Pumpkin harvest

I picked the three remaining muscade pumpkins in the vegetable garden on Tuesday. I was surprised at how big and perfectly formed they are. They're ripe, although they still have their green color. I can tell because they sound hollow when thumped, and the stems are woody. A few weeks in the cellar will help them to fully mature and get their tan/orange color. I picked the pumpkin in the second photo back in early September, so it's been ripening in the cellar for six or seven weeks.

Three muscade pumpkins freshly cut from the vine. Our friend selected the one on the lower right.

Back then, I gave one of the rouge vif d'Etampes pumpkins to a friend. When she read on the blog that we had more, she asked if she could have one of the muscades, so she came over yesterday to pick one out. I'm happy to give them away, especially one of these three because I wasn't expecting them to grow. They're bonus pumpkins!

The same variety after having matured in the cellar for six weeks.

So now we have to decide what to do with them. Ken spent a good hour yesterday researching pumpkin recipes, especially savory ones. We will certainly make pumpkin bread (which is really a cake) and pumpkin pie, but we also flagged recipes for fritters, savory cake, pumpkin soup, sauce for pizza and enchiladas, and curried pumpkin. I'm hoping that the two green pumpkins will ripen over the next month or so in the cellar, giving us time to use them later in the year. I can always roast and freeze them, but I already have a freezer full. We'll be eating this year's crop for quite some time to come.