We call ourselves a "homestead." What that means to me is a topic for another post, but, part of what it means to me to be a "homesteader" is to make use of the materials you have on hand. A "material" that has been on hand at our homestead the past few weeks is some free pumpkins - some given to us & some plucked (with permission) from a kind neighbor's field after the harvest. These pumpkins have been beckoning me from their cozy spot on the front porch nestled in beside the straw bale and old chicken crate.
In previous years, I've made only 1 or 2 pumpkins into puree for the freezer. I use the puree to make pumpkin baked goods, such as whoopie pies and bread. This year, I had 3 very large neck pumpkins and a fairy tale pumpkin. Our neighbor told us that fairy tale pumkins are excellent for making pies. In the midst of my peeling and chopping and cooking to make pumpkin puree, I thought, this is going to be WAAAAY too much pumpkin puree for baked goods. Hmmm...how I could I turn it into a meal? I remembered that I had just heard about making pumpkin soup, and the idea kind of snowballed from there. So, this was what was on the menu at Russell Homestead for supper last evening. (Note: If you get bored with all the recipes, just skip down to the Pumpkin Smoothie - it was by far the crowning jewel of the meal!) Pumpkin Soup I used a recipe from the Pioneer Woman. However, I did not do my pumpkins like she did, which changed the pumpkin measurements. I also didn't have cream on hand, so I used goat milk and butter. Here's my version. 5 cups of pumpkin puree 4 cups of chicken broth 1/3 cup of maple syrup 3/4 cup of milk 2 Tablespoons of butter Nutmeg Salt Cinnamon Directions: Combine puree, broth, and syrup in a kettle and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Slowly add some of the puree mixture to the milk to heat up the milk before pouring it into the soup (to help to avoid curdling). Add the warmed up milk and butter. Add the three spices until your taste buds agree it is enough. I added about 1 teaspoon of salt and just a dash of nutmeg and cinnamon. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Eat with roasted pumpkin seeds (see recipe below). Roasted Salted Pumpkin Seeds My wonderful husband introduced me to roasted pumpkin seeds many years ago. We roast seeds from all types of pumpkins. The classic big orange carving pumpkins seem to have the best seeds, but they are all delicious. To make them pull the seeds from the fleshy part of the pumpkin. It is okay if some of the flesh remains. Put the seeds on a cookie sheet. Coat with oil and add salt. Roast in the oven on 350 for 10-20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. We eat these for snacks, but on this particular night, we ate them in our pumpkin soup. Rolls with Honey Butter Spread Okay, so this recipe didn't fit my pumpkin theme. I should've made pumpkin butter, but I remembered this recipe I had made before for honey butter spread and thought it would complement the soup well. The rolls are an old favorite around our house. Bread and dinner rolls are two things I haven't mastered yet, but these rolls are easy and quick. I use them as hamburger rolls and dinner rolls. Since I didn't alter either of these recipes significantly, I will simply provide the links to the Taste of Home 40-minutes hamburger buns recipe and Eat Cake for Dinner's cinnamon honey butter spread. Pumpkin Smoothies As I mentioned previously, this was the crowing jewel of the meal. I didn't think pumpkin smoothies sounded all that great, but these were delicious! I searched online for yummy sounding pumpkin smoothie recipe, but nothing appealed to me. I decided to try my method of making fruit smoothies. Note: I froze pumpkin puree in an ice cube tray about 5 hours before making the recipe. 1 ice cube tray full of frozen pumpkin puree Milk Brown Sugar Cinnamon Nutmeg Vanilla Directions: Put pumpkin cubes in the blender and cover with milk. (Note: I used goat milk, which is very creamy. If you don't have goat milk, whole milk will yield the best results. My milk was also slushy from being previously frozen, which made blending difficult, but yielded an "ice cream like" texture). Add brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, & vanilla to taste. If you like measurements, I did approximately 1/4 cup brown sugar, 2 teaspoons of vanilla, and a dash of nutmeg and cinnamon. Let's just say, after tasting these, the remainder of my pumpkin puree got frozen in ice cube trays to make these again sometime. My recap of the meal: It was fun making use of what we had on hand. The soup was tasty, but, once a year during pumpkin season is probably the only time it will make an appearance on the Russell table. The pumpkin seeds were already a fall staple around here, and pumpkin smoothies will certainly be joining them! Thanks for stopping by! What are you doing with the bounties of the PA pumpkin harvest? Recipe Disclaimer Spacebar…spacebar…spacebar…faster…spacebar.spacebar.spacebar! For those of you who went to elementary school in the 90s, perhaps you can reminisce with me about playing the good ole Oregon Trail computer game. I remember several things about the game – seeing the little covered wagon bump along the trail, “burying” those who died along the way, trying to feed my oxen, and trying to shoot squirrels and deer for food. I have this mental image (from the hunting part of the game) of the little man on the computer screen with his rifle with bullets emitting each time you pressed the space bar. The faster you pressed, the faster the bullets came. (Thus, my opening line for this blog post.) So, when you saw some squirrels or deer, you blasted a stream of bullets at them (remembering, of course, that your bullet supply was limited). I had a flashback to playing that game the other day when, lo, and behold, the Russell men brought me some game…. The pride on their young faces at bringing home some meat was too much. I cautiously mentioned that I had just seen a recipe for squirrel stew in my Mennonite Country-Style Recipes cookbook. That was the all the encouragement my dear husband needed to butcher the critter.
I smiled bravely as I carefully washed the squirrel. (Let me insert here that before this experience I had never eaten squirrel meat.) Thoughts ran through my mind, such as how I encourage other people to branch out and try new things like venison and goat milk; the old saying, “waste not, want not;” if I were really hungry, I would eat this, and how happy I was in the Oregon Trail game when my hunting yielded some squirrels. Hmm, could I practice all I preached and eat this creature? I read a few tips online and soaked the squirrel in a water, vinegar, and salt solution for a few hours. Then I poured it off and soaked it overnight in just salt and water. The next day, I simmered that little guy for about an hour to make it really tender. I deboned it, and it yielded about ¼ cup of meat that looked and smelled somewhat like dark chicken meat. I put it back in the fridge for about 2 days soaking in Worcestershire sauce. And, then….then…I made squirrel stew. I used a recipe from Mennonite Country-Style Recipes, but I adapted it so much that I’m not going to quote the original recipe. (I do want to give credit to the cookbook, and I highly recommend it because it is loaded with tips for from-scratch cooking. If you have the cookbook, the recipe I used is on page 511; it is called Brunswick Stew.) Russell Homestead Squirrel Stew 1 cup cooked and shredded squirrel and/or chicken meat 1 potato, diced ½ cup chopped onion 2-3 cups chicken broth 1 quart of canned tomatoes Salt, pepper, & seasoned salt to taste Directions: Put all ingredients in a kettle and cook until potatoes are tender. Notes: The canned tomatoes were my own. I can chunked tomatoes with peppers and onions. I did use chicken meat in addition to the squirrel meat because the squirrel was so small. We could not tell a difference between the chicken and the squirrel in the stew. (However, I will note that there was hardly any squirrel meat to speak of, so I won’t say that it tastes like chicken! It simply pretty much hid in our stew.) Other options: The Brunswick stew recipes also called for bacon, lima beans, cayenne pepper, and corn. The options are endless, provided you have squirrel meat available. The conclusion of all this – it was worth it! My boys felt like men who provided meat for the table. The stew was quite tasty, and everyone enjoyed it. I will definitely use this recipe again if any other unfortunate squirrels meet my Russell men. And, since I'm an animal lover who could never bring herself to shoot any animal, I feel good when a harvested animal does not go to waste. If anyone reading this has any tips on cooking squirrel, I would love to hear them! Thanks for stopping by! Recipe Disclaimer |
AuthorVanessa from Russell Homestead. Follower of the Lord Jesus, wife of my knight in shining armor, mother of 5 wonderful children, and joint-keeper of the Russell homestead. Thanks for stopping by! Archives
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Vanessa Russell
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