inquiring minds want to know...well, rather a lot this morning, actually.

[qe2]

1) Food query: This week's CSA installment included a small pumpkin. (By "small" I mean "about the size of a child's bowling ball".) The pumpkin is very cute, and another person might possibly use it for, say, a centerpiece. I don't decorate with food, however - not since that incident with the exploding blender, anyway - and I would prefer to make

Comments

[shuttergal]

OK, my favorite question is pumpkin. I love pumpkin and all the wintery squashes. Most anything can be made of them - bread, soup (I like to use coconut milk in mine), ravioli... it can be baked or sauteed in a sauce. Pie is the classic. Man, search your fave recipe web site and pick. Mmmmmm.... I adore pumpkin!

[qe2]

Ravioli? Homemade? Do you have a recipe you like?

*drools, just slightly*

[shuttergal]

This is a pretty good basic one:
http://chef.pct.edu/recipes/viewrecipe.asp?id=320
I love the sage in it, and lazy me is a big fan of using the premade eggroll wrappers.

[clstal]

1) Pumpkin soup!!! (chicken base, creamy rich puree of pumpkin with warming spices)

4) save those inedible bits for making vegi stock? (Freeze em, if you've got the room, if not... you're likely back to vermicomposting... yay worms!)

[qe2]

The soup sounds delish, and I bet it would veggie-adapt easily. Do you have a favorite recipe?

[clstal]

Nope :-)

[qe2]

Heh. Fair enough. Would you pre-cook the pumpkin? And what spices would you use?

[shuttergal]

Oh, yeah. My favorite little knife sharpener (and maybe the only one I like) is a little henkle one that came with a little tiny paring knife. It looks more or less like a big black handle that sits on the counter. You hold the handle and drag the blade theough the slot on the end where it is sharpened by ceramic discs. Very sharp, very cheap. Likely to be had in a department store, but maybe hardware... And, knife sharpeners are likely to be located through little local hardware stores.

I am not sure composting in an apartment is feasible, but you could collect the matter and throw them into the world elsewhere.

Tech? Not my bag. : )

[qe2]

t looks more or less like a big black handle that sits on the counter.

*nods* I have one of these somewhere in storage, but as storage = another state, that's not going to help me in the short run.

Tech? Not my bag. : )

*boggles at you* Says the woman who posts amazing pictures pretty much every day!

[shuttergal]

I like to keep my tech focused on what I need for my photography - that is already enough to hurt my brain!

[kassrachel]

One easy thing to do w/ pumpkin is to quarter it or cut it into reasonably-sized bits (skin on), scoop out the guts (seeds can be toasted, etc), and then place the quarters or slices of pumpkin skin-side-up on an oiled cookie sheet. Bake at -- oh, maybe 350, until they can easily be pierced with a fork. Then scoop the soft part out of the shell. You can use this in soup, or in pumpkin bread/muffins, or what-have-you...

My favorite squash soup, which could easily be made with pumpkin, goes like this: dice and saute some onions and garlic. Add cubes of cooked pumpkin or butternut squash, a goodly quantity of apple cider, and a bunch of curry powder. Mash pumpkin with a potato ricer (or: puree all of the above in a blender) and spice further to taste with salt and your preferred form of pepper. :-)

[kassrachel]

oh, and -- sometimes I add apples to the soup, as well, for a little more sweetness to balance the intensity of the spice. (I tend to use a mighty lot of curry powder and hot Ghanaian pepper -- it's just my default setting. *g*)

[qe2]

*DROOLS*

Wow. That sounds ... wow.

What's Ghanaian pepper?

[vito_excalibur]

Pumpkin mushroom soup. There are a million versions of this recipe, but as long as you are combining pumpkin, mushrooms, and a little bit of curry, and topping it with yogurt or sour cream, you will not be sorry.

You can also cut up the pumpkin and bake it until it is soft, take off the peel (peel AFTER cooking! AFTER! Do not listen to idiots who tell you otherwise), and make excellent pumpkin pie out of it.

Definitely save & bake the seeds though. The ones you buy are just never as good. Make sure to salt them before you bake them.

Apartment dwellers compost with worms. It really works, my friend used to do it. However, compost is useless unless you grow things with it; so either you have to have a garden/a lot of plants in pots or you should find someone with a garden and establish that yes, they really will take any compost you produce off your hands, before you set it up. Alternatively, you could find out if your city takes compost materials as well as garbage and recycling; San Francisco has separate green bins for that, but

[qe2]

Y'know, I just had a perfectly nice lunch - peanut noodles with Napa cabbage and chopped peanuts, plus the heel of the bread I just made dipped into hollyhock dressing. And yet, having read your comment, I am now RAVENOUS.

God. How can you go wrong with pumpkin, mushrooms, curry, and dairy? My mouth is literally watering.

Ah, yes - compost with worms. I read about that yonks ago, but had entirely forgotten about it until you reminded me here. And yes, I can see where creating compost with no destination in mind would be sort of silly. I don't have a garden, and although I have aspirations of becoming the sort of apartment-dweller who does container gardening I have not yet reached that point. Hm...

[vito_excalibur]

It also occurs to me that most cities have community gardens where you either rent or co-op a bed in the garden. Even if you don't want to put in the time to garden yourself, I'm sure that they would appreciate free compost.