The Great Pumpkin

I am, officially, obsessed with pumpkin. This time of year I go wild for anything made with pumpkin, including coffee drinks, bread, cakes, muffins, pasta, and soups. This year, however, I'd read that there was a "pumpkin shortage," and that due to several poor harvest years in a row, we might not see the canned stuff gracing the aisles at our local supermarkets until November.

Well, this injustice will not stand! Armed with a little too much ingenuity for my own good, I decided to buy WHOLE pumpkins and puree them myself. All in the name of fall, of course...

Right?

So, a week ago I roasted and pureed two cute little sugar pumpkins. It wasn't that hard, but it wasn't that easy, either. Our food processor has a hard time pureeing things so that they're perfectly smooth and it look me an hour, several bowls, and a myriad of cooking utensils to get it all perfectly smooth. When I finished, though, it was a lovely shade of orange that's far more vibrant than what you see when you crack open a typical can of the stuff. Gorgeous.

Unfortunately, my pumpkin needs are greater than what I can churn out of a few sugar pumpkins in an afternoon. Thankfully, Amazon has everything, and so we ordered a case of 12 cans of the organic stuff last week. THEN, we went to the grocery store last night and THEY HAD CANNED PUMPKIN. It was the regular stuff, the Kroger brand, but we got so excited that we bought six cans and vowed to cancel the Amazon order as soon as we got home.

I'm sure you can figure out where this story is headed...

We couldn't cancel the Amazon order. Oops. Apparently it's shipping Monday, which means that I will now have the following for my pantry: six cans of Kroger brand pumpkin, 12 cans of Farmer's Market organic pumpkin, 2 cups of homemade pumpkin puree, and 3 whole sugar pumpkins.

Ack. The whole sugar pumpkins are currently posing as a delightful centerpiece for our dining room table, but I doubt the cans will offer us the same sort of harvest charm. I've been hunting for recipes to use it and so far have found a few promising ones, including this Chipotle-Pumpkin Black Bean Soup and this Pumpkin Yeast Bread. I'm especially excited, because the pumpkin surplus gives me plenty of excuses to make Pasta with Pumpkin and Sausage, which is so so so so so so good.

Last night though, we made these pumpkin spice lattes, and I have to say... they were pretty good! Give one a try (you could probably do it on the stove top if you don't have a mini CrockPot) this weekend and let me know how you think it stacks up the Starbucks original. :-)