Monthly Archives: September 2012

Pumpkin Pie Bars with Gingersnap Crust

Before having kids and getting married, pumpkins served a single purpose for me. They were meant to be gauged and poked and scraped into some semblance of a Jack’0’Lantern (I’m terrible at carving pumpkins, by the way. Something about the “guts” and the icky sticky feeling. Yuck!). After that, in my wilder years, they were […]

Homemade Pumpkin Puree

One of the more unexpected effects of Hurricane Irene last August was a shortage of canned pumpkin puree on the local supermarket shelves. Flooding had evidently destroyed a significant portion of the commercial pumpkin crop on the East Coast, and as a result, my husband, Keith, has been deprived of pumpkin pie, pumpkin butter, pumpkin […]

Four Ways to Survive Work During Oktoberfest

Early numbers are in for the world’s largest 2012 beer festival. Despite Saturday’s rain, 850,000 people attended opening weekend of Oktoberfest in Munich. It didn’t slow beer consumption either: One million liters of beer were sold. I put together a massive resource for those of you who are headed to Theresienwiese. And an extensive collection […]

Ghost Story Dice

“It was a dark and stormy night…” Honestly, I’ve never been good at telling ghost stories. The best ones are too spooky for me to want to remember and anything else, well, just isn’t worth telling. But I’m always game for inventing a tale or two and for having a laugh with friends, and that’s […]