Baking

Before we left the farm in Virginia, Carl went one day and picked pumpkins and squash at a farm in the county (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-visit-to-pumpkin-patch.html). I had tried making pumpkin soup a couple of weeks ago and it wasn't one of our best efforts... so, I had looked up other ways to use pumpkin, and decided to try pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie.

I should have taken pictures during the process, but, we cooked the pumpkin in the Instant Pot. One "pie pumpkin" we could fit in whole; another we had to cut in half and cook half at a time. The one that we cooked half at a time I scooped out the seeds before I cooked it. The one that we cooked the whole, I separated the flesh from the seeds after it was cooked. I think I prefer scooping the seeds before cooking, but, we also kept the seeds that I separated out after cooking and will use them in smoothies.

Finished products (partially consumed):

Three loaves of pumpkin bread and 2 pies

The microwave / convection oven is "interesting" to use for baking. It is not very large, and it doesn't heat evenly so we had to move the items as they were baking to try to get them evenly browned (or, not burned!). They came out okay, and we are finding them much more tasty than the pumpkin soup. 

I still want to give pumpkin soup another try, but I think I'm going to use a recipe that makes a sweeter soup rather than the "savory" one that I used before.

It is nice to know that we have the motorhome all to ourselves for two whole days (they won't be working on it until Monday at the earliest) - so I wanted to get things done that would be really hard to do around interruptions.

We also dumped our tanks today, so I could wash a lot of dishes without being worried about filling up the grey tank.