Pumpkins, plus Recipe attempt (bleh) Celery leaf pesto
First up, pumpkins.
-First, go buy a sugar pumpkin. They are medium/dark orange, smallish, and can be slightly flattened. Get several, you'll want them :)
IMPORTANT!!! STORE AT LEAST ONE WEEK! If it is warm and sunny, outside is fine, but mostly I keep mine on the kitchen table. You can't really tell when they are ripe from the outside, the longer they ripen, the sweeter they'll be! If they are really dirty, wipe them off with some lightly bleachy water, and then dry completely.
-Second, clean them. First, rinse the outside. You need them to end up cut in half, and clean. I do this by cutting out the stem (as though I am carving a jack o lantern), then cutting through the bottom "plaque" and splitting in half. Then I clean out the inside with a sturdy spoon and some elbow grease. If you care for such things, this results in tons of pumpkin seeds, ready for roasting.
-Third, roast the pumpkins. I can roast two at a time on one cookie sheet (so, 4 per oven-batch). Cover all the cut surfaces of the pumpkin (inside too) with some vegi oil, and place cut side down on the cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 1 hour.
-Fourth, put away. Let the pumpkins cool completely. Peel the skin away from the flesh. Either mash with a potato masher, or run through the cuisinart briefly. If you don't do this, it'll be lumpy (no good). Measure, put in bags or containers, freeze (or make pie and bread Noooooooowwwww!!!!!).
These pumpkins are more, um...pumpkin tasting than the commercial canned ones. YUM YUM.
I bought celery to make soup today, and was thinking about the huge bunch of leaves I pulled off it. Were they useful for something? I looked around the internet, which seemed to think they could be put in soup (especially chowder), or made into pesto. I had way more than I needed for the soup today, so, pesto it was.
As a side note, I think I've washed my mom's old Cuisinart a MILLION times this summer.
anyway.
I used my standard pesto recipe, mostly. The following went into the cuisinart: olive oil, parmesean, almond meal, salt, celery leaves. It is fine, but the aftertaste is too bitter and, uh...green? I feel a though I am eating especially not-remarkable ditch weeds. Meh. It is certainly edible, but not what I would call yummy. Perhaps other people would love it. I think that future celery leaves of mine will go to feed the compost pile, not me.
-First, go buy a sugar pumpkin. They are medium/dark orange, smallish, and can be slightly flattened. Get several, you'll want them :)
IMPORTANT!!! STORE AT LEAST ONE WEEK! If it is warm and sunny, outside is fine, but mostly I keep mine on the kitchen table. You can't really tell when they are ripe from the outside, the longer they ripen, the sweeter they'll be! If they are really dirty, wipe them off with some lightly bleachy water, and then dry completely.
-Second, clean them. First, rinse the outside. You need them to end up cut in half, and clean. I do this by cutting out the stem (as though I am carving a jack o lantern), then cutting through the bottom "plaque" and splitting in half. Then I clean out the inside with a sturdy spoon and some elbow grease. If you care for such things, this results in tons of pumpkin seeds, ready for roasting.
-Third, roast the pumpkins. I can roast two at a time on one cookie sheet (so, 4 per oven-batch). Cover all the cut surfaces of the pumpkin (inside too) with some vegi oil, and place cut side down on the cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 1 hour.
-Fourth, put away. Let the pumpkins cool completely. Peel the skin away from the flesh. Either mash with a potato masher, or run through the cuisinart briefly. If you don't do this, it'll be lumpy (no good). Measure, put in bags or containers, freeze (or make pie and bread Noooooooowwwww!!!!!).
These pumpkins are more, um...pumpkin tasting than the commercial canned ones. YUM YUM.
I bought celery to make soup today, and was thinking about the huge bunch of leaves I pulled off it. Were they useful for something? I looked around the internet, which seemed to think they could be put in soup (especially chowder), or made into pesto. I had way more than I needed for the soup today, so, pesto it was.
As a side note, I think I've washed my mom's old Cuisinart a MILLION times this summer.
anyway.
I used my standard pesto recipe, mostly. The following went into the cuisinart: olive oil, parmesean, almond meal, salt, celery leaves. It is fine, but the aftertaste is too bitter and, uh...green? I feel a though I am eating especially not-remarkable ditch weeds. Meh. It is certainly edible, but not what I would call yummy. Perhaps other people would love it. I think that future celery leaves of mine will go to feed the compost pile, not me.