Who Are You Calling Crafty?

I have always wanted to try to cook a pumpkin.  With Booga’s pumpkin this year, he painted it with non-toxic paint so I cleaned it (taking all of the paint off of it) and decided to cook it.  I have a giant All-Clad Stock Pot with a big steamer basket (I got it as a wedding present).  Jeff was nice enough to cut and gut the pumpkin up for me (my pinky on my right hand still isn’t “healed” since cutting it several months ago).  We decided to steam it because that way Booga would try to eat the pumpkin before its time (he did try some uncooked pumpkin and was quite disappointed).  My goal of this was to use as much of the pumpkin as possible.  For several reasons the winter months are always on the lean side for us (tourism tappers off so the phone isn’t as busy) and we hate wasting food of any kind.  If I had a compost bin the skin would have went in there, not wasting any of the pumpkin (maybe next year).  I know the pictures are small and bad but my phone is dying a slow painful death, the important part is I remembered to take some photos.

 I put 12 cups of water in the bottom and placed the pumpkin filled steam basket in there and steamed for 45 minutes.  I let the pumpkin cool a little (because steaming hot pumpkin is REALLY HOT!) and scooped everything into the food processor and blended.  I was shocked on how much pumpkin we now have.  A Libby’s® can of Pumpkin is 15oz or 1 3/4cup of pumpkin.  I split mine up into 1 3/4 cup of pumpkin and froze it.  I got 4 “cans” in the freezer, I used 1 can for a pie (which lasted maybe 24 hours) and Booga pretty much ate another can. 

 Our pumpkin was (is) so sweet I honestly couldn’t believe how sweet it was (it is so good!) making me wish the princess would have painted hers as well.  Instead her pumpkin had a slow painful death on our kitchen table (see above photos).  I have NEVER had that happen before and for the record the black eyes happened overnight – I checked it repeatedly to make sure that wouldn’t happen. 

I also kept the steam water for vegetable broth – I have already cooked rice with it and plan on using it in my holiday cooking as my vegetable broth.  The gooey innards of the pumpkin we used in soup base that ended up being pumpkin risotto (very good) because I added to much rice.  I made pie number one (see photo) and it lasted maybe a day.  I plan on trying to make the pie filling in the crock pot because neither of my kids really like the crust.  Of course we roasted pumpkin seeds which the princess loves but Booga is not a huge fan of.

I can honestly say I will do this again and will probably NEVER buy canned pumpkin again because this was pretty easy.  Also the pumpkin pie I made with the fresh pumpkin was probably the best pumpkin pie I have ever made!