the great pumpkin(s)

Jon had to work this morning cleaning up from the conference that was here this weekend and when I got home from church he had two pumpkins sitting on our kitchen counter (leftovers from decorations).

You would have thought he gave me the moon.
I have really been wanting to try cooking and pureeing and freezing my own pumpkin to use for pies and baking, etc. but an extra pumpkin or two just wasn’t in the food budget lately. So today was my chance!

This is what I did:
1. Cut the pumpkins in half.

2. Scooped out the goop and seeds and rinsed and saved the seeds (they are drying for 48 hours and then we’re going to make this with them).

3. Placed one half of the pumpkin cut side down on a cookie sheet and baked at 350 for 1 hour. And yes there were two pumpkins, which means 4 half pumpkins, which means I cooked pumpkin for four hours straight… STRIKE 1.

4. After cooking I scooped out the good stuff and beat it with my mixer. Then I strained the liquid through a cloth so it wasn’t too watery… that was REALLY a mess. STRIKE 2.

5. Next I measured out 1 and 3/4 cups of pumpkin into freezer bags. (apparently that’s how much is in a can of pumpkin) I also did a few bags with 1 cup in them because that’s how much a pumpkin pancake recipe calls for!

All in all we got about 8 cans of pumpkin… that’s it. STRIKE 3.

We won’t be buying pumpkins to make our own puree anytime soon. BUT if free pumpkins find their way to us like they did today, it was a fun experiment!