Pies from Pumpkins

We had acquired several "pie" pumpkins while we were back in Illinois these past few weeks. I decided to try my hand at making pumpkin pie from actual pumpkins. First, I didn't realize these smaller pumpkins were specifically for making pies. They are sweeter and less grainy than carving pumpkins. You can use carving pumpkins, but you have to add more sugar. Learn something new every day.

To start, I rinsed off the marker my kids used to decorate them then cut them in half, placed them face down on a cookie sheet and baked them at 350 for about 45 minutes.


When they were soft, kind of like a cooked potato, I scooped out the stringy stuff and seeds and put them aside. I went through them later to pull out seeds for planting more next season. After that, I took a spoon and ran it around the shell, separating the "meat" from the shell. It comes off pretty easily.

Once all the pumpkins were emptied, I used my KitchenAid and put it on the whisk for about 15 minutes. I had to keep the speed pretty low or it would splash. There are more sophisticated ways of doing this, but I don' have a sieve or food processor, so I settled for good old fashioned mixer.

Once it was pretty well pureed, I took out the whisk and there was a bunch of glop stuck to it. At first, I tried to pull it off to use it, but then realized, it was all stringy and hard. It turned out to be a good thing that the mixer caught all that and kept it separate, so I just threw it away. the rest was mostly smooth and ready to make into pumpkin pie filling. This is the recipe I used, there are MANY out there to choose from, but I chose this one and was happy with the outcome:

3 eggs

1 1/2 cup pumpkin

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. ginger

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup milk

2 tsp. melted butter

1 Tbsp. flour

In a clean empty bowl, beat eggs well. Add pumpkin, sugars, and spices, mix. Add milk, mix. Add the flour and the melted butter, mix well.

It was very runny when I was done mixing it and that's OK. I will advise that if your pumpkin puree had any water that you could pour off, do. My pie was a little wet in the end.

I chose to not make my own pie crust so I rolled out my refrigerated one and emptied my filling into it. Cover the edges with foil so they don't burn and you are ready for the oven. Bake at 450 for the first 15 minutes, then lower to 350 for another 45 - 60 minutes. A knife inserted should come out clean. I baked mine closer to the hour.

Voila! Pie from scratch. What I did find is that the next day, it had settle more and wasn't "wet" at all. Even though it was "wet" the first day, it was still good, just a different texture. It was really good and what you would expect a pumpkin pie to be the next day. My four small pumpkins made enough for 3 pies. They were really small so I'm guessing an average pie pumpkin would make 2 pies.

I don't think I would normally do this, but I was glad that I did and that now I know how. I'm sure on those Thanksgiving's of old, a pumpkin pie was a real treat!

Applesauce - Not Worth My Time

Making applesauce. Cranky. Won't do it again. Way too much effort for the product. My opinion only.

Canning Pork

Canning meat is just about the easiest thing to do. No fuss, just a few minutes standing around cutting it up. This can be done with just about any meat except sea food, which is not recommended for canning. As always, start with clean jars and lids and the meat of your choice. Mine for now, is pork that was on sale.

This was a seven and a half pound chunk of pork and it filled 8 pint jars or 4 pints and 2 quarts. (I ran out of pints) Start by removing the visible fat. This is disgusting and a little bit of a chore. I'm a bit squeamish about touching raw meat, so I wear gloves. Having too much fat in your jars isn't good and can interfere with sealing.

After you have removed as much fat as possible, cut the meat into small chunks. They don't have to be really small, just small enough to fit into the jar and not leave big gaps between the meat inside the jar.

Place into jar leaving about an inch or so of space at the top. Do not add anything. I guess you can add seasonings, but no water. I choose not to season my meats before processing because I can always store things such as green chilis, bbq sauce, etc. separately. That way I'm not committed to a certain "type" of meat. My preference. After getting all the meat into the jars, wipe the rim of the jars well with a hot rag to remove any residue that may have been left from the meat. Put on lids and bands and put into pressure cooker filled with a couple of quarts of water.

Secure lid to cooker and wait till steam is coming out in a steady stream. Put cap on steam spout and wait for pressure to rise to at least 11 pounds, then start timing it. It's one hour 15 minutes if you are just using pints. If you have any quarts in it, you need to do one hour and 30 minutes. It ok if the pressure rises a little past that, just don't let it get below the 11 mark. You need to keep a watch on it during the processing time. Once it's done, remove from heat and let the pressure go down to zero. Do not remove the cap to the steam valve until then. Remove jars and let cool. See all the natural juices that show up!

Once your jars have cooled, remove bands and wipe around jar rims. For some reason, mine always boil out a little bit so there is juice in the water of the pressure cooker and under my bands. There is no need to replace the bands unless you just want to. Now listen for that beautiful sound of the "pop" telling you - well done! I like to do them in pints because it's absolutely delicious to use for BBQ pork sandwiches for lunch. It's about enough for 3 adult sandwiches. Don't forget to label and put an expiration date on it. I just use little sticky tab labels and I like to put when it expires, not when I made it. Saves me from having to think later. From everything I have read, processed meat lasts at least 2 years so that's when I put for the expiration date. There's no way it's making it in my pantry that long!

Coupons Organized

Since I have started CouponSense, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to make this work. I can't claim origination on this one, I'm a total copier. My problem was that they tell you to not clip your coupons, but file them away under a letter and they will tell you when it's best to use them. Ok, makes sense to me. Problem: I need batteries, I'm at the store, I know there is a coupon somewhere in my file box at home, just not sure where. Bought batteries with no coupon. Frustrating. Soooo, a friend tells me to cut all the coupons each week and file them in a binder.

Here's what I did. Got an old binder, filled it with trading card holders. Found some old dividers and some scrap cardstock. I used the dividers to divide into sections such as frozen, canned, snacks, cleaning, etc. I cut little squares of cardstock to fit in each pocket. This lets me use both sides of the pocket. It is a divider now as well.

I (my children) sat and cut all the coupons out of the papers I had. I sorted them, then put them in the pockets according to category. This was a long and not fun task. They don't all fit right and some could go into different categories, but I did my best. Now, every time I get new coupons, I just add them in. As I shop, I take this with me in case I need something that wasn't a "great deal", but I could still use a coupon for. I just flip through, find it and pull it out. I also keep a calculator in with it so I can figure out prices per ounce. I spent a pretty good amount of time at Wal Mart writing down their prices on things so I could compare the sales at other grocery stores with their prices. Sometimes Wal Mart has better prices than some other store's sales. I just need to type those all up and then I will stick those in my binder as well so I have an easy reference. With the pockets in the binder, I can just slip the calculator and the weekly adds into them and have a nice organized shopping companion.

I'm sure if I am shopping with my kids, this will not be as easy as it seems, but I'm trying now to fit my shopping in at different times when my kids are not with me. If I need to take them, I guess I just throw this into my backpack and carry it that way. I'm starting to see the rewards of the program, but not in full swing yet.

Gardening

DISCLAIMER: We are not expert gardeners and have rarely gotten much from our gardens, BUT we have learned a few things along the way.

First, start by finding one of these...beg, borrow, steal....it's worth it. Ok, maybe not the steal part. Anyway, a tiller is a must have to save your back and hands from all the manual tilling. We borrow one every year. When I say "we", I mostly mean Glade because he does all of the hard work. He tills it up, pulling all the roots and dead stuff out as he goes.



Then he adds a few bags of fertilizer/mulch. We were told that our ground is fertile enough that we didn't need it, but we weren't getting much fruit, just a lot of plants. A bag of Miracle Grow sort of spilled onto one of our tomato plants and it did great. Now we just use it because it really does make a difference. Any kind will do, it needs to have nitrogen in it.

I should have taken pictures along the way, but it was too hot and dirty to think about much else other than "let's get this done". Glade made our rows with a hoe in line with our automatic sprinkler system. By the way, I would never have a garden without a sprinkler system. It was really easy to put together and we just tapped it off our existing system with pvc.

We have started planting on top of the rows instead of down in the trenches. This makes it easier to keep weeded. You can just hoe out the trenches and pluck what grows on the top. Still not good at that weeding thing, totally stinks to do it. We started by laying a seed down on top of the mound and then poking it down with our fingers. Not good on my nails and it was hard to always remember exactly where you put the last one. About half way through, Glade started "furrowing" the top of the mound for me and I would just drop seeds in. Bo followed me covering up the seeds. Easy and fast! The picture below shows the "furrow". Basically just dragging your hand down the middle of the raised mound creating a crevice. Then you just pull the dirt back together once the seeds are in.

After all the seeds were planted, we turned on the water to make sure all the trenches would fill. Glade had to make little adjustments with the hoe to allow water to flow in all the areas, but it soon was and the water soaked right into the berms. Now we wait and pray. Don't the scriptures say to pray over your fields and flocks???

We always have issues with grass crawling in, so this year Glade made a pretty good drop off from the grass to the garden and then we sprayed it with grass killer all along the edge of the dirt.

Hopefully in just a couple of months we will have corn, tomatoes, snap peas, broccoli, carrots, lettuce and cucumbers. We planted more of the stuff I can "can" than of others. This isn't really the right season to get much to can. I'm hoping we get good cucumbers so I can learn to make pickles. I will be picking Grams brain when I get back there. We also stopped planting things we didn't really like just because it was the season to plant it. I know...duh.

Canning Pineapples and Peaches

Pineapples went on sale for $1 each so I decided I would try to can some. I'm pretty sure it isn't really that cost effective and I'm really sure that I'm never going to just have an abundance of pineapple that I need to do something with, but I still wanted to try. One pineapple fills a quart jar or two pints. These were fairly small ones.

I started by cutting them up, which is always a chore. Man they were good. Maybe they would have filled more jars if I hadn't kept taking pieces for myself! Anyway, I just cut them into little pieces and put them into the jars.



I was also told that you don't have to peel peaches to can them. Part of the headache of doing peaches is the blanching and the pealing. I decided to just do a few jars the easy way and see how they turned out. So I just washed them, cut them and stuck them in a jar as well. I added about half a cup of sugar to each quart (less to the pints) and then filled with boiling water.

You need to use a rubber spatula to poke around and get any air bubbles that might be stuck down in there. I can never tell if I've done a good job at this and can never see a visible bubble, but I do it because "they" say you should. Next I wiped the rims well and put the lids on.

Next I water bathed them for 20 min. That is 20 min AFTER the water starts to boil. This part always confused me as to when to start the 20 min. I will be trying them soon to see how the flavor of the pineapples are and if the peaches are any good with the peel still on them. I was told the peel will fall right off when you take them out of the jar. We shall see!!