The October Farmer’s Markets were full of lovely pumpkins and I could not resist their siren song. So, this year I bought a Halloween pumpkin with wonderful intentions of carving it into a masterpiece… but that didn’t happen. Halloween came and went and my pumpkin sat on my porch looking very autumnal but not very scary.
On Monday night I was feeling inspired by all of the posts I have been reading about roasting pumpkins. I figured that since my pumpkin hadn’t quite turned out to be the ultimate Halloween decoration I could still get my money’s worth. All needed to do was roast it and turn it into tasty pumpkin puree. Such a wonderful idea, at least in theory. When I actually set about roasting and pureeing, my brilliant inspiration gradually turned to determined frustration and ended in exhausted triumph.
At this point I should probably mention that I was not using a “cooking” pumpkin. My pumpkin was about 19 inches tall and 16 inches around.
The size should have been my first clue that this would not be a quick task. I also got a bit of a surprise when I cut my giant pumpkin open. I was expecting it to have an 1-1/2 inches or so of meat to it. Boy was I wrong! The walls were about 3 inches thick on the sides and 4 inches thick towards the bottom.
Okay, we have now established that this pumpkin was no shrinking violet. I fact only 1/4 of the pumpkin fit into my modest oven at a time. It took 30 minutes at 450 degrees for the pumpkin to become perfectly roasted. When the roasted pumpkin became cool enough to handle it was time to remove the skin and puree it.
Now is a good time to mention that the sole blending device in my kitchen is a blender. Not a fancy vita-mix type blender either. Just a run of the mill 6 cup Oster blender. It has always served me well and makes a mean smoothie, but I was about to discover that blending frozen fruit and blending roasted pumpkin don’t even come close in comparison.
I peeled and sliced roughly 1 cup of pumpkin and proceeded to attempted to puree it. My blender put out an awesome effort….for the first 5 seconds. After the addition of some water and some coaxing with a spoon I got my first bit of pumpkin puree. 2 hours, a bit of cursing and a few tears later I had pureed half of the pumpkin. You may be asking yourself, exactly how much puree can one make from half a giant pumpkin?
The answer, 23 cups.
Half of this pumpkin is still sitting in my fridge, sliced and waiting to be roasted this weekend. I decided that pumpkin roasting/pureeing is not a great weekday activity for me. I definitely won’t be doing this on a Monday night ever again.
You are toooo funny!!!! Can we expect a few great recipes with pumpkin as the star ingredient in the future? I love pumpkin bread. Do you have a vegan receipe for it?
As a matter of fact I do have a vegan pumpkin bread recipe. And pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pie, pumkin soup…pretty much anything that you can add pumpkin to. I have quite a bit of pumpkin to experiment with. : )
way to go at it. seriously. best way to learn. experimentation. maybe there is a pumpkin bible? there should be… or at least a squash bible. all things in that family. so much to discover!
Thanks for the kind words. This process was experimentation at it’s finest. I am just glad my blender survived the whole ordeal. : )
I am incredibly impressed with your efforts! I think both the pumpkin and blender would have ended up in some giant heap on the floor with me!
I look forward to some vegan pumpkin pie recipes! YUM!
[…] you happened to have read about my pumpkin experience then you know that my modest blender was the only blending/pureeing device in my kitchen. While […]
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I do admire your determination, and on a monday night too! I would love to know how long it took to use up the 23 cups!