Eight Cups of Pumpkin- Do It!

            Oh my goodness, I have to put some distance between this entry and that leftover pumpkin picture on my last entry.  This may need to be a very long piece.  My Saturday morning mantra:  I will not compost that pumpkin, I will not compost that pumpkin.  Step #1 then, break it down.  Very few recipes call for huge hunks of pumpkin and as I already made clear, my husband doesn’t really like straight pumpkin anyway so it all has to be converted to puree.  Easy enough to do.  It now equals eight cups.  By day’s end, I will have used every last plop of the stuff and we will have some ready-made food in our freezer.  I just have to focus and get it done.

1 Cup

Pumpkin Waffles
          This is a recipe from Smitten Kitchen.  It didn't use a ton of pumpkin, but as waffles go, the recipe incorporated quite a lot of real food.  This is the local flour I buy most often.

I think it works well as whole wheat pastry flour.  

          Let's be honest, waffles can be a hassle due to the various bowls for wet ingredients, dry ingredients, and then the egg white whipping.  I'm really not trying to show off here, but I'm just going to say that having two mixing bowls for your Kitchen Aid mixer is slick.  This 220 voltage model I bought to bring to Tunisia just came with two bowls or I would never have made that choice.  For this sort of preparation and for double batches that would overwhelm one bowl, it's so convenient.

     Now, we have about 10 individually frozen waffles in the freezer.

4 Cups
           This recipe is the winner of the most pumpkin use award. The base recipe is my Homecoming Muffins, simply substituting pumpkin for the grated vegetables.  I intentionally underbaked them because I wanted them to be custardy, almost like bread pudding.  It worked.  We have a dozen muffins and two small loaves of bread in the freezer.

3 Cups
Black Bean Pumpkin Soup
          This is also from Smitten Kitchen.  Hey, she's been in my shoes.  The recipe actually called for over 4 cups of puree and I only had three.  Good problem.  I didn't have any black beans, but I had a little package of tiny beans/peas I bought last spring in Umbria.  I don't know what they all are, but some of them are black eyed peas.  They have such an earthy flavor.  They actually kind of taste like dirt, but most people don't think that is a nice taste so I'll stick with earthy.  I had to cook them before I could assemble the soup.

          And there it is.  2 quarts of soup in the freezer.  Turns out I misread the soup recipe and it was 4 1/2 cups of beans it called for and only 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin so at the end of the day, I still had 1 1/2 cups of puree left.  But I've got some nice items in my frozen pantry and I can sleep well tonight knowing I gave it my best shot.

Homecoming Muffins

I’m home in Tunis and happy to be here.  I’m happy to be anywhere really that’s not an airplane, but really happy that it’s here.  I’m so, so blessed to have two homes that I love. 

Settling back in, I begin with an inventory of the kitchen.  Our fridge broke the day before I left for the US and poor Allan had his hands full with transferring everything into a much less capacious model.  He got everything generally in the right place, but efficiency wise, it is not a workable chilled pantry yet.

          It seemed like a good idea to me that rather than spend a bunch of time organizing the food we should just use up a lot of the food and then reorganize as we restock.  I wanted to make some ultra healthy muffins anyway, like a meal in a paper cup, so here was was my opportunity. I like this recipe because it allows me to use up 2 cups of shredded vegetables (4 because I doubled it) and also some muesli we needed to finish.   

Makes about 12 muffins

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 1/2  teaspoons crystallized ginger, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup muesli

2 large eggs

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup oil (safflower, canola, or olive)

2 cups (firmly packed) grated vegetables (zucchini, carrots, or beets)--use largest holes on box grater

1/2 cup raisins (optional)  

Procedure  

Preheat the oven to 350°. 

In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, spices, and muesli. Whisk well to blend. 

In a mixing bowl beat the eggs, sugar and oil for 2 to 3 minutes or until very smooth. Add the grated vegetables and beat just until smooth. Add the dry ingredients and optional raisins and beat until completely moistened.

Scrape the batter into greased and floured (or paper cup-lined) muffin tins, filling each cup 3/4 full. Bake 20-25 minutes, until cake tester inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a rack for 5 minutes. Unmold onto the rack. Cool completely and wrap airtight.