Last Saturday I hung out with my cousins (Melanie, Marian, Marilyn, Marlon, Vernon, Fatima and Claudine) at Trully and Irio's new place. They've got a pretty sweet pad, and it even came with a flat screen TV. Nice!

Melanie and Marilyn brought over some pumpkins for us to carve, but there were more of us than there were pumpkins, and Marlon had his heart set on doing the Headless Horseman pumpkin. So the two of us headed out to the nearest Jewel to go and pick up a couple more pumpkins. On the way there, Marlon got a call to get some ingredients for pumpkin pie. "What do we need to buy?" he asked. "It's all on the label." was the reply. OK, that's easy.

So after debating for a while which pumpkins to pick out, me and Marlon headed into the store to get the pumpkin pie stuff. We found a can of Libby's pumpkin pie mix. I looked in the back and stated that we needed to buy eggs, condensed milk and pie crust. "That's all?" he asked. "Yeah, that's it!" "Wow, that's really easy!" he remarked. "Yeah, that's why it's the Easy Pumpkin Pie mix!" I said as I pointed to the name on the can. The condensed milk was in the same aisle, and we decided to make two pies, so Marlon grabbed another can of pie mix, and enough condensed milk for two pies. We also got a graham cracker crust. I picked out a Hershey's chocolate crust for some variety, but then Marlon pointed out that there was an Oreo Cookie crust. Yum! So we threw that in the cart. Then Marlon asked me, "Will the Oreo Cookie crust be good with the pumpkin pie?" Who the hell cares! It's Oreo Cookie crust!

We then realized that pumpkin pie isn't pumpkin pie without the Cool Whip on top, so we went to grab a extra large tub of it. We debated a bit on getting the lite, low cal version, but thought, 'NAHHH!'

We were like kids in a candy store.

So we returned back to the condo, victorious with our pumpkins and pumpkin pie mix. When we got back, Claudine checked out the pumpkin pie mix. "So where's the nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon?"

The two of us looked at her with a blank expression. "Huh?"

She pointed to the directions. "It says here that you need cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Or did you not read the ingredients?" I grabbed the can and looked at the ingredients. There, plainly written, were cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. How could I have missed that? And does anyone ever have CLOVES handy to back with? I think not. Also, she pointed out that one can makes two pies - so we couldn't use the second can anyway, since we only bought 2 pie crusts.

So we were ridiculed for not getting the right ingredients and ruining the pumpkin pie. Our defense was that we didn't need no stinkin' nutmeg - enough Cool Whip will make anything taste fantastic. Of course, we were also reprimanded for getting the Oreo Cookie crust.

All that was set aside as we at an awesome dinner from Reza's, courtesy of Melanie. Those lamb loins were awesome! And the dill rice was pretty tasty, too.

After dinner we started working on our pumpkins, which was a bit harder than we anticipated. We had stencils to work with, but had to punch/trace the picture on the pumpkin, which took forever. Then we had to meticulously carve the design into the pumpkin, which was pretty tough. How do they expect little kids to do this? All the while we were carving, we were also half watching 'City of God', the Brazillian answer to 'Boyz in the Hood' and 'Bound by Honor' ('Blood In Blood Out'). Since the movie was in Portuguese, but subtitled, we missed a lot of it since we were looking at the pumpkins. Of course, Irio enjoyed the movie, since he's from Brazil and it was probably sweet for him to watch a movie in his native tongue and have US have to keep on asking questions about what was going on.

Claudine was done with her pumpkin early, so she decided to make the pie - sans the nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. She only needed one can, since it made two pies, and we waited in anticipation for them to be finished.

The she was putting away the leftover can, and she looked at the back. She then realized what happened when she looked at the ingredients. "Hey, you guys got two different cans of pie mix!"

Huh?

It turns out that the can I was reading in the store was the Easy Pumpkin Pie mix. The other can that Marlon grabbed, which was RIGHT NEXT to the can that I got, and looked identical, was merely Pumpkin Pie mix. So the ingredients that we got were just fine - it was the cans that were messed up. So we weren't ingredient blind - we just don't know how to read the front labels!

All in all, we had a lot of fun carving out our pumpkins, pulling out the innards and getting hand cramps with our meticulous work. It was a great night to hang out with the cousins and pretty memorable!

Here's some pics:

For more pics, check out Melanie's or Marilyn's sites.

Posted by Yano at October 25, 2004 10:13 AM

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