The Great Pumpkin Experiment...Round 1

Yesterday, I had to wait around for a package to be re-delivered and it seemed like the right time to finally crack into the pumpkin I got at Tesco last week. Obviously, I don't care about carving pumpkins at all (it's hard, and mine always turn out terrible) but I do care about trying to turn the only pumpkin I could find in this town into something edible, preferably pumpkin pie.

So I followed all the steps:

Chopping...



...cleaning...



...roasting...



...until I got to the part where you're supposed to puree the pumpkin, in a food processor or blender or with a hand mixer. We don't have ANY of these things in the kitchen, so I used a fork and my (slightly pathetic) elbow grease. Needless to say, the combination of using a carving pumpkin (when "real" pumpkin for eating comes from pie or sugar pumpkins) and not having any sort of motorized blending instrument left me with a bowl of stringy, watery glop. I don't abandon recipes halfway through, and I already had all the ingredients so I went ahead and tried to turn it into a pie.



Please ignore the sad, sad crust here (apparently, I also need to work on my pie crust skills). I'll be tackling that again when I try the whole process again with a butternut squash. I guess pumpkin in a can like we get in the States is usually made from squash anyway, and I might achieve something a little closer to "puree" consistency.

Last night we tried the crustless extra pan of filling I baked on the side, and Matt loved it. I'm not sure how I feel about strings in my pumpkin pie, but it tasted fine. The point here is to end up with a proper pie for Thanksgiving, because there is no way I'm letting one of my favorite holidays get by without attempting an overly ambitious re-creation of the traditional dinner. Seriously, I love Thanksgiving! I've been known to beg for leftovers as a guest or make Joe roast a second turkey so I could keep eating it for days.

Note: Matt says, "I go to school." That's why he doesn't update the blog anymore. Until I can convince him to update, you'll have to suffer through my two favorite topics: food and fall. Kathleen, I'm going to get those fall pictures for you soon!