Saturday, October 3, 2009

Pumpkin



I was blog surfing the other day, something I find I don't have much time for, and I found several posts about pumpkin. Normally I would have been drooling into my computer, but these were scary posts.... about.....A PUMPKIN SHORTAGE! How can this happen you ask? One blogger blamed it on loss due to a cold snap in pumpkin land. I don't know if this is true and I have not gone looking for any at the store to confirm the shortage because there isn't one, at our house at least.
Back in February when I was drooling over seed catalogues, #3 said to me, "Mom, we HAVE to grow pumpkins so we can have pie!" So he picked out the seeds, and then in the spring, he "helped" me plant them. We were a little concerned about the dry weather this summer, but our neighbor brought over a wagon of soybean straw to put around the plants as mulch and here we are in October and we have loads of beautiful round orange pumpkins. We have so many different ones, we invited our neighborhood to come help themselves to some too.
So, what do you do with a pie pumpkin you ask? Easy as... well pie! Cut it in half like this.
Now scoop out the seeds, and place it cut side down in a baking pan or roaster. I can fit three pumpkins in my turkey roaster at once. Then put it in the oven for two hours at 350, much like cooking squash. You may want to check it every once in a while, but when you see the tops starting to cave in, you know they are done. Pull them out, scrape them out and mash up what looks NOTHING like canned pumpkin. Measure it into quantities of your favorite recipe, mine is two cups, and throw it in the freezer. Done! Six pumpkins gave me enough goo for ten pies. I will probably do ten more as we eat a lot of pumpkin things, but that will still leave me with some for the neighbors. Yay! Later I will post what I did with my first batch of fresh, organic, home grown, frugal pumpkin.

2 comments:

  1. That is wonderful.
    I am drooling for some pumpkin pie.
    Well, I suppose I'll have to settle for waffles.
    It is early, still breakfast time.
    Joyful

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  2. I had heard about the shortage, but it seems like there are lots of pumpkins around?? I love pumpkin pie, but I've only ever made it from a can. Homemade crust but not fresh pumpkin. How odd is that??

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