Finally! The First Batch is All Mine

Directions: Lightly rinse seeds and pick out extra large pieces of pumpkin. Leave some strings and meat. Boil in salted water for 5-7 minutes. Drain. Toss with melted butter and roast at 400 degrees, turning and shaking seeds a couple of times to prevent burning. Sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt.

Poblano Experimentation

It was really fun to hold these over the open gas flame of my stove and hear the skins "pop." I peeled the plastic-like covering off after they cooled, covered with plastic wrap to help sweat the skins away. What's next? Not sure yet. The standard is to stuff with cheese and fry in an egg batter, but I'm exploring a baked option.

Sauce Simmering: Color Doesn't Matter

Before the killing frost, I clipped as many tomatoes as I could from the vines. My idea was that some would ripen in time, and I would experiment with green tomato recipes. But, I had to go out of town, so my window for green tomato projects became small. I decided to just dump all the tomatoes not-quite-ready-eat in a pot and simmer them into sauce.

Saute three cloves of garlic in two tablespoons of olive oil. Add tomatoes. Notice that I don't peel them and only roughly chop the larger ones. Simmer until they become a sauce. I added a little sugar because some of the fruit wasn't quite ripe. The sauce was excellent and I couldn't taste a difference between the batches I did when the fruit was all ripe. It went into the freezer - to be used in future recipes.