Cooking With Winter Stored Produce

It is the first day of spring and I still have some squash and things from last year saved that I need to use.

My mother actually purchased this "pumpkin" last fall at the farmer's market and realized that she had too much so she offered it to me.  I decided I needed to make some pumpkin pies and other stuff so I decided to cook it up.  I actually did this a month or two ago, but I never posted it.

I was surprised to see the deep orange color inside this squash. It smelled wonderful, too, very sweet and earthy.

I peeled and chopped it and baked it in my favorite baking dish until it was very soft.  Then I used a potato masher to mash it up.

You can see that it is still a little rough in texture.  If you want to make it absolutely smooth, you can pulse it in the blender or food processor, but I prefer it this way.  After this I used it as is in my pumpkin pie recipe.  It was delicious.  You can ask the neighbors.

I also used the last of my canned tomatoes to make a great pizza sauce.  This pizza was very delicious, peppers, onions, pineapple, pepperoni, mozzarella, parmesan, and secret recipe pizza sauce on french bread crust.

Here you can see the purple onions. Yummy.

Also, my brother called me a couple weeks ago.  He and his lovely wife were house sitting for my parents.  They found boxes of apples around the house that were going to go bad very soon if they weren't all used, so they decided to make a batch of spicy apple butter.  The reason they called me was they didn't know how to can it.  I had time so I went over and showed them the reference book that my mom has to tell how long to water bath process things and showed them how to do it.  We made two water bath batches of half pint jars. It was fun to hang out with them.  They handed out apple butter for presents the next week. It turned out very delicious.

I am looking forward to having a surplus of produce this year and pickling, canning, drying and freezing loads of stuff. I also want to grow stuff that will keep well in the basement, like pumpkins, dried beans, dried corn and root veggies. I got a pressure canner for Christmas last year and have not gotten to use it yet. I can even can veggies now.