Pumpkins Part Deux!

As promised, here's more on the pumpkin mystery tonight, ha ha!

If you don't know, there are two types of pumpkins - carving pumpkins and pie pumpkins. Now, when I make anything with pumpkin, I usually just use the canned stuff from the store, lol. And every year I get a carving pumpkin that I don't carve. (I love pumpkins. I just keep it around until it starts to go bad, usually about 4 months later. I know... lol.)

Carving pumpkins can very well be cut up and cooked! I do know that. But I've always been curious about the cooking pumpkins, that are smaller, but also supposed to be softer and a little sweeter. When one of the grocery stores had them on sale, I snapped up a few to try out.

Here they are - aren't they cute? Especially with my Halloween table runner?  :D

So they needed cooking! All the websites I consulted said to basically cut them in half, scoop out the goop and the seeds, and place them face down in baking dishes. Cook for approx. an hour and ha half, scoop out the cooked pumpkin, and viola!

Here is what I imagine all cooked pumpkins should look like coming out of the oven.

Here are the cooked insides, unscooped as yet.

Now let me warn you... None of the websites I looked at said to grease, butter, or otherwise alter the backing dish. So against my better judgement, I did none of those. *And* the first pumpkins *may* have been cooked a little too long...

The result? This icky black mess that I can't seem to get off for love or money. I'm going to soak them more and see. I didn't have enough pans to cook all three pumpkins last night, so I did two, got the goop... Trying to get one cleaned took scraping with a knife, I kid you not. So the picture of nicely browned pumpkin from above is from tonight, lol. 

The others didn't really burn, not the insides and there's plenty there. It all looks good to me! And when I cooked the other pumpkin tonight, you better believe I used cooking spray to coat the dish, lol.

Given that it's late now, and was last night, it hasn't been bagged yet to be frozen. Tomorrow for sure though! 

One more time, just because
they're so dang cute!

And there you have the great pumpkin adventure, lol.

:)