A Cooking Blog?

Well, no. But I do love to cook! The holidays are my favorite time of year! Today I decided to make something of these left over pumpkins....
I started with a recipe for fresh Pumpkin Pie.
I cut the tops off of two of our smaller pumpkins scrapped out most of the seeds and strings and cooked them in the microwave on high for about 20minutes.
Set aside to cool.
I then set out to make Pumpkin Soup.
I first cut the top off of my pumpkin(large) scrapped out most of the seeds and strings, and then cut it into sections.

Then I placed each section onto a piece of foil with a few pats of butter and a generous amnt of pepper:

Creating a foil packet:

Place into the oven(set at 425) and baked until tender(about an hr and a half).

Next, I put about 1 pound of smoked bacon and two onions into a pan and cooked them over medium heat until soft.

I then put the cooked onion and bacon, 2lbs of peeled and diced potatos and 3lbs of the cooked pumpkin into a stock pot and covered with about 8cups of stock(the recipe called for vegetable stock but I already had chicken/veggie stock on hand so I used that instead)

at this point I was getting nervous because the picture above did not look very appealing to me and I was begining to wonder if I had just wasted the entire morning. I let it simmer and cook down for about 2hrs, and then put it in the blender:

Once blended I readded it to the pot and put in about 1pint or two cups of milk.

To my suprise it's pretty good, and taste nothing like I thought it would(you know pumpkin! lol) To me, it tastes a lot like say bean with bacon soup, and somewhat like split pea soup, well without the peas ;) Olivia and J especially love it!
Returning to my pie's
After the pumpkins had cooled I removed 4cups of cooked pumpkin.
I tossed it into the blender with:
1.5cups of evaporated milk
2/3cup plain yogurt
1/3cup milk
Blended and poured into a large bowl.
I then added:
1/2cup brown sugar
1cup sugar
1/2tsp salt
2tsp cinnamon
1tsp ginger
3/4tsp nutmeg
1/4tsp ground gloves
In a seperate bowl I slightly beat 4eggs
add then to the bowl of ingreds above and then poured the mixture into 2 store bought pie crusts:

Bake at 425 for 15minutes and then reduce heat to 350 and bake another 45minutes.
These pie's turned out SO good that I will be eating *one* of them for dinner tonight ;) and for the kids:

Pumpkin Pudding
(also very good, I made this with the left over pie filling in a double boiler.)
I just gave T an entire left over section of the baked pumpkin for dinner and she ate it up! With the rest I'd like to make her a good amnt of baby food, a few side dishes for us and pumpkin ravioli! It feels good to know how much we are getting out of these pumpkins we would have otherwise just thrown out!