Yes, yes, I know my blog is running amok with pumpkin right now.  It’s that time of the year, okay?? While, yes, most pumpkin recipes use canned pumpkin, which, yes, is canned and thus available at any old time of year, as I’ve gotten older I’ve become far keener on embracing seasons.  There’s an almost ritual like feeling to drinking hot cocoa in the winter and ice skating, or finding as much water – beaches, pools, lakes – during the summer and camping out by them in a bathing suit.  I’ve started fruit picking, because it feels like the most basic and wonderful way to connect with the seasons: we went to a strawberry patch during the summer, and embraced the fall with a visit to Fish Kill Apple Farms, where we were oogled over the foliage and gorged ourselves on apple varieties I’d never even heard of before.

All of which is to say – yes, there’s a lot of pumpkin.  But there won’t be for long so settle in.  Embrace it.  Love it.  Before you know it, it’ll be Christmas and then the stores will empty of pumpkin and filled with heart shaped chocolates and then it’ll time for Peeps and pastel colors.  So for now, while it’s fall, I’m going to load everything with pumpkin.

And these gluten free pumpkin waffles taste so different than any other pumpkin breakfast you’ve had.  They’re the bad bitch to the Pumpkin Spice Latte’s basic one, employing one of my favorite spices – cardamom – to up the ante on pumpkin’s sweet earthiness and take it to a whole nother level.

And those pecans you see on top?  They’re just sauteed in chai-infused maple syrup.  These spices, traditionally used in Indian food, are perfectly autumnal.  They’ll tickle your tongue and warm your insides.  And, because of the chai, they’re lightly caffeinated, so they’ll put an extra bounce in your step (all the better to jump into leaf piles with, m’dear).  You’re welcome.  

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