Smashing Pumpkins!

Yesterday's Jack-o-lanterns will be making their next appearance in a Thanksgiving dessert or in soup or muffins...I don't know yet.

Tonight I cut appart my jack-o-lanterns that I carved just yesterday (Darly carved them too!), used non-flamable lighting in and then covered with plastic wrap and placed in the frig until I was ready to cook them!

I finally found my favorite pumpkin carving knife...after messing up every other knife in the house to find one that will cut through these suckers! And I cut up the pumpkins so they fit into my pressure cookers...yup! I have two pressure cookers. One is 4 qt (my first one) and the other is a 6qt...it's the baby.

I loaded up the pressure cookers with freshly cut pumpkin, locked them and set them both to high and waited for the fireworks! Well there were no fireworks and even though Darly was positive that they were "gonna blow!" They didn't blow either.

After 5 pots worth I got all 3 of our pumpkins cooked.

Then comes the fun part... pealing the pumpkins. See they're much easier to peal when they're cooked. You just slide a spoon between the flesh & the skin. After that you take your trusty potato masher and take out your frustrations on them.

And last but not least you dump the cooked & smashed pumpkin into containers and put them in the freezer.

Now why on earth would I smash my own pumpkins? I'm not entirely sure about that. I find myself getting more and more domestic as I get older...why just a week ago I made my very first batch of bread...without a breadmaker! And part of it must be that I HATE to buy something that I can make myself. And another part is that I grew these pumpkins (well two of them) and I should get to eat them too. And finally it seems like such a shame for a pumpkin to only be a jack-o-lantern when there's so much other stuff it can be after halloween.