Hey, Charlene!

This year was my first to grow pumpkins, and mine are really too small for much, other than using as decorations. My understanding is that ALL pumpkins are edible, but some are more suited for cooking. I found a related thread on the vegetable forum. Hope this helps.

Bonnie

Here is a link that might be useful: Pumpkin thread

Thanks, Bonnie! That thread was really helpful. Guess I won't be making pie out of these pumpkins for Thanksgiving but I'm going to go ahead and try the soup and sweet bread using them.

Sorry about your pumpkins :( Next year!!

Charlene

Hi Charlene,
I've actually used jack-o-lanterns for food.

My mom, being the frugal person she was, always made pie out of jack-o-lanterns after halloween. And I did it years ago, again being frugal.

The orange jack-o-lanterns are much more fibrous than cooking pumpkins, and lighter in colour like you found, but they taste ok in pies because pies are flavoured more from the spices than the pumpkin. If you pureed it, it should be fine, although a bit watery. Depending on the soup, I wouldn't use it for that unless there's plenty of spice in the soup.

The white pumpkins sold as jack-o-lanterns tasted so bad, I didn't use them at all.

In more recent (past 10 or so) I feed the jack-o-lanterns to the chickens. I don't grow jack-o-laterns because I only want a couple for halloween - and if I grow them I get 20-plus.

I used to grow Autumn Harvest Gold pumpkins for cooking - very orange, very smooth flesh that got quite sweet with keeping a month or so. Sugar Pie are also good. I'll probably grow them again if I don't grow butternuts.

Butternut squash makes very good pie - sweet, smooth and deep orange.

Hubbard also makes very good pie, but they are just too productive for me.

Don't feel sorry for me, Charlene! They were supposed to be small. I grew the 'Jack B. Little' pumpkins, because someone had given me the seeds. Next time I think I will try a small pie pumpkin. I don't have the space for the big Jack O'Lantern type though.

Bonnie

That Kakai pumpkin someone mentioned on the other thread sounds like fun. I once grew a seedless delicata, Lady Godiva, but then the delicata didn't ripen in subsequent years. Combined with the "off flavor" of my acorns, a too short season seemed to confine my gardening to buttercup.

I mentioned the Burgess buttercup as making fine pies on a veggie forum thread once and was surprised at how many gardeners felt that it was the best.

Pumpkins come in such a vast number of varieties, it hasn't been difficult for me to find some that turn orange by Fall. I've even had them ripen a little too early.

Oh, and I made a very good squash soup last Winter with chicken stock, onions, and ginger. It's almost soup season!

digitS'

We make something from squash that should work well with pumpkin as well, a sort of 'fruit leather'. Bake the pumpkin, scoop out the insides and purée with lime juice, and spread the result out and dehydrate. The lime / concentrated pumpkin combo is pretty good.

Autumn Harvest Gold is one of those early ripening pumpkins, although I've never had a problem with any cooking pumpkin which tends to stay small. But it starts out yellow right from the blossom, so it's pretty even when unripe.

It was the one that convinced me 25 years ago that pumpkins could be just as good as other winter squash on the table - a bit of brown sugar, butter, S&P and the kids loved it.

I used to get the seeds from Rocky Mountain Seed.

My friend just gave me a recipe for squash soup that contains ginger - fresh ginger. She says it's fantastic. I'll have to try it soon.

I remembered wrong - it's just Autumn Gold. No Harvest in the name.

Well, I made some pumpkin muffins and a pumpkin bread loaf. Yum!!! I'm giving the loaf to my neighbors who took care of our house while we were at the sand dunes (incredible that such a thing exists surrounded by mountains in Colorado!).

I'll have to try growing one of the cooking pumpkins next year. And some butternut squash too. I'm thinking I want to extend the back of the vegetable garden to make a separate pumpkin, corn and potato patch. The pumpkins just take over the rest of the garden.

That soup with ginger sounds yummy!! I have fresh ginger left over from the plum sauce I made.

Bonnie, I grew the Jack-B-Little's too, in a big tractor tire. They are cute. I have them in a little cluster on the table.

David, I don't know if my son would eat that fruit leather but I'd like to try. My pumpkin puree is not very thick and I'm wondering if it will still work.

There's a book I love by Stephen Pratt called Superfoods RX and pumpkin is one of the superfood nutrition giants on the list.

Here's to pumpkins,

Charlene

Hey Charlene,

I received this email today, and thought of you. Hope you find it useful.

Bonnie

Here is a link that might be useful: Baking with fresh pumpkin