The Pumpkin Conundrum

I have been trying to keep these blog posts in sequence of my cake experience. HOWEVER, I believe I need to skip to current events starting around Thanksgiving time, as they are quite entertaining. Lets start with the pumpkin. So before Halloween, I bought a ginormous pumpkin to decorate our front stairs. Also, my mother-in-law Marsha bought 5 small size pumpkins to decorate the "garden" Not the real baby ones, just smaller pumpkins with seeds in them and all. YOu probably could carve them! I have always wanted to roast pumpkin seeds, but never had. How difficult could it be? I started with a smaller pumpkin incase I completely screwed it up. They were addictive!!! very good, very buttery. I decided to make another batch, bigger and better. I chopped into the ginormous pumpkin--ONLY intending to make pumpkin seeds. and BOY were they bigger and better! these were the best I made yet! So when we finished the seeds, I was left with this huge ginormous cut up pumpkin. NOW WHAT?! Well, I've always wanted to roast and puree my own pumpkin for cooking. So I did it. But I didn't realize that there are certain size pumpkins especially for cooking?!?! I cut up the pumpkin into managable sized chunks to roast. From doing my research online, I found that if you put the pumpkin chucks cut side up, and put some oil on the cut side, and then put approx 1/4" water in the bottom of the pan, they will get softer quicker, and cook easier. Well that seemed to work....but due to the ridiculous size of this monster, I had to do many many MANY batches of this roasting session. This took 10xs longer than I wanted to spend on this. But, i started this crazy project, and Gosh Darnit, I was gonna finish it!! Finally-I finished roasting allllll the pumpkin chucks. Now it's time to puree it. Well, I didn't have a food processor. I had gotten away without one for 4 yrs, didn't think i needed one now! Hell-I have TWO blenders! (not to mention they were both probably older than I was) BUT they worked. I would cut off the pumpkin skin while it was still warm, and chop into smaller chunks. then put in blender, and blend. No problem....hahahah BOY WAS I WRONG! I had pumpkin in my hair, on my clothes, on my face. I was a wreck! This damn pumpkin was taking over my kitchen, and my life! This happened over the course of a whole weekend. I realized the blender was not working. I could only put a small quantity of pumpkin in at a time, and then had to continue to put in the spoon to move around the pumpkin, which caused it to splatter on me. I probably smelled like babyfood. I was quite a site! The blender blended inconsistantly, and just did not work. DADDY SAVES THE DAY! Dad had a food processor! ah-ha! Thank GOD for Dad's and kitchen appliances :) Don't get me wrong, I was very happy for the food processor, but due to the enormous quantity of pumpkin still left to puree, it still took FOREVER to finish. But I had all these pumpkin baked goods i wanted to make! I had BIG plans for this pumpkin. I ended up having about 12-15 cups of pumpkin puree. what the hell did I think I was going to make with this? I gave 3-4 cups to my dad, he could have fun with that. Ironically enough, no one else wanted any of my pumpkin puree? I don't understand that! I did end up making a couple chewy, rock-like pumpkin breads, and many pumpkin cookies that were very good and very moist. Ultimately, about 8-9 cups of pumpkin ended up getting trashed. I got pumpkin burn-out very quickly. Oh well. Now I can say I did it though. Canned pumpkin ain't that bad?! :)