FauxBucks Pumpkin Spice Latte!

I did it!  I said I would try, and I did- all month I've been working on my "Pumpkin Spice Latte".  Something I didn't tell you was that I wanted to make it as easy as I could.  So easy that a mom with a baby on one hip and a toddler tugging at your skirts can make it.  Now, can you enjoy it?  That's up to the babies!

Speaking of which, as I was typing that first sentence, Beatrice woke up from her nap.  Intermission already?  I've only had 1 sip!

Anyway, I splurged this month on 2 Pumpkin Spice Lattes from Starbucks to remember just how delicious they are.  But they're also pumped (literally) full of sugars- mostly HFCS I'm sure, and other goos that only Mr. Starbucks himself can ponder as he wrings his evil little hands.  "Good, good," he says, "I will have them all addicted, and they'll pay me buckets of money to pump them full of corn and chemicals!"  Almost as evil as Mr. Marlboro?  Maybe!

So, I decided to make one myself.  A friend sent me a recipe that had these ingredients:
Coffee, pumpkin flesh, maca, fresh milk, banana, pumpkin spice, vanilla, stevia, and salt


Some of that sounds awesome, some of that sounds weird (banana?  in my coffee!?), and then, what the heck is Maca?


But all that is too hard for the time crunched mom like me.  Maybe mine won't taste JUST like FiveBucks, but it will be delicious and you will LOVE to wake up to this beauty.


What You Need

My egg beater looks like this- only way cooler

• Delicious home brewed coffee of your choice.  I use a french press and love it, but do what you gotta.
• Fresh Whipped Cream. (Raw if you can, non-UHP if you can't)  Seriously, like 1/3 cup cream per cup of coffee.  I whipped it by hand this morning with my brand new egg beater that I found at goodwill for a buck!   I'll take a picture next time I have 2 hands that aren't filled with delicious coffee and a baby.
• Ground Cinnamon
• Ground Cloves
• Ground Ginger
• Allspice
• About a tablespoon of raw, unfiltered honey

What You Do

• Get your extra large, empty coffee cup (you can order one from us like the one in my picture here) and put NOTHING in it (What I mean is don't pour your coffee in yet.  Leave it empty- this is actually hard for me, I am usually in such auto drive at this point in the morning!)
• In a medium sized bowl, whip your fresh cream with your own choice of whipping apparatus.  I like my new egg beater because it doesn't take forever, but it doesn't over-whip it like my stick blender does.  And it doesn't mean a lot of clean up either!
• When you've got soft peaks, add a spoonful to the bottom of your coffee cup, along with half of your spices.  You can add as much or as little as you'd like of each to your own taste.  My only suggestion is to add MORE ginger than you think you want, and only a very, very small amount of the ground cloves.  Like 1/4 teaspoon or less.  Just a sprinkle really.
• Add coffee to about 3/4 of the cup, while stirring in that whipped cream.  Then keep adding whipped cream a tablespoon at a time, stirring in between each until there are no chunky spots but only smooth creamy goodness.  Reserve about 3-4 tablespoons of Whipped Cream.
• Top your coffee with the reserved whipped cream, sprinkle some cinnamon on top, and then drizzle honey off a spoon onto the top of your coffee.  About half way through your spoon drizzling, stick the spoon down the side of your coffee and let it sit there without stirring (yet).  If you like sweeter coffee, add 2 tablespoons, or 3, I don't care!  But honey, use HONEY!  This is the key to making it deliciously sweet like Starbucks without it being uber-nasty-sticky-coat-your-mouth sweet from HFCS.  

Maybe I'll try adding a little bit of mashed pumpkin next time I have some laying around (which will be Monday because it's on my meal plan for dinner that day) but since most people don't want to get up in time to fresh roast a pumpkin for their coffee, I'm leaving it out of my recipe.  Having the spices plus honey does enough for this girl!

Oh, and vanilla?  I've tried making the coffee with vanilla this month, and it didn't seem right.  Maybe I was adding too much?  I'm not sure.  But I'd like to try adding it again, but instead of putting it in the coffee, whipping it into the cream.  This is my first time using whipped cream instead of just fresh liquid cream, so there's always room for improvement.

Have any suggestions?  Questions?  Let me know!  And be sure to enter our 1500 giveaway over here.  And if you ask real nice, maybe Joey'll upgrade you to a pumpkin mug just for fun!

linking back to

The Experiment

Welcome to our new blog!  We're a young family, with two beautiful daughters, and we're both educated-and unemployed.

We're Joey and Brittany, married in early 2009 while Joey was finishing his degree in ceramics and philosophy while Brittany was working as a non-profit social worker.  We've never expected to make a lot of money doing the things we love to do, and still don't.  But after we had our 1st daughter, Charlotte, in November of 2009, and we realized that it would cost us money for Brittany to continue working with daycare and travel costs, so we became a no-income family.  We were lucky enough to have the remainder of Joey's school and some of our basic living expenses paid and saved for, but we never expected to have to live on that for this long.

Joey graduated in December of 2010 with a BFA in Fine Arts  and a BA in Philosophy-aka "bartending".  In the first few months after school, we worked hard looking for a job for him, but realized quite quickly that this was not likely in this economy.  In the 8 months since graduating, he's had 2 interviews. 

But life is good!  We've grown as a family so much!  Brittany's learned how to cook everything from scratch, we've given up soda, and take out pizza, and lots of other "luxuries" that most people our age consider "essentials".  But in all this, we are still finding ourselves part of a very consumeristic society.  If there's something we need, we head to the store- the thrift store usually- or onto amazon.  We research and we fret over that last penny, but we still go over our budget.  We're just too comfortable with the availabilty of our credit card.

So we're starting a family experiment this month to kick start our new blog.  We're going to spend no money for the month of September!

The Rules
For one month, we will not buy things.  Paying our electric bill, obviously, does not qualify as buying a thing.  Going out to eat, on the other hand, does.

We will be paying our recurring monthly bills during this month, but we will be trying to keep them as low as possible.  Quick showers and no more AC and a few more rules should help.  We'll be comparing our water, electricity and phone bills at the end of the month to see how we did.

We will attempt to feed our family on no money, but will allow a small budget for fresh fruits and vegetables to keep our family healthy and strong.  We will not compromise our Real Food values in the interest of free food.

Our first resource for food will be what we already have in our house (and no we didn't stock up on anything, except butter which was on a great sale this week, beforehand).  We will eat from the back of our pantry and freezer and from what is left of our poor little garden before we buy anything.

Our second resource for food will be bartering.  We have a farmer's market near us on mondays and tuesdays with a farmer we've already established a bartering realationship with who will be a good go to for this.

It there's still something we need, we will purchase it at the lowest price possible.

We won't just "hold off" until October 1st and go on a spending frenzy.  We will genuinely attempt to source out those things that we would otherwise purchase in a free or nearly free manner.  For example,  Joey is currently looking for lumber to build raised beds for our gardens for next year, and Brittany is looking for things like a yogurt maker, and books.

Necessities don't count.  If we need to purchase medicine, we will do it.  If we have to go to the doctor, we will go.

In the end, the goal isn't to spend no money, but to not make purchases. 

The reason people buy things is because it's convienent.  The less convienent something becomes, the less expensive it becomes.  That's the society we belong to.  We don't want to do things, so we pay people to do the things we can do for ourselves.  But our goal isn't to remove ourselves from that society (go "off-grid") but to find our resources through the community we live in, in as low impact a way as possible.

Want to follow us on this journey and see just how good (or poorly) we do?  Jump on board and see Our Live Active Culture in action!