Cindy’s Blog

The other day when I came home I saw a store bought pumpkin pie on the kitchen counter. !?! There was still a whole home-baked pie in the fridge. Are my pies not good enough? Why did John buy a store bought pie?

“I didn’t see the other pie” he claimed. Maybe. It was toward the back.

But John redeemed himself yesterday when he volunteered unsolicited, “You know, your pies taste so much better than store bought pies.” John is brutally honest about all my cooking adventures. Trust me, the Dutch Pumpkin Soup I made Monday night did not receive praise like this. He says my pies are more “interesting”. Maybe because you never know whether the next bite will contain a chunk of pumpkin since I haven’t yet mastered homogenizing my pie filling.

I felt as elated by John’s comments as if I had won a prize. Best pumpkin pie from Avila Bay Place, Safeway or Nugget.

Take that, Safeway.

I should be lifting weights right now, but it was such a dreadfully frustrating day, filled with a series of small but frustrating, annoying events that I’m absolutely not in the mood, even though I know my mood would be greatly improved afterward. Too bad.

I’ll just stay home and have a piece of pie.

What am I doing with all those pumpkins? One was carved, as you saw. The rest are being cooked in every pumpkin recipe I can find. So far that includes:

6 pumpkin pies using 2 recipes
pumpkin hot pockets (very good)
pumpkin-mango smoothies (too much mango fiber but otherwise tasty)
Cinderella’s Midnight Feast (pumpkin pasta) - o.k. Not terribly flavorful.
Pumpkin-Potato Soup (I thought it was good. My men rated it ‘o.k.’)
Roasted pumpkin seeds

Incidentally, the best way to prepare a pumpkin for cooking is to cut it in half, remove the seeds and scrape off the fibrous parts, then oil the edges of each half and roast it cut sides down on a cookie sheet for about an hour at 350 or so. Just like you might cook any other squash. I believe the best way to puree the cooked pumpkin is to use a handmixer, as you would mashed potatoes. I haven’t put this to the test yet, but I can tell you that it’s tedious to use a blender or food processor with pumpkin.

We had another dinner from the garden tonight. The corn stalks have been turning yellow and even the luscious corn I drive by every week on my way to the knitting group is drying up. So we harvested some of it.

Mmmmm…. What a success! Here’s Garrison enjoying the first bite of the freshest possible corn - we boiled water, then immediately harvested, shucked and cooked it. Only the yellowest cob on the right tasted good (but it was very good). The rest were chewy. We must have waited too long to harvest, even though the tassels weren’t as dark as they are on supermarket corn. Oh well, I apparently don’t have the touch for corn farming.

We also harvested the soybean crop, shown here on a map of the high school for scale.

The yield was more than I expected and it was the best edamame I’ve ever tasted, although the pods were smaller than what you’ll find elsewhere. What’s new? Freshness really matters when it comes to edamame. These were basically free. I used dried soybeans from the grocery store. Does it make a difference? I have no idea.

The pumpkins are starting to turn orange.

And the morning glories, now that they’re surrounded by prickly pumpkin leaves and are too tall for rabbits, are doing great. They blossom every morning in a variety of colors.