Pumpkin Hunting

Every fall we all load up into the car and make the trip to Shamrock Farm so that the children can run through clusters of pumpkins still out in the field until they find the perfect one. Usually it's bigger than I would like but I can never say no *grin*.

This year the little guy wanted to be fully in charge of the wagon so he huffed and puffed but kept tugging on that wagon full of pumpkins as it weaved and bobbed behind him over the uneven hills of dirt in the pumpkin patch. He was beaming from ear to ear as he made each stop to load in another orange treasure :)

By the time he made the last stop he was more than ready to squeeze in anywhere he could fit and let big brother take a turn pulling the wagon and him back to the barn.

Not only do they have the best pumpkin patch but inside their barn it is always decorated for the kids to. There are pumpkins from floor to ceiling, some real, some decorative, flying witches, hairy spiders and the above nook with creepy creaking noises, chairs that rock on their own, cauldrons that smoke and more *grin*. Talk about fun!

Before we left the children took turns running through a little hay maze they had outside with tunnels and little nooks to crawl through...

and of course we had to check out the chickens to :)

We always have a family party on Halloween since it is Hubby's birthday also so I've been busy planning a ghoulish feast *grin*. This year's menu will include brains and intestines and possibly some pumpkin vomit! Want to come? I promise it will all taste good LOL.

Hugs,
Rosina

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Flax Bread ~ Recipe

The cold and darker days of winter make me want to bake and cook up a storm! I love to create yummy homemade food for my family but it's also a great way to help keep the main floor of our house nice and toasty with the extra heat coming from the oven :) So when I ran across a new recipe for a pumpkin flax loaf of bread I just had to give it a try using some of the pumpkin I canned in the fall.

The recipe does take a bit of preparation as it requires a sponge but trust me it only takes a minute or two to prepare it!

In a glass bowl mix:

1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour from freshly ground hard wheat berries

3/4 cup of lukewarm water

1/4 tsp yeast

Mix it all together well, cover and let sit on your counter top over night at least 12 hours. In the morning you will find that it has grown and bubbled in the bowl.

***If you are using home canned pumpkin like I am you will also want to place it in a strainer and into the fridge over a bowl so that any excess liquid can drip out of it overnight before using it in your bread in the morning :)

Now that your sponge has sat overnight and is nice and bubbly it's time to start making your bread!

You will now need:

2 1/2 - 3 cups whole wheat flour from freshly ground hard wheat berries
3/4 cup all purpose white flour (provides gluten for a good rise)
1 cup mashed pumpkin
1 tsp. yeast
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup ground flax seeds
2 Tbsp. flax seeds

Mix your pumpkin, water, ground flax, whole flax seeds and yeast into your sponge and stir until it is nice and smooth. Stir in your white flour and half of your whole wheat and again mix until smooth. Continue to add the remainder of your whole wheat flour a little at a time until you have incorporated all of it. It makes quite a sticky dough and I found that I needed to use the entire amount of flour.

A little tip for working with a dough that is a little bit on the sticky side like this one is to rub a little bit of oil onto your counter top where you will be kneading your bread and onto your hands so that you can knead it for the 8 minutes without having to add any extra flour which can make your finished bread dry.

Once you have finished kneading your dough, cover it with a cloth and allow it to rise until doubled. Roughly an hour.

Now that your dough has completed its first rise, punch it down to release the gas inside the dough and divide it into two equal pieces. Shape your dough into two nice balls and place on a baking stone or parchment covered baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover your dough again with a cloth and let them rise until doubled again.

Once your loaves have finished their final rise you can create a pretty top to your bread with flax seeds by beating an egg white until it is frothy and brushing it gently all over the top of your loaves. Your flax seeds will now stick to your dough. You can also use a sharp knife and gently slice an X onto the top of each loaf which will create a nice look as it bakes as well :)

Bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 30 minutes or until they sound hollow when tapped on their bottom side.

Oh my goodness is this bread delicious!!!
It is so nice and soft and if you are worried about it having a pumpkiny taste it doesn't at all. It was a huge hit with the kids so I know this is going to become a family favorite. Now I only wish that I had more of my canned pumpkin as this is really going to eat through my stash *grin*. Guess we're going to have to make sure we grow a whole bunch this year!

This recipe was adapted from this Harvest Squash Bread recipe using regular whole wheat flour and roasted acorn squash so you can definitely make this recipe even if you don't grind your own flour! Also if you don't have an acorn squash substitute in what you do have on hand. Sometimes the best breads come from those you change *grin*

Happy Baking!
Rosina

PS. Looking for more yummy recipes?? Check out this week's Hearth and Soul blog hop :)

Preserving Fall ~ Canning Pumpkin

I couldn't bear to let our carved pumpkins go to waste so I had the kids bring them inside to me this morning and I got to work chopping them up for canning :) I just LOVE the smell of freshly sliced and grated pumpkin and this will let me enjoy this time of year just a little bit longer. There's nothing like cooking up a pumpkin pie in those dark winter days and triggering wonderful memories of fall :)

They have a bit of a tough skin to peel but as you get going I find that it gets easier. You start to get the feel for the right pressure you need to apply to your knife while keeping your loose fingers clear in case it slips *grin*. I'll admit it slipped on me once and it sort of give my heart a jump start! LOL.

I had already washed some of my pint canning jars in hot soapy water with a splash of bleach to disinfect them as they had been sitting in the crawl space all year so once I had all my pumpkin peeled I cut the pieces into 1 inch thick spears roughly the height of my jars but short enough to leave the 1 inch head space needed for a proper seal. What at time saver!! When it was time to pack the jars all of the spears were the exact height so there was no need to mess around trimming them to fit :)

I thought that I would share with you how I can pumpkin just in case you want to try doing it with your pumpkins to :) Pumpkins are a low acid vegetable and very capable of growing botulism if processed improperly so make sure you use a 'pressure canner' and NOT a 'water bath'.

When you have collected all of your jars, sealers, rings and have your pumpkin peeled and sliced it's time to prep you pumpkin for packing into your jars. Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit and place all of your pumpkin spears into a large stock pot and cover with water. Bring the pot to a boil and let it gently boil for a couple of minutes only. You will see that your pumpkin spears are starting to turn brighter orange as they start to cook and you only want them to be barely fork tender. You are going to pack your jars hot so even if you don't think they are quite done turn off the burner anyways because as you pack your jars the ones in the pot will continue to cook while waiting to come out.

Put on a clean pair of rubber gloves and grab a jar :) Your rubber gloves are going to be your body armor as you grab hot spears of pumpkin out of the pot and pack them in as tightly as you can vertically into your jars without mushing them. As soon as you have filled a jar, use a ladle and pour in enough of the hot water from your cooking pot to cover your pumpkin spears and make sure you still leave that 1 inch of empty head space at the top of the jar. Wipe the rim clean with a cloth so there are no bits of pumpkin where the sealer will touch and pop the jar into the oven to keep warm while you pack the rest of your jars :)

As soon as you have all of your jars filled with pumpkin and liquid it's time to get your sealers heated. I usually use Bernardin sealers which recommend that you only heat them to 180 degrees. Check the directions on your box as they may be different and if you happen to have old sealers you may find that they still say you can boil them for a full 5 minutes! I must say I sure do miss the old sealers that you could just pop in the pot and boil without worrying about over heating them *grin*. Once your sealers have been heated as directed, remove your jars form the oven with your rubber gloves on again and put on a hot sealer one at a time placing the finished jar each time directly into your pressure canner.

With your pressure canner fully loaded clamp on your lid, place it on your stove top burner, and turn the burner on high. As soon as your canner starts to 'vent' out of the steam pipe time it for a full 10 minutes and when the time is up shut the valve or place your weight on the steam pipe depending on which model of canner you have.

Process your batch at 10 pounds pressure for 65 minutes and that's it :)

Now if you don't have a pressure canner or just don't want to do all of that work *grin* then you can definitely freeze your pumpkin! I had way to much for my canner and I only wanted to do one batch so I grated up what was left of my pumpkin.

Our favorite cake and pie recipes call for two cups of pumpkin so I measured out 2 cups into each of my freezer bags so when I want to use one it will be exactly what I need :) You can also freeze pureed pumpkin, pumpkin butter and pumpkin pie filling as well.

Three pumpkins later I have 18 beautiful pints of canned pumpkin, 6 packages of grated pumpkin for the freezer and 1 blistered finger from all of the peeling *grin*. If you have a favorite pumpkin recipe that you would like to share with me I would love to hear about it :)

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more great recipes? Check out the Hearth & Soul Hop & Real Food Deals :)

The Pumpkin Patch

I can't believe we're nearing the end of October and that it was already time for our annual trip to Shamrock Farms for our pumpkin hunt!!

As we turned off the road and onto their dirt driveway our truck was flanked by fences topped with miniature pumpkins and gourds :)

Big brother decided that he would be in charge of our wagon and off we went with it full of children *grin*. It was the strangest weather to. The fog had been sitting in the valley all day and it actually seemed quite fitting for a Halloween pumpkin hunt :)

As soon as we got to the pumpkins the kids were off and running in all directions.

I think that the enormous choice of pumpkins was nearly to much for them as they scattered in search of the perfect one.

As we looked for ones that would be good for carving, not to green and without any rotten spots...

Hubby searched for the tiniest one that he could find. Why you might ask... because it would be the CHEAPEST!!! Haha, what a funny guy. Not!

Finally we were loaded with 3 beauties and off we went to have them weighed.

The great thing about Shamrock farm is that it's not just a u-pick pumpkin patch, but there is a bit of a haunted house inside the barn with oodles of scary pumpkins, skeletons, bats and a warty witches room full of creepy things :) The kids always love checking it all out. If you hop over to my flickr page later you can see more of the farm to.

The fun didn't stop inside the barn either! Outside are chickens to feed and turkeys, geese and goats to watch. It's such a fun place to spend a bit of your afternoon and part of our Halloween tradition. We don't actually go out trick or treating but it is my husband's birthday on Halloween so we always have a great party with carved pumpkins and creepy foods. It's so much fun :)

I think I'm going to hunt down some fireworks for this year to. When my youngest two were smaller they always cried when they went off but I think they're old enough to actually enjoy it this year *grin*. How about you. What do you do for Halloween?

Hugs,
Rosina

Pumpkin Pancakes

I couldn't bare to see our Halloween pumpkins go to waste especially since we grew them ourselves. So I've been chopping away at them all day, skinning and cubing them up for the freezer. Of course though instead of just packing it all away like I had planned to I ended up making 2 pumpkin pies and a batch of pumpkin pancakes *grin*.

I thought I'd share my recipe for my pumpkin pancakes which are both delicious & nutritious. Just don't tell my children I put a vegetable (or is it a fruit) in their pancakes! LOL.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup raw pumpkin pureed in the blender
2 cups of milk
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of sugar
2 cups of flour
dash of cinnamon

Mix all of the ingredients together with a whisk until smooth and use one ladle of batter per pancake. This recipe is for a crepe type pancake so you will want to spread your batter out all around your pan to get a nice thin pancake :)

If you like the fat & fluffy type of pancakes I use the exact same recipe except I add 2 teaspoons of baking powder to it when I mix the batter and of course you don't need to spread the batter with these ones as you want them puffy!

These get rave reviews from my kids every time and I'm sure you will like them to :)

~ Rosina