Pumpkin pumpkin burning bright
So tonight I made pumpkin puree. I've had the pumpkins for weeks, but tonight I finally had the time (sort of) to process the pumpkins. It's a simple process to describe; cut the pumpkins in half, scoop out the seeds and pulp, sprinkle with salt and bake at 400 degrees (205 celsius) for 35-45 minutes. In actual practice it's harder. Cutting a pumpkin in half is no picnic. The skin and flesh is tough, even a very sharp knife was slow. Then cleaning out the seeds and pulp wasn't easy either. Those fibers just don't want to let go, and the seeds were flying everywhere. All in all it took me about an hour to get the two pumpkins ready for baking. After baking is no picnic either. The softened flesh has to be scooped out of the skin and pureed. Scooping out the flesh wasn't too hard, the trick was pureeing the flesh. A food processor works wonderfully, only problem being I don't have a food processor. I trie my miniprocessor, which as the name implies is a sort of miniature food processor. It worked but not very well. I finally hit on using my stick blender. That did the trick. All in all two pumpkins rendered two and three-quarter pounds of puree. Enough for two pies and some left over. Maybe enough for pumpkin bread, or something else. Pumpkin puree is pretty versatile.