I bought a perfect pumpkin in the first week of October. They were all $2 each and you could pick any one you liked. Some were huge, some small, some very lumpy, some lopsided, and then there was MY pumpkin. Just the right size and a beautiful round shape with the most gorgeous curled vine at the top. It was carried very gently to my car, driven carefully home, and placed in the center of the table in our dining room. It stayed there all through October; made it past Halloween without being marred by a knife. November came and went and it was not made a part of any Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. I grouped some Christmas decorations around it when December came. It was so beautiful and cheerful. Everyone complimented its lovely shape and wonderful curl, which was now rather darkened but still very magnificent.
The day after Christmas I gave it a tap (it still had a good solid thump to it) and decided I needed to go ahead and turn it into something other than a decoration. It didn’t seem quite right to carry it over into the new year. I found a great recipe for a pumpkin soup cooked right inside the pumpkin. I only had to ‘gut’ it and put in the soup ingredients and stick it in the oven for 45 minutes. I also cleaned off all the seeds and started soaking them in sea salt water for later roasting. The soup was not too bad and the pumpkin body was still good for chunking up and freezing. The seeds roasted beautifully.
I packed up the pumpkin body pieces and froze them and we ate the roasted seeds with a good salad.
The lovely curl from the top of the pumpkin is still sitting on the kitchen counter as a reminder of the best pumpkin ever.