Pumpkin "Recipe"??

Quoted message said:

Since I still dont feel much like cooking I have a question. Has anyone
ever just taken a can of solid pack pumpkin and added a little milk and
cinnamon and heated it up in the microwave. I dont want to go to the
bother of adding eggs and baking a custard.

I don't see why you can't eat it this way. It's fully cooked and
there's nothing wrong with it.

Just remember to store it in something else besides the can if you
don't consume all of it at once.

Canned pumpkin with chicken broth makes a lovely, easy soup, too.

Dawn

Thanks for responding. Yes, I would put the leftovers in a dish and
refrigerate. It sounded like a dumb question, but I thought maybe
someone here may have tried it that way. Thanks for the soup idea, too.

Carol Ann

Quoted message said:

Since I still dont feel much like cooking I have a question. Has anyone
ever just taken a can of solid pack pumpkin and added a little milk and
cinnamon and heated it up in the microwave. I dont want to go to the
bother of adding eggs and baking a custard.

Baking veggies works fine. There's no need to convert pumkin into
a dessert-like dish if you don't want to.

Other times, try it with other herbs and spices. Pumpkin and sage
go well together as a baked veggie course.

On another list this morning I saw a recipe for putting pumpkin in
oatmeal. Thats a good idea. They added vanilla, cinnamon and the
pumpkin to oatmeal.

Carol Ann in WV

Quoted message said:

On another list this morning I saw a recipe for putting pumpkin in
oatmeal. Thats a good idea. They added vanilla, cinnamon and the
pumpkin to oatmeal.

Try thinking of pumpkin as just another type of squash and you
could imagine other non-sweetened uses for it. I like diced
squash sauteed with assorted herbs, squash baked into a
breadless casserole covered with grated cheese, squash
steamed then mashed with some milk and basil (cauliflower
isn't the only core low carb food made into fauxtatoes) and so
on. All of these should work fine with fresh pumpkin, the mashed
and casserole versions should work fine with canned.

I've been wondering about the seeds. Dried, salted and roasted
is the second most common use I know of (the first being the
trash bin when carving jackolaterns). It occurs to me that pumpkin
seeds are harder than squash seeds, but squash seeds go in
casseroles and whatever as part of the vegitable for summer
squash at least. Pumpkin is midway between summer and winter
squash so I wonder if they can be included in recipes without
getting shelled first.

Doug Freyburger said:

Try thinking of pumpkin as just another type of squash and you
could imagine other non-sweetened uses for it. I like diced
squash sauteed with assorted herbs, squash baked into a
breadless casserole covered with grated cheese, squash
steamed then mashed with some milk and basil (cauliflower
isn't the only core low carb food made into fauxtatoes) and so
on. All of these should work fine with fresh pumpkin, the mashed
and casserole versions should work fine with canned.

My mom does just the opposite. She's found that butternut squash are
easier to grow around here, more productive, and easier to process than
pumpkins, so she uses them in place of pumpkin in pumpkin pies. And
they're good fried or baked as themselves, too. Pumpkin by itself is
pretty tasteless, but once you add the right spices, they're pretty
interchangeable.

Quoted message said:

I've been wondering about the seeds. Dried, salted and roasted
is the second most common use I know of (the first being the
trash bin when carving jackolaterns). It occurs to me that pumpkin
seeds are harder than squash seeds, but squash seeds go in
casseroles and whatever as part of the vegitable for summer
squash at least. Pumpkin is midway between summer and winter
squash so I wonder if they can be included in recipes without
getting shelled first.

I don't know; they seem too firm to me to include in a casserole--like
you say, they're pretty hard--and they're so good roasted anyway. I
haven't tried roasting winter squash seeds; maybe I'll try that next
year.

Last week, I went looking for pumpkins for seed-roasting purposes, and
most places had already gotten rid of them all. I guess once Halloween
was over, they cleared them out pretty quickly. I finally found pie
pumpkins--the little ones maybe 6-8 inches across--and got a dozen of
them. They didn't have many more seeds than the two big pumpkins we did
at Halloween, and they were a lot more work to process, so next year
I'll make sure to get out Nov. 1 and get leftover ones.

--
Aaron -- 285/254/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz

Aaron Baugher said:

My mom does just the opposite. She's found that butternut squash are
easier to grow around here, more productive, and easier to process than
pumpkins, so she uses them in place of pumpkin in pumpkin pies. And
they're good fried or baked as themselves, too. Pumpkin by itself is
pretty tasteless, but once you add the right spices, they're pretty
interchangeable.

Here in PA, the typical "pumpkin" sold in groceries other than for
jack-o-lanterns is a neck pumpkin.

It looks a whole heck of a lot more like a deformed butternut squash
than a typical pumpkin. Here's a picture:
http://ornery-geeks.org/text/cooking/preservation/freezingpumpkin.asp

They're huge also. I cook them down and freeze in 2-cup portions, which
is just enough to make pie for my hubby and custard for me.

--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

Quoted message said:

Has anyone ever just taken a can of solid pack pumpkin and added a little milk and
cinnamon and heated it up in the microwave. I dont want to go to the
bother of adding eggs and baking a custard.

Carol Ann

I make my pumpkin delight in the microwave all the time. Theer's no
set recipe....a can of pumpkin, a splash of vanilla, maybe milk, maybe
an egg, some sweetner, maybe some added protein powder, pumpkin pie
spice and cinnamon. A splash of Davinci syrup (your choice of flavors)
if you have any on hand. Mix the ingredients in a microwaveable bowl
and heat until hot. That's it....oh, a squirt of sugarfree maple syrup
when you eat it makes the conconction really special!

Canned pumpkin is on sale now, so stock up.

Duffy