Cooking Local Pumpkins & Giveaway

We received two locally grown sugar pumpkins from our CSA this year. We have never cooked a pumpkin before so we were glad that the newsletter we receive with our produce provided us with a recipe and some tips. Below are some of the tips that Jessica gave in the newsletter:

Pick your  pumpkin.  Sugar pumpkins make great pies. Jack-o-lanterns are not recommended, as they can be stringy and tough.(Good to know...we had no idea that there was a difference!)

Cook your pumpkin. Slice up your cleaned out pumpkin, and steam or bake (350 oven) until fork tender.  (We put a little water in the bottom of the pan to keep the pumpkins from drying out).

Puree your pumpkin. After you're done cooking, scoop the flesh out of the skin and mash with a potato masher. If I'm going to freeze for later use, this is where I package it up. When I am ready to puree it for a specific dish, I toss the mash into the blender with the liquids from my recipe (cream, milk, eggnog?) to make a nice fine, stringless puree.

Spice your pumpkin. My favorite pie recipe uses cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, lemon zest and vanilla.

So we cut them in half and put them in the oven. That is our beef broth brewing on the back burner.

And we used the pumpkin seeds for this recipe they were yummy.

Then we pulled the pumpkins out of the oven and scooped the flesh out.

Next, we mashed it up, placed 8 cups of the puree in the freezer and used 2 cups to make a molasses pumpkin pie.

The pie mix was excellent, but the whole wheat crust we attempted to make for the first time was terrible. If anyone has a good pie crust recipe please comment!  We would love to make a pie for Thanksgiving with a crust that is edible. We forgot to get a pic of the pie....maybe next time.

And the Giveaway:

Check out the Nourishing Days site. She is giving away a L'Equip 524 Dehydrator and she has posted a review regarding the product as well.