19 Cent Pumpkin

Well, tonight I finally did something with that 19 cent pumpkin that I bought on November the 1^st. I didn’t smash it on the road or toss it into the windshield of a pickup truck from an overpass (although the thought had crossed my mind), and I didn’t compost it. I will compost some of it tomorrow. I decided to make pumpkin filling. It is just pumpkin filling, because there are no spices or sugar or really anything other than pumpkin in it. However, I am getting ahead of myself.

First, I had to find out what the hell I was going to do with the pumpkin, so I needed a recipe. We have about forty cookbooks and uncounted Christmas and holiday magazines that are just crammed full of recipes. God, I didn’t want to wade through that mess, so I opted for the internet. Now, I have about 5,800,000 results from Google. Gee thanks for the help. I picked one site and read what they had to say. It seems that there is nothing better than making a pie with filling that you made from a fresh pumpkin. Well, since this is nothing like a fresh pumpkin, I am in.

I have to quarter the pumpkin (lets call it Joe from now on, I am getting tired of typing pumpkin), take the seeds out and scrape the insides with a spoon. Then we should put it in a 325º oven for about two hours in a roasting pan with some water. Let me tell you, I have a pretty big roasting pan but there is no way it would take “Joe” cut into quarters. I went all Jack the Ripper on Joe and shoved him into the pan. I took Joe’s seeds and rinsed them, but they were still really gooey and I was pretty sure they were just too gooey. I put them on a napkin to dry off a bit before I toasted them. Everything seems to be going pretty well.

I went back to Joes seeds in ten or fifteen minutes to find that they and the napkin were now dryish and thoroughly bonded together. I picked off as much of the napkin as I could (not much) and then rinsed the seeds again. Now they are gooey, wet and covered with napkin. I eat paper sometimes, not usually with Joe’s seeds, but when in Rome. I seasoned the seeds and mixed them up in a bowl. Wow, the seasoning loosened the paper and I was able to pick it off. Things are looking up. I put the seeds into the oven and in about a half hour or so they were ready. I tested one and remembered that I don’t particularly like pumpkin seeds.

I went out and turned a few snowman decorations for the tree and came back in to a smell that reminded me of my childhood. Every Halloween mom would put candles in the carved Joes and in short order the house stunk of burnt Joe. Wretched smell! It should make a lovely pie.

Now, I have to scrape the insides off of Joe and toss the skin. It isn’t as easy as you might think to strip soggy boiling hot mush from the insides of Joe. I’m going back to using pumpkin. I managed to get all of the pumpkin guts into a bowl and went back to the directions. Okay, now it is time to puree this stuff. I figured that I will use the blender, because it has a “puree” setting which is probably just what the doctor ordered. When I was pulling it out the top dropped into the dog’s water. I shook off the top and got the rest of the blender out. What? It is just water!

I put a hefty scoop of the guts into the blender and hit puree. It spun really fast, but didn’t do anything to the guts. Okay, time to get the food processor out. More fricking dishes to clean, and tough ones too! The food processor made short work of my old pumpkin, well, after I put the right blade in, and now I have a large bowl of pureed pumpkin guts. The recipe says that I now have plenty of prepared pumpkin that can be used in all of my pumpkin recipes. I only have one recipe that calls for pumpkin, Pumpkin pie! The recipe doesn’t say what I should do now, but I still like the idea of tossing it into the windshield of a pickup truck from an overpass. I suppose that I will carefully measure and weigh it and then put it into freezer bags with a label with the date and contents clearly marked on the outside. I am pretty sure it will never be used for a pie (not just because of the dog water incident) because who wants to jeopardize good pastry? I think you can get a can of pumpkin pie filling for about 19 cents at Superstore.

Next year at about this time when I am clearing out space in the freezer I will come across this yellowish, orange, freezer burnt mess and just toss it. Maybe off of an overpass…