Die you pumpkin bastard

Last week I picked up our first CSA (community supported agriculture) subscription basket & in it was the sweetest little seminole pumpkin.  I looked at that pumpkin all week long, thinking how I was going to stuff it a la vegan thanksgivings past & how wonderful it was going to be.

I got sidetracked, naturally.  First I needed to deal with the more perishable produce in same basket.  Also, I have had a bad cold so... 1) cough cough cough , which just sucks the motivation out of me & 2) I have not-much sense of smell & no sense of taste, which sucks the inspiration right out of me.

But Friday night I decapitated the little monster & Oh. My. G*d. that was the thickest rind I have ever seen in my life. I cut & scraped & gouged.  It was like mixing cement in a teeny-tiny bucket with a very narrow opening.

Then I made the stuffing (pumpkin & onions & carrots & some spices & cornbread), stuffed the pumpkin & cooked for 45 minutes.  Then cooked for another 45 minutes.  Because I forgot one of the fundamentals of stuffed pumpkin:  the thicker the rind, the more water it is holding.  We ate much later than usual & then had nachos.  For dessert.

Once it had cooled a bit, I scooped the goo into a fridge-container & will re-cook it tonight, outside the pumpkin, to go with baked chicken.  Saturday morning I took what was still a very sturdy pumpkin shell to the henhouse & dropped it on the  ground where it split & the ladies gorged themselves on it.  I went in the house to get the camera to take a picture of the colorful birds eating that orange orange squash & when I got back out it was GONE.  Just the littlest bit of a stain was left.

When I make it again, I will lop off quite a bit more from the top, cook uncovered & make a few other recipe changes (no need to add vegetable stock, maybe saute the onions in white wine, add some apples, you know: CHANGES).  First though I will need to grow some.  Which is why I saved the seeds.