When I was little, our neighbour grew these prize-winning pumpkins. They were MASSIVE. And every year, the vines would grow under the fence and a good number of pumpkins would grow in our yard. And by ‘a good number’, I’m talking like 20-30. Needless to say, we had a problem with hooligans smashing pumpkins in our neighbourhood. We also had an absurd number of Jack-O-Lanterns, which led to an absurd number of smash Jack-O-Lanterns in our driveway.

That said, it also meant that we had easy access to pumpkin for eating. My mom makes delicious pumpkin pie that starts with a real pumpkin and not some crap from a can. And oh, the difference it makes. I definitely have a heart-on for all things pumpkin.

A few months back, I posted that I’d had my wisdom teeth out and was trying to find interesting things to eat, Connor from Hold the Beef recommended a pumpkin pie shake. I got the recommendation at about 8:30am and was at the grocery store 10 minutes later, buying up all the ingredients. Not only until I got home and got to talking Emily did it hit me that an actual pumpkin pie is pretty blendable (and in my case, soft enough to eat as-is, but I was pretty paranoid for the first couple of days). So we decided to try a delicious experiment: concocted shake vs. blended pie.

Note: Months and months passed (and I healed fully from my wisdom teeth ordeal) before I actually got around to finishing this post. So rather than relying on faded memories, I invited my friend Pam over for a Saturday night of milkshakes.

Pumpkin Pie Shake

The complex option

Connor pointed to a recipe on another Toronto food blog, Closet Cooking. I knew I needed it before I even saw the recipe, but once I saw the picture and the comments, well, that cemented the deal.

As far as smoothies/shakes go, this one is fairly complicated. You’re mixing all the flavours of the pie, which gives you total control over the final product, but honestly, it’s a bit of work for a milkshake. Especially since I had to grind cloves.

Closet Cooking’s Recipe (Source)
2 cups vanilla frozen yogurt
1/4 cup milk (I needed more, to make it drinkable without a straw)
1/3 cup pumpkin puree (I used canned)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoon gingersnap cookies (crumbled for the topping, I didn’t use these)

Blend it all together and you get: a delicious shake that tastes like the idea of pumpkin pie in milkshake form. Delicious, subtle flavours. Downside: you can definitely tell that there was no crust involved. You may get some semblance of that if you mix the gingersnap cookies in, but the recipe calls for them solely as a garnish.

Blended Pumpkin Pie

The simple option

This is definitely the simpler option. My process: Throw some milk, frozen yogurt, and pumpkin pie into a blend and GO. From 10 ingredients down to three.

This is how I like to cook.

From the first sip, you can definitely tell this is an actual pumpkin pie in milkshake form. To my mind, that’s a great thing. Some part of me just loves knowing that I’m drinking pie crust. The… grit (is that the word?) it adds might not be for everyone, but it brings a smile to my face.

The downside: your shake is really going to vary based on the pie you used. If you’re using your mom’s homemade pie, you’ll likely love the shake. The first pie I made with it was pretty mildly spiced, and the shake was delicious. When Pam and I did our taste test, we found the spice a bit overpowering. In later attempts, it was hard to mask the spice of the Sara Lee pie without diluting the pumpkin-ey-ness more than I wanted.

The End Result

Based on the taste test Pam & I did in February, the Pumpkin Pie Shake from Closet Cooking came out the clear winner. If you’re trying to impress someone with your pumpkin-pie-shake-making skills, it’s definitely the way to go. Having control over the spices means you can make it a bit more delicate than the blended pie option, and you can prepare a consistent shake every time. You really do get the idea of pumpkin pie in milkshake form, versus a blended pumpkin pie and everything that entails. The one issue: 1.3 of a cup of pumpkin puree leaves the majority of a can left for some other purpose… I ended up throwing mine out.

Thinking back to my days on a soft food diet, though, I ate a whole lot more of the blended pumpkin pie shakes (an entire pie’s worth, in fact). They were just so easy, what with three ingredients (four if you’re adding protein powder–I did and enjoyed it). And there’s something satisfying about throwing some pie in the blender and drinking it down. If you’ve got access to a delicious pumpkin pie but can’t down it in its soft-but-solid form, give it a shot! But as with anything, the quality of your ingredient dictates your results.

Future experiments: Check out the list on Closet Cooking’s recipe - I’m pretty excited to try out some more pumpkin pie-flavoured goods and use up this can of pumpkin puree!

I got my wisdom teeth out yesterday!

Why is that good news? Because I means I have the opportunity to find all sorts of weird crap to eat. I’m not in much pain (none, actually) less than 24 hours later, but I still want to go by the book when it comes to my diet in recovery. Our friend Emily, thankfully (and unfortunately), had to go through a much more prolonged ordeal this summer, and started Jaws Wired Shut. It’s a pretty amazing resource for all those on a blended diet for whatever reason, and even got some press in a New York Times blog.

So now that I’m off the first day’s relatively boring clear liquids diet, it’s time to start playing around. For lunch today’s, I’ve made myself this delicious Banana & Avocado Shake. An avocado, a banana, some plain yogurt, and some milk. I threw in some protein powder, some vanilla Progressive Harmonized Vegan stuff that I picked up this morning. So far, it doesn’t seem to be as soluble as the non-vegan stuff I usually get, but… this is what they had at GNC this morning.

Anyway… completely delicious. And significantly more filling than a bowl of straight-up chicken broth.

If anyone has any ideas to help get me through the next week, send them along!

Behold, I present to you, a death match between two exotic Pepsi flavours, gathered from around the world!

In this corner…

Pepsi Green

I got this little gem at a 7-11 in Thailand, where it’s all over the place. My friend who lives there absolutely hates it, and can’t understand why the locals “are obsessed with it” (she says with disgust). I’m not sure how I feel about it, or even if it counts as a cola. Everyone I feed it to says the taste is familiar, but they can’t quite place it (check out the heated internets debate on the subject). My kid sister says it tastes like Dr. Pepper. I also taste mint, with a hint of a floral bathroom air spray (or maybe just it’s the putrid green colour that makes me think of bathroom products talking).

Wanna know more? Check out Pepsi Thailand, which has got to be the slowest loading corporate website in the entire known universe. I wrote this entire post before it finally loaded. Go you, Pepsi Thailand!

Once the novelty wears off, I give it 6 Mehs out of 10.

In the other corner...

Pepsi White

Good old eBay provided me with this questionable limited edition beverage from Japan. Guess what the White refers to? Yogurt! But it doesn’t actually taste like yogurt. At all. (Maybe this is a good thing?) I was expecting that it would taste like calpis, but it actually tastes kinda spicy. According to the “The Japan Marketing News” it has ‚Äúa deeper, more memorable flavour.‚Äù Metafilter says it tastes like “malted battery acid.”

I do like the smell though, which smells like a cordial I had as kid in New Zealand called witches’ brew (any kiwis remember it?).

Overall, I give it a 5 Good Thing It’s Limited Editions out of 10.

So, Pepsi Green … wins! (if you can call being less gross winning…)

Apparently some folks over at ABC Perth like our blog (and I’m a bit of a fan of the ABC myself. Go public broadcasting!)! So, they’ve invited me to be a guest their afternoon show to talk about some super serious important business: tuna cupcakes and other weird and crazy food. So tune in to 720AM around 2:40 this afternoon.

Extra bonus, it’s a call in show (this should be fun!)

Love,
Kate

Eggs, potatos and chorizo from Taco Shack

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A mere few blocks away from my old home in Mount Lawley there exists a restaurant where they bring you a stack of raw meat and a rock that was supposedly thrown out of an erupting volcano. This rock is heated to an insane temperature - hot enough to make your face sweat the entire meal - and delivered to you at your fancy white linen covered table so that you might cook your food upon it. Reservations are a must.

I had been curious about this place - the Lava Stonegrill - for a while. But it wasn’t quite quirky enough for Extreme Food Dating. It just sounded like a variation on Korean BBQ. Then, a friend of mine took some girl from the internet on a date there and liked it (and the date worked out well…). He reported back that they had along with the beef and chicken stacks of raw meat, they also had a game platter, featuring crocodile fillet, venison steak (although, I feel I must tell you that they promised me “venison” on the menu), wild boar and kangaroo steak, all served with a bush tomato chutney. Sold!

For extra bonus fun points (but not intentionally), the date was scheduled to occur during a brief period when I was on a some rather innocuous medication that, despite its supposed innocuous nature, had the side effect of messing with my head (if you have ever tried old school anti-malarials, it was something like that, but more of the daytime weirdness and less of the sleeping weirdness).

So, the date started out well (at least it seemed so to my foggy brain). We arrived at the grill - it was packed and swanky and somehow fully stocked with hot gay waiters. Despite their hotness, these waiters kinda sucked at waiting in a timely fashion.

I mean really, how long does it take to prepare food that I cook myself?

This is something I’ve noticed that is annoyingly common with Perth cafes and restaurants. Even with no one else in the cafe, it often takes them a good 5 minutes to take the cookie out of a jar, put it in a bag and charge me for it. One time I waited 15 min just to get a pre-made sandwich warmed up.

As advertised, the plate of uncooked meat and a sizzling lava rock came with the tomato chutney, and some other delicious yet unidentified dip type thing. The waiter hurriedly told me what each piece of meat was, and then scurried away, and I immediately forgot what everything was, except for the one that looked like chicken (the rest were all red meat) - that one was crocodile. When I finally hailed the water down again to ask which meat was what, he claimed they had been reorganized and couldn’t tell me. So, my dear readers, I cannot give you much of a review of each meat, other than the crocodile tasted like chicken. Surprise.

This was $34. I had to order the steamed vegetables on the side - another $7.90. Some readers might remember the kilo of steak and kilo of chips I had at Outback Jack’s, all of which were a mere $36.

When I was done the cooking, I wanted the hot rock to go away because they made me feel like I was going through menopause. I’m not sure if this was from my crazy drugs or the heat of the sizzling plate before me. But either way, you can imagine its not so pleasant to have a sizzling hot rock cooking your face while you’re trying to enjoy your dinner.

All and all, overpriced and underserved. Also, more craziness next time please.

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I was kinda relieved since I accidently bought a can the other day, thinking it was the Blueberry flavour. And not being one to waste food, I drank it with some spicy pizza, whilst fearing for my life. Now I’m glad it was safe, but, it still tasted mega-ick.

Sadly, if finding an impossible combination was our aim, we fail, fail, FAILED, because it turns out that tuna cupcakes are positively delicious. Hellebelle, a friend and occasional TunaCupcake.com commenter, pointed us to a recipe for tuna cupcakes within a few days. And then when I posted my comfort food dare, she brought it up again. So I went for it, guys. I totally went for it.

What is a tuna cupcake?

Well, it’s really a cupcake. It’s really a biscuit filled with tuna and cream of mushroom soup. Almost like… a portable tuna casserole. And we all love tuna casserole, right? I know I do. I survived on it through much of my undergrad… except by tuna casserole, I mean i dumped some tuna, cheese, and cream of mushroom soup on top of some noodles, eating until warm enough to be edible. Man, was I lazy. And fat.

A tuna cupcake is a touch more sophisticated: You take some biscuit dough (the recipe calls for the pre-made kind, but I was slightly more ambitious and used Bisquick) and line some muffin tins with small squares. Don’t grease them!

Next, you heat up all the other ingredients until you’re bored of heating them, and dump them into the biscuit-lined muffin tins. Fold the dough over the filling, bake, and you’re set.

WHOA, THAT’S REALLY IT?

Yup.

How do they taste, though?

Delicious. Seriously, if you like cream of mushroom soup, tuna, and biscuits–and I’ll be personally offended if you don’t–you will like tuna cupcakes. The taste of the filling permeates through the dough and makes the biscuits nice and moist. Which leads me to the one issue:

Seepage. Most of the filling disappeared into the dough, so rather than having a nice gooey centre, we had… well, not a whole lot of anything, honestly. A bit of tuna in the middle. And I filled them up to the brim, so… short of adding more filling partway through the cooking process, I’m not sure how to remedy that one. But oh man would a more tuna-filled cupcake really hit the spot.

On a scale of 1 to tuna-cupcake-licious, tuna cupcakes score, well, 89.5.

Want to make them yourself? Check out the recipe