The Pumpkin Purée Preparation Perplexity

-

Several weeks ago, I purchased 3 smallish pumpkins from a display at Bearss Groves that had a sign - “sugar pumpkins” - intending to make pumpkin purée from scratch. They were easy to carve open and roasted quite nicely, yielding about 7 pounds of purée. I froze some, made pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie.

Great! I hadn’t done this for many decades, since I lived in New England and tried it. The purée I made then was pretty awful - not the taste, but the texture, which was stringy. I’m older and I hope, wiser.


Yesterday, I went back to purchase a few more since they were on sale after Halloween. They’d moved them, I thought, so I asked and was pointed to the baking pumpkins. I bought 4 for 10 dollars. At home, I prepared to roast 2 of the 4. First step is cutting out the stem and splitting them in half. I thought, hmmm, these are kind of hard, as I tried to stab my paring knife into the top of the gourd. It was so hard, I tried the other pumpkin. It was the same as were the other 2. This prompted me to wonder if they were actually not quite ripe. 


Research after the fact tells me that baking pumpkins can have a harder shell. Ya Think?!! I managed to get a Ginsu steak knife to saw a circle around the stem since I didn’t want to break my good paring knife. I then tried a series of knives to see if I could saw the thing in half. By this time, I was sweating and swearing up a storm. Various knives used to little or no avail: 


At this point, my husband came in and suggested a machete. Fine. Either that or a chainsaw. I suppose a machete is less cleanup. He took the gourd I hadn’t already butchered outside and managed to cut it relatively in half after a few glancing blows which cut off some shards.  


I can see the difference. Baking pumpkins, besides having a shell like a freaking macadamia nut, have a lot less stringy flesh and roast beautifully. I tried to cut a bit off the bottoms so that they wouldn’t roll on the baking sheet. HAHAHA. Just lean the damned pieces against each other.

I completely understand why people buy pumpkin in a can.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

trellis lace bookmark

-
Image
It took me more time to make the written charted pattern for this bookmark than it did to knit it! I'm still learning how to use Apple's Pages. Just click on the link above for the pattern. It's free to anyone who's interested. I'm still pretty bad at making tassels. I think I may invest in one of those little tassel making tools that they sell at Joann's.  I found the lace pattern for this in Barbara G. Walker's Charted Knitting Designs: a third treasury of knitting patterns . Here's the finished bookmark: From knitting From knitting Enjoy! This pretty little orchid opened this morning. With all the rain we've had, two of the three buds dropped, but at least I have one flower. This is Pot. Burana Beauty. From orchids
Read more

leaf me alone, i'm reading

-
Image
I'll have to knit one of these to keep for myself one day.  I'm giving them all away.  Here's a new lace bookmark design.  I call it (actually, Wayne thought of the title) "Leaf me alone, I'm reading".  We stopped by Fiber Art, Inc . last Saturday and I bought 3 more balls of Mini Mochi in different colorways.  I've got enough now to knit 30 or so more bookmarks.  The pattern for "Leaf me alone" is here . I'm accumulating quite an assortment of bookmarks of all kinds.  The Ephemera Society of America posts an article on the history of bookmarks .  Yet another collection.  Add it to the dragons (I will post about them, eventually), orchids, skulls...can't leave out the knitting yarn, needles, and patterns (those seem to multiply like breeding rabbits!).  I have bookmarks in two books I'm reading now: Aimee Bender's  The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake , and  The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Four .    Ephem
Read more

Trois Fleurs Lace Bookmark

-
Image
I finally got down to typing up the chart I made for the new bookmark.  It has three lace flowers surrounded by eyelets around the edges.  The fun bead I picked for the tassel echoes the flower shape of the lace.  I found out that the Windows version of CET Knitting Symbols font works almost perfectly with Apple's Pages.  Almost.  I just could not get any of the alt-codes to work, so had to improvise a "t" for the more commonly used knitting symbol for a twisted stitch.  You can find the finished charted pattern here . I love the part where I get out the pencil and graph paper and draw the design. From knitting The finished bookmark looks great with this color-way of Mini Mochi yarn.  Blocking: From knitting Finished: From knitting Fueled by homemade turkey pot pie, I was able to get through the frustration of (still) learning Apple's Pages version of working with tables as opposed to Word.  The pot pie is to die for.  I'll share my recipe next blog.
Read more