Fall is now in full swing, and tis the season for a whole slew of food choices and flavors. From now until Christmas, the smells of cinnamon, spice, and everything nice will fill the air and tempt our taste buds. In this post, I will focus on my favorite fall flavor of them all: pumpkin.
A pumpkin is a multi-purpose vegatable that can be used from it’s outer exterior to carve a Halloween decoration, all the way down to it’s seeds. The following are my pumpkin food findings thus far this season:
DUNKIN DONUTS
Dunkin Donuts has fully embraced the harvest by offering a wide variety of pumpkin goodies and drinks. In terms of baked items, they are selling pumpkin donuts and pumpkin muffins. For drinks, they market a pumpkin latte. I prefer to get an iced coffee with the pumpkin syrup mixed in.
Unfortunately for those of us that are calorie conscious, these items are not very diet-friendly. A tasty alternative to the baked items is the new low fat caramel apple muffin, which I actually found to taste much better than the pumpkin muffins. A small pumpkin latte is 220 calories and 6 g of fat. Even if you convert it to an iced or hot coffee, the drink is still 110 calories, before adding cream or sugar.
THOSE OTHER COFFEE PLACES:
Gloria Jeans also has its ow
n version of a Pumpkin Spice latte, which while good, tasted more like caramel and less like anything pumpkin.
I know there is also a Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks, but I am strictly a Dunkin Donuts goer – so if you have a review of the drink, feel free to send it over!
RECIPES:
Besides breakfast, here are some other recipes I have tried thus far:
The best pumpkin recipe I have recently come across is called “Wayne’s Pumpkin Smash” and is straight from my favorite source, Hungry Girl. This is a very simple and low calorie crustless pumpkin pie recipe, with only 65 calories and less than .5g of fat per serving. Pair this recipe with some aerosol cool whip for a great guilt-free desert! And, in case you were wondering, “Wayne” is a friend and subscriber to Hungry Girl, and also a writer for The Jay Leno show.
Click here for the full recipe.
For something less conventional, YumSugar offers a recipe for a Pecan Pumpkin Cakewich, an inspired by carrot cake with cranberries folded in.
Bon Apetit!
Fall is definitely here with this post. Here is an idea that you might want to try. You can easily turn your coffee up a notch by adding either cinnamon or pumpkin spice to your grounds before brewing.
Try it!
[...] I purchased a tasty zucchini bread, fresh avocado, and freshly cut pineapple. There is a wide assortment of coffee beans, teas, fish, and even a take-home section of already prepared hot food to enjoy at home. Not to mention some massive pumpkins! [...]
[...] I purchased a tasty zucchini bread, fresh avocado, and freshly cut pineapple. There is a wide assortment of coffee beans, teas, fish, and even a take-home section of already prepared hot food to enjoy at home. Not to mention some massive pumpkins! [...]