Happiest Place on Earth

Hi:
I was away last week at Disney World, and yes, I'm in the green cup with my five year old. We adore Disney, and even the now 6 month old seemed to have fun.

The Not So Scary Halloween Party was fun, though it poured. My five year old and I did the Big Thunder Railroad in the dark with pouring rain and that frankly, was pretty scary. So was getting up at 3:30 a.m. Eastern time to catch a plane home...

Now I'm back to reality - such as it was before I left anyway - and am still on the search for an easy pumpkin cake recipe. I did find a funny pie recipe in the Farm Journal County Cookbook, which, after the Southern Living ones, is my next go to cookbook for weird vintage recipes. If only it didn't have so many prune recipes - including Prune -Yam dish (the Thanksgiving favorite) or Prune Spice Cake...

Here's Tawny Pumpkin Pie. Wasn't Tawny the name of an actress in Risky Business? I think making anything with Tawny in the title is risky business, but here's the recipe:

1 1/4 c. cooked or canned pumpkin

3/4 c. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. ground ginger

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. flour

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1 c. evaporated milk

2 tblsp. water

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 9" unbaked pie shell

Sliced process cheese (huh? What about the cows on the Farm?)

Combine pumpkin, sugar, salt, spices ad flour in mixing bowl.

Add eggs; mix well. Add evaporated milk, water and vanilla; mix.

Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake in hot oven (425) 45 - 50 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean.

That's it for directions - now they spend a lot of time on decoration...

Decorate, if desired, with Cheese Acorns and Leaves: Cut oak leaves (as opposed to Maple or Gingko?) from process cheese slices with cutter (or make cardboard pattern). Seriously? Who has an oak leaf cutter?

Draw 'veins' in leaf with knife tip. For acorn caps, cut rounds of cheese 1: across; dust with nutmeg. For acorns, form 1 tsp. of soft cheese into ball (or shape with melon ball scoop). Toothpick caps to acorns. Stock a whole clove in top for stem.

OK - when the decoration takes more time than the cake something is wrong. This isn't a wedding cake after all. And what makes this Tawny?Anyone want to try this one?

I'm reading The Indigo King by James A. Owen. This is the third in his Imaginarium Geographica series, and it reads like a Tolkein - intricate, lots of little funny asides and clues, fun characters. James does the art too, which is pretty amazing. But I have 150 pages to go and the review is due tomorrow. Plus I have a pumpkin farm visit and a kindergarten birthday party to attend today. I can do it.