The Great Pumpkin

Fall is upon us!  Is there anything that says Fall more than the aroma of a pumpkin pie baking and filling your kitchen and house with that fantastic fragrance?  Who needs a candle when you can just bake a pumpkin pie?  Lots of people get pumpkins for decoration around this time and throw them away and then go to the Piggly Wiggly and purchase cans of pumpkin to make pumpkin pies.  What a waste!  Today we'll show you how easy it is to save your own pumpkin for pie making or other uses.

Last Sunday in church I did a little illustration for the young people that showed how Christians are like pumpkins:

God is like the farmer who goes out to the patch (the world) and picks out pumpkins (people), cleaning up the outside of the pumpkin from the dirt and filth that's gotten on us while we were growing in the patch. Now we can try to clean up our outside as well, but it doesn't mask something else.  Like a pumpkin, we have an inside AND an outside.  When God picks us out, He performs "open heart surgery" and cuts us open to reveal the 'yucky stuff' - things like greed, pride, selfishness and other slimy nastiness that is within us.  God scoops all of that out of us, but He doesn't leave us empty and hollow.  He puts his Holy Spirit inside of us to full us and guide us and He tells us to go and be a light for a darkened world, shining for Him for all the world to see.

Let your light so shine before men that they shall see your good works and glorify your Father which is in Heaven - Matthew 5:16

Don't throw the pumpkin away!  Here's what you do:  cut the pumpkin in half and scoop out all of the seeds and strings.

Pumpkin cut in half

Then cut the pumpkin into quarters and place them, skin down, on baking pans with some water filling the bottom of the pans.

Pumpkin quartered and placed in water filled baking pans.

Be sure to save all of your seeds.  We'll show you what to do with these in another blog post.

Pumpkin seeds

Place the pumpkin in an oven that has been pre-heated to 300 degrees and let it bake for an hour or until the 'meat' of the pumpkin is soft.

Into the oven

Take the pumpkin out of the oven, place on a cutting board, and cut into strips.  Using a sharp knife, 'skin' the pumpkin, separating the soft meat from the hard rind.

Skinning the pumpkin

Use the knife to cube the pumpkin meat into manageable pieces.

Cubing the pumpkin

Place the cubed pumpkin in a bowl.

Here's the fun part.  Most pumpkin pie recipes call for 2 cups of pumpkin, so we want to freeze the fresh pumpkin in 2 cup measured quantities.  Quart freezer bags work great for this.  Get out a clear measuring container and fill it to the two cup marker with pumpkin and mash it down with a potato masher to puree it. As you mash it, you'll have to add additional cubes until you have exactly 2 cups of pumpkin. 

He did the mash.  He did the Monster Mash...

Now just spoon the pumpkin puree into quart sized freezer bags.  The picture below shows 10 bags of pumpkin puree that a medium sized pumpkin yielded.  If you use your imagination (like me), you don't just see 10 bags of pumpkin - you see 10, piping hot pumpkin pies, filling the kitchen with a wonderful fragrance. Wishful thinking indeed!

Future pumpkin pies!

Sorry Piggly Wiggly.  Who needs to go to the store to buy pumpkin?  Stay tuned.  Tomorrow we'll show you something else to do with the pumpkin you saved.