On Thursday I made dinner. It was moist and delicious. I will share the recipe in my next blog post.
Today I baked one of the mystery cross-breed pumpkins. It was wonderful. I cut it in half and removed the seeds. The seeds are thick and dark colored just like the one I planted to grow these, and in total they filled a cereal bowl. The remainder of the "guts" that I scraped out wouldn't have even filled a cereal bowl. I tossed the scrapings out in the woods at my parents' house for the deer. I cut the pumpkin halves in half (pumpkin was quartered), and put it in stoneware pans, with water, covered in foil to bake. After 90 minutes in the oven (at 350 degrees), it was soft, and I was able to scrape it all out into a bowl. I used a hand mixer to puree the pumpkin, and (after it cooled) I measured it out into freezer bags. My recipe for pumpkin pie calls for three cups, so I put three cups into each bag. This one pumpkin produced 11 cups of puree - or 3-2/3 pies worth. I still have four more of these pumpkins (one smaller and three bigger), so I think we will have plenty of pie to go around all winter long! It's just a matter of processing them all. But since pumpkin is a winter squash, there's no rush. They shouldn't go bad for a while anyway. The seeds are drying now. I anticipate they will be ready to trade in about a month. I like to make sure they are fully dry before bagging them up, even if it means leaving them out much longer than needed... especially since these are such thick seeds.