Poke-nom-nom-mon?

I had originally planned to post this yesterday, but i have to admit, I've gotten carried away with an old love of mine. A few months ago my friends Rachel, Erika, and Heather all posted links on my facebook to various ROM and Emulator websites where you could download a few tiny programs and actually play all of your old favorite videogames... (atari, nintendo 64, sega, sega dreamcast, etc.) and of course -- Gameboy. All of them XD you simply have to download the emulator (the gameboy, Visualboy Advance in my case...) and then download your desired game, open them up, and play away.

I've personally been playing Pokemon Emerald.

If you could see a pokemon from your party following you like in yellow (pikachu) you would totally see my badass Ralts and all their bowl-haircut glory. lol.

But enough about pokemon! ON TO THE FOOD!


As i said in the last post, i've been doing a LOT of cooking lately. like, enough to feed a ravenous gang of angry hobos. So what have i been cooking?

Pumpkin and lots of it. (although not specifically just pumpkin...)

• Pumpkin pie
• Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread
• Pumpkin Butter (reserved for another post, as it's still in testing...)
• Pumpkin Muffins (Jim didn't follow a recipe, so i can't provide that one, sorry!)
• Pumpkin Cookies
• Pumpkin Soup
• Roasted Pumpkin Seeds (failure T.T)
• Cinnamon Swirl Bread (my first!)
• Butternut Squash Soup
• Halloween Cake (not really a recipe, just us playing around with icing and food coloring)
• Butternut Squash Risotto (no pictures sorry! it went too fast!)
• Quiche (another first!)

 All this has been in the past week, haha. our kitchen was a MESS. (but we're awesome and used our super-powers to clean it and make it sparkly, and once again we have ugly red countertops)

So to start things off, we're going to post the scrumptious recipe for homemade pumpkin puree -- which helps you make awesome "canned pumpkin" recipes from scratch!

First off, cut your pumpkin open and scoop out the guts and seeds (set those aside if you want to make roasted pumpkin seeds later). Chop the pumpkin into large-ish chunks (use everything but the stem and the butt piece on the bottom) and place them in the largest pot you have.

Fill said pot with enough water to cover the pieces of pumpkin. Boil it until you can stick a fork (or knife, but i think a fork works better) into the pieces and the texture is that of a baked potato. (don't stick it through the skin o.O skin will STILL be quite tough.)

Peel (or scoop) the pumpkin away from the skin and place it in a bowl. There will be a LOT of pumpkin o.O Mash it the best you can with either a fork, a spoon, a potato masher -- what have you.

 (For those of you who are lucky enough to actually own a working food processor, that's probably your best bet.. lol) For those of you unlucky enough to own nothing more than a temperamental blender, then feel free to scoop pumpkin mash into the pitcher (about halfway) and moisten with about a cup of water. Pulse until smooth and puree'd and place in a freeze-safe container (because trust me... this will make a ton of pies.)

Freezes practically indefinitely.

 Unfortunately, i don't have the word-for-word recipe my boy used to make his super awesome homemade pumpkin pies...So you'll have to deal with another pumpkin-related recipe instead. (or five... lol)

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Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread 

(recipe from {here})

Ingredients

• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup water
• 3 cups white sugar
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
•  (i added chocolate chips to mine)

(This makes about two loaves)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. (I usually use the hand mixer here for a little bit because my flour mixture always clumps.  I only mix it until most of the clumps are out.) (This is the point where i folded in the chocolate chips -- about a cup less than a 12oz bag) Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

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Next posts will contain the remaining recipes and a few updates here and there. (it's kind of hectic around here at the moment, we just got a visit from my Uncle coming all the way from Florida and we haven't seen him in years... so yeah, haha.)

 -Cake42