A Squash In The Hand

The last few days have been bangers. Truly, I have packed even more living than normal into them. Hmm. That seems to be every day actually, but honestly, there was a lot going on.

Even yesterday, my supposed day of resting ended up being a bit of an adventure. I am pretty sure it is because I made this cake. When I was a kid my mom used to make this oatmeal cake with chocolate chips in it. My gods that cake was delectable! The longer it sat, the more moist and delicious it became, so when I saw the Lazy Day Oatmeal Cake recipe yesterday morning when the mood to look up something to bake for the hubs and the boy struck me, well, I had to give it a go!

The broiled pecan, butter, coconut brown sugar topping doesn't disappoint!!

After I made the cake, I languished by the woodstove for a bit and watched a livestream of a rally that I knew was going to frazzle some people's internal balance waves (I wasn't disappointed), and then spent the rest of the afternoon around a fire outside with my brother. Nothing makes a fall afternoon better than a firepit and a BS sesh with the bruh.

Today, after four hours of school work, I got outside and got the rest of the firewood stacked. It always feels so excellent to get that chore done, and seriously guys, I have about two years of firewood now, so my face is all smiles.

But then, then it was time to attack the beast. My friend gave me a Rouge Vif D'Etampes pumpkin that was, well, how do I put this politely, about 440 field dressed as my Papa used to say!

Okay, okay, it wasn't 440lbs, but it was pretty massive. It took me a bit to buck er' all up and remove the guts. Because it was such an impressive specimen, I saved some of it's numerous seeds before I cleaned and roasted the behemoth.

Later, after it had roasted and cooled, I scraped the soft innards out and pureed them in my food processor. All of the youths in the neighborhood decided to descend at that point and I must say I enjoyed their wrinkled-nose countenances as they took in the scene of pumpkin carnage.

That's what they get when they interrupt my pumpkin dissection time to pick up some pack horse training tack!

Anyway, after the heathens left, I discovered I had 24 cups of pumpkin puree from the one pumpkin. I don't know about you all, but that's a pretty dang impressive number from just one squash!

Over the next couple days, I am going to be loading the puree in my Souper Cubes (silicon 1 cup molds) and freezing it. I love the Cubes, it's like turning your food into building blocks, and I don't know about you all, but I loved blocks when I was a kid. Plus, it's fun to stack my food all pretty and orderly like in my freezer!

So, in the future, expect some random what should I bake with this pumpkin polls and such. I figure since I have so much puree I should experiment with pumpkin and squash recipes and post it for you all to enjoy along with me.

And I haven't even got to the massive Hubbard squash yet!

I love fall....

And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's now christened with pumpkin puree still new though iPhone.