Pumpkins, Pies, and Pancake Piggies

This week we harvested what was worth harvesting. Pumpkins are my favorite. They are so pretty. At least, what wasn't demolished by the deer.

Our fall harvest display, now safely in the garage

One pumpkin/squash didn't make it in the picture because it had split open a bit from the nearly 3 inches of rain we'd had. I cooked it up right away for a pie. The children picked the ground cherries, and we finally had enough for some pie. 

Pumpkin on the left and ground cherries two ways.

Since ground cherries are new to us, I had to search online for a recipe for pie. That was the middle one. My son made it almost by himself. He still needed a little help for his first pie. The crumbly topping one was my variation.

Happy pie

So, do we like ground cherries? I'm leaning toward "not so much," but they do taste better in a pie. Others in the family are firmly in the "no" camp, while others think they're okay. 

In other news, a few weeks ago we had an unexpected power outage just before time to start supper. I was totally unprepared and had nothing to serve up without electricity. It seemed a good time to go grocery shopping, so we headed off to Hagerstown for dinner out and Sam's Club.

For supper we found ourselves at Bob Evans because we had some coupons from the library's summer reading club. The girls ordered pancakes that looked like little piggies. This is my version, because cute food is cool:

Three little pancake piggies

They were a hit. If you want to make them, you'll need one larger pancake and two smaller ones, banana slices for the nose, and blueberries for the eyes. The ears are one of the smaller pancakes cut in half. Your kids/grandkids will think you're supercool if you set these in front of them, guaranteed. We also added "mud" on top in the form of syrup, but the 2-year-old had to call it syrup because we don't eat mud.