Pumpkin Challenge: Day 29

The paleo diet - if a caveman (ahem, cave person) wouldn't eat it, neither do you!

If you could hunt for it and find it in the wild, then it's yours to eat - nuts, seasonal fruits and veggies, meat, seeds, etc. Essentially, it is a "natural" diet, in that you aren't dealing with agriculturally-produced foods (sorry, pasta).

This is all information I've gathered from the Internet, so take it with a grain of salt (did cave people eat salt?) - but what I am trying to do here, is offer a prelude to today's pumpkin item:

Paleo Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes! (recipe) (also vegan!)

These photos are pretty awful quality (I blame yellowish lighting and decor), but I believe that they capture the essence of what this recipe turned into: A bit of a squishy, but clean and yummy, treat.

The best part about these was definitely using my mini food processor from Cuisinart! I have only used it twice, but the past two days have been made a whole lot more exciting as a result of it. I described the feeling of using it as a feeling of having a missing piece of my daily life - my mom seems to be okay with this description.

I added some coconut ice cream to make it more "pie"-like, and I would say it worked! I also ate my samples before they had completely cooled, and this may have contributed to how squishy they were. Currently, they are chilling (literally) in my fridge, and I plan to have another go at them tomorrow.

Pumpkin Challenge: Day 28

Tuesday has been a continuation of the trying to cross out my to-do-list items. Tuesday has been a somewhat back-to-back sort of day.

Tuesday was a day to combine my consumption challenges into one item!

A desire to eat something sweet joined forces with a desire to clean out my system and the need to have something pumpkiny, and Simple Green Smoothies answered my call with the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip smoothie.

The combination of spinach and pumpkin may be deceptive, because the reality is - with the magic of fruit, cocoa powder and almond milk - this smoothie is great!

Pumpkin Challenge: Days 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27

In my defence, the Internet was inaccessible where I stayed this weekend.

Then Monday was a bit disorganized and required attention to bring order back to my life.

I don't have any excuse for how Thursday was left out of the mix.

Now it is Tuesday, and I can provide an update for each pumpkin item that I did consume over the weekend! It was a yummy weekend for pumpkin things, and a self-care weekend for Katie.

Thursday the 23rd: Mini Pumpkin Chocolate-Chip Muffins (vegan) from: Unknown (my Pinterest wall likely has the recipe somewhere...)

The week had been long and I felt that chocolate was in order (as per usual). I felt a need for some therapeutic baking to get me through one more week day, and these little muffins hit the spot! I absolutely love miniature baking.

Friday the 24th: Pumpkin Apple Muffins (vegan) from Minimalist Baker

Holy moly, these muffins were yummy. I mistakenly "sliced" rather than "diced" the apples for the recipe, so the apple portion of the snack was fairly large, and made the muffins a little gooey while you ate them - but that's okay! They were light and moist and naturally sweet, and I love oats in most any baked good.

Saturday the 25th: Pumpkin Pie Steamed Almond Milk from G.I.'s Blue Parrot Cafe

Since I spent the weekend with my family, I recognized that baking another item during the weekend would be unlikely to be eaten (since my family eats small quantities of everything), so I decided to go for a pumpkin item while I was out, instead. I went to the Blue Parrot Cafe for a nice light steamed almond milk with pumpkin pie flavour!

Sunday the 26th: Pumpkin Waffles (vegan) from My Darling Vegan

To celebrate my parents returning from their trip, I decided that some snack-sized waffles for brunch would be appropriate. I found this recipe from My Darling Vegan, and would happily go back! I think I put too much in the waffle-stick maker, because these didn't fluff up as much as I had hoped, but they tasted delicious, and that's really all that matters.

Monday the 27th: Chickpea Pumpkin Fritters (baked) from lunchbox.com

This recipe had sat on my Pumpkin Challenge board on Pinterest for some time, and I am glad that I finally made it yesterday! This were an easy meal/snack to make, and I have several left over that I can use for sides at lunch/dinner, or for a meal! I bet they would turn into soup, as well...

This post has been a bit excessive in order to catch up on everything, but I hope you're still with me - I only have 4 more pumpkin items to go, and I'm still not sick of it!