Pumpkin Time!

Some of my poor Halloween pumpkins have now become the future makings of Thanksgiving pies! This is one of the first years that I did not carve my pumpkins into Jack-O-Lanterns so I have the option of leaving them sit for quite some time before having to do anything with them. They will just hang around in pumpkin form until I decide that more pies, muffins, bread or pumpkin butter is needed! That is one of the great things about things of this nature..they do not go bad in just a few days! Keep them cool and free of bumps and bruises and pumpkins will sit on the floor in the kitchen or pantry for months and be just as good as the day they were picked from the vine.

Today, however, Son decided it was a pumpkin muffin sort of day. It was quite cold out so running the oven sounded like a good idea to me! He started whacking at one of the larger pumpkins. After cutting that one up into workable pieces, he immediately grabbed one of the smaller ones and started hacking at it. Wait! I warned him that two pumpkins sure would be a lot of pulp once we got it all cooked. He just made some comment about really liking pumpkin muffins and that we could always make pumpkin butter. Ummmm ...yeah..but still that was going to be a LOT of pumpkin pulp! The pieces all went into the pot and need I mention here that we had to make two cookings using my large canner pot! The pumpkin merrily bubbled away in the large pot until it was tender..then the first batch was lifted out and the second went in the same boiling water. Two HUGE pots of pumpkin chunks were soon waiting to be pureed!

When I prepare the pumpkins for pies and such, I never even peel them. I used to...then I watched one of those cooking shows (back when I had a TV!) and the chef just pureed the entire thing (sans the seeds). So since then..no peeling! I figured that I should definitely try to be more like those professional chefs! Anyway..no peeling made it a lot easier on me..(Those TV chefs are sure smart!). I plopped all of those pumpkin chunks into the blender and let it do its job! This took probably an hour or more as it took me filling that blender about two dozen times to get all that pumpkin pureed! Finally, though, it was done and I had the prettiest bowl of nice thick pumpkin pulp!

Those two pumpkins made an enormous amount of puree! Two gallon bags were filled for the freezer, one gallon jug was placed in the refrigerator to be used in making the pumpkin butter and a quart was used to make some delicious pumpkin muffins. That still left a gallon jug of juice that I had strained from the pulp. How in the world will I ever use this stuff? It just seemed far to good to toss! I am quite sure that something delightful can be created from pumpkin juice..I just have to ponder on it and then do a bit of experimenting! All in all, after roasting the seeds, I only had the stems to toss in the compost pile! And to think...I still have four more large pumpkins sitting on my kitchen floor...wow!..that is a lot of pumpkin muffins!