When I was little, I distinctly remember eating pumpkin soup with caramel corn croutons on Halloween before going out to troll the neighborhood for treats. It was one of my favorite parts of the holiday. That, and finding a hiding place where I could successfully stash all of my candy – protected from my siblings – to ration it over the next months. (What kid rations their candy I mean COME ON.) If I’m honest, my siblings always found my stash and always stole my candy, sprinkling little reminders of the holiday through the winter months. But I don’t remember having pumpkin soup at any other time.
Being a grown-ass woman has its perks. I have a kitchen of my own now and a profession that requires me to make my own damn candy and keep it in abundance openly around the house. (Recipe testing!) And I can politely ask anyone who tries to steal or overeat it to leave. I also can express my pumpkin love more openly and do so by the mountain of squashes and pumpkins that I start gathering from the farms around the valley…basically as soon as they’re plucked from the ground. (Pumpkins will keep, uncarved and uncut and stored in a cool or room temperature place for months and months.)
As least a few times a week, I jam a pumpkin into the oven and go about my grown-ass lady business. When I return, a couple hours later, I have a fragrant, glowing orb of perfectly roasted pumpkin flesh begging to be scooped out by the spoon and swirled into…everything. Pumpkin soup is one of the easiest things I could think of to do with all that golden sweetness, until now.
Pumpkin Eggs in Purgatory is a ridiculously easy little dish to make for any meal you want to get right, and wouldn’t mind making a wee bit special or impressive…without lifting any extra weight in the kitchen. You can’t mess it up (literally!) and you can eat it anytime — pre- or post- ride/hike/run/ski, or for dinner on a night when dipping crusty bread into something feels like the right jam.
In this month’s “Serious Questions,” one of you dear readers asked about the best knife to cut a pumpkin or squash. It’s true that these little jerks can be a bit tricky to slice into, with their rotund bodies, and slippery tough skin. My answer, as in anything in life, is don’t fight it. Slicing a big pumpkin with a knife and a normal sized human arm elevated at the level of a kitchen countertop is just too hard, my friends.
Instead of cutting that bad boy, I strongly STRONGLY suggest roasting it. Whole. Be it a butternut, a kuri squash, those tiny little delicata, an acorn, or a sugar pie. Line a sheet pan with foil (easy cleanup as the juices start to flow from the pumpkin.) Then, prick your pumpkin all over with the sharp edge of a knife. Stick the whole damn pumpkin in the oven at 350°F and walk away. That’s it. Your job here is done for a little while. (Read: you’re not really doing anything and yet getting credit for “cooking a pumpkin,” ya see?
Now, come back and check on your little pumpkin baby again in, oh….an hour if you want to be able to slice it into wedges or cut it open and fill it with goodies. Something like that. If you’re like me 99% of the time, you’re just after the creamy flesh and so you can keep roasting that little guy until the knife melts at the touch of a knife, the pumpkin has started to collapse in on itself and your whole house is filled with sweet pumpkin smells (divinity, really.)
Then, pull the pumpkin from the oven. Let it cool a bit. Slice it open with a butterknife if that’s all you have, and scoop out the seeds. What you’ll have left is the flesh, easily pulled from the skin, ready and now completely surrendered to you, ready for whatever sort of deliciousness you may want to get after. You may want to squish it into a smooth mash, or blend it up to make it smooth, but that’s also optional.
This flesh is ready for your pumpkin breads and cakes. Mix it into pumpkin cookies. Make muffins. Make it into pumpkin soup! Or, you can make this Pumpkin Eggs in Purgatory. (Hint: you’ll probably have enough to do a few of these things!)
Yes, of course, you can do that too.
But from my purview, that means I’d have to go to the store, elbow through the crowd of folks hunting for their groceries to find the cans of pumpkin. When I arrive there, it’s very possible that the canned pumpkin will be sold out (because somehow no one seems to know that pumpkin in cans comes from PUMPKINS IN REAL LIFE.)
You don’t get any of the smells with canned pumpkin. You also spent twice as much for half the amount of pumpkin. You don’t have to recycle a can, nor guess how long your pumpkin has been in the can. Yes, it’s safe in there, but it’s not nearly as flavorful as the pumpkin you get from your farmer, roast in your own, and squish until it’s pureéd with your own hands (or, or a blender.)
Yes, you can completely substitute canned pumpkin here. Do what works for you.
What would the holiday season be without some preoccupation with “good and bad,” foods, eh? This is the time of year when we really start to vilify the sweet flavor. If we’re having cravings for sweet foods, we automatically think that there’s something naughty going on within us, and that we must strike down that desire, ignore it and eat a salad. But, if we’re having these thoughts we’re on the wrong train.
Eating sweet foods is one of the most important ways for us to fuel and care for our bodies in the fall and winter. Sweet foods are soothing, grounding, mineralizing, nourishing and balancing. And I’m not talking about eating an entire apple pie, or a pint of ice cream, or every one of the holiday cookies that you baked for the neighbor. Apples, carrots and beets are sweet. Grains, milk and dairy products are sweet. Maple syrup, natural sugars and honey are sweet. Fruits, especially cooked in their own juices, are sweet. And, pumpkins, sweet potatoes and winter squashes are some of the sweetest of them all.
AND, by the way, if you’re wondering “how this meal helps me perform,” there are few better sources of carbohydrates than pumpkins and winter squashes, perfect for recovery, rebuilding and stocking your system with what it needs to get after it — whether you’re chasing costumed humans around the neighborhood, or chasing a PR.
Enjoy them with reckless abandon in this season.
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