Cinderella

Blimey. Have just logged on and realized it's over a month since I last posted. I doubt even my parents are still checking in. Ah well.

We're upstate and it's raining hard. The nights are drawing in, the leaves are ablaze and there's woodsmoke in the air. All of a sudden it's nearly a year since we moved upstate to begin our experiment in country living and I'm finding myself terribly nostalgic for that wood-stove-warmed bubble we created for ourselves in our little wooden house in the snow, when my life was all greening, Dotting and blogging. The best four months of my life really. Although to be fair they're all pretty great now we've got a hilarious little person laughing, pointing and boogie-ing her way through our days.

It being October I'm indulging myself in my pumpkin fetish. For those of you who don't know, I'm so obsessed with pumpkins I actually scheduled my wedding for October 30th so I could have miniature white pumpkins as the table centerpieces (then the florist couldn't get them in England so that showed me, but anyway). So far the hubby's only had to munch his way through one batch of Nigel Slater's spicy pumpkin soup but I've just rediscovered a book called The Perfect Pumpkin my dear friend Courtney bought me as joke a few years ago and spent this evening poring over all manner of pumpkin recipes to experiment with in the coming weeks. Pumpkin Cheesecake, Pumpkin Cookies, Pumpkin Torte, Pumpkin Curry, Pumpkin Dinner Rolls, Pumpkin Ale...well, maybe not the ale.

Today I roasted a large sagey green specimen I'd bought from River Brook Farm two weeks ago. I think it was a Gray Hubbard, and anyway it seemed to weigh more than my daughter. By the time I pulled it from the oven the noble beast was listing to starboard and oozing shiny juice. I let it cool and set about scooping out the seeds and flesh. This took a lot longer than I'd anticipated and was no less involving (or messy) than stripping down the carcass of a large turkey but the flavor was excellent and I now have a panful of pumpkin sitting in the fridge ready to be blended, beaten and baked into pumpkin muffins for breakfast and soup for lunch tomorrow before it's off to the farm to try a new variety. What I don't have are the seeds I painstakingly pulled from the strings and set aside to dry roast because the hubby threw them in the bin but I suppose he wouldn't be him if he didn't do things like that all the time.

Right, must get to bed before I - well, you know what. I'll add a pic of the pixie in just a minute.