Thursday, November 18, 2010

Vegan MoFo Day 17: I'll Never Do THAT Again, Pumpkin Edition

Seriously, never.

Day 17, and I decided to prep the pumpkin for the Pumpkin Saag recipe from Veganomicon. The little thing looked so cute and harmless!


But pure evil awaited me. I proceeded with the instructions for preparing the pumpkin - cut the top off, get the seeds out, scrape out the stringy stuff, cut it in half. No problem. I just took my serrated knife (pretty much a bread knife, but my only serrated one) and started to saw away.

After at least 10 minutes, barely breaking skin
I began to understand what those electric turkey carvers are really for - pumpkins! I'm inclined to say that it took me about 30 minutes to finally get that stem outta there. Once I finally got it out, I got this:


Seed time. I gotta say, I didn't enjoy pulling those things out by hand. A couple things came to mind. I tried to scrape/seed with a spoon, but that wasn't very effective at all. I got what I could out of there, which probably took about 20 minutes.


Finally, time to cut in half. By then, I figured it was going to be ridiculous. Not to mention, I don't like knives. Trying to cut into this stubborn thing with the biggest, strongest knife I had simply freaked me out. I imagined trying to unwedge the knife and having it jab me in the face. Ugh.

Luckily, that did not happen. Also luckily, after just a little bit of carving in, I discovered that I could crack the pumpkin! I did that on both sides and, after far less effort than I anticipated, I broke the pumpkin in half. I then scraped the remaining stringy stuff off. However, I realized that pretty much all of the inside of a pumpkin is stringy, so I stopped.


I put the evil thing into the oven, where it roasted for nearly an hour and smelled wonderful.

I can see why pumpkins have become a Halloween tradition. Those things are freaking EVIL and frightening to deal with! I should/could have assumed this when I decided to embark on this recipe, but the book gives NO warning of just how RIDICULOUSLY hard work they are!

I'm excited to make this recipe, but if I really love it and ever want to make it again, I guarantee that I will not be using a fresh pumpkin.

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