One Explosion and Two Other Ways to Cook a Pumpkin

My friend Donna Ashton exploded a spaghetti squash this week.

You smiled.  Didn't you?  

Thank the stars above it wasn't mine to clean.  Really, I would have turned the oven up high and burnt it off.  After pulling the battery out of the fire alarm and opening the doors of course.  I'm sure Donna cleaned it the right way.  She's good like that.

The squash blast brought me back to the directions my favorite employee gave me for cooking a pumpkin.  (Nobody has hurt feelings about her being my favorite.  She is everyone's favorite and she put up with me the longest!)  (I liked John a lot too.  He once told me to start taking Xanax.  "You might be a real nice person, you never know!")

In the aftermath of Donna's explosion, let's compare my mother's method of cooking a big squash with Erynn's and Donna's and declare a winner.  Full disclosure: My mother is coming to visit today and Erynn hasn't embraced this new internet thing and is unlikely to see this...


Mom's method:  Cut the squash in half.  Clean out the gunk and put the squash cut-side down in a baking dish with a half inch of water.  Poke the outside.

Erynn's method:  Poke holes in the squash and bake it whole. 

Donna's method:  Put the squash in the oven whole.


I am questioning Erynn's directions.  Although I have followed them before without casualties, I never actually used the cooked pumpkin.  I cannot attest to the doneness or quality of the mush.

What's more, my mother blew up an acorn squash in the microwave the same way and she did stab holes, just not like-she-meant-it holes.  The microwave door flew open and squash parts flew everywhere.  It was a squash horror movie.

Seems the same thing happens with the oven.  Donna's decription: "mostly all the seeds and stringy parts are what shot out and under my cabinets.  The rest was saved. :)" 

I'll let you recover from that for a day while I go buy the pumpkins.

This is a three day project for me but if you have your s--- together then you can do it in a day.  These are the steps:
     Day 1. Get pumpkins and cook them.
     Day 2. Scoop the cooked pumpkin into 1 cup servings and freeze.
     Day 3. Bake some yummy pumkin treat - I'll show mine if you show me yours.  ;)