You may be saying to yourself, “Enough already with the
pumpkins! Halloween was over a month ago. Get over the pumpkins!!”
Oh, you’re not? Well, I am.
I have had pumpkin on the brain since mid October and I am in
need of a brain (and picture) dump. Consider this my...
Great Pumpkin Purge!!
I’ve hunted them
I’ve schlepped them
I’ve carved them
I’ve gutted them
I’ve toasted & roasted them
I’ve baked them in a cake
(bread, really, but you get where I’m going. Oh, you don’t? Well…)
(bread, really, but you get where I’m going. Oh, you don’t? Well…)
About the hunting:
I told you the story here. It was a very fun, albeit wet, adventure with grandma.
Even though I had three or four pumpkins at home, I was
happy to accept the gift of some beautiful Cinderella pumpkins from the
gardener who tends to my restaurant’s planters and outside decorations. He
literally had the bed of his truck full of pumpkins: large ones, small ones,
orange, gray, green and blue ones. I picked out three of the prettiest pumpkins
and I thought to myself,
“Self. I can totally
carry these to the car three city blocks away before I pick up Lorelei from
daycare.”
Yeah. No.
I hoisted those suckers up in my borrowed bucket and huffed
for almost a block before I enlisted a strapping young man (with blue eyes and
brown hair, wearing a nice sweater… wait, pumpkins) to carry the other side of
that bucket so that I could get those damned things to the car. He helped me
get mostly there. I made it the rest of the way, huffing and puffing, on my
own.
About the carving:
Pumpkin carving party!!!!!

We had five kids, ten pumpkins, and shortbread cookies to
keep us busy. I set up card tables in my garage and let the kiddos have at it!
We made scary faces, cute faces, and there were a lot of happy faces all
around.
Lorelei helped me collect as many pumpkin seeds as we could from the many, many pumpkins that were carved that day. We squished and swished the guts in water and did our best to collect the tasty seeds for roasting.
About toasting and roasting the seeds:
Part 1: I brined the pumpkin seeds
in salt and sugar for two hours or so then toasted them in a 425º oven until
they a deep golden color.
Part 2: In a 400º oven, I roasted the sugar pie pumpkins for a good long time, maybe an hour and a half. I knew they were done when the house smelled warm and gourdy, and when a knife slid easily into the flesh. I let them cool overnight and scooped the flesh away from the skin.
(No picture, sorry. I know! What a let down, huh? You'll be OK. Just breathe.)
That pumpkin puree was staring me
in the face for almost two weeks before I did anything with it. “What did you do with it?” you
ask? You didn’t ask. DAMN! I thought I had it that time. Ah well.
Pumpkin bread!!!! I followed the
Betty Crocker recipe, which is really their zucchini bread recipe that substitutes
the pumpkin for the zucchini. It was good, but I’m going to make some changed that will make it awesome!
____________
If you wanted to play a drinking
game with the blog post, knocking one back every time I used the word pumpkin,
you probably wouldn’t be able to see your computer screen by now.
Hickup! You’re welcome.
Hickup! You’re welcome.
____________
I feel better. I hope you do too.
Happy holidays everyone. I send my best and hope to not use the 'P' word for a very, very long time.
Happy holidays everyone. I send my best and hope to not use the 'P' word for a very, very long time.
Santé