Pumpkin Pie Steel-Cut Oats

This mess has been our weather report for almost two weeks now - humid, rainy, cloudy, and generally gross.  It's an amalgamation of my least favorite weather patterns, and it basically moved in and made itself comfortable.

When the weather (or, well, just about anything) gets me down, I get cooking.  There's something inherently comforting about being in my kitchen preparing something I can enjoy and/or scarf down.  In the rare moment when I'm really honest with myself, I realize that I really enjoy domesticity -- I love nesting, I love cooking, and I love making my home feel like a giant bear hug.  Whenever I think about this, my love of all things domestic is quickly countered by the little voice in my head that screeches "No!  You're supposed to love your career more than you love homemaker-y things!"  But still, there are times when nesting makes me ridiculously happy.

Rainy days are, more often than not, one of those times.  During the entire month of August, I'd flinch when I heard the word "fall" -- fall is by far my favorite season, but summer went by ridiculously quickly this year.  I think that the wedding made things move at light speed -- I spent June and July scrambling to prepare for it, and then suddenly July 30 was upon us.  We came back from our mini-honeymoon (mini-moon?) in the Rockies a week later, and whoosh, suddenly it was Labor Day.

For the last month, I was all, "I'm so not ready for summer to end" and "Shorter days are going kill me" and "Wah, wah, wah."  Happily, though, as soon as September arrived...I was ready.  I had four discernible thoughts:

1)  PUMPKIN!
2)  SOUPS AND STEWS!
3)  I AM *SO* OVER THE HUMIDITY!
4)  I LOVE SWEATERS!  (I love lamp!)

Yesterday, I decided it was time to break into my stockpile of canned pumpkin.  My mother-in-law, who just happens to be awesome, sent me a ton of canned pumpkin when we had a regional shortage last year.  The pumpkin shortage was heinous.  It was only by the grace of my MIL's generosity that I survived, and now I stock pumpkin like the Soviets stocked nukes during the Cold War.

I decided to combine it with my other love, oatmeal.  Angela over at Oh She Glows recently did a post on steel cut oats (AKA pinheads, or as I tend to call them affectionately, steelies...maybe steely pinheads is a good combination?) -- she also has an amazing recipe for pumpkin pie oats, so I decided to combine the two.

I cooked 1/2 cup GF steely pinheads, added 1/4 cup pumpkin puree, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice to taste, and brown sugar.  I would've added almond milk, had I not found it frozen solid in the back of the fridge.  (Boo and hiss!)  Even without the almond milk, though, it was still delish -- comforting, totally laden with pumpkin-y goodness, and enough to keep my mind off the sodden, mosquito-infested mess outdoors.