With Halloween this week, it was time to process our pumpkins! My level of excitement for this activity was a little out of proportion for how exciting the activity actually was, but hey! I grew these pumpkins! I was excited!
I started with the larger of the two pumpkins:
And let me tell you, this guy sure was large! I had trouble lifting it up on the counter!
I cut the monster in half and started scooping out the seeds and stringy goop.
I've had more fun...
Because of it's size, I had to bake one half at a time. I added about an inch of water to the pan also, to keep things moist and steamy. Then it went into the oven (180'C) for about 90 minutes.
While it was roasting away, I started prepping the seeds. My kids love eating roasted pumpkin seeds more than actually carving the pumpkin, especially now that they're teen-agers and so friggin COOL.
I never knew this before, but pumpkin seeds are actually difficult for the human body to digest. It is recommended that you boil seeds for 10 minutes before roasting them, to make them more palatable, so that's what I did.
The boiling gave the seeds a slightly green tint, which was interesting to me, because I always wondered why the seeds you buy at the store are green. Now I know!
Back to our first pumpkin half, which was coming out of the oven (as the second half went in)...
The next step was to remove the baked meat from the skin. This was done easily with a spoon.
Leaving a skin not much thicker than a baked potato's to throw away!
Then I used an emulsion mixture to purée the pumpkin.
The result was quite wet, so I had to strain it, a cup-full at a time, through a fine-mesh sieve. There was a lot of purée. This picture is just from half the pumpkin! It took forever. And it was boring. By the time I was finished with this lot the second half of the pumpkin was coming out of the oven, and I had to start all over again. Ugh!
After draining, each cup was stored flat in a plastic bag, and frozen.
I now have 22 cups of pumpkin in my freezer.
That is a lot of pumpkin.
Back to the seeds!
I was ready to bake my boiled seeds now, so I tossed them with a little olive oil, sea salt and Italian seasonings. I baked them 30 minutes at 200'C. Perfect snacks for our Halloween guests!
Not all the purée went in the freezer. Our Halloween guests would also want dessert! So I whipped together some pumpkin pie bars.
Pumpkin pie bars are much easier to bake than a pumpkin pie. I tried a recipe from a blog called Some the Wiser, and they came out good, except I had to make them without the nuts, as one of our dinner guests was allergic. I think they definately need the nuts. Maybe even some oats too, in the crumble topping, to make it more crumbly and less flour-y.
Still, they got rave reviews!
I am definitely making them again with the nuts!
But we're getting ahead of ourselves! There was still that second pumpkin!
Being that I already had 22 cups of purée in the freezer, together with the fact that our guests were knocking at the door, I made the executive decision that pumpkin #2 would serve as a fantastic Jack-o-Lantern.
You have to agree, right?
Seeds from pumpkin 2 were to be saved, some for next year's planting, but most will go to my colleague, who wants them for a school project. So I rinsed them well, then laid them out on newspapers to dry.
It will take them about a week to dry completely. And you want to make sure they're completely dry before you store them, or they will grow mold.
And after the holiday weekend, our Jack-o-Lantern was retired to a back corner of the garden, to be enjoyed by birds and mice and other critters.
All in all, a very successful pumpkin harvest!
Hope you had a Happy Halloween!
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