Most of us have eaten pumpkin.
Most of us have cooked with canned pumpkin.
Most of us haven’t cooked a pumpkin dish starting with a whole pumpkin.
Let’s get down to business.
We all know what a pumpkin is and looks like though. I feel like there are so many things to use pumpkin in that most people would just use a can of pumpkin puree and call it a day. I want you all to feel empowered to walk into the grocery store, pick out a pumpkin and make your own baked goods with homemade pumpkin puree.
I could kind of figure out the process but I had help from The Pioneer Woman on the actual tips and tricks. Go check out the original post here.
There are a ton of other squash to try but I have never cooked a pumpkin. I have carved my fair share and now I regret letting so much food go to waste when I could have been roasting them all this time. This is like a 2.50 lb pie pumpkin, and I would always try to get the biggest pumpkin as kid. (There was one year where my parents couldn’t find pumpkins anywhere so I got to carve a cushaw, a gourd I haven’t encountered since).
It felt odd to be cutting up and scooping guts without a face on the front of the pumpkin. My first instinct was to make little triangle cuts on the outside. I resisted that urge and chopped it down the middle.
I want to give a major shout out to my knife this day as it cut up five different squash in one day without breaking apart. The toughest one to cut was the butternut squash by far but the spaghetti squash put up a pretty good fight as well.
I didn’t clear out the guts as well as I could have, I just made sure the seeds were out of the picture. It’s all pumpkin flavored anyway, so I figured I’m not losing any flavor by including the strands. You roast them as is, skin and all, no olive oil or seasoning until the skin can be easily pierced with a fork.
My kitchen smelled very inviting and like I was baking stuff, but it was just the pumpkin baking up. For the time it was in the oven it made me feel like I was part of the Harry Potter universe and I needed baked pumpkin for some kind of weird potion.
Taking the nerd level to another degree, there was a part in the Nintendo 64 game, Hey You, Pikachu where you had to make some kind of vegetable stew and I believe you could pumpkin and all kinds of squash in it. You just had to get that stubborn little rat to listen to you.
For Sale. That Game. Played Twice.
Peeling the pumpkin was super easy and I actually did it by hand once the pieces cooled off. The skin just comes right off and you squeeze the flesh into a bowl and you got your pumpkin chunks.
Throw all that in a food processor and you got yourself a nice pumpkin puree. Nothing else added, that bowl is full of nothing but pure pumpkin.
Don’t know what to do with it now? Make muffins, make pie, make pastries, make a spread, put it in smoothies, put it in dog food to help their digestion (in small doses) and you got yourself a pumpkin party.
Week 42 is now done. You are reading this on October 12 (unless you’re further along the timeline) but this is the pick meant for the week of the 22nd.
Just like that y’all, 42 is here and only ten more picks remain. 2018 is almost over and I am closer to finishing up this resolution.
Try 52 