Fall arrived here with a vengeance. I was holding out on turning on the boiler as long as I could. Then I got a nasty 24-hour bug--the fever and chills kind. As soon as I was able to rouse myself to get to the thermostat, I flipped the switch. Heat, glorious heat, bubbled forth from the radiators for two days, then nothing. We'd already had the boiler serviced, and even though we knew she was on her last legs, the tech thought we could get another year, maybe two. Ahem. So, we went without heat for two days waiting for service. I watched the temperature drop and drop until this morning, when it was actually warmer outside than inside. (I was wearing many, many layers of fleece and knitwear, and I know I looked ridiculous, but I was glad to have it. i was also glad for the hot water bottle that I tucked next to my poor cat, who was not the least bit pleased by the chilly turn in his environment.) To make along story short, we have a new boiler, and got rid of not one, but two, old ones. (The old, original cast iron boiler was still down there, and it had to go. It was in the way and time marches forward. Ciao, baby.)
When things were chilly, in an attempt to generate as much heat as possible, I cooked and oven roasted things most of the day. I made a curried pumpkin, acorn squash, butternut squash, apple, coconut soup that was pretty wonderful. I roasted the sugar pie pumpkins, and they yielded a good helping of seeds, so I tried a recipe that called for boiling them for ten minutes before roasting them. When you stir a pot full of pumpkin seeds, they line up quite prettily, wouldn't you agree?
They didn't get crispy like I'd hoped, and I blame the boiling or the fact that I baked them on parchment paper, so I'll have to try it again without the paper. More experimentation is needed. Fortunately, it's pumpkin season!
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