Pumpkins Galore!

Being the week of Halloween, we were able to do a few activities at work with the Dreamers that were festive and Halloween-centered. The students didn't have school on Thursday or Friday because of teacher-parent conferences, so we held a Dreamer Camp Day on Thursday. The Dreamers arrived at 9:30 and we started with a literacy activity where they were given a list of fall/Halloween adjectives and then had to use a thesaurus to find synonyms to those words. Each Dreamer was assigned a word that they then had to act out and have their peers guess their synonym. After that activity we got to carve pumpkins! David had cut the tops off of the 25 pumpkins (that we had bought at Whole Foods a week earlier for $1/pumpkin) and the kids were able to carve jack-o-lanterns, after they cleaned out the gunk inside of course. We served them a festive lunch of (all orange foods): mac and cheese, carrots and ranch, Clementine oranges and Funfetti! Halloween cupcakes they frosted afterwards.

We had bought 25 pumpkins but ended up only having about 20 Dreamers attend camp. Dusty offered David and I a pumpkin or two at the end of the day and I happily took two, along with two baggies of gunky pumpkin seeds (a lot of the Dreamers expressed interest in taking pumpkin seeds home with them. We had initially planned on baking them with the students but ended up running out of time so we just divided up the seeds into Ziplocs. Some of the Dreamers didn't want any seeds though so I was happy to take them home instead).

When I got home Thursday night I thought that I could roast one of the pumpkins like you do with butternut squash. I looked up stuff online but wasn't certain how it would turn out. I ended up just cutting it into chunks, sticking into the oven at about 350 for over an hour on 3 baking sheets (with a little water in them so the skin wouldn't stick to the pans) and hoping for the best. I didn't season them at all because I didn't know if they would turn out. Luckily they did, unfortunately they were super bland. No worries though, I ended up eating one with some leftover sauce, Indian-seasoned. I ate another one with some vegan butter, salt and pepper on it that was really tasty. And I ate a third plain, on my way home from snowboarding with David on Friday. The only complaint I had, besides them being a bit bland, was the consistency reminded me an awful lot of the innards of pumpkins when you are carving them, which is an obvious statement for sure.

Today I woke up with the second pumpkin waiting for me, in addition to the pumpkin seeds I'd cleaned and dried. I scooped out the innards and baked the second pumpkin just like the first, but for much longer, about an hour and a half. I decided I was going to make homemade pumpkin puree, and I wanted the pumpkin to be really easy to take the skin off of. While waiting for that to bake, I seasoned the seeds with the sweet flavoring: butter, pumpkin pie spices; that is my favorite of the three I have made this fall.






The pumpkin puree was super easy and now I have 3 jars full, which when I bought a can of it last week cost about $2 so I feel pretty stinkin' loaded right now (just kidding!!). All I did was peel the skin off the pumpkin chunks, stick them in my all time favorite kitchen tool, the food processor, and pureed. I then put the puree into left over jars I had previously used and stuck them in my freezer.







Since I had so much puree, and since Dad had shared a few pumpkin recipes with me in an USA Today newspaper article, I was inspired to use some of that puree today! And I did! I made some hearty pumpkin soup and some maple-pumpkin oat muffins. The soup's recipe is listed here and the muffin recipe is in the following blog post. I was careful with the soup and made sure not to add any spicy seasoning in it, which fortunately the recipe didn't call for any. I wanted Britney to be able to eat it after last week's curry coconut pumpkin soup she couldn't enjoy. I tried just a little of it after taking it out of the food processor and I think she's going to really like it. It is even a little sweet since it calls for some maple syrup. I ended up adding a bit too much of pepper though so hopefully that won't scare her away from it!


Harvest Pumpkin Soup

http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/food/cooking-recipes/2010-10-26-recipe-pumpkin-soup_N.htm

This soup recipe is sure to warm anyone up when the air turns crisp.
Ingredients

•2 tbsp unsalted butter

•1 medium onion, minced

•2 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 2 tsp)

•½ tsp ground cumin

•½ tsp ground coriander

•¼ tsp ground nutmeg

•3 cups low-sodium chicken broth, plus extra as needed

•2 cups water

•1 (15-oz) can pure pumpkin (not pumpkin-pie filling)

•¼ cup maple syrup

•½ cup half-and-half

•Salt and ground black pepper

Directions

Melt the butter in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the garlic, cumin, coriander and nutmeg and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Stir in the broth, water, pumpkin and maple syrup, scraping up any browned bits, and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until the flavors have melded, about 15 minutes.

Working in batches, purée the soup until smooth, 1 to 2 minutes. Return the soup to a clean pot. Stir in the half-and-half and additional broth as needed to adjust the soup's consistency. Heat the soup gently over low heat until hot (do not boil). Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Servings:

4 to 6 generous one-cup servings.

Nutrition per serving: 140 calories; 7 grams of fat; 4 grams of saturated fat; 3 grams of protein; 18 grams of carbohydrates; 4 grams of fiber;15 milligrams of cholesterol; 300 milligrams of sodium.


Here's the soup in a tupperware container. I've found it difficult sometimes to take pictures of soup, especially pureed soup.


Here's a close up shot of the pureed soup, not the best shot but just imagine how tasty it is!!