Snow, Pumpkin Carving, "Apple Pie", and Pumpkin Seeds

On the plate:  Leftover Chinese food from the previous night...delish!  "Apple pie" and Spicy toasted pumpkin seeds

Soundtrack to cook to:  'NSync's "Bye Bye Bye" and Music Together's CD (Alexander was kind of cranky today, so I had to appease the little guy)

Snow!!  I couldn't believe it when it was falling last night and I couldn't believe we had enough to accumulate that I would actually see it in the morning.  Since the whole family was together and home this morning, I thought it would be nice to have a proper weekend breakfast.  In my family, we always do a "big breakfast" on the weekends.  I've been happy to carry on this tradition.

A big breakfast in this house usually consists of turkey bacon, eggs or pancakes, and toast or potatoes.  A perfect breakfast plate, if you ask me.  I finally discovered how to make the perfect breakfast potatoes.  I love ordering home fries from restaurants because I can never get the right crust around the potatoes.  I've tried cooking them at a high heat, but they still ended up a little greasy.  Then, one day, I was discussing this at work and a co-worker said that he par boils his potatoes.  Par boil??  Whaaaaa???  What is this method of cooking that I've never heard of??  My world was rocked.  You cut the potatoes, boil them for about 8-10 minutes, then throw them on a pan, sprinkle with olive oil, season, and finish cooking them in the oven.  PERFECT breakfast potatoes!  Thank you, Mr. Herbst, for introducing this method of cooking to me, and for solving this mystery!

3 eggs and 3 egg whites omelette with mushrooms, onions,
and feta cheese; turkey bacon, and potatoes.  Mmmmm!!!

After the delightful breakfast, we were warmed through and through and decided to go for a little family walk.  I decided to bring the camera along with me so that I could capture pictures of the first snow...I just didn't think it would be in October!  Here's how our walk went this morning:

Alexander was all bundled up in his winter
gear.  He's wearing gloves thanks to Tita Kristen
and Uncle Pete.  I went on a search the other day
for toddler gloves because Alexander hates mittens
(he doesn't know how to put his thumb in the thumb hole,
so he just gets frustrated and is quite fussy on our walks).
Needless to say, I didn't want to have all of our walks go
that way, so Kristen and Pete got him some gloves.  It
seems as if he's not really a fan of the cold weather just yet.  

Oscar in his sweater on the walk.  He doesn't
like the cold weather either....or the sweater. 

Since it was pretty cold outside, I was inspired to clean out the fireplace and start a nice fire.  It was actually our first one that we'd ever had in this house (and we've lived here for 2 1/2 years).

With a nice fire burning, Alexander and I played in the living room, Oscar moped in his sweater by the window, and Joseph went upstairs to study (he's so responsible). :)

Alexander jamming on the piano.  What can I say?  We have
a little prodigy on our hands.  Lol! 

Alexander found another use for the toy
organizer.  He's so creative. :)

Showing off his supafly Purdue warm up suit.
When we say, "Boiler up!"  He says, "Toot!  Toot!"
That's our little Boilermaker for ya. :)

I told you Oscar was moping - he doesn't like his sweater.
However, if he doesn't wear it, then he shivers.  We're just trying
to keep our babies warm.  Oscar suggests that we seek an alternative route.

Once we had lunch and a nap, we decided to carve our pumpkins that we purchased the other day.  After all, tomorrow is Halloween!  Thankfully Joseph was able to put his studying to the side in order to have some quality family fun, carving style!

Joseph and Alexander carving the little pumpkins.  Alexander
wasn't a huge fan of scooping out the pumpkin goo.  In fact, every time
he touched the goo with his hands, he shuddered!  I couldn't believe it!
He's just like his mommy - doesn't like any messes whatsoever.  He
wiped his hands off on Joseph's pants. 

Alexander found it necessary that in order to adequately carve
a pumpkin, he should put his foot in the pumpkin first.  Makes sense! :)

Alexander helping me scoop out some pumpkin goo. 

The little man gave me a little smooch!  What a sweetie!

Voila!  Our Jack-o-lanterns!

After we put Alexander down for the night, I went straight to work to make a little sweet treat and a savory one as well.  I put "apple pie" in the title in quotation marks because after making this low calorie apple pie, I decided that whomever threw this recipe together had a very loose definition of what an apple pie should be.  It was basically a crumble topping that was turned into a crust and then topped with apple slices.  Instead of lemon juice, I used meyer lemon juice, and added finely chopped rind of a clementine, and pumpkin pie spice.

Before baking...

and after baking...doesn't look much different.  It's like an
upside-down crumble.  You really need to add extra things
to the recipe to add more flavor.

After this culinary disappointment, I decided that I needed to make something to redeem myself to....myself.  Since this sweet treat didn't pan out, I thought I'd try my hand at a savory snack.  I had already cleaned the pumpkin seeds after Joseph and Alexander (mostly Joseph) had sorted out all of the seeds from the pumpkin goo.  They had already dried out, so all I needed to do was spread them out on a pan, season them, and throw them in the oven.  I saw this yummy recipe for toasted seeds on a blog that I frequent.  I was drawn to it because it included cayenne pepper...that pretty much sealed the deal for me! :)  I like my food spicy and these toasted pumpkin seeds really hit the spot!

These turned out absolutely wonderfully!  They're the perfect
salty and slightly spicy snack.  So good!!

I had finally redeemed myself and was content, sitting on the couch next to Joseph.  My salty snack satiated my munchy cravings and we snuggled up to catch up on The Walking Dead and Boardwalk Empire episodes that we had missed.  A perfect end to a perfect day!  Until next time...

Love and kisses,

Nikki