Pumpkins!

This was my first year growing a vegetable garden. It started out as more of an experiment, but to my utter astonishment, I actually managed to grow quite a few things! Then I was left trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do with all this stuff. Pumpkins, for example:

I was very proud of the 2 whole pumpkins I managed to grow. I put too much effort into them to carve them up for Halloween... these were going to get carved up and EATEN darn it.

So I turned to the trusty Internet and tried to figure out how to cook a pumpkin. I found this University of Illionois Exension site that had all kinds of great information, including how to make pumpkin puree.

So I cut up my beautiful little pumpkins....

And scooped out all the seeds...

Then they looked like this:

I used a little paring knife to scrape out all the fibrous goo...

All the pieces went into my big stockpot, with 1 cup of water...

I steamed them for about 30 minutes, until the flesh was soft (you can see the little holes where I pricked one piece with a fork to test).

After the pieces had cooled off, I used my trusty paring knife to separate the peel from the flesh

When everything was peeled...

I put all the fleshy parts in the food processor and processed away!

It took a little while in the processor, but eventually I had a smooth puree. I measured it out in 1 cup increments and put it in plastic containers for freezing:

Those 2 little pumpkins yielded 5 cups of puree.

Here's a couple of my favorite pumpkin recipes:
Pumpkin Pancakes
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins (I change this one and use 1 cup of pumpkin and omit the water)

I'm going to try this recipe for roasted pumpkin seeds tomorrow, and this Pumpkin Cookie recipe as soon as I get a deal on white chocolate chips!

Happy fall :)

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