Wednesday, November 4, 2009

What to Do With the Leftover Pumpkin



















This Halloween, we decided to decorate our pumpkins with crayons instead of carving jack-o-lanterns so that we could actually eat the pumpkins. Now that the holiday is over, I have pumpkin puree coming out of my ears. Making pumpkin puree is surprisingly easy! Click HERE for step-by-step guide with pictures.

Once you have the puree, there are a million things you can do with it. Here are a few of my favorites:
  • Pumpkin Pie. Duh.
  • Pumpkin Ooey Gooey Bars. My mother made a healthy version of this classic Paula Dean recipe this weekend using fresh pumpkin and an organic cake mix. Very good!
  • Pumpkin Peanut Soup. I made this for dinner tonight. It was very simple and very tasty. It reminded me of satay sauce.
  • Curried Pumpkin Soup. This recipe is a bit more complicated, but sounds (and looks) amazing! I found this recipe on Canary Girl, a great blog by an American mother of four living in the Canary Islands. She loves to cook and take pictures of her food. Her photographs are gorgeous!
If you don't want pumpkin every day for the next month, try freezing it. If you divide the puree into small measured portions, you can easily defrost only what you need for a recipe.

You can also freeze the puree in ice cube trays. I've done this with lots of different fruits and vegetables. Because the cubes are small, they defrost quickly. These are some of the ways I've used frozen puree cubes. It's a great way to sneak extra nutrients into to a recipe without dramatically changing the taste.
Puree cubes are also great for baby food. Wholesome Baby Food an excellent resource for making homemade baby food.
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4 comments:

  1. When I first saw that gorgeous picture, I thought you made it and was very impressed. I'm still impressed that you're making such good use of all your pumpkin. :)

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  2. Thanks, Lisa. Yikes - I certainly don't want to give the impression that I took that photo. I just thought it was so exquisite, I wanted to share it with others. It came from a wonderful blog called Canary Girl (see link in the story). Being new to blogging, I'm still figuring things out. However, it has been my experience that fellow bloggers generally enjoy sharing content, as long as proper credit is given and links back to the original site are provided. This is such a nice photograph and Canary Girl seems like such a lovely person - I think I'll email her and make sure she's okay with what I've done here.

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  3. Hi Rebecca, Thanks for all the ideas for leftover pumpkin! The ooey gooey bars sound delicious!!! :) I'm so glad you liked the picture, and of course I'm cool with your using it here! :)

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