For pumpkin butter and all manner of things. Optimism is not really in my nature, but I’m trying.
This morning Thursday morning I made a batch of pumpkin butter, which I hadn’t done in a year or two because the last batch turned into a tasty but non-spreadable lump, that I think was due to the squash I used. It might’ve been kabocha which I am starting to not like as much as I used to because it is so thick and dry, and I’ve had a few that were slightly bitter. For this batch of pumpkin butter, I used autumn frost, which I think has both butternut and pumpkin qualities, sweet and runnier, less tendency to solidify. I guess pectin levels vary, though – I roasted the below autumn frost and butternut (the jester or starry night or your favorite name here, for the squash that are shaped like acorn, but motley green, orange, and white shell will be for dinner tonight) and it was the butternut that was really thick. I measured all the autumn frost into one of my glass quart spouted measuring pitchers and it didn’t get quite to three cups, the amount I needed for the pumpkin butter. So I added a small layer of butternut to get it up to 3 cups, covered it, and stuck it in the basement fridge till today. When I brought it up, I thought a hard skin had formed because it wasn’t covered that tightly, but realized the hard part was the butternut. I peeled it off and ate that for lunch and used the runnier stuff for the pumpkin butter. It’s chilled a few hours now and so far so good.
Autumn frost squash, center left
This year’s batch of pumpkin butter, 2 pints, plus a small dish of overflow
Peeled off, congealed butternut with pumpkin butter
And now … I started this Thursday and I’m trying to remember what there was to be optimistic about besides pumpkin butter. Maybe I was just feeling optimistic because the weather finally cooled off. They gave me the over-60 pneumonia vaccine on Tuesday at my yearly physical and I had a terrible headache on Wednesday, so maybe Thursday I was feeling optimistic because the headache ended. I have a whole other raft of irritations related to that yearly physical that of course my doctor messaged me about at 5:15PM on Friday, so I can’t do anything about it till Monday. I’m going to hold off complaining more about until then.
I haven’t had any particular cooking triumphs; more like disasters. I think I’ll call it quits here, and end with a few random pics.
Fig-filled pumpkin scones. The kabocha makes good scones. But Mark stopped eating them so I had one today (Saturday) and just composted the remaining six.
Sourdough fail. I tried a new recipe where you do all the folds as kneading in your mixer. It looked good, but then I did a long ferment in the fridge, over 24 hours, and it didn’t rise, nor did it rise after 4-5 hours at room temp. And obviously the loaves didn’t rise either.
On Wednesday Jasper and I went to the pumpkin patch and on the way back we stopped at the big green dino park by mommy’s house.
I picked up Jasper at nursery school on Thursday and we had to make a special trip to his cubby to get his spidey dino. This’s is our pumpkins that we got the day before with him and his dino. Seems like a boy thing to me to caress a scaly dino, but maybe a girl would do it too.
Also on Thursday I made a loaf of whole wheat bread, a Sally’s Baking Addiction recipe I had made once before, and it didn’t rise as much as it did the other time, either.
But it made good toast
With tahini and (still spreadable) pumpkin butter. Maybe there’s that optimism again