Halloween ambience

Around holidays, I like to create a kind of ambience so it really feels special. I like to surround myself with themed decorations, music, foods, and movies. I also like being outside, because that is one of the best means of ambience.

In many ways, I've had a hard time feeling the Halloween ambience. I've grown a bit tired of many (most) of my holiday shows, so I'm not watching them as much anymore--but even though I've been a bit tired of them, they do contribute to the feeling. Also, working in a professional environment doesn't have a whole lot of fun atmosphere when it comes to holidays. I remember elementary school, and things just aren't as festive anymore.

Nevertheless, I have had some moments of Halloween feelings. I raked leaves at night in the light of our pumpkin decoration, playing Halloween music from my phone. My Halloween playlist is currently the best of all my holiday playlists.

We carved pumpkins. Mine is the one on the right. Gutting pumpkins certainly feels Halloweeny, although it seems less so since I've starting cooking with squash.

I hear that before Halloween (or All Hallows' Eve, or Samhain, or whatever predecessor) was transported to America, they used to make jack-o-lanterns out of turnips. Their turnips must have been different from mine, because I cooked with turnips yesterday, and it would have been very difficult to hollow them out as a lantern.

(It is not far fetched to assume their turnips were different, due to selective breeding and other issues--to say nothing of semantic shifts and what the word "turnip" actually meant.)

I had two occasions to dress up this week. At a ward activity, I dressed up in full vampire garb. I loved that costume in high school because I really wanted to be a vampire. And then yesterday we went to my dad's work to see the devices they make (bits for artificial heart valves) and it was a costumed event. I wore my Vector costume from last year. There was a family there dressed as Minions and Gru and they talked to me, but my social awkwardness kicked in full gear and I don't think I responded appropriately to them. Oh well.

Speaking of my dad's work, earlier this week he was driving home from work, and his engine was making noises and came home to discover that a cat had gotten up in the engine. I didn't even know the cat, and I feel sad about it. My dad, who pretends to dislike our cat, felt terrible about it. I'm kind of pathetic, because this week I was thinking about how cute and hilarious cats are.

***
Caramel apple items are almost over with, because I consider caramel apple a Halloween flavor, not Thanksgiving. But pumpkin and candy corn are both, so pumpkinundation roundup will continue.

 I got this Caramel Apple Blow Pop at a Halloween party. I'm glad, because I wanted to try it, but I would never buy a whole bag. Sometimes it tasted like caramel and sometimes like apple. It's pretty typical for a Blow Pop, and I don't think any Blow Pop can get a rating better than 3/5.

 In 2013, 2014, and 2015, I had the Kneaders pumpkin chocolate chip cake. It was one of the best cakes I've ever had, although I couldn't eat it in one sitting. They didn't have it this year, and this Kneaders pumpkin chocolate chip petite cake is apparently its successor. I've often wondered how they managed to keep making those giant cakes without wasting them, so this is probably more economic for them. But it was disappointing. I feel like regular pieces of cake have a better cake-to-frosting ratio, but cupcakes are more convenient. This cake took the worst part of cupcakes (big glob of frosting) without the best part (you still have to eat it with a fork). So what's the point? Also, I don't think this one used cream cheese frosting. Maybe it was, but I couldn't tell. And it has chocolate pudding in it. I have nothing against chocolate pudding, but it seemed kind of out of place, like a cheap filler. Now, the cake was good. But it was so disappointing compared to what it could and should have been. 4/5.

 I went back another day and got a Kneaders Butterfinger caramel apple. It was good, but I think it would be better without the Butterfingers. 5/5.

 I ate a piece of this Pepperidge Farm Pumpkin Spice Swirl bread, but I don't really remember what I thought of it. I think it was good? 3.5/5?

 I didn't want to let Halloween go by without trying these Hostess Caramel Apple Cup Cakes. I gave most of them away, but only because they're not good for me and because I can't have them after Halloween. I like them better than regular Hostess Cup Cakes. They do taste like caramel and apple. 4/5.

 These Pumpkin & Spice Triscuits are one of the more unusual items. I don't care much for Triscuits, but I liked these better. They're a little sweeter. 3.5/5.

 Ever since I've started counting calories, I've been less inclined to get Pop-Tarts, because one package (two Pop-Tarts) has 400 calories. But these Caramel Apple Pop-Tarts are new. I liked them. They're not as good as the other holiday offerings (pumpkin pie, sugar cookie, gingerbread, red velvet), but I like them better than any berry Pop-Tart. (Seriously, why is strawberry the most popular flavor?) 4/5.

 Since I ran six miles and made a low-calorie dinner, I could afford to have a big bowl of Dreyer's Pumpkin Patch Ice Cream. It's tasty, but I feel it could still be better. 4.5/5.

 These "The Bakery" (Walmart) Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes are better than storebought vanilla cupcakes. But that's not saying a whole lot. Still, I liked them. 4/5.

 A collection of items I had at church: pumpkin chocolate chip cookie, the above cupcakes, apples with caramel sauce, and pumpkin chocolate chip cookie with cream cheese frosting. I'm not going to rate them. The other item was a peanut butter bar, but I thought it would be a pumpkin bar. I had to punish myself for eating it by doing pushups.

This Franz pumpkin bagel might be the worst pumpkin bagel I've had. Other brands do it better. All I could taste was clove. Now, clove is an underutilized spice, in my opinion, so I was glad to see (or taste) it so prominent. But I doubt clove bagels will ever catch on. 3/5.

Natural highs

Any person who doesn't like this time of year isn't a person at all. I just love it so much.

Elementary schools recently celebrated Red Ribbon Week, and I can remember singing or hearing "Go for a Natural High" every October. To be truthful, I didn't really get it then. But I do now. To me, there is nothing more exhilarating than a trail run on an autumn evening. Who needs any mind-altering substances that are harmful when you can be thrilled and healthy at the same time?

I'm trying to get better at steep trails. This is the Woodbriar Trail, which is very steep (but short), even though the picture doesn't show it. I only took one brief rest on it when I went on Thursday this week, so I'm getting better.

This week I went on a hike with some casual friends to Adams Canyon in Layton. I had two objectives in going on this hike: overcome my social awkwardness and see a new place in my home county. While I don't think I did the former, I was happy to do the latter. I thought about running it, but that would defeat the purpose of a group hike. I felt a little impatient just hiking at first, but later up the trail it would not have been a good running trail. It reminded me of Holbrook Canyon, but it was less confusing and had fewer creek crossings.

 It was a pleasant hike, but towards the end there was a bit of scrambling and steepness. It was getting late, but we decided to continue to the waterfall. I'm glad we did. Before the waterfall, I was less than enthused--not that it was bad, just not worth it for me. But the waterfall at the end was lovely. It was fun to be out in the twilight in an open space by running water. It was worth it. It was 1.9 miles to the falls.

 Then we had to continue our hike down in the dark. What did people do before cellphones with bright flashlights on them?

Then I went to North Canyon again for the third Saturday in a row, because I love it so much. There were more cars than usual on the dirt road, probably because of hunting season. There was an appropriately Halloweeny sight. I didn't see it last week, but maybe I just didn't notice it, because at first I thought it was firewood:

 There were even some hooves and a bone strewn about:

But that still didn't detract from the beauty of my favorite place in Bountiful, although many of the leaves are already gone.

In other news--not to be prideful, but I'm basically as righteous as they come. I'm definitely not perfect, but I'm very much a Peter Priesthood type. Thus it might be surprising that I bought an explicit album this week. You may or may not know that I love Lady Gaga. Maybe there's some psychological thing accounting for a quiet guy like me liking a bombastic popstar, but mostly I just think she's a fantastic singer. I had gone to Amazon and was picking individual clean songs from the clean version of her new album, Joanne. But then I found that I could get the entire explicit album for less than picking the individual songs, so I did that. I wasn't planning on listening to the explicit songs anyway, but after my bishop's wife gave a stake conference talk about media today, I deleted them from my computer--although they're still floating around my Amazon Cloud Player and Google Play.

However, while I don't condone the inappropriate songs, this album is cleaner than her last solo album (the Tony Bennett collaboration was squeaky clean), and the music industry is inconsistent in what it calls "explicit." If this were set to the same standards as Ariana Grande's last album, this would not be explicit. And this one is no worse than many a country album, and they never get an explicit label tacked on. 

***

Rest assured, I have remained within (or under) my calorie budget during all this pumpkinundation roundup. But I haven't been eating as many vegetables as I should.

 These Twizzlers Caramel Apple Filled Twists have a fake apple flavor with a fake caramel filling. I don't know how to describe the filling; it seemed like caramel mixed with flour. But that's not out of place, because Twizzlers are made with flour. They weren't bad. 3.5/5.

 I had a bite of this Corner Bakery pumpkin gingerbread bundt cake last year, but I had a whole one this year (ate it on two different days). It was tasty and pumpkiny. 4/5.

 These Hershey's Caramel Apple Filled Milk Chocolates have a fake apple flavor with authentic chocolate and caramel. It's an odd combination, but it works. 4/5.

 These Keebler Pumpkin Spice Fudge Stripes Cookies were one of the first pumpkin items I saw in August, but I just got them this week. They're a little bland. They're more like ginger snaps than anything else. They aren't made with real pumpkin. 3.5/5.

 It was harder than you'd expect to get a picture of the Farr's Fresh Pumpkin Pie and Cheesecake Twist ice cream with the signs. I got the pumpkin one several weeks ago, but this time I twisted it with the cheesecake. I put Boo Berry cereal on it, not because the flavors match, but because I only get Boo Berry once a year. The ice cream flavors aren't super flavorful, but they're still good. 4/5.

 My work had a pie social, and I don't know whether this pumpkin pie was homemade or storebought. Someone at my table said it's hard to mess up pumpkin pie; I said this one was slightly inferior to most, but I think that's because it was overcooked. 4/5.

 Do you like my sexy leg pics in this series? One of my favorite things has been to include pumpkin items from obscure places, and this My Cookie Fix pumpkin spice cookie came from the gas station at the bottom of our hill (Miller's, formerly Walker's). It was a lightly pumpkiny sugar cookie with a cream cheese-esque frosting. 4/5.

 I got this Nielsen's Frozen Custard pumpkin concrete on the same day as the cookie, the pie, and the ice cream, so I could only eat one-fourth of it that night. If I hadn't gone running I would have had no calories. It's good enough, but no better than ice cream. But it has fewer calories, so it's better in that regard. 4/5.

 I chose this Kneaders nut-covered caramel apple over a small pumpkin chocolate chip cake, because (1) I can't have caramel apples after Halloween, but I can have pumpkin through Thanksgiving, and (2) at least the apple provided nutrients. It's generally hard to go wrong with a caramel apple. 5/5.

 I'm a little surprised they still make the Hershey's Candy Corn bars in full-sized bars, because they're not that great. But I always appreciate a seasonal item. 3/5.

 Arctic Circle pumpkin pie shakes have been a staple of Halloween and Thanksgiving for me since at least 2003. But I think other restaurants do it better, because Arctic Circle can get a little spicy. 4.5/5.

Only from running eight miles on a mountain was I able to also have this Baskin-Robbins pumpkin cheesecake ice cream. It didn't seem terribly pumpkiny or cheesecakey, though it was good. Their plain pumpkin pie ice cream has more of an autumnal flavor. 4.5/5.

Mid-October emotions

This week had a portion of sadness.

The saddest part was that my sister's best friend from high school died from an unexpected illness. She was thirty-seven. It's sad enough that I feel a little bad talking about it on this blog where I discuss frivolous items. It wasn't like I personally knew her super well. She was my sister's friend, not mine, and nine years older than I am. And yet I find myself sad about it. I thought about her a few weeks ago as I was putting up our Halloween lights on our garage, as I remember her commenting six years ago about them, saying she couldn't tell they were ghosts from the street. She used to come over many afternoons in 2010, a time when I was living at home searching for a job. I can remember her back to when I was six years old--I remember her telling me she had a journal identical to mine; telling me she believed in Santa Claus when I didn't; calling my sister (and my sister calling her) "enema" based on a shirt my brother had; and bringing my sister a toy car on her sixteenth birthday. She used to honk every time she drove past our house. No more honking or commenting on my Thanksgiving decorations. It is sad.

Any change is sad in its own way. In the past year and a half, I've been serving in a stake family history calling. In the last few weeks I've had to help out at family history-themed FHEs, and I attended my last such event this week, as I'm being released from that calling. However, I'm not a very good person, because I'm kind of relieved about it. Three others are also being released, and I think they feel the same way (at least one of them pushed to be released even though he didn't have another immediate calling). But that's all I'm going to say about that.

Instead, I was called as executive secretary in my ward, which basically means I set up the bishop's appointment calendar. While it will be time consuming, I was also just released as assistant ward clerk, and my two callings together--clerk and family history--seemed to equate to about the same time commitment I will have in this one. In fact, I might have more time, because I can spend time doing things while I'm sitting at appointments. Which is exactly what I'm doing now, so I'll have less time spent blogging later today.

Despite moments of sadness, there were good highlights. Do you like my new Halloween tree? To me, there's nothing that screams Halloween like orange and black. Some people throw purple and green in there too, but that makes it look almost Eastery. Orange and black is the pure way to go.

And I like real autumn trees even more than I like decorative autumn trees. I spent three nights on the Woodbriar Trail, a short trail with portions that are exceedingly steep. You climb 700 feet in less than a mile. I'm getting better at the steep parts.

 And then, of course, there's my perpetual favorite, North Canyon:

 I was amused by this sign, because every type of recreation has been crossed out, apparently by people who don't like the other kinds. I'm not a fan of dirt bikes (which appear to be least popular), but horses are the worst. (I guess I'm in the hiker category, even though I don't use sticks and backpacks like the picture suggests, and I pass all the hikers.)

I've often passed a little road but never gone up it, so I tried it yesterday. It wasn't really a road, but it led to a broken building with graffiti. Also beer cans and cigarette butts. Why do the beer drinkers and smokers litter so much? (They're not the only ones; I had to pick up a water bottle on another trail yesterday. One of the many reasons I don't believe in bottled water.)

I did also explore another road in North Canyon where I'd never been before. There were lots of steep side roads. It wasn't as pretty, but it was still fun to be someplace new. This put my run yesterday at 8.5 miles (an extra 1.5 miles). I'll have to explore more here when I haven't already done so much.

***

It was a busy week in pumpkinundation roundup. I ate out every day. There were also a few homemade items. 

At the FHE I attended, I had a grocery store pumpkin chocolate chip cookie. I was kind of in a hurry, so I didn't see what store it was from. These cookies all tend to be the same; it's hard to do it wrong. 4/5.

I had a TacoTime pumpkin empanada. I've had these several times, and I liked it most this time, perhaps because it had cooled down enough for me to actually taste it. It's a pumpkin filling inside a cinnamon-coated tortilla. 4/5.

Subway hasn't usually been on the seasonal game (except for the gingerbread cookies they've had occasionally in years past), so I was delighted to try a Subway pumpkin spice cookie. I like all Subway cookies, so I appreciated having a seasonal one. 4/5.

The Jamba Juice Pumpkin Delight is a new alternative to their regular Pumpkin Smash smoothie (which I haven't had since 2013). It's made with pumpkin, almond milk, and bananas. It was good, but a little fruitier than I'm used to in a pumpkin item. 3/5.

I am still confused that Candy Corn M&Ms exist when regular white chocolate M&Ms only come out occasionally. These are OK. 3/5.

I don't do Pinterest, but my mom found this pumpkin pull-apart loaf. It's made with canned biscuits and sweetened, spiced pumpkin. They were pretty good, although it was a little hard to get it sufficiently cooked. 4/5.

I got a Roxberry Pumpkin Bash smoothie. It actually tasted like pumpkin pie, but in a smoothie. 5/5.

I always like to get a Dairy Queen Pumpkin Pie Blizzard, which is pumpkin ice cream with graham crust pieces. And I'm glad they have a mini size--I tend to get numb to the flavor if I have too much of a milkshake. 5/5.

I saw these Pumpkin Spice Fat Boy Ice Cream Sandwiches last year but didn't try them. Apparently that's a good thing, because the sticker brags that it's a new flavor. And I have to wonder what it was like before. This time, it was OK. The ice cream is sub-par. It's not terrible, but it's the most inferior pumpkin ice cream I've had. The graham wafers I think are a better choice than chocolate would be. 4/5.

I wasn't going to buy these Lindor Pumpkin Spice Milk Chocolate Truffles, but I was stuck in a very slow checkout line at Walmart and they were staring at me. These actually have real pumpkin in them, but you can't taste it. These don't taste like pumpkin spice to me; they just taste like chocolate. But it's still very good chocolate. 4/5.

About this Cheesecake Factory pumpkin cheesecake: I'll just say that I intended to eat half of it and finish it later, but no, I ate it all in one sitting. I'm not a huge cheesecake fan, but this was wonderful. And at those prices, it better be. 5/5.

I like these Sunbelt Bakery pumpkin spice chewy granola bars. They're not very pumpkiny, but they're good as granola bars. 4/5.

I don't know why I keep getting Greek yogurt when I'm not big on it. But Oikos pumpkin pie Greek yogurt is better than Chobani. 3/5.

My earliest memory of these Kashi pumpkin spice flax crunchy granola bars is on a Death Valley field trip in early November in 2012, although I might have had them earlier. I keep getting them, even though they're not fantastic. They're pleasant enough, though, especially when eaten with milk. 3.5/5.

I think this F'real pumpkin cheesecake milkshake is intended as a convenience store thing, although in this case it was the Winegar's grocery store service deli. You buy the cup and put it in a special machine. I was skeptical. I mean, a prepackaged milkshake? Also, the Arby's pumpkin cheesecake shake was literally the worst pumpkin item I had last year. But I was pleasantly surprised here. It had a nice pumpkin flavor with light cheesecake flavor. 4/5.

I recently got Caramel Apple Mike and Ikes, so I had to get the Cinnamon Apple Hot Tamales. It's just Hot Tamales with apple Mike and Ikes thrown in. With the Mike and Ikes, the apple overpowers the caramel; with these, the cinnamon overpowers the apple. But I like Hot Tamales, and I haven't had them in years. 4/5.

I was tempted to get these Caramel Apple Sugar Babies in a theater-sized box, but I already have lots of opened candy packages, so this way I can give them to trick-or-treaters. Guys. These are seriously the best caramel apple candy there is. Maybe even the best Halloween candy there is. And I don't even really like regular Sugar Babies. 5/5.

Now, with all this talk of pumpkin, it only seems appropriate that I talk about real pumpkins. I bought a pie pumpkin and cooked it.

And then I turned it into puree. I cooked pumpkins last year but didn't puree them, because I didn't have a food processor or a Blendtec last year. I'm excited to use the puree.

I made pumpkin waffles using a different recipe from last time; I used a weird restaurant cookbook from 1985. I had to use up leftover canned pumpkin (why do they only sell the giant cans?), which is darker than fresh.

I also made an apple cider syrup to go with them. The waffles were inferior to my previous recipe, and probably less healthy. The syrup is also rather unhealthy, but it was good enough. 4/5.

And then this caramel apple crumble is another Pinterest item, and we used apples from our neighbor's tree. It was too sugary, and the apples were too soft from the slow cooker. 3/5.