If you've been taking a good look around the food blogosphere lately, you will know without a doubt, that we are officially in  pumpkin season. Since I bought this adorable and very large specimen not so long ago, it's been pumpkin this, that and the other in my kitchen...... not that I'm complaining. I won't push my luck though and promise this will be the last pumpkin instalment for a while. With this soup,  this cous cous dish and today's offering, I have amply proven my devotion. I know many of you love pumpkin just as much but if you want to know my true feelings about this bulging, bulbous autumnal beauty, I'll let Mr van Pelt speak on my behalf :




Pumpkins don't signify Halloween to me but call to mind, the Headless  Horseman and his blazing pumpkin noggin, Linus van Pelt, blue blankets, savoury pumpkin rice cakes and luscious Thai desserts. Halloween was never a part of my childhood and it is as alien to my children as it was to me. We just don't celebrate it here, which is such a pity as it always seems like such ghoulish fun!

 

October though, has always been my favourite month of the year; even here in the tropics, the weather turns pleasantly cool and offers a wonderful albeit short respite from the almost year long heat,  just before the watery onslaught of the merciless northeast Monsoons. Of course, it may also have something to do with the fact that I am an October baby :)

the gratuitous gynaecological close-up......."open wide!"  




I have no more pumpkin in my kitchen - the last of it went into these fabulously easy and scrumptious scones, reeking to the ceiling of cinnamon, ginger and vanilla, speckled throughout with orange flecks of tender, sweet, fresh pumpkin, riddled with morsels of fudgy white chocolate. Just the thing to cosy up with on nippy mornings or afternoons, with a pot of hot coffee or tea.


I come up with new flavours almost every other day and the inevitable I suppose, has finally happened. My family has issued a month long ban on scones! Yes, I am obsessed, but they'll soon change their mind. And, even as I type, I'm recalling a petite beauty of a  pumpkin I spied a few days ago in the market. I know better than to resist; soon it will be mine. My word holds true though - no more pumpkin recipes here until a decently long absence, so I hope you will enjoy these :