It's that time of year again -- when big displays appear in all our food stores, featuring every imaginable food item flavored with pumpkins and pumpkin spices! Pumpkin cookies, pumpkin ale (more on that later), pumpkin pasta sauce (yes, I tried it - it was good, but I don't think it will be replacing yummy marinara quite yet), pumpkin pasta, pumpkin chips, pumpkin cereal and oatmeal, pumpkin spice latté, pumpkin coffee, and the list goes on and on. If you can conceive of it, apparently you can add pumpkin to it.
I'm drawn to these displays partly for the sheer imagination on display, and also because I don't hate pumpkin spices. I spotted this Sweet Harvest Pumpkin tea on one of the displays for something like two for $5, so I grabbed a pair, one for myself and one for my tea-loving colleague. He loves tea so much, he has a 6-ft. tall bookcase devoted to a multitude of tea flavors! It's very impressive!*
I tried our new tea a couple days ago and it was très yummy! I added Coffee-mate's Natural Bliss hazelnut flavor and it was delicious! Natural Bliss is basically cream and sugar but I’m sure any of the flavors would be yummy.
You see, not too long ago, I broke my cherished sparkly bedazzled to-go cup. I knew I needed a new one, so last week while grocery shopping, I stopped by the in-store Starbuck’s. They had lots of to-go cups, some of them on sale for $9.99, and going all the way up to $25!!! They had very pretty cups for $16.99, but I didn’t see a need to spend so much for to-go cup. I settled on a purple sale cup with the Starbuck's logo. I still thought $9.99 was a lot to pay for a cup!
I decided to try out my new cup with my new tea! Since it’s a little bigger than a regular cup, I threw two teabags into the cup and added my boiling water and natural bliss. I just went ahead and left the teabags in the cup and dashed off to work. Wouldn’t you know it, that little old Starbuck’s cup kept my tea burning hot for hours! I have to admit, my overpriced to-go cup is growing on me….
So get out there and enjoy the bounties of the season!!!!
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