Jack O Lanterns!

It's spook time!   The jack o lanterns are lighted and we're ready for Halloween!

K2 did the Cheshire Cat [of course] and Lily did a pumpkin pi.   

2013 Winter Squash

I grew a bunch of winter squash this year, as I always do.   Here's a preview.   Details coming in the next few days.

Tiny Pumpkins

Can I just tell you how much I love little bitty white pumpkins? 

At the end of the season, sometime in December, we pitch the remains in with the chickens and every year when we use the chicken dirt in the garden, I get some of these cuties as volunteers in the veg garden.  

So many cute things to do with them.   Here's a list of ideas and pics from Pinterest.

Shout out in the comments what you'd do with a pile of little white pumpkins.

Another Squash Update

Yeah, I know it's kind of obnoxious to keep posting pics of baby squash, but I have a little squash obsession and I think it's only fair to share it with you.   Some people show off pics of their kids and dogs, I show off pics of my squash.   It's a crazy world.

Also, excuse all the hands in the pics.  Not super attractive, but I wanted to give you an idea of how big they are getting.

This is Australian Butter Squash.   Sort of chunky and exactly the color of butter. This is our first time growing this one.  I can't wait to see how big it gets and what it tastes like. 

This one is Honeyboat Delicata.  It's pretty prolific.  I've got at least six fruit right now and they set pretty early.  They're a little longer than my hand.  I think they're supposed to turn more coppery when they're ready to harvest, so I'm waiting.  

This is Black Futsu.   I tried it last year and it finally set fruit in late September.  They were adorable and tiny but too late to ripen.   I decided to try again this year.   You can see how big this one is getting.   It'll have an orange area when it's ready.

This one is a summer squash - Golden Marbre Pattypan.   I love the stripes.   These get a bit bigger than my palm and dark yellow when they're ready.

And this one is a Musquee de Provence.  You can see how big it is already and it's just getting bigger.   I have two more big ones like this one.

The little white things are some volunteer baby white pumpkins.  We keep throwing the remains in with the chickens and every year we get more of them as volunteers from the chicken dirt we amend the garden with.  

Putting Up Squash

I canned my squash harvest this year against FDA recommendations.   Here's the FDA page if you want to look at it.  They don't even want you to can it with a pressure canner.

Note:  The FDA has recommendations for canning meat here.  

So, just to be clear, the FDA does think it's safe to pressure can meat, but not pumpkin.

[Eyebrow raised.]

I pressure canned my squash anyway.    I roasted it, did not puree it, packed it in quart jars, and filled it up with water leaving an inch headspace.   Then I processed it at 10 pounds of pressure for 80 minutes - just what the book for my canner recommended.  It's an old book that came with my canner, lo those many years ago when my mom bought it.

Note:   The processing called for on the FDA meat page link above, for raw chicken with bones is 10 pounds of pressure for 75 minutes.   Raw.  Chicken. 

I think I'm safe.

If I had an extra freezer, I'd freeze it but freezer space is at a premium.

Also,  things get lost in the freezer.  They go in and are never seen again, like agents going into the Escher Vault in Warehouse 13.    Mysterious dark forces are at work in there.   I just know it.  

Also, freezers are vulnerable to power outages.  It's a bad feeling knowing that the contents of your freezer are slowly thawing out and that every time you open it to try to use some up before it goes bad you're just hastening the inevitable.

So,  I'm trying to can more and freeze less.   Or at least freeze only things that I can easily and safely bottle up in a water bath canner over an open fire if I had to --- like fruit.  

UPDATE:  All of that pumpkin was delicious.   A current search [3/25/14] shows that the USDA now says it's perfectly fine to pressure can pumpkin in cubes now: http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_04/pumpkin_winter_squash.html
After you process them, they often fall apart and look just like puree.

Old Fashioned Southern Style Lemon Ginger [Pumpkin] Marmalade

I'll cut to the chase here.

What makes this old fashioned and southern style is the liberal use of pumpkin slices. In the south, this recipe is called Pumpkin Chips.    I've also found it called Pumpkin Marmalade and Pumpkin Pickle and since it really is more like marmalade than anything else, that's the name I chose.

Yep.

First, let me make this clear.   This jam does not taste like pumpkin pie or anything remotely like it.   I did some blind taste testing with picky eaters  and they did not taste the pumpkin - even after I told them there was pumpkin in it.   The strongest flavor is lemon, then the ginger.   The pumpkin gives it a much lighter texture and less 'in your face citrus peel' flavor so that if you're on the fence about marmalade, but don't hate it, you'll love this jam.   I love this jam!   [Marmalade haters didn't like it because it tastes like marmalade.]

I know it's a reach.   But here's the deal.  Most people have firmly associated pumpkin with pumpkin pie spice.   It doesn't have to be that way.   Pumpkin is delicious without cinnamon, allspice and cloves.

I also loved this jam because the recipe is easy to adjust to the amount of pumpkin you have available - either a little or a lot.   So if you have one pumpkin but you want to make a pie and some marmalade, you can, very easily.  

I also loved this jam because I have a terrible time getting my marmalade to jell without using pectin.  This jam jelled perfectly.   Perfectly!!   With no pectin.   And it was easy. 

I started with two recipes that I found this summer:   Pumpkin Chips in Steve Dowdney's book, Putting Up: A Year-Round Guide to Canning in the Southern Tradition and Pumpkin Ginger Marmalade, from Judith Choate's book, Gourmet Preserves.  

Steve's recipe called for twice as many lemons and half as much sugar as Judith's. I went with Steve's proportions.  Judith added ginger to her marmalade and I decided to use ginger in this recipe, too. 

Divine.

This is a slow jam.   It needs to sit overnight before you start cooking it.  Then it takes a while to cook the next day and it needs to be watched.  Plan accordingly.

Four cups of chips will yield about 2 pints of jam.   Decide how much jam you want before you start. 

Cut the top off your pumpkin - like a jack-o-lantern.  Do the same thing with the bottom. That'll keep it still while you're cutting the middle.     Slice the middle into 1 inch wide 'spears' from north pole to south pole.   Peel each spear and take the seeds off.   Run the spears through the cutting/slicing attachment on your food processor, or cut them by hand into very very thin slices [short-ways] across each spear. 

Measure your chips frequently.  Stop making chips when you have enough for jam.    The rest of the pumpkin can be roasted or steamed for pies or pumpkin butter or muffins or cheesecake or something else with cinnamon, allspice and cloves.   [Take the seeds off before you roast, but you don't have to peel it if you're going to roast it.  After you roast it, you can scrape the flesh off the peel with a spoon.  Easy.]

Once you have your chips, then use these proportions to make your marmalade.

Old Fashioned Southern Style Lemon Ginger [Pumpkin] Marmalade
from www.rurification.com

• 4 cups pumpkin chips
• 3 lemons
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 Tablespoon fresh grated or minced ginger [or minced candied ginger]

Wash the lemons well.  Juice the lemons.  Set aside the rinds to use later.  Put the pumpkin chips, lemon juice, ginger and sugar in a pot to sit overnight.   Stir well and then leave it alone until the next day.

In the meantime, go back to your lemon rinds.   With a spoon, pull out the seeds and discard them.   Chop up the rinds into small pieces [the size you won't mind eating in marmalade].  Put the rinds into a small pot and cover with water.   Boil for 20 minutes.    Drain and discard the water.   Keep the rinds.  Put those in the fridge until tomorrow. 

When you come back to the jam in the morning, stir the pumpkin and juices well again to help finish dissolving the sugar.    It'll be super juicy.

Put the pumpkin pot on the stove and add the cooked pieces of lemon rind to it.   Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and cook it until the pumpkin chips become translucent.    It might take an hour or more to cook it until translucent.   The higher the temp, the faster it cooks, but your goal isn't to get it done fast.   It's to get the sugar cooked into the pumpkin and lemon.   Don't rush it.   I cooked mine at a low-medium temp  [3 or 4 on a scale of 1-10 on my electric stove.]

When the chips are translucent, strain them out and set them aside.   This is to prevent them from overcooking and becoming mush while it finishes.    I used a big slotted spoon and put them in a colander over a bowl.    The extra liquid that drained into the bowl as I was getting the chips out, I put back into the pot.

Bring the liquid to a hard rolling boil - the kind of boil where foam creeps up the sides of the pot.   Stir constantly!   Use a long handled spoon.   Boil it until it gets to 213 degrees or until it gets thick but before it starts to darken.   Keep an eye on it.   If you don't have a thermometer, then put a small bowl or plate in the freezer for a few minutes.   Dribble a bit of jam on the cold plate and see if it wrinkles when it chills.    It will also start to double drip or sheet off the spoon when it's jelled. 

When the liquid is thick, then add the chips back to the pot.  Bring to a boil and then it's done.   Ladle into jars.  Steve Dowdney says this is a sugar saturated, high acid jam that is very safe to can.   Yield:  2 pints of jam for every 4 cups of chips that you started with.

I made this in a single batch with 16 cups of chips, 12 lemons and 8 cups of sugar.   It worked brilliantly!    The bigger your batch,  the wider the pot needs to be.   You want as much jam on the bottom of the pot at one time as you can get.  


Want the recipe for this Marmalade and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!

Coconut Squash Soup

Winter squash soup is one of my favorite breakfasts.

Really. 

I love it.    Especially the sweet soups.

We have a lot of winter squash this year and I was thinking that coconut milk would make a wonderful addition to squash soup.

And guess what!?

It totally was.  

And it was so easy that it's embarrassing to even call it a recipe.  

Coconut Squash Soup
from www.rurification.com

• 1 squash the size of a big head.  I used one of my golden hubbards.   
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• Toasted Coconut marshmallows, cut in half

Cut the squash and take the seeds out.   Roast the squash until very soft.   Scoop the flesh out of the skin or peel the skins off and put the flesh into a blender.  [Feed the skins to the chickens.  Or your compost pile.   Or your trash can.   Whatever.]   Blend the good squash stuff up with the coconut milk and brown sugar.  

Then put it in a casserole dish and top it with the coconut marshmallows.   Put the cut sides down all over the soup.    And then broil it until the marshmallows are all toasty and puffy and fabulous.   

To say that I loved it was an understatement.   Everyone loved it.  The real miracle was that even Lily ate it and liked it and she's not into the winter squash type vegetables.  At. All.  Period.  End of subject.  Unless they're in pie.

I'm thinking I could dress this soup up if I added a bit of cinnamon and some finely ground coriander.   What do you think?

Volunteer Squash #3 and #4

As I've told you before, I left a few volunteer squash in the gardens to see what they would grow up to be.    I had a tiny white pumpkin [which succumbed to the heat and a vine borer, I believe.]  and a bigger white pumpkin.

These are volunteers #3 and #4.

#3 is some sort of warty green pumpkin. 

#4 is some kind of butternut squash. 

Here is what a riper version of #3 looks like [next to the white pumpkin that volunteered.]

The green pumpkin is getting oranger and oranger.   I'm wondering if the green stripes will disappear completely.

I must say that I've had a lot of fun with the volunteer squash and I'm getting things that I probably wouldn't have planted.   I'll definitely be doing this again next year.   I just need to find more room.

Volunteer Squash #2

I was delighted to find that one of my volunteers was a mini white pumpkin.   It set a dozen or so fruit before the heat got to it and did it in.   The last set of 105 degree days fried the poor thing. 

We were able to get about a dozen of them before it died.   I can't wait to use these for fall decorating. 

Volunteer Squash #1

I kept four of the volunteer squash that popped up in the garden early this year.    They all grew out of the chicken coop dirt and since we throw all the kitchen veg scraps in there, I had no idea what kind of squash it might turn out to be.

This is one of them.  

It's a medium sized white pumpkin - a little smaller than the size of your head.

We bought a couple of them for Halloween two years ago and tossed the remnants to the chickens.

So far I have 4 pumpkins ripening and the vine is getting longer, so I might have more.

Updated!: Sweet Creamy Pumpkin Soup

UPDATE:   Pioneer Woman  had a version of sweet creamy pumpkin soup that was even better!    I revised hers a bit and love, love, love the result!   For breakfast!    I like it better because the maple doesn't make this taste like pumpkin pie as much as the other recipe does.   I wish I'd thought of it myself.

Here's the new version:

Sweet Creamy Pumpkin Soup

• 4 cups pumpkin or squash puree
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp salt
• dash nutmeg 
• dash cinnamon [OPTIONAL]

Put all ingredients in saucepan.  Heat through.


Original post:
After I finished cooking up the big pumpkin the other day, I had loads of puree to play with.   I've been busy playing with pumpkin soup recipes.

My husband and I  love pumpkin and squash soups.  The kids....not so much, so I make small batches.   Last week I made two versions of pumpkin soup,  I made a spicy Indian verison and I made a sweet version with cream.   Delish!

K1 likes the spicy version and K2 likes this one [without the candied ginger garnish].   Eric and I like them both.

Enjoy!

Sweet Creamy Pumpkin Soup

• 4 cup pumpkin or squash puree
• 1/2 milk or cream
• 1-2 Tablespoons sugar
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt

Put all ingredients in saucepan.  Heat through.   Garnish with candied ginger and cream.

Pumpkin Soup - Sweet UPDATED

UPDATE:   Pioneer Woman  had a version of sweet creamy pumpkin soup that was even better!    I revised hers a bit and love, love, love the result!   For breakfast!    Here it is:

Sweet Creamy Pumpkin Soup

• 4 cups pumpkin or squash puree
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp salt
• dash nutmeg

Put all ingredients in saucepan.  Heat through.


Original article:
After I finished cooking up the big pumpkin the other day, I had loads of puree to play with.   I've been busy playing with pumpkin soup recipes.

My husband and I  love pumpkin and squash soups.  The kids....not so much, so I make small batches.   Last week I made two versions of pumpkin soup,  I made a spicy Indian verison and I made a sweet version with cream.   Delish!

K1 likes the spicy version and K2 likes this one [without the candied ginger garnish].   Eric and I like them both.

Enjoy!

Sweet Creamy Pumpkin Soup

• 4 cup pumpkin or squash puree
• 1/2 milk or cream
• 1-2 Tablespoons sugar
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt

Put all ingredients in saucepan.  Heat through.   Garnish with candied ginger and cream.

Pumpkin Soup - The Spicy Version

This is a recipe for a pumpkin soup blended with Indian spices that we really like.   Feel free to substitute any kind of yellow winter squash for the pumpkin.  
This recipe will make 4 small servings or 2 large ones.

Spicy Pumpkin Soup

• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 2 T butter, or bacon grease, or sausage drippings
• 2 cups pumpkin or squash puree
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• dash cayenne
• salt to taste

In saucepan, caramelize the onion and garlic in the butter/grease/drippings.  Put in blender.  Add pumpkin, chicken stock and spices.   Blend until completely smooth.  Put back in pan and heat through. 

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Harvest

It's time to bring the pumpkins in and process them for cooking.  Yay!    Pumpkin!

We managed to grow a few small ones this year that the squash bugs didn't get.    I got another, larger one from a market, too so I could play around with pumpkin/squash soup recipes and so we could put some up.

There are a couple of ways to process pumpkin for use in pies and soups.   You can bake it, or you can steam it.  I like to steam it because it's faster.  

First cut it in half.    This was an excellent, meaty pumpkin.  Not many seeds, but a lot of flesh.   Perfect for pies and soup.  

Scrape out the seeds.   Don't worry about getting all the stringy things out.  Just get the seeds out.

Cut the pumpkin into wedges or strips.  Then peel each strip with a vegetable peeler. 

Cut each peeled strip into chunks.   They can be big chunks, but not huge ones. 

Steam the chunks until they are soft.   You should be able to put a fork in them easily.   They might begin to fall apart - that's OK. 

I use a little steamer basket that opens up to fit across the entire bottom of this big pot.  Then I load the pot to the top with pumpkin chunks. They'll cook down a bit as they steam.

Turn the heat on high enough to get a hard boil.  Once it's boiling well, you can cover the pot and turn the heat down.    It only took me about 20 minutes to steam a big pot full.    [I had two pots worth of pumpkin chunks.]


Once the pumpkin is good and cooked, I put it in a bowl and mash it up a bit with a potato masher before it goes in the blender.   

My blender is happier that way.  


I filled it to the tippy top.   Then I turned on puree to get...

....this lovely pumpkin puree. 


Now it's ready to use in pie or soup or pumpkin butter or whatever else your heart desires.  

We used ours in soup and in pumpkin pancakes.   Yum.

Long term storage:   Pumpkin is dense and low acid.   If you want to bottle it up keep in your cupboard, then make sure you use your pressure canner.     If you don't want to mess with the pressure canner, then you can freeze the puree until you're ready to use it.  

The Frost is on the Pumpkins...

These are little pumpkins - New England Sugar Pie and Omaha [the egg shaped ones].   I love them.  They make me ready for cool weather.

And the weather is cool.  We've had our first frosts.   It always reminds me of James Whitcomb Riley's poem, 'When The Frost is on the Punkin'.

James Whitcomb Riley is a Hoosier and one of our favorite Indiana sons.   Riley told country stories and celebrated country ways.   He honored the rural in America.  He believed in writing in a conversational style and he used creative spellings to give a better sense of rural pronunciation. [Mark Twain did the same thing.]   Some of the critics disapproved, but the people loved them - and Riley wrote for the people.   Read his poems out loud.   They're amazing.


When the Frost is on the Punkin

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey cock
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence
O, it's then's the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin' of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries kindo' lonesome-like, but still
A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below the clover over-head!
O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;
And your cider-makin' 's over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With their mince and apple butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too!
I don't know how to tell it but ef sich a thing could be
As the Angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me
I'd want to 'commodate 'em all the whole-indurin' flock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!