PUMPKIN PIE FILLING....The Real Deal!

Okay, so this was supposed to be pretty exciting at the house! Noa was finally able to enjoy HALLOWEEN!! Well, kind of, she's 16 months now, she that really means she running around and loving using her hands! We decided that this year would be so much fun to carve our Jack-o-laterns for Halloween, eventhough we knew the dogs would carry them off within a day or two. Well, we got so busy the last couple of weeks before Halloween that we actually didn't get a chance to carve our pumpkins as a family! Of course I wanted to save the seeds so we could grow our pumpkin patch for next year, but I just couldn't bring myself to throw away 3 perfectly good pumpkins! And since I love PUMPKIN PIE.....I decided to do something I never did before! I COOKED AND SAVED MY PUMPKIN INNERDS!!!!

REAL FILLING FOR PUMPKIN PIES!!!

Now, keep in mind this is just the pumpkin, when making your pie, remember you will need to add things like sugar and such for your actual pie filling. This is just to instruct you on how to save your seeds and your filling!!!

Start like you would if you were carving your pumpkins. If you are carving them, you would simply scoop out the slime and seeds with an ice cream scooper.....SAVE THEM IN A BOWL...A BIG'UN)! In this case, since we didn't carve them, I simply sliced my pumpkins in halves and scooped everything out!!

FOR THE SEEDS:

Once you scoop everything out and into a large bowl, fill the bowl (with slime and seeds) with water about 2/3 or so full. (Leave in the sink to reduce mess). I let it sit for about 3 minutes are so. Then you just work the seeds and slime with your hands to separate them. Put the seeds into a smaller bowl and you will again fill with water and work it again to make sure you get all of the slime and small pieces of pie off.

Toss the Slime, Keep the Seeds!
Drain the seeds from the water. Now you want to get alot of the water off the seeds and there's not a super easy way to do it, so here's what I did....1)strain the seeds 2) stir the seeds with a paper towel in your hand 3)take a paper towel or real towel, pour the seeds in the towel and dab. Then put the seeds on a foil or wax paper sheet and let them set over night to dry out. I then transferred them to a pizza pan and let them lay flat for about 5 days to dry out! VOILA....you have seeds ready to plant IN THE SPRING! So throw them in a shoe box or paper bag and put them in the basement or closetf until spring!!!!




TO MAKE THE FILLING!!!
Now, I used 2 large pumkins and 1 small pumpkin!

Supposedly, the smaller the pumpkin, the sweeter. That's yet to be determined in my kitchen, so a good idea is when making your pie, to taste test your filling as you add sugar to decide on the right amount!!



Now, you have scooped out the slime and seeds and all I have is the shell of the pumpkin. YOU WANT TO COOK IT! You can microwave it, boil it, bake it, I don't care...just cook it! Now, I am ANTI-MICROWAVE on anything but frozen corn! There's something very wrong about microwaves in my opinion, so I bake my pumpkins.

Take your slices, turn them upside down on a pan, bake for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours on 350 DEGREES, until you can stick a fork in them when they are tender.




When they are tender, take then out, turn them back around, and scoop out everything but the skin with your scooper or spoon or whatever! Toss the skins and save the rest in a bowl.





Puree the insides until smooth (I use a hand puree for liquids, because it's awesome!). When you finish, you filling is ready! Find a HOMEMADE Pie recipe that you like, that will have you use real pumpkins for filling because you will add to your filling! I will post in a couple of weeks my recipe!

NOW....for the time being, I frozen my pureed pumpkin! For a good size pie, it make take up to 3 cups of pureed pumpkin. So, since this is my first year, I froze in bags 4 cup portions just in case. So if you do this and you have an overload, just make a tiny pie to go along with it!!!

ENJOY!