It’s September and my life is all pumpkin, all the time. I would probably straight up eat the Great Pumpkin if it dared to come to my house.

It began with the annual announcement that Starbuck’s was bringing back their Pumpkin Spice lattes. That’s usually the first rumbling of pumpkin mania: internet food people reported waiting 20+ minutes for their coffee as squash crazies flooded into the stores. (Starbucks.)

In college, we used to call my friend Claire the DPBG — the Double Pumpkin Bar Girl — for getting seconds every time the bars were available in the dining hall. But secretly… I was one too. Sorry for making fun of you, Claire.

The last time I made pumpkin bars was probably more than three years ago, holy shit. Three years just might be my recipe cycle — I might be due to make Banh Pate Chaud sometime soon, then. And I think it takes some maturity to know when to ask for help; so I consulted with the Amateur Gourmet’s archives, which always have pretty decent renditions. Adam Roberts’ recipe is here! All I did was add golden raisins, craisins, and sunflower seeds to the cake. And I subbed in a trickle of honey for the confectioner’s sugar in the frosting. Also walnuts.

Breakfast this morning!

Homemade pork ramen stock, Cantonese noodles, soy- and mirin-marinated pot roast with mushrooms, spinach, and a poached egg on top.

Like a chump, I was determined to try a Hawaiian pizza while I was on the island. Before I went to Hawaii, I thought it was just the pineapple that made it typical. Then I found out that the whole joint was basically Pork City. They take their pigmeats seriously over there. The Luau pizza at Coffee Shack, a tiny cafe on a cliff over Kealakekua Bay, was totally different from the pizza I like.

The crust was thick and way breadier than any I’ve ever had. But it was still great! I just took it as its own thing; it was a de facto separate species of pizza. The ham, which really carried the whole pizza, was much better than the flaccid Canadian bacon that we typically eat this with on the mainland.

A lot of Midwestern Vietnamese kids are accustomed to their parents jonesing after “banh mi Ba Le,” and my cousins and I weren’t surprised when our parents took us to the Ba Le in Kailua Kona TWICE. It was pretty dingy-looking, but in a comforting way. We grabbed a bunch of banh mi to go, and I got the lemongrass chicken. Pretty great, and cheap too.

The second time around, the owner, an older Vietnamese woman, came out and chatted with us the whole time we were there. I was coming down with laryngitis, so I had a huge bowl of pho ga. Soooo good.

When we went to Hilo for a day, I scoured the internet for a cool, off-the-beaten-path lunch spot; the Hilo Lunch Stop came up a lot. Situated in an industrial center near the Queen Liliuokalani Gardens, the cafeteria-style restaurant seemed to be a favorite among the area’s working class.

I really loved it! There were so many offerings that I had never seen before, like a cornucopia of musubis, salads, ceviche-like fish preparations, and all things be-Spammed. I shamefully admit that I got overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of choice. I settled on their nori chicken, the typical macaroni-and-potato salad, and a tofu and mystery fish patty. Though they didn’t look like much, they were all so tasty!

When my family went to the Big Island of Hawai’i this month, we did our best to eat at interesting local places. (For some reason, my mom really wanted to go to the Macaroni Grill by our condo, but we managed to steer her away. This happened several times during our trip. She’s usually so classy, too.)

As the resident control freak, I was elected to be the food guide. I spent a ton of time poring over Yelp and our copy of the Fodor’s Guide to plan out where we were going to eat every day. Some guesses were better than others, but here are the results!

My mother, sister, and I got stranded in Captain Cook, HI after an adventurous bus ride that didn’t turn out to be as “round-trip” as expected. Parched, exasperated, and annoyed with each other, we stopped at L&L Barbecue, which was serving up breakfast. My sister ordered a banana lumpia, which was basically a piece of banana wrapped and fried just like an egg roll. The banana got nice and melty inside, which we really liked. Some kind of sauce would have helped, though.

Malasadas are a Portuguese export; they amount to sugared doughnuts. There were a bunch of flavors available at the Punalu’u Bake Shop, where we stopped en route to see a black sand beach, but we settled on taro due to its distinctiveness. I loved it! It was yeasty and not terribly sweet.

When my cousins’ family flew in to meet us, we went out to Waimea for dinner. I thought it’d be cool to go to Fujimama’s, but the restaurant wasn’t there! In its place was the Red River Cafe. Since everyone was going insane from hunger, we tried it out. And it was great! The decor was a little chintzy, but the staff was a genuine bunch. I tried the shrimp and housemade noodles with oyster sauce and truffle oil. It was a surprising flavor match-up, but it made its own kind of sense. I loved it, especially when I ate the cold leftovers for breakfast the next morning.

I’m so glad that my (imagined) namesake pastry tastes as good as it sounds. Incredibly, frighteningly flaky, it makes a great accompaniment to the bakery’s fancy, Clover-brewed coffee. It’s so flaky that, like Lovecraft’s geometrically bizarre vision of the ancient city of R’lyeh, it simply defies comprehension. I wanted to grab a baker and demand to know their secrets, but I’m sure that the knowledge would drive me insane.

The custard in the center is topped with half of an apricot. I’m inclined to slather the whole damn thing with jam, but that’s just me trying to make the most of a fleeting experience. I’m dreading the end of this pastry.

Sometimes I just want to tuck myself into bed with a big, cheesy plate of whatever, only reappearing in polite society on trips to the grocery store for marshmallows and booze. The noncommittal early days of winter are definitely that kind of time. Luckily for me and my bear-like tendencies, the Wisconsin Cheese Board dropped off a ton of cheese samples at work and I’ve been slowly working my way through a wedge of Marieke whole-grain mustard gouda this past week. Mmmhmm.

Last weekend, I threw a shard of my pride out the window and decided to party, Lutheran-style, by making a tater tot hotdish! My earlier foray into hotdishery amounted to a vague kind of thing that wasn’t quite the real deal. I mean, we used cream of mushroom soup, which, given the low standards of Minnesotan cuisine, qualified it as a genuine article. But I wanted to go for something iconic this time.

Instead of using cream of mushroom soup (because I am a stuck-up bitch), I whipped together a Mornay sauce with the aforementioned gouda and some Parmesan cheese. It was great, because then I didn’t have to melt cheese on top of the tater tots, which would have made them less crispy than I wanted them to be. I also went a little farther with the food snobbery and used duck fat as the base for the sauce instead of butter. Honk honk.

Tater Tot Hotdish
Serves 1 big fat fatty or 10 people

• 1 bag of tater tots
• 1-3 lbs. of diced assorted root vegetables (i.e. parsnips, carrots, sweet potatoes, onions…)
• 1 lb. of mushrooms, sliced
• Random herbs (thyme works great, as well as marjoram and rosemary)
• 2 T Duck fat or butter
• 2 T flour
• 1 pint of cream/milk/half and half
• Grated cheese of some kind
• Salt & pepper
• Cayenne pepper

Brown the root vegetables in a heavy-bottomed pan or pot. Once they’re toasty, add the mushrooms and herbs. Put aside.

Make the Mornay sauce by starting a roux with the fat and flour. Scald the dairy in another pan. Once the roux stops tasting like raw flour, stir in the cream or whatever and reduce. Add salt, pepper, cayenne, and cheese to taste.

Spread the cooked vegetables onto a baking dish and pour the sauce over them. Then layer the tater tots on top and throw it all into a 375-degree oven. Once the tots crisp up, you’re done! Easy peasy.

E is really into this McRib.

I guess everyone’s all aflutter because the McRib is back at McDonald’s. But after trying a bite of it, I kind of wish it would go away again. It was sort of like a slightly more flavorful burger? I don’t know, the second I put it in my mouth all I could think of was that I didn’t want it to be in there.

My fellow volunteers at the Trylon Microcinema really wanted to get McDonald’s during our shift, and insisted that I order something too. I asked, “Uhh is there anything vegetarian on the menu?” and they laughed (rightfully so). I actually had to look up the menu on the internet because I have no idea what they have. That felt pretty absurd.

I had leftover dough in the freezer and apples, so I just threw together another tart this afternoon. My apple slice fanning and knifework are getting better, I think! Both very useful skills probably.

So I met this guy, we hit it off, and I’m basically crushin’ on him really hard. To be honest, the whole dating thing is really difficult for me. I’m terrible at selling myself, especially if I like the person I’ve met. In order to mask my acute insecurities and myriad personal inadequacies, I decided to seal the deal by making him dinner. Thank god for gourmet food goggles.

The first course was a simple plate of raw Hakurei turnips sprinkled with some fennel-citrus salt. Hakureis are really sweet (for turnips, anyway) and are just perfect as a snacking vegetable. If I had a mandoline, I would have sliced them thin and served them like sashimi, but I don’t have one. And also, it’s not the ’00s anymore.

I served Smitten Kitchen‘s vegetarian mushroom bourguignon as the main course. I was kind of a cheapo and used organic white button mushrooms instead of portobellos or criminis, but it didn’t make a big difference. Since I got a cute little bag of chervil in my CSA share this week, I chopped up a bit of it and sprinkled it on top.

The pierogies are filled with a mixture of dino kale, Yukon Gold potatoes, caramelized onions, and more Hakurei turnips. Mushroom bourguignon is a nice departure from the traditional pierogi accompaniments of sour cream or applesauce, too. All I ever want is savory, savory, savory anyway. My date, who pretty much wiped his plate clean, seemed to agree. <3

Lastly, I served up Jacques Pepin’s apple tart for dessert. The crust, a pate brisée, turned out so flaky and crispy that one could probably eat the whole thing without silverware. The dessert was kind of a butter explosion, but it just tasted so good! Especially with fresh CSA apples. I’m not sure what variety they were, but they worked really well in this dish. (Sorry, I’m useless.)