fresh pumpkin puree

Remember my pink pumpkins? Well, in a moment of zeal the other week, I found myself cutting up the smallest one so I could try cooking it up.

I don't know what came over me. It was already around 3 in the afternoon. I had begun the process of making a new bread recipe (three loaves of oatmeal raisin bread), finished another batch of tzatizki, and had cleaned all the bathrooms earlier in the day.

I think I thought that since the oven was going to be on anyway I might as well do a pumpkin and see how it goes. And then I figured I had to do the seeds at the same time (oven efficiency etc.) and it wasn't too long before I found myself without any counter-space or time left.

Slicing a pumpkin open is fairly dangerous and scary and is really the hardest part of this whole task. This one seemed to crack so once I got a line sliced, I hit it on the counter to separate the halves. I read that a serrated bread knife does a safer job, but I tried that on another pumpkin and I thought it was more difficult and messy.

As I scraped out all the seeds and stringy membrane, I realized that I've never seen such beautiful pumpkin seeds before. These were plump, white, and perfect.

The seeds became a drain on time, though. And definitely, if I've ever thought it about anything, a job for children. Standing in the kitchen, picking seeds from pumpkin membrane is so tedious and tiring. If I didn't have pumpkin bits strewn everywhere and slimy orange hands, I would have taken the bowl into the living room to work on it so I could sit comfortably with the tv on (I think I'm getting old). Also, my next house is going to have so much natural light in the kitchen, it's going to make visitors ooh and aww (and all my prep pictures won't look like they were taken inside a gas station bathroom).

So back to the pumpkin cooking (which is the point to this anyhow). Initially, I was going to use the oven because it had to be on for my bread, but after one singular google search, I found that steaming pumpkin is faster, so out came my steamer pot (really just a big pasta pot) and my stove was commissioned for steaming.

I ended up cutting the pumpkin into quarters so they'd fit in the pot better. Depending on the size of the quarter, they took around 45-60 minutes to cook. So this is not a job you should start at the end of your day.

Once done, I removed the segment with a ladle and a slotted spoon (cuz I didn't really have a better plan for getting the pumpkin out of the pot) and let it cool in a bowl until I could safely handle it.

The pumpkin meat scrapes out fairly easily, but the rind will also come off easily so just be sure not to get bits of skin in your pulp. All that's left is to puree it and, like magic and unicorns, you've made your own pumpkin puree! Wasn't that so much better than buying a can at the store?! Except now it's 7 and you've only got one more segment left to cook, and your back is aching and your feet are tired (because you really should've left the seeds for a separate project) and usually you're falling asleep in front of the tv around this time, so don't worry about that damn last pumpkin slice until tomorrow.

{pumpkin puree}

1 sugar pumpkin (jack-o-lantern pumpkins have barely any pulp inside -- you know, so you can cut a face out of them easily. Note the inside difference on mine -- and are apparently very watery so don't bother with them)

Carefully, slice the pumpkin in half and use a spoon (or ice cream scoop) to scoop out the seeds and stringy bits. Cut the halves in half again (in quarters) so they can easily fit into a steamer pot. Add one quarter to the pot (or two if you can fit it) and fill the pot with enough water so it's about a quarter to half way up the side of the pumpkin slice and there's enough so the pot doesn't boil dry, then turn your heat to high. Once boiling, lower the heat to about medium low or just so the water continues steaming but isn't at a rolling boil.

Check on your pumpkin periodically with a fork (by that I mean to jab it). Once it's soft all the way through, remove the pumpkin from the pot and allow to cool to the touch. With a spoon, scoop the pulp from the skin, then puree the pulp with an immersion blender or regular blender (whichever works for you). The amount of puree you get varies with the pumpkin. Mine netted me the equivalent of 6 cans (and a bit) of pumpkin puree. You can use it for recipes right away or do what I did and measure it out (so you know how much to take out for future recipes) then freeze it in well-labeled freezer bags (I like using bags now because I can freeze things flat and it takes up a lot less space than jars or plastic tubs).

{note} All in all, it is more economical to make your own. I've since had the pleasure of figuring out if this whole venture was worth it and, had I bought the equivalent in cans, I would have spent around $16 (given the price at Superstore last week). So, minus the amount for the pumpkin itself, I saved $10. I've also been using pumpkin for just about everything lately. Recipes coming soon!

november desktop

We are well past simple frosts now, but I had to give you something with a little colour and interest this month instead of what's actually going on outside my window. I think it would be fair to classify this as our first blizzard of the year. Yup.

This is a ninebark, 'diablo.' I think it has the best colour and supposedly it does really well in wet and poor soil conditions. I'll have to wait until next year to find out if that's true, so right now, I'm just hoping it at least survives the winter!

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pixy stix

Earlier this year, Idle Husband alerted me to this super awesome site, Stop Zombie Mouth. There you can find some coupons for a free P.C. or Mac download of Plants vs Zombies to give out for Halloween. (Plants vs Zombies is one of my all time favourite games.) 

This started me thinking. I know the coupons are meant to be given instead of candy (you know, to stop "zombie mouth"), but it kinda feels wrong not to hand out candy on Halloween. At first I thought it might be fun to attach the coupon to those smaller-sized suckers, but then I discovered pixy stix at the dollar store.

I haven't officially tasted these (I'm not really keen on having a mouthful of sugar), but Idle Husband seemed to really enjoy them. He sampled one of each flavour and orange is his favourite.

I printed out one sheet of coupons (8) because I'm only going to give the coupons to kids who look old enough (I don't remember there being a lot of older kids -- and by older, I mean waist height -- at our door last year). Then I punched a hole in each side of the coupon and threaded a pixy stick through. Easy!

Download coupons here and test out the game online here.

DIY: crow door decor

We love birds around here (even when Hermes is being an angry little dictator), so I thought the most appropriate decoration for our house this year would be crows (last year, I made a monster and went crazy with spiders).

This whole plan almost fell through because I could not find a single acceptable black crow. I was about to default to the Pacman and ghosts idea, when I stumbled on the perfect little crows at Superstore. And just like that my original idea was back on!

For the birds, all you have to do is find some silhouettes of crows through a google image search. Print them out at various sizes (to give the appearance of distance) and cut them out for templates. I used black poster paper that I found at the dollar store for the finished bird.

 

I also didn't worry too much about detail. Some images have every feather and foot perfectly outlined, but I just wanted to cut out as many as I could in as little time as possible, so I rounded the wing and tail feathers and just used wavy cutting to simulate feathers. Occasionally, I put in a feather slice but only randomly.

I had to do some testing with how to stick them up because tape takes off the paint on my doors. I found that sticky tacky actually does hold in the cold weather (I tested it in my freezer) and I'm even more impressed with it because I put all of this stuff up (in what seemed like) the hour before we had the biggest wind storm of the fall. I was so worried that night cuz I thought I'd go out the next morning and find a door covered in blobs of sticky tack and all my crows blown away, but I only lost one (and that wasn't on the door, I've got some around the window, too). And to further prove it to you, I put these crows up last week and these are pictures I took today. Everything's still holding strong.

The fake crows that I found at Superstore were only $3 which I didn't think was too bad (considering the larger ones I'd found). They did need a little fixing as their legs easily pulled out (and that's the main attaching part), so I added a little dab lot of hot glue and pressed them back in again. They do have wires on their feet for attaching and that seemed pretty good, but I didn't want to chance it, so I used some floral wire to further attach them to the branches of our front tree.

I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out (and I'm a little smug to see that other houses along our block have also now added some black paper crow cut outs to their Halloween decor, too). I did the spider web thing last year and putting it up was kind of a hassle, but taking it down? Trying to get all the webbing off my house was more of a nightmare than Halloween itself (there were STILL small web remnants left on my tree even through summer). This will be so much easier (and my heart bleeds for the house down the street that covered their junipers with spider web this year. Good luck getting that off!).

friday fixations: cotton flowers

Last year (around this time, maybe), I received a package from Danielle from Dinosaur Toes and Girl and Parrot (she's got some of the best jewelry -- I've got this, this, and this and I love them! -- and prints -- I want this and this). Inside that package, I found quite a few carefully wrapped, fluffy cotton flowers.

I had mentioned in some random comment (that I can't even remember) how much I loved them and wished I could have some seeds to plant and (as if by magic) Danielle remembered and sent them to me.

You see, here in cold Alberta, we don't grow cotton, but I thought it would be so awesome to get some seeds and grow them as an annual for bouquets. But once I finally had the pretty cotton puffs, with their seeds, in my hands, I just couldn't bare to pull one apart. And before I knew it, June came and I didn't think it would give them a long enough growing season. So they've spent the summer sitting in a decorative bowl on a table in the living room. 

I decided that I was going to find a branch and attach them to it so they'd look a little more natural (even though I don't really know what "natural" would be for cotton flowers). Then I remembered I had a lot of fake cherry blossom branches.

I sacrificed one and pulled off the plastic cherry blossoms and attached the cotton flowers to the bare ends with floral wire. It was incredibly easy and I think it looks pretty nice. It sits in a vase near the kitchen and I've added some random grass seeds to it for filler.

Now I'm thinking I should figure out how to brown the leaves and I really should spend some time taking the brown dead bits off each little cotton fluff. (But it was kind of impossible as they're like little velcros!)

Anyway, I love my little cotton flower branch and I think it makes for really cute fall decor. Thanks, Danielle! Hopefully I'll work up the nerve to harvest some seeds and then I'll have more branches to add to my vase next year!