The Life of a Pumpkin

This week has been busy and full with some tutoring and gingerbread-house-making (no pictures yet!), hence there hasn't been time for much blogging.  But I did cook my very first pumpkin. 

Perhaps the following series should be titled "The Death of a Pumpkin" or, less morbidly, "The Life of a Pumpkin Pie" . . .

It started with a small, cheerful pie pumpkin from Walmart.  He made our kitchen more festive for a number of weeks, but the time had come for "the chop" (reference Chicken Run).

In retrospect, the entire process of baking a pumpkin pie from scratch was extremely easy.  The hardest part (physically, not emotionally, I assure you!), was chopping it in two.  But it was at length done,

cleaned, and baked for about an hour under some foil.

Now, what to do with the seeds?  I decided to go to the "trouble" of roasting them.  But for today, I just let them dry. 

I pressed the pumpkin through a colander in an effort to rid it of stringiness, yielding this lovely golden pulp.

Day 2:  Time to mix up the goodness in my beautiful mixing bowl from the beautiful Sarah Brackbill.  :-D

It's just enough for one pie.

Delicious!

The seeds came out ok, too.