I think all our energy this year definitely went to pre-Halloween celebrations, and now that Halloween is almost here I'm a little partied out. Focusing on food is so much more inspiring to me right now than costumes, but it might also be because on the costume-front, I definitely peaked last year. Sorry, Oscar, but you were there in utero at least.
So our final pumpkin hunt was at my parents house out in Sherwood, where they had grown their own little patch of gigantic Cinderella pumpkins. They're idea was to have this patch for carving for the grandkids, but then they decided to go out of town for all of October and I started telling them about how great Cinderella pumpkins are supposed to be for eating, and the story unfolded from there.
I wanted to experiment with cooking pumpkins and Sarah wanted to carve some pumpkins, so we put our plans together and threw a big harvest party. We practiced the weekend before with splitting open a pumpkin and baking it in the oven for homemade puree, and between the two of us we turned that puree (followed by the puree of several more pumpkins) into a table full of delights:
crackers with pumpkin herb cream cheese dip
pumpkin gougeres
pumpkin muffins
black bean pumpkin soup
fettuccine with pumpkin cream sauce
pumpkin gnocchi with sage butter sauce
There was also spiced apple cider and hot goat cheese and pork with cider and prunes that was cooked for hours and gobbled up nearly the moment it hit the table (and I'm not embarrassed to tell you that I was not the only one picking bits of well-done meat from the bowl of skimmed fat long after dinner was over).
Then we sat by the fire and rubbed our bellies. Or, that's what I did.
It was really good.
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