When it's time to change, you got to rearrange...

Sha na na na na na na na na....Sha na na na na! (Think Peter Brady from the Brady Bunch)

It was time for a change. The background, by the way, is a closeup of a Peruvian bill that is worth 10 soles...or about 3 dollars and some change.

I can't believe that October is over. I mean, honestly. What the heck? Where did it even go? I spent the majority of my October teaching english classes, working with compArte, and quite possibly my favorite part of the whole month was dedicating a lot of time to carrying out Pumpkin Fest 2009.

What is Pumpkin Fest 2009 you ask? Oh my. It's amazing, that's what it is.

I'll explain. Pumpkin Fest is at least a month long festival that involves making a lot of delicious things with alot of delicious fresh pureed pumpkin. You see, in the Baikie family, we alllllllways boiled down our own pumpkins in order to make pumpkin pies (my mom makes the world's best...don't try to argue with me, you'll lose as soon as you taste hers), pumpkin bread, and other assorted pumpkin things. we neeeeever use canned pumpkin, and if you think that those fake orange pumpkin pies that canned pumpkin makes are good, well...you just sadly don't even know what you're missing.

Anyway, so with me living in Peru, I do not partake of the same fall festivities of the United States so much anymore. However, thanks to globalization, Peru has recently began to pick up on Halloween, and thus, once a year for a few weeks in October, the globalized grocery stores sell pumpkins, which I quickly buy in order to quickly boil down and quickly puree, in order to quickly begin pumpkin fest, which basically just includes making a lot of pumpkin based things. 31 recipes technically. So far, Pumpkin Fest 2009 has included the inaugural pumpkin pie, pumpkin chocolate bars, pumpkin swirl brownies, pumpkin brownies, roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin bagels, pumpkin cinnamon rolls, a chocolate pumpkin layer cake, pumpkin pie fudge spice cookies, aaaand....there's some more coming.

So basically, I've been baking.

Alot.

And yes. It's all been good. Come visit me in Peru, and I'll make you something pumpkiny.