That's right. I saw. I bought. I conquered. Well, the pumpkin did put up a good fight, but I prevailed! I know it's been said that one of the keys to cutting a pumpkin is a sharp knife. I thought my knives were sharp enough until I went to cut into that bad boy. And at first, it was not going well. So, like any normal person, I proceeded to put my cutting board with pumpkin in tow on the floor of my kitchen and used my body weight against the knife to cut said pumpkin. Nothing. At this point, my knife is stuck in the pumpkin and I cannot cut further and cannot retrieve it from the pumpkin's grasp. Naturally, this progressed into the next logical step. Smash the S.O.B. into smithereens. With the pumpkin stuck on my knife, I lifted the knife (and attached pumpkin) into the air and smashed it down on my cutting board. SUCCESS! Hey, it works for lumberjacks cutting wood. Why wouldn't it work on pumpkins?
Since this worked so well, I continued to use this very sophisticated and highly evolved method to cut the rest of the pumpkin and to also cut the skin from the pumpkin flesh. Sure, parts of pumpkin were literally flying across my kitchen but it was all part of the experience. Next time, I'm charging admission because I'm sure it would be quite entertaining to watch.
And let me say I felt very awesome after this adventure. I used the entire pumpkin (minus the skin/vine) and found that there is something very satisfying in using something in its entirety and having little to no part of it go to waste.
I roasted the pumpkin seeds and added some garlic salt to them. YUM! Click here for how to roast them. (I followed her directions, but found mine needed a bit more time to cook thoroughly. Checking them often is helpful in preventing the burning of the inner seed.)
Well hello little fella! Just keep roasting. Just keep roasting.
Next on the docket, pumpkin corn chow-dah!
It actually thickened up quite nicely, but I'm sure you could add a bit of flour if you wanted it thicker. I found this recipe on Pinterest, but here it is for your convenience. I didn't have any peppers, which made me very sad. They're one of my staples. How could I not have peppers? But, I just threw in some green beans. I figured, "Eh, they'll go with the rest of the ingredients." Apparently, that's how I'm cooking nowadays. Haphazardly following recipes.
And lastly, I made some pumpkin bread. I used canned pure pumpkin for this recipe so although I did not smash any pumpkins for this recipe, I figured it still went with the general pumpkin theme for the evening. I really enjoyed this! Next time, I'll experiment with alternative flours, but I figured it was best to stick to the recipe as close to the original as possible the first time I baked it. (Cooking's different. I have a bit more leeway. Baking I feel needs to be more precise.) The only thing I changed was I subbed unsweetened applesauce for the oil. Oh, and I replaced some of the sugar with honey. Okay. Apparently I didn't stick to the original recipe all that closely.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the recipes if you try them out yourself! And if nothing else, I hope you at least enjoyed my story or the visual of me going Gallagher on the sugar pumpkin.
