Week 9 – Pumpkin

This past weekend Janine and I met our friend, Danielle, at a pumpkin patch. It was pretty cold, but we still had fun painting pumpkins, going through a corn maze, and taking pictures.

At the pumpkin patch, they had sugar/pie pumpkins and I got a couple because I wanted to try making pumpkin puree from scratch. I ended up making pumpkin chili for the challenge this week. Weird, right? Don’t worry, it’s good. It’s not going to replace my chili recipe anytime soon, but it is something different to try once in a while.

So to make the pumpkin puree, I used The Pioneer Woman’s recipe.  It was fairly easy. Word on the street is they are going to run out of canned pumpkin…this would be an excellent alternative. The hardest part was cutting into the pumpkins. Pictures below:

You have to use the little pumpkins. I’m not sure if all pumpkins are the same variety and you just use the little ones for baking or if these are totally different than the big ones you get to carve. I used the sugar/pie pumpkins that I got at the pumpkin patch and they were great.

This was an unfortunate problem

Just like The Pioneer Woman says, chop off the tops. She doesn’t tell you how hard it is….Maybe don’t use your good knives like I did. Also remember to save those pumpkin seeds for roasting!

I was very proud of this step because I had cut the tops off and cut the pumpkins in half. It was hard work. Then I remembered I had to cut them into fourths.

I gave up on that idea pretty fast.

And it worked. All pieces of pumpkin were done and ready when I took them out of the oven 45 minutes later.

So then you scrape the insides out and put them in the food processor.

Woohoo! You need two cups of puree for the pumpkin chili. You definitely do not need two pumpkins to make two cups of pumpkin puree.

Here is the recipe for Pumpkin Quinoa Chili from Julia’s Album. The only thing I changed was that I used vegetable broth instead of water. The recipe was actually really easy, once you had the pumpkin and the quinoa prepared. Then you just throw everything into a pot, bring it to a boil, and let it simmer.

What is your favorite pumpkin or fall recipe? I’m planning on making these Pumpkin Oat Chocolate Chip Cookies tonight too. I’ve made them before and they are delicious.

Come back next week…we are going to have our first guest blogger! Danielle is a friend of both of ours from law school. She currently lives in Iowa and probably does more cooking and baking than Janine and I combined.

The theme is Hot and Cold. We told Danielle that this could be anything she thinks of: from a spicy cold soup to hot apple crisp and ice cream. I can’t wait to see what she makes!