Pumpkin pie experiment

This week I cut apart one of the Winter Luxury pie pumpkins and roasted it in the oven, then made a pie out of the pulp. The flavor and texture were both delicate and wonderful. And the pumpkin produced many seeds, which I saved for growing more of these delicious pumpkins next year. In the past I have made my pumpkin pies out of butternut squash flesh and they have been delicious, but this winter luxury pie pumpkin has a much more subtle and refined flavor. I cut down on the amount of spices which the recipe called for, to allow the pumpkin flavor to be available to the palate. This pumpkin definitely lives up the the description I read in the Nichols Garden catalog which states:

Beautiful 5 lb, 10" diameter, netted pumpkin is what every pie pumpkin promises but rarely delivers. Completely smooth, thick flesh cooks to a rich mellow flavor. A friend asked a market vendor to recommend a pie pumpkin; she reached under the counter and exclaimed, "This will be the bes you've ever had," as she brought out a Winter Luxury Pie.

The pumpkin I used was the largest of the harvest and produced six cups of cooked flesh, enough to make three pies total. I froze the remaining flesh in two-cup increments. I'll be ready to make another pie soon.

Cold Weather

Lemons

We've got a frost alert for the next few nights. This means various tender plants need to be protected from the cold, mostly citrus. This evening I went about covering and insulating my two lime plants and two lemon plants. I also picked most of the lemons from the lemon tree that bears fruit. Last year the fruit froze and fell off in a cold snap. This year I was looking forward to harvesting lemons on an as-needed basis. Now I have a basket full of lemons that will need some sort of processing. I could juice them and freeze the juice or I could make lemon marmalade. I love the idea of doing some of each.

I started making some green tomato jam yesterday, and it is resting before I'll cook it up some more and then process it in half-pint jars. Since water bath canning is so energy intensive I could do a batch of marmalade and process them all on the same day.

Thanksgiving day in the USA is on Thursday, November 25 this year, and I'm thinking I'll make a pumpkin pie using one of the pie pumpkins I grew this year. I'm going to brine two organic chickens on Wednesday and then on Thursday I'll roast them in the oven. One will be stuffed with tomato and feta from my Greek cookbook, and the other will be unstuffed.  We'll have mashed potatoes with lots of butter, perhaps some pan gravy, collards from the garden (which will be nice and mellow from the frost) and perhaps a few other things. I enjoy cooking with things that I've grown. The pie pumpkin and collards in this case. A few weeks ago I made some pumpkin cannelloni with one of the French heirloom pumpkins I roasted and some tomato sauce I made in September, and had in the freezer.