Make your own pumpkin puree

So with Thanksgiving this week, I figured it'd be a great way to write an article covering how to make your own pumpkin puree. Not only will this impress people, but it's pretty easy to accomplish, and seems to bring a much better taste to pumpkin pies and other pumpkin based dishes.


When making your own pumpkin puree, you won't use the pumpkins used for Jack O lanterns, but rather the smaller pumpkins, usually about 6-8 inches tall and wide. These are usually called "pie" pumpkins, but I've seen them labeled as cheese pumpkins as well.  These are supposed to be slightly sweeter than the larger pumpkins, and, as far as I'm concerned, much easier to work with. One pumpkin will usually get you about 3 cups of pumpkin puree. 1 pumpkin pie only requires 1.5 cups, so I usually make 3 pies or you can save the extra to make pumpkin bread or something else pumpkin based.

You will need the following tools/utensils:

• a pie pumpkin
• double pot steamer
• large knife (serrated is a bit safer to use, but sometimes not as easy to cut with, I use a cook knife)
• cutting board
• hand blender
• metal ice cream scoop
• container for puree
• a teaspoon or tablespoon
• tongs (optional, but helpful)

The first step is to clean the outside of your pumpkin as you would with any vegetable before cooking. Once cleaned, cut in half and remove stem and the base. If you have trouble with this, it's okay to notch out the stem and base, you won't lose a significant amount of pumpkin. If the pumpkin has been out in the cold for a bit, it might be a good idea to bring it in to thaw a bit, as this makes a big difference in how easy it is to cut the pumpkin in half. Sometimes I cut through as much as I easily can, and then pull apart the remainder. It will make a snapping sound as it breaks.

Once you have your pumpkin separated, it is time to start scooping out the innards. A metal ice cream scoop works best for this. The edges of these scoops are pretty share and can easily scrape out the stringy insides. You'll want to remove the stringy part of the inside, the seeds, and scrape along the harder part of the inside of the pumpkin. Be careful not to scrape into the pumpkin meat too much. Some people pick out the seeds and save them for planting in the Spring or roasting them (I have not tried this myself, yet).

At this point, you will want to prep the steamer. Fill up the bottom of the steamer, cut one half into two pieces, if you desire, leaving the pumpkin as a full half is harder to handle after cooking though. Place basket into steamer base, innards down, and steam for about 30 minutes. You will need to cook the two halves separately, usually, because the size of most double pot steamers are restrictive.

Sometimes you will be able to tell that the pumpkin has completed cooking by looking for a visible separation of the pumpkin material from the shell. Larger pumpkins do not always have this separation. One other indicator which I've used is by checking to see how tender the shell is, if you can poke through it, then it is probably more than done. If there is no separation though, there will be more work to scoop out the pumpkin innards. Be careful removing the pumpkin from the steamer basket, as the pumpkin will be extremely hot. Sometimes removing the pumpkin will cause some of the inside to fall out, but if you're careful, you should have no problem transitioning it to a cutting board or other surface.

I usually use a teaspoon to scrape the pumpkin away from the shell. This should go relatively easy, with the exception of the heat from the steam. If you are dealing with a thicker pumpkin, then you may have to scoop into it using a spoon or other utensil. Be careful not to cut into the shell/rind, you want only the inside material. It is a good idea to scoop into its own container, in case you wish to save the pumpkin for a later date, or wish to drain/sieve the pumpkin.

You will want to now repeat the cooking process with the other half of the pumpkin and scoop out into the same container. Restore the water in the base of the steamer before cooking the second half. After the second half has completed cooking, and you have scooped it out into the container, you will want to use a hand blender to smooth out the material for better consistency and to eliminate any thick texture.

Once you complete blending, the material should look like this. At this point, the pumpkin is ready for use. I usually store in a refrigerator for a few hours to over night and strain some of the liquid that separates, but I find that some moisture in the material is good as this transfers over into whatever you are baking. As indicated, one pumpkin should be able to yield about 3 cups of pumpkin puree.

And there you have it, you have your own pumpkin puree. Impress your friends and family with this easily attained ingredient. You can usually prepare a whole pumpkin in a little over an hour. As a final note, I'd like to give credit to http://www.pickyourown.org , as they were my primary resource for learning how to create my own pumpkin puree.

New Samsung Epic/Galaxy S Review

So I just received my brand new Samsung Epic on Thursday night, and it's possibly the best phone I've ever used; it blows me away more than the Moto SLVR did, and even more than the Palm Treo Pro and HTC Touch series, all of those phones were amazing, but this is just on another level.

I believe a lot of it has to do with the strength of the Android platform. I was initially skeptical because I have a very long history with Hotmail, I've had an active email address there for close to a decade. When I first sampled a different Android phone a few months ago, there were many headaches with linking up to my Hotmail account. I need to use iMAP for Hotmail, and the new Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync for Hotmail seems to open up a lot of doors, but there are still some issues with downloading HTML emails. There are already a few pay apps that allow you to Sync up pretty well, but I'm looking for consolidation and ease of use here, so instead, I slowly migrated over to my Gmail account, and simply used Gmail to pop off of Hotmail's servers. Not the best solution, but a compromise I can live with. To my surprise, making Gmail my primary was a great idea. Google accounts migrate seamlessly into the phone, and really enhance the experience. I already used Google Calendar and Google Maps/Latitude, so it made a lot of sense.

The overall features are just so flawless at the moment. An overall smooth and very reactive touchscreen that isn't too sensitive, a great slide out keyboard, an amazingly crisp screen. The phone seems to run quite fast as well. I did have some problems with it reading my USB card, but the phone actually scans the ENTIRE card for media... a little unexpected, and I may need to move photos to their own dedicated card to combat this, but overall a nice feature, especially when browsing for a photo that you just can't seem to locate. The phone is a tad large, but not as bulky as some previous touch screen/keyboard combos. I'm coming from a Palm Treo Pro, so this phone is a bit bigger, but it feels sleek and light overall, and the size doesn't seem to impact it's portability at all.

As far as the interface goes, the integrated TouchWiz 3.0 works great, and allows for up to 7 customizable home screens. The transitions between them is smooth and fast, and the widgets that can be added are varied. My personal favorites are the Twitter and the Mint.com widgets, although I'm sure there are other great ones out there that I'm not even aware of yet. The Swype texting ability works great, and is the next big evolution on technologies such as iTap/T9.

Overall, I feel as if this is just an overwhelming approval of the Android OS with TouchWiz, after dabbling with it since its initial release, this is the first time that I actually have an overall positive experience with it. Granted, I've only owned it for a few days, but the first impression is the lasting impression, of course. The best features are the ultra responsive, high resolution touch screen, the speed of the hardware, and the light-weight generously sized slide out keyboard. The one major irk thus far is that the system does not allow you to use your camera if it is less than ~20% battery life.

Key Lime Pie Challenge

Lately, I've had a LOT of people ask if I can bake up key lime pie. Of course, I'm always up for the challenge, but I had no idea where to start. I figured it would be similar to Pumpkin Pie, but really couldn't put the two together in my head. So after some research and networking, I found 3 recipes. So far I've made 2 of them, and I'm thinking the first one is better, both were acquired from Allrecipes.com . The last one is from a friend and is quite unique in that egg whites are completely ignored, no whipping, no meringue... I think I'm going to love the simplicity of this one, since beating the egg whites in the first two was quite exhausting. Here's the basics of each one:

Recipe 1:

• Condensed milk based
• home-made graham cracker crust
• bottled key lime juice
• create light meringue which is combined with lime filling

Recipe 2:

• Uses key lime juice + zest (I had to cheat and use regular lime zest)
• uses corn starch, flour, sugar, water mixture for filling
• home-made graham cracker crust (trying to perfect this recipe)
• large meringue piled on top (lots of beating/whipping

Recipe 3:

• Sweetened condensed milk
• Lime juice + zest (doesn't indicate key lime??)
• yolks only, no egg whites (no beating!!!)
• home-made graham cracker crust, although I was recommended to make a Nilla wafer crust for this instead

At first I thought recipe #2 was going to be the best of the lot, but now I'm thinking recipe #3 might win it because if it's simplicity; Recipe #1 is incredibly simple as well, and does incorporate a meringue, even though it is folded into the batter, which I thought was quite odd. I whipped #2 together last night, and, to be honest, I unsure of how to preserve it. So much that I ate a piece warm, not bad, but interesting. I love how spongy the meringue is, and the graham cracker crust is getting better. Right now it's in the freezer, hopefully it doesn't cause havoc with all of the water in the lime mixture. I'll try to document the making of #3 from start to finish and give my final verdict, shortly!