Post Punk Kitchen Forum

so i notice a lot of my neighbors are tossing their (non-carved) pumpkins that still seem to be hard and in good shape..some are the regular orange ones, some are beige and green heirlooms..which ones can i eat?

we got some green heirlooms this year but are still using them for decoration, so that's why i'm asking about the neighbors'. there's about 20 of them out in the garbage piles today along the street...

You should reasonably be able to eat all of them, they just might not be the tastiest. My grandma used to grow the big pumpkins and use them for pumpkin bread. You can also roast the seeds.

20 uncarved pumpkins in the trash!! Have a roasted pumpkin seed party and then scrape the insides and freeze the pumpkin for later use. That is a shameful waste!

Or even just rescue the pumpkins and keep them in a cool place if you have room. They should be good for a few weeks or even months still.

if you keep them in your basement, get a few cooling racks and put some foil or a trashbag on the ground or whatever surface you'll be putting them on, then the racks and then the pumpkins. i made the mistake of storing a bunch of pumpkins directly on a wooden rack in my basement, and the majority of them got moldy from the bottom up. bleh. i am assuming they just need the air circulation to last a little longer.

Winter squash and pumpkins seem to store best if they're not kept too cold. About 60 - 65F. is perfect.

Yes! I had one of the small pumpkins that we grew this year in my living room and it rotted out at the bottom just from sitting on the floor. If they are outside they will do much better or in a really cold area of the house and they need to be rotated if you aren't going to do the above. The longer they sit on one side without movement the quicker they will rot. But I'm all for making your own pumpkin puree and then freezing for use late in a million plus recipes.

that makes a lot of sense. my basement isn't heated whatsoever, and i think i may have just let them sit until it got too cold.

I'm sure they'd be fine cooked. With planty things, you can usually tell when they're off by them being white and furry.

However, carving pumpkins tend to taste a bit bland, because they're varieties that are grown for a particular size, colour and shape and not flavour. I'd use some muscavado sugar or something with a strong taste as insurance.

I use them all the time, but in baking and as oil sub. Not for pies.

Oooo, great idea butterbobbin! The cooked pumpkin could be frozen in 1/4 cup increments to be used as egg replacer as well!

i always make doggie treats out of pumpkin. i pack it into those ice tube trays and freeze them. they're each 1 oz, so it makes it super easy to measure for recipes. (or to give to a doggie) either way, win-win. (when she limps a lot, she gets glucosamine mixed in to the pumpkin before freezing.) :-)

I bake or steam squash/pumpkins with the seeds still in, then scrape the seeds & stringy surrounding flesh into my Vitamix with some water and blast away. It totally pulverizes it all, and I use it in soups, bread-making, etc.

just found a great use for the harder ones! using them in the spiral slicer!

this post for butternut squash spaghetti popped up in my reader this morning...and i've been going to town with the pumpkins!