowering.  I think I might do what the magazine says and volunteer to make this for Thanksgiving potluck this year but make it the “right” way.

Can I say how EASY spaghetti squash is?  I mean like really easy.  The hardest part was cutting the squash and I had Chris do it for me!  I’ve had people tell me that it’s simple before, but I didn’t think it would be THIS easy.  So, if you’ve been putting off trying to make a s. squash like I had, stop!  Run to the store, buy one, and cook it tomorrow!