I was the last hold-out among my local circle of friends to hire a babysitter. I just couldn’t bear the thought of entrusting the care of my precious little ones with anyone outside of our family. And given that we have no family closer than an 8 hour drive away…well, you can just imagine how rare our date nights have been.

It wasn’t until I was about a month away from my due date with our second child (as it turned out, it was just a week before he was actually born!) that the reality of two kids finally set in with me. My sanity was going to depend on having a trustworthy helper. End of story – the most wonderful woman now comes over to watch Dora the Explorer and rock the infant seat for a few hours every week while I “get things done”. She genuinely loves children (she’s got three grown ones of her own) and, best of all, she loves my children. My daughter took to her immediately which was pretty much all I needed to observe to move past my fears. If she could get comfortable with a babysitter than so could I!

Did I mention that our Mary Poppins likes to bake too? When I told her about Cooking On the Side she remembered a cookbook she had at home, Philadelphia Cream Cheese Classic Recipes, and offered to lend it to me. How cool is that? I definitely had to make one of the cheesecakes – the Cookies and Cream one, complete with Oreo crust, called my name.

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I never ate cake until I was 8 or 9 years old. But I sure ate a lot of frosting! I was that kid at birthday parties who hopped up and down when the corner piece – the one with the profuse amount of frosting flourishes – was being passed out. I’d extract every last bit of sugary, fluffy stuff and leave the cake on the little paper plate. It wasn’t until the middle of my elementary school years that a frustrated parent of a friend finally urged me to try just a bite of the cake “just this once” that I discovered the treat I was missing.

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Like a lot of folks, I look forward to making pumpkin dishes this time of year (like this incredibly moist Pumpkin Spice Cake with pumpkin cream cheese frosting, see above)  – but have you heard about the  pumpkin shortage? I’ve had such a ridiculous time finding pumpkin purée in stores! After numerous canned pumpkin hunting trips over the past two weeks, I can offer these four tips for tracking down this elusive product:

• Check the baking aisle (near the canned pie fillings) – I’d assumed it would be with other canned vegetables, but it was not so at my local Vons. If you find it, stock up!
• Beware of something called “pumpkin pie mix” - the can looks nearly identical to pumpkin purée but it contains other ingredients besides pumpkin (it’s meant for making quick pies); a store clerk was trying to help me and brought me a can of this by mistake – unfortunately, I didn’t discover it until I was already home.
• Ask a clerk for help – Despite my mishap in the above bullet, it’ll probably save you a lot of time to have someone who knows the store aisles by heart find the pumpkin for you – or to let you know if they even have it at all.
• Roast your own - I haven’t tried this myself yet but if I didn’t find the canned stuff it was going to be my next option – Elana from Elana’s Pantry offers 10 easy steps to roasting a pumpkin.

Once you’ve got some pumpkin, you’re going to want to make this amazing cake. The recipe comes from a butter company so you know it’s moist!

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