Pages

Monday, November 8, 2010

Pumpkin Sunday

At some point in the somewhat recent past, I developed a love for all things pumpkin. I think it started with something delicious that Whitney made years ago, but I can’t be sure. Anyways, pumpkins are just almost impossible to find in Nicaragua. Or when you do find them, they cost a bajillion dollars (or maybe $25, but still!) I sulked for much of October, mourning my new life without pumpkin, but THEN! Then, we went to the store on Halloween and the pumpkins were marked down to $3! I made the cashier double-check the price, and it was for real! We bought one and spent the next week or so deciding what to do with it. I wanted to carve it, but Halloween was over, so we had to get a little more creative than that. We got home from church on Sunday and got to work. IMG_6571Chase cut it up into large chunks to microwave it. [Since there is no A/C, the oven works a bit like a furnace, so we try to avoid using it in the hot afternoons!] This is what it looked like in its microwavable form. We did that for about 15 minutes or so, but we found that steaming it on the stove worked better.
IMG_6574Meanwhile, I focused on the seeds. I found 2 good recipes – one salty and one sweet, so I created a little foil divider on our toaster oven pan to separate them. The salty (on the right) turned out great, but the sweet (on the left) was a disaster, as I failed to pay close attention to the recipe and turned them all into one large-brown-burned-clumpy-pumpkin seed-mess. It was quite sad as I only had 2/3 of a cup to begin with; now I was down to 1/3 of a cup.
IMG_6575After Chase was done steaming the pumpkin, he removed the peel and put the chunks in our handy Vita-Mix to turn it into pumpkin puree for future use in fantastic pumpkin recipes.
IMG_6576These are the seeds after they baked for 45 minutes. On the left: about to be eaten. On the right: about to be ruined.
IMG_6577And here are the 4 2-cup bags of pumpkin we ended up with. The top bag was only about 1 1/2 cups, so Chase ended up making pumpkin butter out of it. It is delicious!
IMG_6593And this. This is a present brought back from the States from Kristina. For which I love her a little bit more than I already did. I had it in my coffee this morning and it speaks fall to me (along with the refreshingly cool weather outside) better than anything else could (besides maybe a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks)! Thanks Kristina!

1 comment:

  1. Sami has her own pumpkin patch in the backyard! I've had that coffee creamer, it's delish! I miss you guys. Much love, D.

    ReplyDelete

You don't need a Google account to comment! Just select "Name/URL" when you click the "Comment as" drop-down menu, and type your name to let us know who you are before you let us know what thought this post inspired in you. No one likes to receive anonymous comments!

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.