Last year when Libby was having shortages of canned pumpkin I hit an abundance.
I have a couple of favorite pumpkin recipes but have always used canned pumpkin in the past. I had even purchased a can with the intention of doing something with it and it is currently still sitting in my cupboard.
Enter Andrew....fan of quantity.
Last October we went to a fall festival that Jim's brother and his wife annually host. Andy decorated not one, not two, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 or 6 pumpkins. Josie and Doug each did one.
.
.
We also had three pumpkins for carving that were picked up from the church's visit to the local pumpkin patch as well as a few pumpkins that the kids painted during the church Fall Carnival.
I was about ready to open my own pumpkin patch when I realized that I could actually make my own pumpkin puree. So as many pumpkins as I could I roasted in the oven until fork tender, scrapped out the innards, and sent it through our food processor (which is impressive considering my food processor is a hand-me-down from my grandmother and only holds a total of 1-2 cups). The puree came out beautifully but since I started with so many pumpkins I ended up with a lot of it.
Unfortunately I did not think about freezing it in reasonable quantities until the last of it was done. I also sort of ran out of time to do anything with it and just dumped it all in the freezer.
I've only removed one small baggie of the pumpkin for a friend who wanted to make pumpkin soup but couldn't find any canned during the Libby pumpkin shortage.
So as October is looming right around the corner I realized that it might be good to actually get some of that pumpkin out of the freezer before the possibility of more.
This weekend it smelled like Fall in my house because I had enough pumpkin in one of the containers to do two sheets of my mom's pumpkin spice bars and two pumpkin pies.
Fortunately my children like the pumpkin spice bars and the pies turned out to be the best I've ever made (I had a piece for breakfast this morning). I still have at least one big container that I will need to deal with at some point, but at least I made a dent.
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2 comments:
Hey! I have two pumpkins from our farm share sitting on my counter waiting to be processed. What temp and how long did you roast? Last time I steamed it, and it came out a bit watery.
But the pumpkins are waiting - today I did tomatoes. Much as I love the idea of sauce from scratch, MAN, that's a lot of tomatoes and work for a little bit of sauce.
I think I did it at 350. I cut the bigger pumpkins in half and the smaller ones I left whole. I don't remember on the time but I know that I poked them with a fork to check for tenderness. Then I just scooped out the meat and put it through the food processor.
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