Pumpkin Thread

Had some time to myself last Saturday and got the rando craving to make some pumpkin bread. And because pumpkin recipes never possess the generosity of spirit as to require the whole can, I had maybe half a cup of pumpkin puree leftover. Made some steel cut oatmeal and mixed in the pumpkin just to use it up. Made it a nice autumn color, but you couldn't really taste it. Nutritional boost, I guess.

You'll find this in the back pages of this thread, it's good! I always stock up when I find it.

I got a pie pumpkin at the campus garden cleanup a couple weeks ago and I'm not a pumpkin guy so it's been sitting in the fridge. I decided to try making some pumpkin butter in the slow cooker before it gets funky since I'm a big fan of any compote or fruit butter on my pancakes.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

I had pumpkin pie yesterday. Made my day since its actually hard to find pumpkin here. Seriously, I think there is some kind of agricultural ban or something because there is very little pumpkin-flavored anything here in Japan and the tiny pumpkin tart at Starbucks is like 6 dollars.

I made it last night. I used a medium-sized kabocha. I stuffed it with a mix of garlicky croutons, fresh mushrooms and leeks sautéed together, prosciutto, gruyere, and reconstituted dried mushrooms. Once all that was in the pumpkin I poured in a mix of eggs, cream, and nutmeg, most of which boiled out while it was baking; I should have given it thirty minutes or so to soak in. I also should have seasoned the stuffing mix very aggressively, since that was going to flavor the pumpkin itself. My kids were none too pleased to see it; my wife said it was "Like dining at Hogwarts". I had so much filling leftover that at the end of the meal, I just scooped out the remaining pumpkin flesh, mixed the raw filling with the cooked stuffing from the insides, and put in a gratin dish to bake off later this week. 

What I was most pleased with was the pumpkin itself: the flesh was thick, meaty, and had a baked-potato-like texture, not mushy like normal pumpkins get. It was definitely a presence in the dish, with a decided sweet flavor. I'm sold on using kabocha as my eating pumpkin/squash of choice from now on. 

I did this last night. As dramatic as the presentation of a whole stuffed pumpkin was, I liked this version better, where basically the proportion of stuffing to pumpkin was reversed, and the squash was just a flavorful accent rather than the bulk of the dish. 

On Thanksgiving I had my own pie, then we went to friends' house for board games and more pie. Theirs was a bit bland, but at least they were able to use their own garden-grown pumpkins - Long Island Cheese variety which is apparently the original pie pumpkin. They had a bunch and gave me one to take home, so I can try some of the recipes in this thread that I've not gotten to.

Then on Friday I was one of the few people in the office and therefore got to eat even more pumpkin pie which was brought in by one of the sweet older staffers. Saturday and I'm back at home, eating pie for snack. It's a good life.

Which of their 57 ketchups is this? 

I'm craving pumpkin coffee cake 

Yesterday I tried the Pumpkin Spice Donut at Tim Horton's. It was decent, though I was hoping for more spiciness.

A coworker brought Pumpkin Spice Malted Milk Balls from a regional candy factory (Albanese, known for their gummies) and I don't even like malted milk balls but these are pretty darn amazing. If it were socially acceptable I'd just eat the chocolate off.

My mom is talking about visiting in November. I'm going to make her bring some much canned pumpkin with her. Really looking forward to it since that stuff is worth its weight in gold here.