Monday 9 December 2013

The Great Pumpkin Massacre of 2013

I am so far behind at this point that I figure I'm either late for this round, or really early for the next one..   but I promised myself I'd keep plodding along, so here I am.   

Sucker for punishment, perhaps -- but at least caught up, is caught up.. regardless of the time frame.. so I'll just carry on where I left off.. 

Every year we decide that we're going to get pumpkins and do a massive roast of pumpkin seeds, since everybody loves them so much.  We'd been buying the bulk barn variety, but we just find them SO salty,  that making our own seemed to make much more sense.  

We were watching the sale sheets, and just happened to notice that pumpkins were on sale 2 for $5 ~ What a great opportunity to Pumpkin seed to our heart's content! 

So Caelly and I headed out.. and who did we bump into but our eldest daughter Caryn!  We picked out 8 pumpkins in varying sizes.   To be fair, Caelly picked most of them.  Caryn and I were amused to watch the enthusiasm unfold.  

One poor specimen committed suicide on the grocery store floor..   OOPS!  

Back at home, we've got the first batch in.  Caelly cut them in half, and I got them cleaned out and put the first batch in the oven.  Caelly started on the pie shells.  




Pumpkin Guts!

The most time consuming part is picking the seeds out of the goop! 

Ready to be seasoned and baked!  

The pie shells came out looking great!  


The first pair of pies came out looking a little on the well done side, 
but the next 2 were much better. 

All in all it took us all weekend to get all of the pumpkin baked, pureed, and prepared for the freezer,  and it was days more before James had all of the seeds roasted at long last.  

Unfortunately by the time we got to that point we were no longer taking pictures, but just glad that the pumpkins were DONE.   

There were seeds of many different flavours, and James felt bad that we'd spent all weekend killing pumpkins so he could have the seeds..   but we had fun doing it..   and he's worth it! 

We also have some 50+ packages of pumpkin puree in the freezer for future use..  lots of work but SO worth it :)

Apparently I am a waste of pumpkin though since it is a bad thing to have that many pumpkins and not carve at least one for Hallowe'en.   We were however gearing up for a trip to Vancouver and weren't sure if we would be here for Halloween so *that* seemed like a waste..  ah well perspectives, right?