Fall Colors

Current Weather:  14 and partly cloudy.  Not a bad day!  After the miserable summer we had, today was a treat!  I wanted to take advantage of the nice weather while it lasted, so I took my bike out and rode around the neighbourhood and took pictures of all the beautiful colors!  I was glad to have an opportunity to use my bike - I got it last winter, and hardly had a chance to use it this summer with all the lame weather we had.  I also enjoyed exploring my new(ish) neighbourhood and looking at all the darling houses.  I saw some dark clouds forming above Nose Hill and started to head there to try and capture the darkening sky, but the wind picked up hard core and I was getting sand blasted, so I headed back home.  All in all it was a lovely time!  Here are some of my favorites:

Click here to see the entire album.

Squash!

Guess what time it is?  Squash season!!  I love all kinds of squash - zucchini, spaghetti squash, butternut squash...

Yesterday Lowen bought a spaghetti squash and tonight we cooked up with some meat sauce.  I thought I'd try something new and roast the seeds.  It took some effort to get them ready.  I had to scrape them out, separate them from all the inside gunk, wash them, and dry them off.  I then added a little bit of olive oil, salt, and Cajun seasoning, and baked them at 350 for 5-6 minutes.  They turned out really well!!

Lowen gave them 5 stars, and they disappeared in a matter of minutes.  Yet another reason to love squash!

Butterscotch Gingerbread Cookies

I wanted to bake some cookies for a party tomorrow, and thought it would be fun to make some cookies suitable to the season.  Typing in 'fall cookies' into allrecipes.com's seach field brought up over 200 cookies.  After weeding through all the different biscotti, squares, and cookies, I came up with a short list of 13, and from there picked the winner - Butterscotch Gingerbread Cookies!  I love butterscotch, and I love gingerbread, so I thought they would be the perfect mix.

The recipe was easy to follow, and I had all the ingredients in my cupboards.  The only disappointing thing was that the dough was a little crumbly.  Instead of dropping the dough by spoonful onto the cookie sheet, I balled up handfuls of the dough to make it stick together and just set the balls on the cookie sheet.

Here's how they turned out:

I will admit they are very tasty!  They're quite sweet and butterscotch-y with subtle hints of the gingerbread.  I will definitely save this recipe to my recipe box and make them again!