It's September!

It's time to Pumpkin all the Things... I was worried about getting overwhelmed by a pumpkin-a-day challenge for a month, but a friend on FB suggested a pumpkin-a-week challenge, now until Thanksgiving. And so it shall be. Almost certainly all cookies and breads and pies and tarts. Mmmmmmm... pumpkin...

I found a pinboard that should help with finding recipes, though some of them don't call for straight-up pumpkin. But within almost 600 pins I can certainly find 13 decent recipes... and I do have my old favorites (one will have to be pumpkin pie, of course, and I have a pumpkin cookie recipe I adore, so I only need 11 new recipes!)

...I need to get excited about something, I just found out that my favorite grocery store is closing TOMORROW. It's just big enough to carry what I need and small enough you don't need a dog with a barrel of whiskey to come rescue you. It's laid out super-conveniently so that you don't have to travel eleventy billion miles to run in for a gallon of milk. It's on my way home, and easy to get in and out of. A huge mega-grocery store opened a mile away and they just don't have the business anymore. Said huge mega store (HyVee) is obnoxiously large and super stupidly laid out, and I hate it. Plus I hate them for the bullshit they pulled trying to make the city I work for look like the villain for not PAYING FOR THEM TO UPDATE THE STORE. Even though the city did offer money for outside renovations, that wasn't enough. They wanted to the city, and the taxpayers, to pay to remodel the inside of the store. That is uber-bullshit. So, even though they're the only store on my current route home, I'm not going to shop there if I can help it.

And, in a tangential note, I worry that my favorite liquor store, located in the same center as the closing grocery store, will not have enough business now, either. And having a huge vacant store just sucks. Hopefully something moves in quickly. :(