Let’s Eat Jack-o-Lanterns

It’s that time of the year! The spooky season where we buy pumpkins, carve ’em up into scary faces, and decorate porches with them to scare the kiddies! And then… we kinda just let them rot? Toss ’em out? Which is frankly a waste, because pumpkins are full of so much good stuff! So for the last couple of years, when buying a Halloween pumpkin, I’ve been slicing it up for a different purpose–to consume! That thing is full of nutritious flesh, skin and guts, baby, and you should take advantage of that! I decided to write a short ‘n sweet blog post of what I do with the bits of the pumpkin, so you can too!

Before we get into this, though–I don’t entirely recommend eating a pumpkin that’s been sitting outside for a long time. Ideally, you should buy a pumpkin just to eat on its own, but if you want to eat your jack-o-lantern, I suggest buying it very close to Halloween, carving it up the day of, and sticking it outside for just a few hours–enough for the trick-or-treaters–then bringing it inside to prepare. Don’t leave it overnight!

Prepping your Pumpkin

If you’ve ever carved a pumpkin before, you know what to do. It’s great, it involves a big knife. Carve a hole at the top of your pumpkin around the stem, then remove it. Grab that thang and yank it. If you’ve already carved your pumpkin for Halloween–great! You’ve already done this! You’ve also probably already removed the guts and seeds, so you can skip ahead. But if you haven’t–go ahead and do that. Take out all the seeds and guts and separate them. Next, cut up your pumpkin into either halves, quarters, or whatever you feel will make your pumpkin a bit easier to manage (and fit in your oven). Then, take a spoon and carve away all the rest of the guts so that there’s no more orange stringy bits on the flesh, and stick ’em with the rest.

The Guts

Texture hell, these are. I hate them. Normally you toss them after carving, but even these gross things can be useful. I usually save them in the freezer for later, because they can be used to make some delicious soup stock if you boil them.

The Seeds

Honestly, the star of the show. Like–yeah, yeah, carving a face is kinda fun, but then you get to eat the tasty seeds. Delicious unborn pumpkin children. Fire up your oven, line them up on a baking sheet and sprinkle them with some oil and salt, and that’s all you need! If you wanna be fancy, you can play with other seasonings too, like garlic and chili. It’s hard not to eat them all in one sitting. Sometimes I do, but I’m an adult and can do that.

The Flesh

This part takes the most work, but it’s worth it, I promise! Now that your pumpkin is all cut up, with no more guts and seeds, you’re gonna wanna bake it on a low temp. Put it on some baking sheets with the skin sides up for about an hour. This is to get the flesh nice and soft–you should be able to push your finger into it fairly easily when its done. Then, with a fork or spoon, scrape it off the skin and into a food processor/blender, and give her a whirl until she’s velvety. Now you have some homemade pumpkin puree! If your puree is still looking a bit stringy, try adding some water into your processor/blender and run her until its smooth. It’s perfect for baking, or soups, or what-have-you. You can even store it in the freezer for later–I usually separate it into baggies of about 1 cup, since recipes usually need one cup of purree.

The Skin

You can use the pumpkin skin, too. I’ve yet to try this one, but you can roast the skin in very much the same way as the seeds, with some oil and salt, making some yummy pumpkin skin chips. Just be sure to wash the outside of your pumpkin first!

There’s no doubt other ways to use up your pumpkin, too–this is just what I’ve been doing! It just makes the season that much more fun.

So now that you’ve got all that puree, what do you make? Here’s my two go-tos: soft pumpkin cookies (which I found off the internet) and pumpkin bread (which is a recipe from my grandma). I’ll share the recipes below, so if you end up ripping into your pumpkin and blending its flesh, you can make some too!

Soft Pumpkin Cookies

Ingredients:

Instructions:
-Preheat your oven to 350F.
-Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt into a bowl.
-In another bowl, beat the sugar and butter.
-Beat into the sugar/butter mix the pumpkin puree, egg and vanilla until smooth.
-Gradually beat in the flour mix.
-Dollop 1 tablespoon of batter for each cookie onto a baking sheet, and bake for roughly 15 minutes.
-Stick a fork into the cookies to make sure they’re cooked, then let them cool.

-Combine the powdered sugar, milk, butter and vanilla in another bowl until smooth.
-Drizzle the icing over the cool cookies and let it set.
Enjoy your cookies!

Grandma Etta’s Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups of flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 1/5 teaspoons of cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoons of ginger or nutmeg
• 1 1/2 cups of sugar
• 1/2 cup of oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of pumpkin puree

Instructions:
-Preheat your oven to 350F.
-Mix the eggs, oil and pumpkin in one bowl.
-Mix the flour, baking soda, seasonings and sugar in another.
-Mix the two together.
-Put it in a greased bread pan (or, if you want muffins: a muffin tin!)
-Bake for about an hour. It’ll probably be longer, though. Be sure to stick a fork in to be sure it’s cooked!

Enjoy your bread! I love it best warmed up with butter on it.

Thanks for reading–now savour the season! Feast upon the eerie gourds! Boil their guts and rend their flesh! Consume the very essence of Halloween!!!