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Don't feel too bad, Italian Cook. I've also inadvertently set a timer for hours rather than minutes. Sigh.
While we are on the subject of kitchen goofs, when I was making my sandwich buns yesterday in the bread machine, I started it, and thought that does not sound right. I looked inside and it was liquidy. Then I realized that I'd not added the 2 cups of regular flour to the whole wheat flour. (I have to go outside to the garage apartment to get my whole wheat flour out of the refrigerator, and thus forgot to add the regular flour when I returned.) I quickly put the rest of the flour in, and as it was only three minutes into the kneading cycle, all was well.
As I said before, anyone who says that he or she never makes mistakes in cooking or baking is either lying or does not cook or bake.
I was back at the farmers market today and bought a small Cinderella pumpkin. I want to compare it with the "peanut" pumpkin and the two pie pumpkins. I'll have to split it vertically, however, if I want to bake both halves at the same time. Even my large Calphalon roaster will not hold it if I split it horizontally.
Like Skeptic 7, I like to experiment with what I find at the farmers' market and to encourage these small growers.
Aaron, I used to drag myself to do pumpkins until I found a simple puree recipe. I had been cutting up the pumpkin, cutting off the peel and either simmering it on the stove or in the microwave. That was tedious. Now, I cut them in half lengthwise (although the odd pumpkin I used this time would probably have been better split horizontally due to its shape), then use a grapefruit spoon to scrape out the seeds. (Note: I do not eat grapefruit or use grapefruit spoons. My mother gave me a set in my everyday eating utensils, and my husband's parents had some that we inherited. They do come in handy for other uses.)
I put them cut-side down in a heavy roasting pan (Calphalon) then let it bake at 325F. The small pie pumpkins usually take an hour or so, depending on size. Sometimes I can do two pumpkins at once. When the skin starts to collapse in on the pie pumpkins (or the flesh is tender), I remove from the oven, and allow to cool a bit in the pan until I can handle them. I turn each half cut-side out, cut into slices, and usually the peel comes off easily, and I put the pieces into the food processor to puree it. I measure it into containers, with some earmarked for pie, and others in half cup or one cup containers. I use it throughout the year.
It is important to use pie pumpkins. I think the variety I bought in Texas was called Baby Bear from Melissa's.
My mom always used our jack-o-lantern pumpkin--one reason that she always had a watery pie that took forever to bake--because she hated the idea of food going to waste, a trait that I share, although I send any jack-o-lantern off to the compost pile. At one point, when my father was discharged from the navy, and was unemployed for a few months, my mother was able to get a station wagon-load of big pumpkins after Halloween that the vender was giving away. We ate a lot of roasted pumpkin with butter in those months. When you are feeding eight children, half of whom are teenagers, you do what you have to do. It's amazing that I still like the taste of pumpkin.
I've never been able to make roasted pumpkin seeds that I wanted to eat. I only like them hulled, and I've not heard of any easy way to do that at home.
