Tuesday's Tip

So this year in my garden I decided to grow some pumpkins. Never had any success with them before, so having faith, I planted my seeds and waited........

They grew!!

Dang it, I can't remember the name of the pumpkin, but these are not the regular Halloween type. They are made to cook and make pumpkin pie with. So if anyone out there is waiting anxiously for their pumpkins to grow and ripen, here's how to cook them.... easy peasy!

Here's my lovely orange beauties.

Cut them in half and scrape out all the seeds.  I saved them and actually roasted them but due to my extremely sidetracked personality (ie doing too much at one time) I forgot about them and they burned.

 

After everything is cleaned out, place them on a cookie sheet and bake them in the oven at 375 degrees. Mine took about an hour to get soft.

Now, here's the rest of the story.....without pics. I got busy and forgot to document it...

When everything is cooled, peel off the skin and puree the cooked flesh in a food processor. I placed 1 cup of the puree into ziplock bags and froze them.  Now I'm ready for pumpkin pancakes and pumpkin bread.

The fresh cooked pumpkin is really delicious! It didn't taste ANYTHING like the pumpkin out of a can.  It was more like squash and had a nutty flavor.   I got five pumpkins out of my little patch and it was super satisfying to grow, harvest and preserve the fruits of my own labor.  Although it's a pretty good thing I'm not a pioneer, because I think I would have starved due to sad lack of production........