Finally I'm recognized for what I am: a gourdist!
Yeah I do like to carve pumpkins in the season and put gourds around them as decorations.
But when it comes to cooking pumpkins, I treat them like any kind of winter squash... butter, salt, pepper.
We dig on some winter squash, yeah, done up salty, buttery, but then I like to hose them down with a little honey, get a good sweet ~n~ savory thing going.
So a few months back, the little G asked for some pumpkin pie filling, you know, just plain canned pumpkin for some recipe, she wound up not using it, so the wife on-the-fly made some pumpkin cookies (and a little icing) and holy hell were they good. Thick and soft, kind of like a cake texture (icing was some kind of cream cheese something-something).
I need to request those again
I was at the store today and there were about 1000 pumpkin or Oktoberfest beers prominently displayed.
And that seems way early, doesn't it? Those couple of Southern Tier beers I picked up had been out since almost the beginning of August!
