Pumpkin PUFF!

Yesterday, I decided to attempt copying a little delicacy that I have every time I go to one particular dim sum restaurant for morning tea. I never mean to order the same thing again and again, but every time I look at the menu, I see something that says 南瓜 (nan2 gua1, pumpkin) and I just have to have it. Then, every time, I am, like, “Ohhhhh, that pumpkin thing,” as it dawns on me that I have fallen for its menu appellation yet again.
Imagine... cream puffs. Smaller-than-doughnut-hole-sized orange cream puffs. With no cream. Just puff. They are slightly sweet, and too delicate to resume their original form after you have taken the first bite. They have been fried, so they leave oil on your lips for the remainder of the meal. And they taste exactly as they should – pumpkinny.
I always have a pile of pumpkins lying around ready to be cooked. Last night, I turned one into my experimental pumpkin puff pumpkin. Its existence was dedicated to me finding my own recipe for pumpkin puffs. The result: glorious.
I mixed together a hill of bread flour, a dash and a half of baking powder, two pinches of salt, a loooong squeeze of (chrysanthemum) honey from one of those soft plastic containers with the pointy-hat-like dispensing tips, a packed spoonful of brown sugar, more nutmeg than should ever go into that amount of flour (pretend you are adding cinnamon when you add the nutmeg, and as soon as the aroma wafts up to indicate that you are, in fact, pouring in the nutmeg, stop immediately with a clear expression of aghast horror on your face, and then you will have copied my methods to the “t”), enough cinnamon to cover the flavor of the nutmeg I had just spilled (for all intents and purposes), a conservative pinch of allspice, and... maybe their was a secret ingredient, too. Can't remember rightly... Oh! I added water until it was a bit sloppy, totally unlike yeast bread dough.
I heated some aromatic peanut oil (for added deliciousness – not so great for those allergic to this legume) and tossed in spoonfuls of my batter as soon as the oil was hot enough to sizzle as soon as anything was added. For those as unpracticed as I in frying, I feel the need to indicate the importance of not using your finger to test the heat of the oil. It will likely leave a nasty scar.
As the puffs fried, I sprinkled a little extra salt to the outside of a few, and I found that to improve the flavor far above expectations, but that is probably because I am a salt addict--

MY GOD!!!!!

My apartment rumbled, my doors shook – a blast of thunder just ripped through campus and gave me insight into why our ancestors were dead set on appeasing the gods who were willing to mete out such a wrath.

Back to pumpkin puffs.

I had to buy a replacement pumpkin last night to keep my stash up to snuff. I went to a different market than the one I most commonly frequent, and I found squat little pumpkins, much more like what I often find at home (same color and texture on the outside as the long ones, but with the traditional squat Halloween pumpkin shape). I asked how much, and said I wanted to buy one. This turned into a ten minute ordeal of the vendors around me trying to tell me that these squat pumpkins were not as good as the long ones, and me assuring them that I had tried plenty of long ones, but I had never tried a squat one, and Americans have strange tastes anyway (cold milk on small sugary biscuits in a bowl every morning? Weeeeeird...), so just sell me the damn squash and if I don't like it, I'll buy a long one next time! *pant pant pant*
A crowd gathered to not only listen, but take part. We had a great time fighting over that $.75 pumpkin. My favorite part was that I got so into the debate that I started using more complicated sentence structures without thinking about it, and I got a good laugh as I walked away with my pumpkin in tow hearing one of our audience speaking well-memorized English lines (not for my benefit, but as a well-earned point of pride).

I just looked out my window again. I am sooooo happy that we have ample stores of food, because this is not a day to get out. For as much as I love being in the rain, Zhuhai has taught me that getting wet is only a joy when you know that you will have an opportunity to dry off in the near future. With this humidity, such assurances are not close at hand.