Pumpkin Smoothie & My 5 Fall/ Autumn Favorites

It's officially Fall here (September 22) and the weather is slowly getting chilly and crisp. I see the trees changing color and perhaps that is the best part of fall that I love -- all the beautiful colors. Fall also means kids going back to school, days getting shorter and days getting busier. Busy means less time to go shopping even for ingredients and favorite foods and I find myself doing a lot of online shopping these days. I didn't realize until recently that I can buy gift cards for just about any store like Walmart or Target or Whole Foods at a discounted price on Raise.com.
Raise is the first online marketplace to buy and sell gift cards, where you can buy discount gift cards to your favorite stores or sell your unwanted gift cards for cash. Their marketplace has a wide variety of brands; from Starbucks to Target and many many more. Buying a gift card to a specific store is a great idea, so the recipient can buy what they want instead of getting gifts that they don't really want/ need.
I wanted to share my 5 Fall/ Autumn food favorites and I'm sure I'll be using Raise to buy some gift cards to get my ingredients for the recipes.

1. Pumpkins: Pumpkins, orange, jack-o-lanterns, halloween -- all these scream 'FALL' to me. So pumpkin finds its way into just about everything around this time of the year, like these muffins, tiramisu, bread, milkshake and many more. I made a creamy & delicious pumpkin smoothie today (recipe below).
2. Soups: Who doesn't like a warm bowl of soup on a chilly night. It's comforting and gets you warmed up. My son has become a soup fan recently and wants me to make him tomato soup, just about every day. 
3. Baked dishes: After resting all summer, my oven is itching to start working again. I have bookmarked so many baked casseroles and pasta dishes that even I'm dying to use my oven. 
4. Apples: Apples are quintessential part of fall/ autumn. This year for the first time, after living in the US for 14 years, I went apple picking with the kids. Even though I'm not a big fan of apples, I loved the freshly picked crisp & sweet apples and I'm sure apple picking will slowly become one of our yearly things going forward. Also I can see myself making desserts with apples in the near future.
5. Birthday Cakes: Fall also happens to have the most birthdays in my household which means a lot of birthday cakes and parties. Even though it is against all rules to try a new recipe for a party, I always tend to break the rule and make a new recipe. Knock on wood, almost all of them have been successful so far.  

This Pumpkin smoothie recipe from Pioneer woman has been on my to-make list for forever and finally I got to make it today. It is creamy, sweet and just perfect for fall season. This smoothie uses canned pumpkin pie filling that is frozen. I divided a 28oz. can between 4 freezer safe ziplock bags and froze them, then they are ready whenever I want to make a smoothie.

Recipe adapted from here.
Ingredients: Serves 3~4
Canned Pumpkin Pie Filling - 1 cup, frozen
Vanilla Ice cream - 1 cup
Milk - 2 cups
Ground Cinnamon - 1tsp

Method:

• Blend all the ingredients until nice and smooth. Pour into glasses and serve right away.