So we have had a few interesting pumpkin experimentations. Last night, we cooked a ham. Jeff had a cracked-open pumpkin that he was fairly determined to cook. I was going to make mashed potatoes to go with the ham. When it came down to it, there were already so many dirty pans that I decided to mash the pumpkin and skip the potatoes. You have to puree pumpkin so it's not stringy. We did. It was very strange--like eating baby food. The kids didn't eat it very well (Jacob, Emma, and Joseph actually finished their servings). Tonight, we had it again (leftovers!), but this time I added some mashed-potatoe flakes and that helped it a ton (texture was much better). I wonder what I will do with it tomorrow, as we still have plenty of leftovers.
Also, Jeff wanted to make pumpkin juice. So, I strained out the water from cooking the pumpkin, and refrigerated it. Tonight, after carving our pumpkins, we decided to try our pumpkin juice. I blended it with sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. It actually became quite frothy! Each kid carefully took a tiny sip. I was scared to try it, but Jeff teased me saying that I might like it, and that would be weird, so I better not try it (which is my excuse for not trying a lot of things). I took a sip, and nearly puked. My reaction was almost exactly that of Buddy the Elf's when he thinks body-spray is a sugary spray and so he sprays it in his mouth. If you haven't seen "Elf", then you won't understand. Yuck.
So, Jeff has a department potluck on Wednesday; which one should he take--the mashed pumpkin or the pumpkin juice?
4 comments:
both but never mind the bread
Awesome comment!!
We did a lot of pumpkin experiment cooking this year too. The best was to get the smaller pumpkins labeled for pumpkin pie (not very stringy and a nice sweet squash) clean it, bake it for about an hour with a little water in it, then fry up some mild italian sausage (you have to take it out of the casing) like you would fry hamburger for tacos. I also add french bread chunks, but that is not necessary. Then drain the water, add a little face on the pumpkin and stuff with the sausage. It is actually really really good and the kids really like it. The sausage flavors the pumpkin well and you have your meat and vegetable and that is all we need for one meal. We also tried pumpkin soup and that was very well disliked. It reminded me of Indian (India) food. We tried pumpkin bread (yummy), Pumpkin cake (okay), pumpkin cheese cake (good but we would rather have either pumpkin pie or cheese cake instead, and pumpkin roll (an all-time favorite). It sounds like you had fun with pumpkin cooking too. And I hope you have time to blog more. I have had so much fun blogging and reading everyone's blogs.
Ben's fam tried to make Pumpkin Juice once for the Harry Potter Party, and my reaction was very similar to yours, I almost puked. It ws not very tasty at all. Wow, we have never gotten creative with pumpkins at all though. Just carved them, and then chucked them in the garbage when they got old. Good for you all for making stuff with your pumpkins. I actually think the mashed pumpkin sounds very yummy.
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