Frosted Pumpkin Cookies

Sing, goddess, the wrath of Eilif son of Jack, that

brought countless ills upon the Pumpkins. Many a brave gourd did
it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a squash did it yield a
prey to cakes and cookies, for so were the counsels of Jove

My favorite time of year draws nigh. Autumn, the sharp air wraps scents in a swaddling of crisp cleanliness. Even trash and dog shit smells refreshing. In autumn, return is the greatest pleasure. One can’t come home unless one goes out. I have a proclivity for nocturnal rambles, and it reaches it’s height in November. I like to just walk around and smell shit, sometimes literally.

Not a whole lot actually smells bad, if you try laying prejudices aside and just sniffing. Rotting meat and old cheese, maybe. The smell of trash can be damn interesting.

Everybody knows that when you smell something, you are inhaling little particles of it. Mouth breath all you want, you still fill yourself with trash and poops and that industrial strength carpet shampoo your neighbor is using to clean the upholstery in his car. You are what you eat, and what you breath in. This could be pretty gross, but keep in mind that you eat 4 to 8 spiders in your sleep a year*. Your muscles: made of thousands of wriggling spiders! Itchy.

Murha makes Finnish sound just like this.

Being alive is pretty cool, but also pretty gross and occasionally just plain degrading. Sometimes that’s fun. For the other times, there’s brutal death metal. Filthy, churning, slamming, brutal death with riffs as gigantic and venomous as Shelob. Like an audible bee suit, all neuroses become laughable when faced with it. Never fails to put me in a good mood.

Murha is an excelent example, if a little on the easy listening side (one occasionally discerns a straightforward melody and the singer is intelligible, if you understand Finnish). As a side effect, the songs are catchy as fuck, and you can sing along! What Murha lacks in ESL charm, they make up with the dire/cute sound of Finnish, like an audible Gloomy Bear. Don’t worry about lyrics, just enjoy the sound. Like most death metal bands, you don’t really want to know what they’re saying anyhow. (Hint: it’s about murder.)

Murder solves all kinds of problems, even our current problem of being made of shit and spiders! You can’t unsniff all those delightfully disgusting smells, but you can tweak the spider to baked goods ratio of your meat by eating plenty of cookies. So...

Let’s murder some pumpkins!

Pumpkins are delicious and healthy. Plus they are lower in fat than a human and won’t get blood on your carpet. This time of year they are cheap and abundant. Buy three, put them on your headboard, tell them your troubles, make them little dresses, paint faces or nice pictures on them. They make cute decorations and patient friends. When you’ve had enough of hanging out with mute vegetables, hack them to pieces and eat them.

Olive Oil Pumpkin Cookies with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

A delicate cookie much like a small cake. Fresh pumpkin and nice olive oil make all the difference in this recipe.

Option 1, start from scratch:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Set a rack in the middle and one at the top.

You will want a Chinese vegetable knife for this. A cleaver is a close second. Halve those cute little fuckers and scoop their innards out conserving the seeds. Just slide your fingers in there and pull. Gross!

Put the halves cavernous side down in a 9 by 13 baking dish, pour in half an inch of water, cover with tinfoil, and put it on the middle rack in the oven. Depending on the size of your pumpkin, they’ll take about an hour to bake. When a fork slides easily into the skin, they’re ready.

While the pumpkin is roasting, simmer the seeds in salt water for 10 minutes, drain, pat dry with a towel, and toss in about a teaspoon of olive oil. Spread them out in a single layer on a baking sheet. Actually spreading them to a single layer is the key to even roasting. Put them on the top rack and watch closely. Depending on your oven, the weather, and possibly gnomes, they will brown in 10 to 20 minutes. Rotate the sheet for even browning if necessary. When they are a nice golden brown color, remove from oven, and begin shucking. Alternatively, give these seeds to industrious rodents desperate to put on fat reserves for winter, and go buy some pre-shucked pumpkin seeds, because this shit is a pain in the ass.

Back to the pumpkin. Use a fork and your indifference to pain to turn the halves out onto your work surface. Scoop the pumpkin meat out into a receptacle. Each average sized sugar pumpkin yields about five cups of cooked flesh. You’ll want a cup and a half for your cookies. The rest keeps nicely in a container in the refrigerator, or you can spread it flat on a baking sheet, reuse your tinfoil to cover it, and freeze in cup portion cakes. Once frozen, pry the disks up and store in the freezer in a plastic bag. Way better than canned whenever you fancy a pumpkin dish and about as easy.

Option 2, get a can of pumpkin puree and go ahead with the cookies:

Preheat your oven to 350 fahrenheit. Grease your cookie sheet.

In a bowl mix together:

2 ½ cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

Beat together:

1 ½ cups pumpkin puree

1 cup brown sugar

⅓ cup olive oil

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

With a few swift strokes, mix your wet ingredients into the dry.

Drop by the tablespoon full onto your greased cookie sheet and place in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Frosting!:

Beat together:

¾ cup of vegan cream cheese.

3 cups of powdered sugar

juice of ½ a small lemon

½ tsp of vanilla extract

Adjust the lemon juice or sugar to reach desired consistency, which is that of a thick glaze.

When the cookies are fully cooled, drip frosting by the spoonful on top and let it spread itself. Sprinkle pumpkin seeds to taste on top.

*According to the Burke Museum of the University of Washington, this is a total myth. I’ll believe them; they have the skeleton of a terror bird in their lobby, after all.  How sweet is that?  Just too good a rhetorical device to pass up.