At this point, with the economy being what it is, I can't afford to waste anything that might be food for my family. That includes pumpkins intended as Halloween jack-o-lanterns that were never actually carved.
The week of Halloween, I was swamped with book revisions, among other things. I managed to take the kids to the pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns, and I even brought back a pumpkin myself, plus four little pie pumpkins. But I didn't manage to get my pumpkin carved. As a last-ditch attempt at Halloween decoration, I took out a black Sharpie and drew eyes and a mouth on my pumpkin, then set it outside the front door.
That pumpkin sat through November and December in the nice cool garage because I really didn't know what to do with it. I mean...we've always associated pumpkins with pie and custard and little else. But then I remembered that Barbara Kingsolver, according to her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, had tried to make pumpkin soup in the pumpkin's own shell. (Apparently, the pumpkin collapsed, but the soup was great.) Well, by this time in early January, my family was still willing to eat bean soup but getting a bit tired of it. I had a Deborah Madison cookbook with the recipe for making pumpkin soup in the pumpkin shell, and I had a big ex-Halloween pumpkin that I had never intended for food. We all had a craving for some kind of food that was different from the ever-present bean soup. So I tried that recipe.
I hollowed out the pumpkin and scraped the innards out, then had my older daughter pick out all the seeds for roasting later. Then I rubbed the inside of the pumpkin with salt and set it aside. The milk mixture, I had to cobble together from a couple of cans of evaporated milk, since all we buy is 1% and the recipe called for whole milk. But I did have a bit of cream on hand for making butter, so I used just a little of that in with the rest of the milk, which I reconstituted by adding water. I used my big roaster pan to set the pumpkin in so that if it collapsed it wouldn't be lost to us entirely. Then I left it in the hot oven for about an hour or a little more, and crossed my fingers.
Low and behold, it came out intact. All it did is sag just a little on one side, and I think that's because I left it in maybe just a little too long. But when I scraped its sides, it didn't collapse, and it held the soup and pulp just fine. The pulp was a little stringy, so when we had lowered the soup level a little, I went ahead and pureed the last of the liquid and pulp together until it was creamy and smooth. My younger daughter loved it and the oldest even found it likable enough, though they both preferred the smooth, pureed variety. The Huz liked it with the pulp intact. Shrug. To each his own. I agree with the kids; I prefer it pureed smooth.
In any case, it worked, and it was food, and at least one Halloween pumpkin didn't go to waste this year. But because it wore a jack-o-lantern's face, it also wore that face into the oven. It made a humerous sight sitting there in the roaster pan with its crescent-moon eyes and its little surprised "o" of a mouth, with aluminum foil draped over its head to hide one eye while supporting the lid we'd cut out of its top. From pumpkin to jack-o-lantern to soup tureen. I'd say it led a full life.
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