Way too much Pumpkin!!

Apparently this month is NaNo (National Novel Writing Month). Therefore, instead of me writing a novel (that's my sister's department) I will be posting a blog everyday this month. I must say, it is going to be quite a stretch for me since I've never been one for writing. But I think the hardest part is going to be figuring out what to write about. So if anyone has any suggestions or is interested in the inter workings of my mind....please let me know!!

I thought I would share my adventure of making yummy treats from a home grown pumpkin. First, the story of how the pumpkin started. This is the first year my family and I have ever grown our own pumpkins! The original plan was to grow them and then carve them for Halloween, but I never got around to carving one. Plus, even if I had we had more than enough pumpkins to deal with. Therefore, it was time to attempt the task of making treats from scratch!

Since I have never done this before (or anyone in my family) I had my good pal, Google, to ask how to use a fresh pumpkin. Originally, when I read about it, it seemed simple enough and wouldn't be too time consuming! However, it is more time consuming than I had anticipated as you will read below that it takes a couple hours just to get the pumpkin in the right state to mutilate! At least I had it planned to make the crusts in that down time.

First step: Cut the pumpkin in half (or in my case, since the pumpkin was a bit large, I had to quarter it) and then put it on a baking sheet and bake for about 1 - 1.5 hours at 400 degrees.

Second step: Scrap out the inside and puree it. I accomplished this by putting it in a blender. It worked wonderfully! I only scraped out one quarter of the pumpkin and that made about 8 cups worth!

That is pretty much all it takes to make the pumpkin usable to use in treats. I ended up making pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheesecake that evening. Since I had so much pumpkin already pureed my goal was to try and use all of it because I didn't want to have to store it and then find the energy again to make more! Therefore, I ended up making 2 cheesecakes and 4 pumpkin pies! Yes, it was a lot, and I still had some pumpkin left over!

Now the real question is, what am I going to make with the other 3 quarters of the pumpkin?!?! So far I have come up with: cookies, bread, muffins, soup, smoothie, ice cream, or perhaps more pies! I will have to strategically plan on what I make otherwise I might be faced with overindulging in all these pumpkin treats!