I haven’t carved a pumpkin in quite a long time, mostly as, when one lives in an apartment, there’s just no good place to display one. While I do have a balcony, the 15th floor is simply not idea for such things. However, I enjoy having pumpkins sitting around, as they function both as fall décor as well as future food. So I generally get one each fall. With Thanksgiving coming up, there is pie to be made, so I figured it was a good time to hack this bad boy open.

Baked the two sides for a bit over 2 hours at 350. Extracted the seeds from the guts, and set aside the juice that had oozed out of the baked pumpkin.

I really wanted to try making pumpkin spice syrup with the juice, but every recipe I found used pumpkin puree rather than juice. So I sorta hacked this one together:

1 cup pumpkin juice (I had just over a cup, but was close enough)
1 cup brown sugar
¾ cup white sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ginger
½ tsp cloves
½ tsp nutmeg

Then, I dumped all of these together and let simmer on the stove just below medium heat for about 10 minutes. The recipes I looked at said not to let it boil, but mine accidentally started boiling and it still tastes fine.

As for the seeds, I had just around a cup or so. I boiled them in saltwater first, as I found a site that recommended doing that to allow the salt to penetrate to the inner seed. Then, I tossed them with 1 tbsp olive oil, a chunk of cinnamon & sugar mixture, along with some nutmeg (just sort of estimated on these). Baked for 10 min at 400, came out pretty tasty.

As for the pumpkin, I ended up getting just over 8 cups worth. 2 cups is already going to pie, the rest is going in the freezer for the time being. Thinking of trying to make some soup, curry, and soufflé, amongst other things.

All in all, not a bad haul for a pumpkin I spent either $3 or $4 on!