Vegan Pumpkin Chai Latte

One of my favourite captioned photos of all time is of this kid:

Seriously, he's the cutest. Doesn't he just look SO excited? If you look at that picture though, that's kind of how I feel about fall. I love fall. Really it's kind of insane. A few days ago, I was trying to explain that the feeling I get in my mind and body when fall comes along. The only real way to describe it was that fall actually turns me on. Now don't get me wrong, if you actually look up the definition of a "turn on" in the dictionary, it doesn't have to apply to something sexual. In fact, it just means "something or someone that causes excitement or pleasure," and Hello does fall do both for me!

Since fall started a few weeks ago, everything has been amazingly falling into place. Yesterday, Andrew and I met at Dow's Lake for a kayaking date, and this is just one shot of my beautiful walk from class through the Arboretum to meet him:

No crazy colours just yet, but they're coming! I may or may not have actually frolicked through the park. I may or may not have gotten a few weird looks from passersby. I definitely did not care.

As part of my fall awesomeness plan, pumpkin has definitely been making an increasing appearance in our household. That's mostly thanks to all the raw vegan pumpkin pies I've been making for my awesome new catering gig for one of my favourite local restaurants. Since it got a little bit chillier tonight, I decided to stick with the pumpkin theme and try my hand at making a vegan pumpkin chai latte. This one turned out to be a little heavier on the "latte" part of that name than the chai, but it was tasty either way!

Pumpkin Chai Latte

Yield: About 2 Cups

2 C non-dairy milk

1 teaspoon of teeccino or ground coffee (optional)

1 tea bag of chai of your choice

2 generous tablespoons of pumpkin puree

1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spices*

splash of vanilla

dash of cayenne

very small dash of salt

sweetened to taste with maple syrup (about 2-3 T)

*I went heavy on the cinnamon, but also had ginger, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and cardamon

1. Over medium heat, warm milk with tea bag, spices, and teeccino/coffee as if making regular chai.

2. Add all the other ingredients, and stir well until uniform.

3. When it's as warm as you wish! Drink away! I can see this going very well with some kind of warming fall treat, like pumpkin bread or some candied nut loaf... yum.

For all you raw folk, I'll share a valuable trick with you. The secret to authentic tasting raw pumpkin anything is to dehydrate the pumpkin "flesh" first before making it into anything... it'll taste just like the real deal!