The excitement in the kitchen never seems to end these days!
My goal for the evening was to make something with the pumpkin that was left by a former housemate about a month ago. It's been sitting up on top of our fridge collecting dust for about 2 months. Today was the day to do something with it. But my goodness, that pumpkin did NOT want to be eaten! I don't know if pumpkins get tougher the longer they sit or what, but I tell you, my life would have been much easier if had had a kitchen axe tonight! I used my biggest, sharpest knife (and it is a very big, very sharp knife!), but man, did I ever have to wrestle with that pumpkin! I had it down on the concrete floor, using two hands and two feet, trying to get the knife through the silly thing! I was fearing that I would lose a foot to the blade before getting that pumpkin cracked open.
I eventually did get it open - only after working up a pretty good sweat though (yes, you may laugh here, Sean!)! I couldn't manage to cut anymore, so I just chucked the entire half into the pressure cooker and let it boil for a while. Once the pumpkin meat was all mushy, I took it out, and lo and behold the skin wasn't even slightly softened! I could use that half a pumpkin shell to dig in my garden, it's still so hard! And that's after being pressure cooked for 30 minutes! Anyway, the meat was lovely and soft and deliciously "nutty" smelling, so I scooped it all out, and into the soup pot it went, together with a bouillon cube, sauteed onions, minced garlic, tomato paste, and chopped fresh basil. It smelled SO good. But I had to wait for the generator to be turned on at 7pm so I could get out our blender and smooth it all up.
After blending, I returned it all to the pot, to heat it again and to add a little plain yogurt. All the yummy looking recipes I saw online called for cream at this point, but that's just a dream here, so a little plain yogurt is usually a decent substitute...
But as I was adding the yogurt, the gas quit on me :( So then started the adventure of procuring the proper crescent wrench to use to wrestle with with gas cylinder. All of the rummaging through one absent neighbor's tool box came up fruitless, so I had to go and ask the neighbor to borrow his crescent wrench. While I'm an independent woman who can take care of herself, I'll never deny a man the opportunity to practice a little chivalry - especially when I'm hungry and gas bottles are involved. Changing a gas bottle here isn't difficult - quite simple, really - but you do have to have a bit of strength to get the regulator unscrewed, screw it tightly onto the new bottle, and then open up the nozzle on the new bottle. Not to mention the fact that these bottles are HEAVY, and you have to wrestle the silly thing into position near the stove before you can attach the new one.
Of course, there was no chivalry here tonight, and all I got from the neighbor-man was, "Bring back the wrench when you're done!". So off I went to wrestle the gas bottles.
I was successful, and pretty soon, my lovely soup was bubbling away again. In the meantime, I had also put some bread in the oven to toast a bit.
I was just opening the oven door to take the bread out, when I had the opportunity to scream while cooking dinner for the second day in a row. My opening of the oven door must have scared a rat from out behind the stove! So while I took the bread out of the oven, the rat scampered up the brick wall and into a hole that he had chewed in the ceiling board above the stove. I'm just so thankful that he didn't fall back down into my pot of lovely soup (did I mention how delicious it turned out... without the rat inside?!).
So tonight the before-bed-chores included setting the trap for the rat. I'm waiting, and hoping that any minute now... SNAP! And my rat woes will be over for another day. I'll update you tomorrow on the success or failure of tonight's hunt.
My goal for the evening was to make something with the pumpkin that was left by a former housemate about a month ago. It's been sitting up on top of our fridge collecting dust for about 2 months. Today was the day to do something with it. But my goodness, that pumpkin did NOT want to be eaten! I don't know if pumpkins get tougher the longer they sit or what, but I tell you, my life would have been much easier if had had a kitchen axe tonight! I used my biggest, sharpest knife (and it is a very big, very sharp knife!), but man, did I ever have to wrestle with that pumpkin! I had it down on the concrete floor, using two hands and two feet, trying to get the knife through the silly thing! I was fearing that I would lose a foot to the blade before getting that pumpkin cracked open.
I eventually did get it open - only after working up a pretty good sweat though (yes, you may laugh here, Sean!)! I couldn't manage to cut anymore, so I just chucked the entire half into the pressure cooker and let it boil for a while. Once the pumpkin meat was all mushy, I took it out, and lo and behold the skin wasn't even slightly softened! I could use that half a pumpkin shell to dig in my garden, it's still so hard! And that's after being pressure cooked for 30 minutes! Anyway, the meat was lovely and soft and deliciously "nutty" smelling, so I scooped it all out, and into the soup pot it went, together with a bouillon cube, sauteed onions, minced garlic, tomato paste, and chopped fresh basil. It smelled SO good. But I had to wait for the generator to be turned on at 7pm so I could get out our blender and smooth it all up.
After blending, I returned it all to the pot, to heat it again and to add a little plain yogurt. All the yummy looking recipes I saw online called for cream at this point, but that's just a dream here, so a little plain yogurt is usually a decent substitute...
But as I was adding the yogurt, the gas quit on me :( So then started the adventure of procuring the proper crescent wrench to use to wrestle with with gas cylinder. All of the rummaging through one absent neighbor's tool box came up fruitless, so I had to go and ask the neighbor to borrow his crescent wrench. While I'm an independent woman who can take care of herself, I'll never deny a man the opportunity to practice a little chivalry - especially when I'm hungry and gas bottles are involved. Changing a gas bottle here isn't difficult - quite simple, really - but you do have to have a bit of strength to get the regulator unscrewed, screw it tightly onto the new bottle, and then open up the nozzle on the new bottle. Not to mention the fact that these bottles are HEAVY, and you have to wrestle the silly thing into position near the stove before you can attach the new one.
Of course, there was no chivalry here tonight, and all I got from the neighbor-man was, "Bring back the wrench when you're done!". So off I went to wrestle the gas bottles.
I was successful, and pretty soon, my lovely soup was bubbling away again. In the meantime, I had also put some bread in the oven to toast a bit.
I was just opening the oven door to take the bread out, when I had the opportunity to scream while cooking dinner for the second day in a row. My opening of the oven door must have scared a rat from out behind the stove! So while I took the bread out of the oven, the rat scampered up the brick wall and into a hole that he had chewed in the ceiling board above the stove. I'm just so thankful that he didn't fall back down into my pot of lovely soup (did I mention how delicious it turned out... without the rat inside?!).
So tonight the before-bed-chores included setting the trap for the rat. I'm waiting, and hoping that any minute now... SNAP! And my rat woes will be over for another day. I'll update you tomorrow on the success or failure of tonight's hunt.
No comments:
Post a Comment