Pumpkins . . .

I'm finally getting my Halloween post up. Our internet was down since Wednesday (and I was a few days later than I wanted to be anyway). So now I can share our kid pictures, pumpkin recipes, and costumes.

Owen and I had our system down this year and I think we did two pumpkins in the time it took us to do one last year (probably because I didn't help him at all last year, I guess I was with Abigail?). So the kids described what they wanted, I sketched, Owen scooped out, I did detail carving, viola!

I hate throwing out two whole pumpkins, so I tried to be very resourceful with the scraps.

Besides saving the seeds to roast, I cut all edible pieces out of the trash pile to cook.

The eyes, mouth, and nose all got saved (and just the thin dark orange skin peeled off); then I cut out pieces of pumpkin from inside the pumpkins where possible (made the lid thinner, hacked off pieces where it wouldn't be noticeable, thinned the rind in places) and loaded it into my crock pot.

At that point it was late enough at night that I didn't want to deal with the seeds or the flesh, so I left the seeds to dry on a tray and put the crock pot into the refrigerator.

The next morning I loaded the pumpkin into the crockpot and cooked it a good long time. Later in the day I blended it and cooked it a while longer to make pumpkin puree.

I froze some of that into one cup cubes because I was warned by Marissa from Food in Jars that you can never can pumpkin except in chunks. Then I continued cooking the rest in the crock pot with a little sugar and made one jar of pumpkin butter (we just finished that yesterday).

All in all, I found the pumpkin products very successful. We ate the seeds and pint of pumpkin butter for two weeks, and we really enjoyed them. The pumpkins looked great for Halloween and we tried a new trick we read to coat the insides of the eyes mouth and nose with Vaseline to keep them from mold. That worked until it rained really hard a few days before Halloween, then the insides got moldy. I have puree in the freezer to make pumpkin muffins later.

This is the season where I start storing up for the winter with fruits and veggies that store well. So this weekend we got some onions, potatoes, butternut squash, and cooking pumpkins.

So we should be all set in the pumpkin department. I may have to try a pumpkin flan or pie or something. :)

Happy fall!

A New Christmas Cookie for the Davis family

I was very excited to find a recipe for pumpkin applesauce cookies with oatmeal & raisins posted on epicurious.com (If you want to see the webpage, click here).  I was going to spare you all the results of my healthy cookie search, but then the cookies were actually really good.  (Especially with the nuts and chocolate chips I added.)

Pumpkin Applesauce Cookies with Oatmeal & Raisins

Start to finish: about 45 minutes

Ingredients

2 cups, all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cups, quick oats
1 tsp, baking soda
1/2 tsp, salt
2 tsp, cinnamon
1/4 tsp, ground cloves
1/2 tsp, ground ginger
1/2 tsp, ground nutmeg
1/2 cup, unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 cup, natural applesauce
1 cup, packed brown sugar
1 cup, sugar
1 cup, canned pumpkin
1 large egg
1 tsp, vanilla extract
(note: cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg quantities can be increased if stronger flavor is desired.)

3/4 cup raisins

PreparationPreheat oven to 350. In a medium bowl, combine flour, oats, baking soda, salt cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg and mix well. In 2nd larger bowl, beat together butter, applesauce, brown sugar and sugar until light and fluffy. Add pumpkin, egg and vanilla extract and mix in. Then add flour mixture and mix well. Gently stir in raisins. Drop teaspoons of batter onto greased cookie sheets. Bake for 12-14 minutes, or until light brown on bottom. Let cool on wire racks, then store in an air-tight container.

(note: these are cake-light in texture and will not crisp up.)

They were amazing, but I highly suggest stirring in nuts and chocolate chips when you stir in the raisins--and we added extra raisins, too.  My helper-chefs are below:

Pumpkin Muffins Revisited

I have a bunch of squash I need to use that I bought at the farmer's market.  Here they are, aren't they gorgeous?

I actually started with sunshine squashes, a pumpkin relative.

I thought I'd revisit an old recipe I tried last winter for pumpkin muffins.  Here's the link if anyone's interested in trying it:  pumpkin muffin recipe

I hack the squash in half, then roast both halves side by side in a roasting pan.

The batter, with the raisins this time.

My helpers really surprised me at how capable they were.  Apparently I've been underestimating them!

The helper, one of two.  This guy did almost ALL of the stirring, my least favorite part; greased the cups; and filled the cups.  It was so much better actually letting go of the process and letting him really help me.

The finished product: they were really good with the raisins!

Pumpkin Breakfast Muffins

So I had leftover frozen pumpkin to use up from my freezer.  And I wanted to make a healthy breakfast muffin out of it.  I couldn't really find one I thought fit the bill.  The closest I found was actually a cupcake recipe on Wellsphere:  Original pumpkin cupcake/muffin recipe

What I made was actually . . .   (approximately . . . )

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease 24 muffin tins and a little loaf pan.

2 cups pumpkin

4 large eggs
1/2 cup honey
2 large mashed bananas
1/2 cup olive oil

Mix above ingredients first.  Then add:

3 cups ground whole grains (you could use whatever flour you want, I imagine)
1/2 cup flaxmeal (approx.)
4 teaspoons baking powder
about 4 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Stir, then add 1 cup chopped walnuts.  Spoon batter into cups and put leftover in mini-loaf pan.  Muffins take about 25 min. to bake, and the loaf may take a little longer.  Test with knife or toothpick.
I think if I make them again I will add raisins or dates.  I would also consider experimenting with a little applesauce.  If anyone does anything different with these or has a similar recipe, please post under comments!  My measurements are mostly approximations, I should add as a disclaimer.