Pumpkin Massacre and More Food
Weekends seem to be for making food, and before I can cook, I have to have a clean kitchen. My kitchen usually is mostly clean, but after yesterday's pumpkin massacre and dinner almost all my stainless steel bowls, the huge stainless steel colander, my pot big enough for cooking mounds of spaghetti in, and just misc stuff was washed and drying in a great pile 'o stainless steel. It was towering! Somehow I worked myself into major cleaning of the counters, the stove top, the bottom cabinets, and all the knick knacks and containers. So, those went into the dishwasher (after I had Eric unload last night's dishes).
So, yesterday, I started the adventure of using my halloween pumpkins for something other than landfill. I know that Halloween pumpkins aren't usually the cooking kind, but the old bus driver used to take my pumpkins (uncut of course) and make pumpkin bread. Well, after hacking one in half, scooping guts, separating seeds, and finding that this, smallest of the pumpkins could barely be squeezed into my oven, I was beginning to question my judgment.
Roasted pumpkin seeds are great, and Megan loves them, so it's a labor of love to reach into that gooey mess and pick them out. I remembered that the seeds float, so after scraping and scooping, I dumped them into a bowl and filled it with water, scooping out the floating seeds. The last pumpkin, I realized that I could just cut it in half, fill the cavity with water, then massage the pulp until I got the seeds loose. Why is it always the last step that you realize the easy way to do something?
So, after the first pumpkin had been in the oven for about an hour and a half, and was softened, I pulled it out. It was a sickly yellow, and I pulled a little piece off, and it tasted like... nothing. Maybe a bit like summer squash, but no real pumpkin flavor. I don't know if I did something wrong. Anyway, it was after I had splattered myself with lava hot pumpkin goo that I decided it was a shame that I did not have a compost pile. I hauled the corpses of the three pumpkins out in a large black garbage bag.
So, furthering the cooking bananza, I had started a pork butt in the oven... it just now got done enough. It looks really tasty, and the bit I pulled off was prettttty good! However, I had braised it with apple cider, but none of that flavor seemed to have penetrated. I poured off the roasting juices, and this was one juicy butt... it made quite a bit of it's own juice, but has absolutely no appley sweetness at all. I'm going to reduce it with a bit more apple juice to mix in once I pull it. With this, I'm going to make rice, field peas and some of my frozen turnip greens. I also promised some potato skins, and we'll see how the leftover baked potatoes that I have in the fridge make that work. I think I'm going to nix the idea to also make cornbread... enough cooking is enough!
Tuesday is the school's bake sale. We had no trick or treaters this year, so we have a ton of leftover candy! Didn't help that I had rainchecks and coupons and ended up with something like 8 bags of candy, full well knowing we never get trick or treaters! Those snickers, twix and baby ruth bars are going to go into cookies for the bake sale. We'll see how that turns out!
I think I won't cook for the rest of the week after this!
So, yesterday, I started the adventure of using my halloween pumpkins for something other than landfill. I know that Halloween pumpkins aren't usually the cooking kind, but the old bus driver used to take my pumpkins (uncut of course) and make pumpkin bread. Well, after hacking one in half, scooping guts, separating seeds, and finding that this, smallest of the pumpkins could barely be squeezed into my oven, I was beginning to question my judgment.
Roasted pumpkin seeds are great, and Megan loves them, so it's a labor of love to reach into that gooey mess and pick them out. I remembered that the seeds float, so after scraping and scooping, I dumped them into a bowl and filled it with water, scooping out the floating seeds. The last pumpkin, I realized that I could just cut it in half, fill the cavity with water, then massage the pulp until I got the seeds loose. Why is it always the last step that you realize the easy way to do something?
So, after the first pumpkin had been in the oven for about an hour and a half, and was softened, I pulled it out. It was a sickly yellow, and I pulled a little piece off, and it tasted like... nothing. Maybe a bit like summer squash, but no real pumpkin flavor. I don't know if I did something wrong. Anyway, it was after I had splattered myself with lava hot pumpkin goo that I decided it was a shame that I did not have a compost pile. I hauled the corpses of the three pumpkins out in a large black garbage bag.
So, furthering the cooking bananza, I had started a pork butt in the oven... it just now got done enough. It looks really tasty, and the bit I pulled off was prettttty good! However, I had braised it with apple cider, but none of that flavor seemed to have penetrated. I poured off the roasting juices, and this was one juicy butt... it made quite a bit of it's own juice, but has absolutely no appley sweetness at all. I'm going to reduce it with a bit more apple juice to mix in once I pull it. With this, I'm going to make rice, field peas and some of my frozen turnip greens. I also promised some potato skins, and we'll see how the leftover baked potatoes that I have in the fridge make that work. I think I'm going to nix the idea to also make cornbread... enough cooking is enough!
Tuesday is the school's bake sale. We had no trick or treaters this year, so we have a ton of leftover candy! Didn't help that I had rainchecks and coupons and ended up with something like 8 bags of candy, full well knowing we never get trick or treaters! Those snickers, twix and baby ruth bars are going to go into cookies for the bake sale. We'll see how that turns out!
I think I won't cook for the rest of the week after this!