The Coronacation Diaries, Episode 22

Makin' Whoopie

We are at the point in the grocery game where all the fresh produce is gone and I'm attempting to make food out of random items still in the pantry. It's like an episode of Chopped. Anyone have an idea for water chestnuts, sweet pickles, smoked adobe peppers, and cream of mushroom soup? Yeah, me neither.

Enter the lone can of puréed pumpkin, left over from the holiday season. I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin spice anything, so I try to avoid recipes that turn perfectly good pumpkin into a spice cake, which is basically every pumpkin recipe ever.  Skimming through a "50 Canned Pumpkin Recipes" post on the Food Network site looking for inspiration, I found the recipe for a bit of a dream in #43: pumpkin-nutella whoopie pies! I I never would have thought about putting these two flavors together, so I did a quick Google search and found out that lots of pumpkin-nutella recipes are out there. They were all over-complicated, though, and insisted on drizzling and dunking and adding all of that pumpkin spice nonsense. So I went back to the original recipe #43 and made it. I've gotta tell ya: this recipe is a must-do. The cookies are soft and mildly flavored, and the nutella is a perfect match. The entire batch took about 20 min to make and almost as long to disappear. Sam (yes, the pickiest eater of them all) said, "Mom? Don't let it go to your head, but this is the best dessert you have ever made. Ever."

Have a random can of pumpkin in your pantry? Make these. Now.

In other whoopie news, you know what's not an essential service? Spaying and neutering animals. My "daughter from another mother" has an 8-month old kitten that was given to her from a barn litter. And poor Stella (the cat, not the daughter) is in heat. She is miserable and confused and currently trying to sex it up with everyone and everything, including the refrigerator. But all spay and neuter clinics are closed. So, please stay home, my friends. Stella needs you to stay home so that clinics can reopen and she can stop offering herself to all passersby and stationary furniture.

And the final bit of whoopie today is brought to you by the letter F. We walked the Lake Lansing trails today, and the sexy frogs (F was for frog, my friends. Jeesh. Where is your mind?) were singing up a storm, calling out to all the pretty ladies. And we realized, as we walked and talked, that nature really had very little concern for us and our pandemic. Nature goes on as usual, and the cycles of life continue. All we people do is get in the way and muck it all up. We try to constantly bend the planet to our will -- but if we don't get over ourselves soon, we will simply break it. 

But it's not broken yet. And the frogs? They are rarin' to go.