a smorgasburg of pumpkins.

as i've mentioned a bunch of times in the past, three-quarters of the parow children now live in new york city, so we get together every once in a while. when we do, it's usually over food. last weekend, my doctor sister was celebrating her 35th 25th birthday so on a windy saturday the three of us & a few of the bro's pals met up in williamsburg at the god-awful hour of 11am to eat a bunch of food at brooklyn flea's smorgasburg market. it was the first time i'd returned to the market after visiting there for fucked in park slope back in may for its opening weekend. in preparation for our familial gathering, the bro had purchased three passes from gilt city that were each good for five entrees, a drink & a dessert, so we had some serious eating ahead of us. i, of course, was on the hunt for pumpktoberfest treats.

i hadn't eaten breakfast yet, so i decided to start off with an entree. after doing a lap around the market, i stopped at the booth for saucy by nature, who create a bunch of sauces made with locally-sourced ingredients. on this particular saturday, they were rolling out their pumpkin ginger sauce & offering up a dish--mui thai pumpkin ($7)--that was made with falafel, pita, asian cucumber salad & the aforementioned pumpkin ginger sauce. the sauce itself was well done, with a nice mix of sweetness & earthiness that you should get when pumpkin's on the menu. the cucumbers were crisp and the falafel & pita were...well, falafel & pita. the only downfall was that i lost a good amount of the greens due to the windy conditions that day.

with a nice, hearty dish in my stomach, next up i went for something sweet--a pumpkin chai spice donut ($3) from electric blue baking company, a vegan bakery that doesn't have a physical locale yet but is based out of brooklyn standard in greenpoint. typically, i find vegan baked goods to be sort of dry but this donut was, for lack of a less disgusting-sounding word, moist. it had a clean consistency to it, as the cake itself had an appropriate amount of spice to it & the frosting on top was sweet but not too much so. it's food like this that makes me think i should reconsider my stance on vegan baked goods.

since we had fifteen entree tickets to plow through, i spent the rest of my time filling my face with entrees but i did manage to grab a couple more pumpkin treats for the road. the first was a pair of pumpkin ginger sandwich cookies ($1.25 each) from whimsy & spice, a brooklyn-based company who i've seen countless times at the brooklyn flea but for some reason hadn't tried anything from. after trying these tiny cookies, i realized the folly of my ways. between the white chocolate filling & the spiced cookies, which are lightly covered in "sparkling sugar," they were a nice lil' treat. my only regret was that i waited a day to eat them, a delay that made the cookies a bit harder than they probably should have been.

i also stopped by the table for murray's cheese, where i picked up a small jar of pumpkin yogurt ($3.50) from white cow dairy. white cow dairy's part of blue hill farm, a fourth-generation dairy farm out of east otto, NY. their pumpkin yogurt's simply done, with grass-fed milk, L. bulgaricus, S. thermophilus, L. acidophilus, jones's pumpkins, maple sugar & spice. while that's all well & good, i sort of psyched myself out about it before i'd even tried it, as i get weirded out quite easily by food consistencies & this stuff kinda looks like a jar of mustard. when i finally got around to trying it, it turned out to be quite flavorful. it's creamy & features tiny chunks of pumpkin in it along with a well-balanced blend of sweet spices. unfortunately, my brain quickly got the best of me & i was only able to eat a few scoops before i had to stop. of course, you might be more rational than i & if so, will probably enjoy it.

with only ten days left in this pumpktoberfest season, time's running out to get yourself any of these treats, so if you happen to find yourself in williamsburg one of the next two saturdays & have a hankering for something pumpktastic, swing on by smorgasburg & get your fill.