Pumpkins all Year Long

I realize that somehow not all of you are "into" Halloween as S.D. and I are, and might not have the plethora of jack o'lanterns that we do, hence do not have the quantity of pumpkin seeds we end up with, but let me share a great way to use pumpkins all year long!

The day after Halloween, head out to your local farmer.  The local farmer will want to get rid of his pumpkins desperately.  We often buy enough pumpkins to fill the back of my pick-up truck, and make it steer funny for about $20.00.  Now, the farmer will likely have winter squash, maybe honey, perhaps some other stuff, too.  Buy that so you can support that agriculture, too.  Who knows? You may be helping a kid through college!

Anyway, what we like to do with the majority of our pumpkins is to set them out and spend the day shooting them as they advance (the Pumpkin Invasion).  I have no idea, nor do I care if they reseed in the field after this.  The few (10 or so) that we held back go back home with us to get processed.  When we process the pumpkin, we turn it into easy to use, year-round food product.  Sometimes we can simply store the pumpkin, but if there is any puncture or scrape in the side of the pumpkin, it will rot quickly.  This method keeps waste at a minimum.

The pumpkin gets cut in half, the stem area cut out, and scraped out of it's seeds.  Half the pumpkin gets put, cut side down, on a large cake pan (Wilton's half-sheet) and roasted for about and hour or two, closer to two at about 350 to 400*.  The pumpkin will collapse during this time, some or a lot.  When you pull it out of the oven, the skin peels off easily, and the pumpkin can then be put into baggies, cut into roughly 5x5" slices.  We then put those in one of our freezers, stacked up like bricks.  The second half gets roasted, so on and so forth for days.

The seeds get put into baggies and frozen, too, to get roasted later in the year. When we roast them later in the year, they get thawed and roasted (unsalted) at about 350* until done but NOT BURNED.  Burned seeds get junked into winter compost, as they will make everything they are put into taste burned. 

The seeds will get ground in the coffee grinder (long since we've stopped using it for coffee) in batches as needed.  I'll replace  up to half the flour in a recipe with pumpkin seed meal.  It adds quite a lot of protein, a nutty flavor (with out adding nuts, which is really nice when you have company with nut allergies!), potassium, magnesium and fiber! 

The frozen pumpkin gets thawed and drained (a LOT of water will come out!), then it gets pureed and added to recipes as a low calorie recipe stretcher, a moisture additive, and a taste enhancer.  It works wonders!

If your only source of pumpkins is jack o'lanterns, you can use the left over cuttings and scrape your pumpkins really thin (which makes them easier to carve!) to use the pumpkin pulp!  Of course, we have at least 10 jack o'lanterns, so there's quite a lot to keep from them, too!

Our next challenge is to preserve pumpkin products without using the freezer.  When the ZA hits, the freezer might just be a point of moot.