How to Cook Fresh Pumpkin

It is almost Halloween so I went to our local pumpkin patch earlier this week and picked up some pumpkins for carving and one for pies. There is a HUGE difference between varieties of pumpkins and I thought perhaps it might be handy for you to have directions on how to roast one – fresh pumpkin is SO much better than canned. So here is the step by step.

1.       Find a pie pumpkin. The main differences are that usually a pie pumpkin has freckles on it and they are always much more dense than a carving pumpkin. You will be able to easily find them at your local market or pumpkin patch this time of year.

2.      Tools for the task: A sharp knife, rimmed baking pan, ice cream scoop, colander, spoon, mashing device (potato masher, food processer or blender)

3.      Turn your oven on to pre-heat. I use 375, but this process is very forgiving, so anywhere from 350 to 425 will do the trick, you will just need to adjust the time needed depending on how much heat.

4.      Using your sharp knife and some muscle, cut the pumpkin in half leaving the stem intact on one side.

5.      Then use your ice cream scoop to scrape the stringy center and seeds out of each half. Put the seeds and gooey parts into a colander.

6.      If you want easy clean-up, spray your baking pan with a thin coating of Pam.

7.      Place each half cut side down on the baking sheet.

8.     Roast for 45 minutes to an hour, until a fork slides in and out of the pumpkin easily.

9.      While the pumpkin is roasting, place your colander in the sink. Fill the sink with water just until the seeds start to float to the top.  It is really easy to then skim the seeds out of the colander and into a bowl, picking out any orange bits as you go. The stringy parts will hang on to the seeds, so squish them out, rinse them a little and put them in the bowl with their friends.

10.  DO NOT put the orange goo down your garbage disposal – unless you have a crush on your repairman and want to invite him over. Throw the goo in the trash or your compost pile.

11.   Put the seeds back in the colander and rinse them one more time, then pat dry with paper towels. They probably won’t get all the way dry, but that’s okay. Put them back in the bowl and toss them with a little bit of olive oil.

12.  Spread them out on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with kosher salt. Here is where you get to be adventurous. Some people like to use garlic, pepper, cayenne pepper, pretty much any spice you really like. I am a purist about these things and only use salt.

13.  As soon as your pumpkins are fork-tender, put them on a rack to cool. As soon as you can, flip them over this hastens the cooling process.

14.  Make your oven 400 degrees and pop those seasoned seeds in for about 15 minutes total, flipping them over as best you can about half way through.

15.   Once the pumpkin halves are cool enough to handle, you can often just peel the skins right off. Use a spoon to scrape any of the meat which is stubbornly holding on and put the meat into a large bowl.

16.  Then use a mashing tool to mash the meat into a uniform consistency.

17.   Viola! Now you can proceed to make your favorite pumpkin, bread, pumpkin cookies or pumpkin pie!

18.  NOTE: I put two cup portions into quart-sized freezer bags, mush them flat, and pop them into the freezer. The trick with this is to get the pumpkin out of the bag before thawing it in a bowl. (Otherwise it is a pretty messy process.)

Mini-break Part 2

We got a late start on Saturday since our adventures in the park on Friday night got us to bed later than usual. We set out to find the colors of Northern Michigan with a brief stop for breakfast on the way. The plan was to drive along the Lake Michigan shoreline to the city of Charlevoix where they were having an Apple Festival, stopping for Kodak moments as they came up along the way.

            It was a perfect autumn day with bright sunshine and deep blue skies, the kind of sky you only see where trees outnumber people. Driving through the valleys, like you do, we spotted a dirt road that had a sign posted saying that this road would not be plowed in the winter. This looked like a promising opportunity for the photogs in the truck, so we ventured up the hill and in to the deep forest. We were instantly plunged into the shadows created by towering pines, ancient oaks, and bright maple trees. I could wax poetic about the beauty of virgin forests, but I will spare you – let it suffice to say that it was lovely.

            The “road”, really a one-lane wide track through the forest, was very sandy and, at times, very steep. I was glad we had the four-wheel-drive truck for this adventure as I doubted there was much traffic to lend a hand if we were to have gotten stuck. Eventually we came to a clearing atop one of the hills where we decided to stop and let the shutterbugs fly free. With dense forest on the west side of the hill, there were pasture lands on the east side with a clear view of the surrounding hillsides, ablaze in all their autumnal glory.

            My boyfriend jumped right out of the truck and headed over to the vantage point near the barbed-wire fence where he could capture the scene. Joe and I had a brief discussion, and when I looked over to see where Larry was, he was rising up from the ground. “You didn’t just cross that fence!” I hollered over to him. “No,” he replied, “I fell.” “You okay?” I questioned. “Yeah, I’m fine.” So I wandered over to the gate in the fence and surveyed the beauty before me.

            A few minutes later Larry emerged from the tree line and much to my dismay, blood was streaming down his face. To make a long story short, he had tripped on some fallen branches buried beneath the fallen leaves, hit his head, scraped up his arm and had landed on his camera, protecting it during his fall. I doctored him up, and ignored the jibes about having band-aids in my purse. He was okay and went right back to snapping away.

            Three of the bovine inhabitants of the pasture came lumbering up the hill to check us out. A very large bull and, what I would assume were, two of his male progeny took long drinks from the water trough as they had their pictures taken. Once they were assured that we did not have any special treats for them, they headed back down into their lush valley. After the shutterbugs had taken a little hike down the trails in the forest we headed down to the road that runs along the coast.

            There is a place along M-119 which has been dubbed the “Tunnel of Trees” due to the very narrow road which is completely covered by the forest. It was incredibly busy on that Saturday afternoon, with a steady stream of traffic going in both directions – and no place to pull over and enjoy it. It was lovely, though, and we all enjoyed the experience.

            The Apple Festival was pretty cool – many of the local apple producers had stands along the main drag and there was also an art fair, face painting, and pony rides, by the harbor. We wandered about, looked at some of the art, and bought some apples before heading back to Mackinaw City for the night.

            We each went to our rooms to relax before going out to dinner. I went out on our balcony to watch the sun setting behind the bridge.

Someone set off a firework near the bridge, and Larry joined me on the balcony. Soon it became apparent that this wasn’t just, “someone setting off fireworks”, but an actual show. Larry went in to the room to get his camera so that hopefully he could capture some of the beauty of fireworks with the bridge, all reflected in the bay. There were some tiny bugs attracted to the light in our room, so Larry pulled the sliding glass door closed behind him as he came out. It was a pretty impressive display, and we really enjoyed it. However, when it was over and I headed back in to the room to make arrangements for dinner, I found that somehow, the door had locked.  

            Eventually, Larry called out to some of the occupants of a neighboring room to please call the desk and apprise them of the situation. The manager of the hotel came pretty quickly and let us back in, and we all had a good laugh. I decided that it was fortunate timing as 1) the weather was nice – no rain or snow, 2) we were fully clothed when this happened, and 3) I didn’t have to pee.

            On Sunday we took a drive across the Might Mac and the Upper Peninsula to see the Locks in Sault Ste. Marie. (For those of you non-Michiganders, that is pronounced “Sue Saint Marie”.) We didn’t get to see a ship going through the locks, but it was pretty cool anyway. (And I mean that – the wind was biting cold.) It was a pretty easy drive home after all that, and traffic was not at all bad. It was a wonderful way to spend a weekend.

Note: photos are from a google search - don't have any from the trip yet.

A mini-adventure, Part 1

This past weekend we went up to Northern Michigan for a mini-break. I booked us rooms at a hotel in Mackinaw City, at the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula.  This is the point where the Mackinaw Bridge connects the Lower Peninsula to the Northern Peninsula (known as the U.P. to us locals). If you research it online, you will find the Mackinaw Bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the Western hemisphere – or the third longest, depending on which way they measure it. It is five miles across the point where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron.

It was a beautiful day for our drive up, which took around four hours. Bright blue skies hung over the deep greens of the pines, burgundy maple leaves and soft yellows of the birch trees. Dusk was approaching as we neared the top of the mitten and as we came over the rise near the coast we could saw a wall of fog hanging over the water obscuring our view of the lakes and bridge. We descended into the fog and town and made our way to the hotel. Our balcony afforded us the perfect view of the straits and the bridge which eventually appeared as the winds blew the bank of fog to the east.

After dinner we drove out to the International Dark Sky Park. It was a beautiful night and the stars were almost close enough to touch. It is weird how just sitting in a car when you travel can be so exhausting, and even though the bed was a slab of concrete, I slept deeply.

When I awoke in the morning I sat out on the balcony drinking my coffee and, watching the ferry boats carry tourists back and forth to Mackinaw Island, I was reminded of Istanbul. The parallels between these two places are almost surreal. Both have huge beautiful bridges over busy bodies of water and dozens of ferry boats which take people to islands where motorized vehicles are prohibited, where tourists get around on bikes or in horse-drawn carriages. In one place minarets pierce the sky, in the other it is steeples, lighthouses and wind turbines. In one place there are millions of people using the ferries to get to work each day, while in the other they carry mostly tourists. In one place the centuries of history of the spice trade waft through the light breezes, in the other, a wooden fort stands against the harsh Chinook winds. Both places have huge ships passing beneath their bridges on their journeys to supply the world, but in Mackinaw the ferries are quiet and modern and don’t puff out black smoke which then settles as soot on the window sills. The relatively new and the relatively old… so many similarities and differences, on opposite sides of the world.

More on our adventure will follow…

On Persistence

     I woke up this morning thinking about my mom. It has been three years this week since she left us so I have been thinking about her a lot in recent days. I miss her. But this morning I was thinking about how she would have reacted to my “breaking up” post. I think she would have shook her head at me and, after a rant about how the academy is an “old boys club”, she would have asked me if it was a good idea to close the door on any possibilities.
     Raised on a dairy farm in upstate New York, my mom followed in her mother’s footsteps, graduating from Cornell with a degree in Home Economics. She once told me that only “rich kids” got a liberal arts degree, and most of those girls were only there to find a husband. She would say this with great contempt, which I now find ironic as she did find a husband while getting her degree. She worked for a brief time for the extension service before she began to have children, but then, sometime after I was born, while my dad was working at MSU, she decided to get a masters degree.
     While I was in school she worked as an instructor in Family Ecology at MSU, I think she was an adjunct as she also taught classes at Eastern from time to time. She worked in a few different areas at the academy and eventually she moved into primarily doing development work. (Much to my chagrin, in the early 1970’s, she and my dad taught the first class on human sexuality at a public university – with a great deal of fanfare, so EVERYONE in my little high school knew about it.) I know that she always felt like a second class citizen in the academy, because she didn’t have a PhD – and only people with a PhD got any respect. I am paraphrasing here, but I know that the wounds ran deep. She did a presentation at a conference once and when she got home she was livid. Some man had commented to her that “it was nice that her husband let her present his work”. But it was HER work, HER research, findings and paper, not his.
     So what is my point? I guess that she found her own path within and outside of academia. She didn’t want to take the time to get a PhD because she was too busy helping the women of developing nations. She was out there doing the work; spending long hours getting to those who needed the help most, while others were getting their PhDs. She worked all over sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America, and Asia helping women to become self-sufficient.  
     And when she wasn’t out of the country, she was sitting in her favorite chair, with sports on the television and someone’s dissertation draft in her lap, glasses perched in front of her sparkling blue eyes, red pen in hand, helping others to get their PhDs. Yes, she would have shook her head at me and told me not to give up. That I can do anything I set my mind to, despite what I might think right now. And that I have a roof over my head, shoes on my feet and food on the table. End of story. All of this despite her disappointment that I am not, nor have I ever been, a star singing on Broadway.