Pumpkin Madness Day One - Roasting Pumpkins


C'mon everyone, celebrate Fall with me!





OK.  This is a photo of a photo from some mailer I got.
I totally ripped it off.  Admittedly.

But let's celebrate Fall anyway!
Even though "Fall" here in NorCal currently means 80 degrees!
Yay!

So we're going to roast up some pumpkins y'all.

Remember these lovely Buttercup Pumpkins I bought at the Farmer's Market?

Were you wondering what the H-e-double hockey sticks I was going to do with them?

Well here you go...

Get yourself some pumpkins...





I got these Buttercup Pumpkins because the Farmer's Market guy told me that they had the best flavor.

I found this recipe on how to roast a pumpkin after I bought the Buttercups, so it looks like the Farmer's Market dude gave me the correct advice.
According to the recipe, orange pumpkins are for Jack O'Lantern's and are too stringy for baking.
By the way, the above pic is 1 of many.
Because this was going on while I was attempting to do my pumpkin photos...




It's amazing how Otie can manage to get his nose under my armpit no matter what I'm doing.

So, about those Buttercups.
Check out all the knobblies...





The Farmer's Market Dude told me the Buttercup's were the small green ones with the weird belly button.

Found it!





This is what the inside looks like...





I followed the directions linked above (and here) for roasting.

It's pretty easy, but let me give you some commentary:
Make sure you have a super sharp knife.
These bad boys were tough to cut.

Here are some up close images of the inside...










I got way more seeds out of these than I anticipated.
More on that later.





Pumpkins de-seeded.





What it looks like from inside a pumpkin...
This makes me think of James & The Giant Peach for some reason.





Pumpkins scraped clean...





Ready to roast...




The roasting took longer than I expected, 375 for one and a half hours...
...it really took that long too.

Roasted inside...





...and outside.  They stuck to the pan pretty good...





I got at least 4 cups of pumpkin from the two small Buttercups.
I put it in a Tupperware to use for my two upcoming pumpkin based recipes which you'll see in a later post....





Left overs for the mulch bin...





The seeds....





Lemme tell ya about these seeds.
Is there a trick for getting the slippery, stringy stuff off?
It took me for days!!
I finally got them all clean and rinsed.
I laid them out on a paper towel (spread across a cookie sheet) and let them dry overnight....
...then I put them in a Ziploc (note to self, should be using something other than a plastic bag for storage) so I could make one of these pumpkin seed recipes from Not Rachel Ray.
BUT.
On about day two I noticed moisture in my bag.
So I opened it to let them dry out.
And the next morning they were growing mold.
Fail.

More Pumpkin Madness in posts to come!

Note:  Notice how I'm saying "upcoming posts" or "later post" instead of "later this week"?  I realized I did that a bunch of times last week and totally didn't deliver.  Fail again.  I have a skewed idea of what I think I can accomplish with what I can actually accomplish.  I will call this SuperWoman Syndrome.  I want to be SuperWoman but I'm just The Cyclist's Wife.  So, please excuse my SWS.  I will try to stop lying to you from now on.  Even if I believe myself.
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