Brewing Your Own Pumpkin Beer?

Okay, okay, we all know where this is going. Try to brew your own pumpkin beer for a week or two, try it, spit it out and go out for some UFO Pumpkin Ale, Shipyard Pumpkinhead, Dogfish Punkin, or whatever other brand of completely delicious pumpkin ale the hipsters be drinkin'.

I'm actually totally down with that, because it has all the necessary components of a fun, festive endeavor: 1.) looking like I tried something new 2.) potentially turning out yummy and 3.) if not, drinking something that is. Win-win.

This is a recipe for literally brewing beer INSIDE of a pumpkin.

Requirements:
1.)A giant pumpkin for brewing

2.) For lack of a better technical term, equipment related to brewing beer.
3.)  TIME. I can't tell exactly how much but it seems like this shit requires a ton of time to ferment. Like, weeks. Ugh.

Okay I don't really actually know how I feel about this. But instead ... here is a list of the best pumpkin beers to purchase!!! And if you succeed in the endeavor of brewing pumpkin beer, well good lord, many props. Please let me know. Boy, this article sure did go exactly as predicted. I'm thinking about using the $2 cash I have on me to put a down payment on one of these bad boys on my way home.

 

What's that, you say you don't take down payments?

From: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style/72

Carving Pumpkins

It is almost Halloween!! This is both exciting and alarming, for me at least. We don't have even have the tree any decorations up, the only thing I've done costume-wise is suggested to Matt is that we go as zombies together (vetoed), and I've eaten a dismally minimal number pumpkin-flavored items. But it's ok, there's still time for all of this, and more.

Carving pumpkins is arduous and takes a sizable amount of time, but is absolutely worthwhile if you do it with friends. Following the template can get a little messy at times too, and it's difficult to see the end goal, but if you're patient, it may or may not turn out awesome.

Halloween 2010's carving expedition had us searching high and low for free pumpkin carving templates, but apparently the fascists that own the really good templates all have them under lock and key and charge you anywhere from $.99 to upwards of $2.50 for their helpful goodness. Honky tonk redonk a donk, if you ask me. But never fear! Halloween '11 has a totally different, fascist media giant running the show: Disney! This also has reminded me of one thing that makes it slightly better to be a postgrad, and that is that I don't necessarily expect a gang of hooligans to come and smash my works of art. Last year my Shakespeare pumpkin and Pete's creepy tree pumpkin were blasted into tiny bits when they met an untimely end on the sidewalk. So sad. I am searching through the archives for the pictures of these pumpkins in their glory days, but alas they are temporarily missing.

Anyway, Disney makes it easy to freely copy Kermit, Tigger, Jack Skellington, Tinker Bell... I mean okay there's no Fozzie or Miss Piggy but I'll get over it. I like them. And they're free so hooray!

PS, Thanks to Woot I also was just led to TMZ's gallery of free stencils - celebrity faces. 

HOLY S%@*!

They have the following celebrity faces:
Mike Tyson (above), Steve Buscemi, Madonna, Steve Jobs (RIP), Charlie Sheen, Gabourey Sidibe (who?), Chaz Bono, Steven Tyler, Pee Wee, Betty White, Ice T, Audrina from the Hills, Tiger Woods, Steve-O, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, Adam Sandler, Susan Boyle, Chuck Norris, Taylor Swift, Slash and Ozzy.

For some reason I feel like if I was doing anyone I would definitely go for Slash and then Ozzy and have some kind of Rockin' Halloween Party, but that is probably because I am extremely lame. Not sure. 

That's on Ebay Commercial

I enjoy a creative commercial. I wish I could say, "now that I work in advertising I really notice advertisements with a whole new depth and appreciation than I used to be a simple-minded college lassie," but really none of that is true. I have the tiniest bit more insight into the process of buying time slots on TV, but my 3+ months on the job hasn't brought me anything more profound than, "Oh, I see they're advertising online universities during Teen Mom. Makes sense."

Anyway, there is a very catchy commercial to the tune of "That's Amore" done by UPS right now that repeats "that's logistics," which I don't particularly mind because I enjoy logistics, but there is another version that I happen to like much better.... called That's on E-bay.

Side note, just last week I sold my first item on E-bay, so I am feeling particularly fond of this organization. Here you go!

And so you know what to compare it to, here's UPS' "That's logistics"

Andto top it all off, Dean Martin's version. All of this just makes me want to eat a bit pizza pie.

 

Coffee Can Pumpkin Bread!

As it turns out, a perfectly acceptable way to bake a delicious fruit/vegetable-infused bread, a.k.a. a cake that looks like bread, is in a metal coffee can. Now I don't know about you, heck, I hardly know you, but for a while now I have been getting my coffee from bags. That isn't going to cut it. That behavior must stop right this instant because Coffee Can Pumpkin Bread seems like the cheapest way to package a fairly nice and extremely inexpensive Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/Thanksgiving/Oktoberfest kind of present for your aunts. Do you usually buy your aunts presents? Well now is a good time to start. Just my opinion, but it's true.
From this dainty website, here: http://www.squidoo.com/coffee-can-pumpkin-bread comes a recipe that is bound to make pretty much anyone who enjoys pumpkin bread smile. Plus it's presliced. Or it looks like it tells you where to slice. Either way.

Ingredients

2 Cups of cooked prepared pumpkin (or 1 can works too)
or 1 large can pumpkin, drained
3 cups Sugar
1 cup canola or rapeseed
or extra light virgin olive oil
3 eggs
3 cups flour
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
1 tsp each of
cloves
allspice
salt
baking powder
baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
 3 empty METAL coffee cans
(don't make the mistake of anything plastic. Toxic, toxic.)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease and flour three (13 oz.) coffee cans (or two standard bread pans).
In a large bowl, mix sugar and oil and add eggs one at a time. Set this mixture aside.
Sift flour and all spices together.
Add flour mixture and pumpkin alternately to the sugar/oil mixture. Mix just enough to moisten all the dry ingredients; It's better if you don't overbeat. Lastly, add raisins and/or walnuts and/or pecans.
Pour mixture into the 3 coffee cans. Stir a bit when mixture is in the cans to avoid air bubbles.
Cover loosely with foil.
Bake at 350 degrees for 70-80 minutes.
Cool for 10 minutes before loosening from cans or pans.

Serve with Coffee and/or Ice Cream or whipped cream. Or okay, whatever the hell you want to serve it with. Makes about 24 slices.

The idea has apparently been around for ages, and works with banana bread, zucchini bread, sandwich bread ... mmmmmmmmmm.

 Enjoy!

 

 

Not Eating Acorns

Nom nom nom nom

If you live in New York State or the Northeast, October is the best month, hands down. The beautiful fall foliage is in full swing, AppleFest happened, there is pumpkin flavored coffee/bread/muffins/pie deliciousness all over town, if you are in high school it's fall sports season and homecoming time... Christmas may be the most wonderful, but autumn is clearly the best time of  year.
Eric Steinman of care2.com describes my trials and tribulations of every day life exactly: "Tis’ the season to slip and fall on thousands of discarded acorns and their hard, leathery shells. I say this because, it is fall here in the North East and acorns are abundant and raining from the sky, and because I have nearly chipped a tooth on my many trips to ground due to the plentitude of these acorns. My neighborhood squirrels, along with the few birds that are able to plunder their share from my towering oak trees, are just bonkers for acorns, and they have turned my house, and surrounding yard, into a compost heap of acorn detritus. It isn’t pretty, and this acorn debris is as unpleasant to look at, as it is difficult to clean up. Which got me thinking: why should rodents and visiting birds be the only one’s enjoying the bounty from above. Why can’t I eat acorns?"

This led me over to the NY Times article, What the Squirrels Know: Acorns for Dinner, which presents that you can, in fact, eat acorns in a variety of forms. I'm intrigued.

Thanks to some potentially toxic, not to mention disgusting, tannins, acorns are not to be consumed in their natural form. I recognize tannins from the stuff released by tea after you let the tea bag steep too long - they make it bitter (and gross.)
Low and behold, you can whip up a plethora of foodstuffs with acorns. Well, ok, like 5 things. Let's discuss 2. First, Acorn Flour

which isn't the easiest thing to make yourself. Luckily for everyone, it is basically the exact same process as making, something that I might even consider trying someday (maybe), a German favorite, drumroll...Acorn Coffee!

The chef over at honest-food.net, also the guy who took the above picture, writes, "Oh I know what you’re thinking: They’re poisonous. Intolerably bitter. Flavorless. Too much work to shell. Too much work to process. Not worth the effort. Mealy. None of this is really true, unless pre-packaged meals are your idea of a grand dinner." He explains that this coffee tastes a bit more like tea than it does a dark roast, but hey, it sure is cheaper to use what falls from the trees right here than buying coffee.

He does, however, expand on the bean collecting process, "Back in October I’d gathered a big sack full with my friend Elise at a park near my house. I’d left them lying around for a while, and when I got around to shelling them found out that many acorns harbor a nasty little maggoty thing that is the larva of the oak weevil. I got rid of all the infected acorns and shelled them with a hammer."

Ok, ok, you had me at "maggoty." Gross. Perhaps worth trying....... someday. After the nut is finally released from its shell, the next step is boiling all of the acorns to rid them of their evil tannins. He does mention changing the water 5 times, which apparently "isn't bad for acorns." Cooking with acorns getting less appealing. Then he bakes them at 325 for a while, and grinds them into a flour paste, and from there on out generally makes it the way you'd make regular coffee. In a french press!

While it does have me interested because it's mad cheap to use what falls on my house from the trees above, I still really don't feel to good about voluntarily dealing with anything remotely maggoty. Coffee isn't that expensive.

What do you think, vast audience of readers? I think I am a no. But I'm open to being proven wrong... or being told not to knock it until I try it and then not trying it. There has got to be another handicraft that can work with this that doesn't involve dealing with worms.

LinkedIn.com App: Reading List by Amazon

I have profiles on just about every stupid social media site out there. Twitter? Yes. Fb? Duh. About.me which nobody has even heard of? Obviously.
So needless to say, I have a LinkedIn profile. For an internship at my college's Career Services this past spring semester, actually not all that long ago contrary to the way it feels, I made a video on maximizing your LinkedIn profile for personal career-oriented success. That video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npy_gakaNaE. Cute, right? Yep that's my voice.

So anyway, now that I am gainfully employed I really have no use for LinkedIn. Yes, I know this is pretty much the worst attitude on networking ever, as the smart people network while they have a job so they are better equipped to find one should the day come that they are in need. This is true. So I'm not neglecting it completely, I'm just updating it less, since there is less content that I feel the need to put up.
Except for  this:

This is Amazon.com's reading list application for LinkedIn, an extremely simple way for me to organize the books I've just finished, the books I want to read, and the books, .. well that's it. I can also write recommendations should I so choose for future employers to read. Currently I have 0 followers and 0 friends that also have the list app, which is just as well, because I don't know if I'm ready to have a full-on community of readers, but if I did want one, I'd know where to turn.
For now this is really just a means of cataloging the many books I'm attempting to read on my 2+ hour commute to/from work. You know, the ones I didn't read in high school or college, or the ones I want to read again, and some others. It's just an excellent way to stay on top of what you've read and not completely forget about it once it goes back to the library.

"Crate" Solution

Taken from a first grade teacher from FantasticinFirst.blogspot.com, this is a great way to make a double purpose from an otherwise single-use item, that is, the Yaffa Bubble Crate.

I keep my records from 1999, too.

Although certainly these instructions can be resized to accommodate a variety of crates, milk crates, giant shipping crates, really it's whatever you want or however large you wish for your new chair to be.
And guess what! It comes out like this!

The general idea is getting a square of plywood that fits inside, then covering it with foam, and sewing some beautiful fabric on it to tie the whole thing together. The teacher explains that she just used a staple gun to adhere the fabric to the wood, no extreme sewing machine necessary.
Read on here: http://fantasticinfirst.blogspot.com/2011/02/crate-solution.html
for more specific instructions... and hooray! Now you have new seats! Perfect for 6-year-old bums at story time.

Get the title??? That's not my joke. 

Superpoints.com

So far I can't tell but this seems like a good idea. It is similar, and in many ways identical, to Swagbucks.com, Irazoo.com, and the others in that you gradually build up points by doing things that are exceptionally easy and get to trade them in for $5 gift certificates to Amazon. For me, it may or may not mean free Christmas shopping since I have no other money, we'll see.

Here, grab yourself an invitation with this Superpoints code: http://superpoints.com/wrpgs/ont106
http://superpoints.com/wrpgs/nhp5h5 here is another!

So far it is not a scam and it is perfect for the frugalista in all of us.