From the depths of my Freezer

At any given point in time I can usually dig around in my Freezer and find a bit of awesomeness.

Because I freeze EVERYTHING.

What I had in the fridge were some baby carrots, celery and onions, which by itself meant I could pretty much do anything I damn wanted.

Got some plain white rice to steam, sucker-punched my veggies in a tiny food processor, set everything aside for some stir fry I plan to whip up with some beef from... The Freezer. I usually buy a few extra packages of stir fry beef from the store, get home, wrap the entire package tight in a couple of layers of Saran wrap and forget all about them (in The Freezer) until they sound like a good idea again. They freeze well, and defrost remarkably quick.



But that's for dinner tonight. Later.
In the meantime, I could go for some soup.

Simmer some more of those chopped veggies with some chicken broth (I don't have any at the moment, so it was water and chicken bouillon), a good clove of minced garlic, some herbs (thyme, parsley, cilantro--my folks always say it's pointless to use those last two together, and I disagree), and added lime zest from The Freezer... I left that on the stove for a good 40 minutes or so, then dug around The Freezer for some more stuff.

Frozen corn.... what's this, a baggie of shredded beef? Alright... this kinda looks like an ice-cube shaped lump of blanched spinach... yeah, I think I remember doing that, okay... Sweet.

Bowl: beef, some of the cooked rice from earlier, broth. Sprinkle of lime juice. If I had avocado this would be perfection. Daughter's vs. mine: mine has the spinach and cayenne pepper. YUM.

Pumpkins

All over the internet you'll find pages advicing you that Jack-o-Lantern type pumpkins are not the kind you want to use for baking. Too stringy, no flavor, not sweet enough, blah, blah, blah.

Fact: IT'S FRESH PUMPKIN. I don't care how you look at it, it's still better than crap-in-a-can. Besides, it seems like such a waste.

Too stringy? Before you do anything with it, you have to bake and puree it. If your puree is stringy, You're Doing It Wrong.
No flavor? Were you planning on eating it by itself? You're weird.
Not sweet enough? Add more sugar to the dish, come on, people, this isn't rocket science.

I got a great run out of last year's pumpkin (read: about 3 gallons worth), and I didn't hear anyone complain about the cream-cheese filled, streusel topped, pumpkin/cranberry muffins.

I started out with a massive pumpkin that I had to bake in 3 different batches, and which produced as much puree as roughly 3 small houses. A good bit of it is stored in my freezer now, but I kept about half a gallon in the fridge to experiment a bit over the next couple of days.

Tonight I made a cream of pumpkin base, because I wanted to try savory and sweet versions (savory won, no contest), and a cranberry/citrus flan that sounded much better in print than it actually was. I mean, it was decent. If someone served that to me at their house I'd eat it and enjoy it. Just like I ate and enjoyed it tonight, but I probably won't be making it again.

Cream of Pumpkin
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
Evaporated milk
Pumpkin puree
Salt
White pepper

Making a roux is easy stuff--melt butter over low heat, add equal amounts of flour, let it cook/dissolve/get creamy and thick. I had something like 1/4 cup evaporated milk in my fridge, so I used that, let it thicken again, and started adding pumpkin puree. I didn't measure it, but I probably added about 2 cups (maybe less), gradually. It seemed a bit too thick, so I added a bit more regular milk (probably another 1/4 cup or so). Salt/white pepper to taste, topped with fresh parsley. It was definitely more than decent, and if The Husband enjoyed Cream of- soups more I'd probably make it on a regular basis.

Tomorrow I might try to make pumpkin noodles. I've been wanting to try that for a while.