To celebrate spring I baked and froze what we were told will be the last winter squash of the season from our CSA share at the 47th Ave Farm.  It was a monster. Craig came home with it and said several people there had to come back for theirs, and that if we’d had a full share rather than a half it would have been even larger. You can get a sense of scale by looking at the cleaver in the photo above.

I had to first bake it for 30 minutes, just so I could cut it. It barely fit in our oven:

After it sat for a bit, I split it in half, scooped out the innards  and then baked each half.

When both halves were baked I scooped out all the flesh into a big bowl, which by the end was on the verge of overflowing:

The bowl of mashed squash weighed 13 pounds! It filled six quart jars and one pint jar.

After the innards were placed in jars I moved most of it into the chest freezer (can I get a hell yea for chest freezers!) leaving a couple of jars out to make soup and pies with this week.

I then used the recipe in Mark Bittman’ How to Cook Everything and made spicy pumpkin seeds.

Even though this whole process start to finish took almost 8 hours, and thus my whole Sunday, the seeds in particular are  so delicious and addictive that I almost want another pumpkin!

Then on Monday I made crust for two pumpkin pies and the first of the pies. Unfortunately, the filling sloshed all over the crust (and the oven window) and thus it looked as if the pie was burnt. It still tasted good, though not as good as the first pie I’d made last month with the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. On Tuesday, I made the second of the pies, and had even more trouble with the crust…this time it actually split in the pre-baking phase. I brought it to the office to celebrate LJ’s birthday, and despite not being beautiful in presentation when we cut into the pie it was delicious!

This post is tagged