The tattoo I'd get on my ass if I could get a tattoo, which I can't.

This is not the tattoo.

I like to brag about our neighbors because they are really the best ones a young ill-mannered couple could hope for and also because we spent some time with the worst neighbors a young couple could imagine back in the day and so I feel that we are due.

I'm sure you agree.

Also, these neighbors aren't racist assholes, so that helps.

Anyway, these awesome neighbors (who are different from the awesome neighbors who helped us schlep 3 cubic yards of dirt and mulch across the street and different still from the neighbors who gave us the best tomato cages in all the land) came by on Sunday with a surprise awesome gift.

They called this an "Apple-Warming Gift", as we have an apple tree, three years the junior of their apple tree, and ours has yet to produce a blossom.

Sure - it's only been in the ground for nary a year and we were assured that after a year of establishment we could hope for blossoms, but you know, the neighbors felt that an awesome surprise Apple-Warming Gift would help solidify our chances.

We're not too worried yet, because he's still in the 95% percentile for height, or whatever those measurements are that parents of human children use to rate their kids against other kids to decide if they're normal.

Guess what, folks - they're not! They're all backward! Aaahahah ahahhA HAHAHAH ahaha!

Kidding - I have no idea about these measurements and what they mean or don't mean about whether your child is a future idiot or will grow up to be a super scientist.

Anyway.

So, these nice neighbors just knocked on the door, just as normal as could be, and then proceeded to gift us the most amazing tool imaginable that I actually had imagined buying about a thousand times but could never rationalize because HELLO when am I going to need to peel, core and slice quite so many apples?

I should just tell you now that this amazing surprise gift was The Apple Machine.

Feel free to stand back to properly absorb its glory.

This is the most amazing and wonderful machine of which I am aware.

Seriously, now.

I even told Bubba that, had I somehow invented this machine before anyone else in 1864 (thank you, Google), I could immediately die and be happy and satisfied with my life because this thing is a work of pure genius and obviously something for which its inventor will be forever known, Mr David Harvey Goodell. Don't act like you don't have his name tattooed on your ass cheek because I know that you do.

And if you don't think so then I'll thank you to produce one single other invention that is more ingenius, clever, easy to use, easy to clean and so 100% god damned effective. Go ahead, try.

Here, let me save you the trouble - you're wrong. The Apple Machine is better.

I mean, obviously.

Perhaps I was so bowled over by The Apple Machine at this particular moment because as he stood there just handing this magic machine to me as though it was the most mundane thing in the whole wide world and he wasn't even sure we'd want it (WHATEVER GIVE IT!), I had a whole basket of apples just getting ready to up and die on me.

And you know I don't do waste. Noooooooo.

So, obviously, I thanked him profusely and asked on about his own The Apple Machine and the status of their 2009 Apple Crisis (their tree produces apples, on top of which some of their friends door ditched them a bushel of apples. Woe is them) and then he started to look worried, so I let him say his polite goodbyes and escape to the peace and tranquility and Finny-Free-ness of his own house.

Despite this man's utter and total niceness, I'm not sure he quite knows what to do with me and my cocktail tottering ways.

Anyway.

Upon his departure, I made haste to the kitchen - along the way grabbing all the apples I could carry and crying out to my Joy of Cooking book that it better gird its fucking loins because I was about to bake an apple pie for the first time in about five or so years and it was gonna be a good'un.

And, in case you can't tell, I've been rummaging around in my brain thanks to NaNoWriMo and it appears the drama and Crazy spilling out on those pages is now overflowing here. Sorry about that. Don't mind the mess.

Now, there are a few apple pie recipes in Joy, I believe they are distinguished with numbers like I and II and maybe even III, and I think I went with Apple Pie II, but I can't be certain. Basically, this is the recipe and it's unique (to my small world at least) because it calls for pre-cooking the filling rather than tossing up the apple chunks raw and throwing them and the crust in the oven for the first time together as a couple.

Seems sorta trashy doesn't it?

I thought so, so I went for the pre-cooking the filling method, which seemed more decent and restrained. And we all know how decent and restrained I am.

Shut-up, you whores, I am.

The important thing is that I got to prop up my beloved, stained copy of Joy and commence to coring, slicing and peeling of my apple pile in, like, two minutes flat, because the thing is nearly assembled and ready right there in the box.

Bless it - it doesn't even need to be plugged in. Which, obviously, since it was invented before people had two dozen three-pronged outlets in their kitchens. Or electricity in their houses. Or stilettos.

And don't you judge me - I need all of those outlets. For things. Important, electricity sucking things. Like giant food processors.

Whatever, I'm getting off track.

I'd be lying if I said this was the only picture I took of this process.

Basically, within five minutes of mounting this beauty to my countertop (also mercifully quick and effective), I had a bowl full of perfectly sliced, peeled and cored apples ready to pre-cook with some butter, sugar and cinnamon in the approved holy way.

Just look at that and try to tell me it's not amazing. JUST TRY IT, SUCKAH.

This went into the compost. To make my compost amazing.

And this went into the pie to make the pie amazing.

I think you see where this is all headed.

As though I have any fucking clue what approved holy ways really are.

And, to keep these lovers apart for just a skosh more time - to heighten the longing and desire, I can only assume - I was told by Joy to let the hot, sweet filling cool to room temp in a single layer on a sheet before pouring it into the bottom crust.

Yes, I believe I *have* heard of food porn before.

If that's not good old-fashioned proper etiquette, I just don't know what is.

Though, it's surely obvious that I have ZERO idea what proper etiquette might be. But you knew that.

Sadly, though, I didn't pay so much attention to the warning bells going off in my head as I wandered over to the sideboard to cheerfully (and naively) retrieve the apple pie crust cutter gifted to me by a certain awesome mama.

Looks pretty promising, though, doesn't it?

Now, mom, don't get me wrong, I appreciate the cuteness of this particular item, and while the cuteness has not waned for me, its effectiveness does not, how you say, put it up there in the ranks with The Apple Machine given its general ineffectiveness and ability to destroy a perfectly good pie dough.

I mean, it started off innocently enough - I was even so excited to use it that it was the third thing I grabbed after Joy and the apples - but sadly, it's true vision was not to be appreciated as I dutifully turned my perfect dough into a misshapen wad.

NOT TO FEAR, though - because it was salvageable. And some apples did make an appearance on the final product.

Just not in the way I'd originally envisioned.

And after it baked, it looked as cute and chaste as could be. For a whoring apple pie, that is.

COVER YOURSELF!

Now, sadly, Bubba and I are still at odds over whether to deliver a thick slice of this pie to our Apple-Warming neighbors or wait until I bake another apple-something just especially for them (which could happen soon since the farmshare says we're getting apples again this week).

We probably shouldn't be having this conversation while eating the pie from the dish with one fork and his germs spewing everywhere (he has a cold) because the thought of giving them this germ-soaked masterpiece would probably feel more like a slap in the face than a proper thank you.

So, that seals it, I bake them something anew and won't let Bubba breathe near it.

Done. No repenting necessary.

The final Final on the garden

[Don't want to read all through the Taming of the Tomatoes? Scroll to the bottom for final garden tallies. Loser.]

If I ever sincerely wondered whether four tomato plants may have been too many, this weekend I had it confirmed for me.

Four tomato plants is too many.

At least when it comes to Breaking Down the Garden time. Because this one woman, her trusty giant yard waste bin and composter can't really handle everything that gets dished out by four tomato plants.

Especially after going for a six mile run and realizing there are 800 bulbs ready to be planted.

Think I'm being a whiner?

This is what the TWO tomato plants looked like last year.

On the left, there.

Notice that they are strong growers. Recall that they produced a good amount of tomatoes. Remark on how they are staying confined to their one bed, there.

And now notice how this year's FOUR tomato plants look like nothing like that.

Because instead they look like this:

Crap.

Like big, green, scary tomato monsters intent on consuming their entire beds and spilling out onto the ground, searching for new acreage to absorb.

By last weekend, these plants had taken on a whole new life. Thanks to Fall That Thinks It's Summer But Then Thinks It's Winter, we had a big rainstorm, followed by a minor heat wave, followed by mild temperatures, followed by the tomato plants inquiring about a move to our neighbor's yard.

Those things even had the gall to put on new blossoms and make for the fence.

Don't get too close.

Well, after my recent pillaging of the tomatoes and the fast-approaching first frost date (11/1), I'd had these guys marked for destruction.

Hell if I was going to hold out for Miracle November Tomatoes knowing full well that frost would come and turn these plants to goo.

And cleaning out four gooey tomato monsters in the cool morning mist of a November Saturday? No, thank you.

However, the removing of these plants was almost more than I could handle. And it was certainly more than my yard waste bin could handle. Even with help from the composter and the wheel barrow and the ever-growing street pile.

I knew I was fucked when, in trimming back the plants so that I could just walk between the beds, I managed to fill the green bin to the brim.

It was empty when I started.

So, then I began tossing trimmings and eventually plants into the wheel barrow, thinking I'd just wheel that guy out to the street when I was done and VIOLA! I'd be finished.

Not so.

See, four trimmed tomato plants is more than one wheel barrow can handle. Even when it's piled up just so.

This was taller than me.

And by *just so* I mean that there was even strategic log cabin type piling strategies going on here so that they all didn't go careening off one side in a waterfall of greenery.

Sad.

I wish I'd taken a photo of the aftermath with the wheel barrow, but let's just say that it became top heavy and keeled over in an impressive display of giving-up-ness all over my freshly cleared bed.

Bubba had pity on me and cleared it all out to the street. I think he knew I was going to cry.

Anyway!

After all that whining and trimming and coaxing of tomato plantness into bins and composters and yard piles and wheel barrows, the beds looked good and the soil was intact.

Always a good sign.

Plus, I managed to haul away an extra and unexpected nine pounds of tomatoes (some green - for salsa) and a bag of basil.

Made a nice end of season batch of pasta with this.

And with the beds freshly turned, I jammed some garlic in the ground so that the dog would have something to uproot on Sunday when she went to bury her new fancy (gross) bone. Thanks, puppy.

Apparently my hand prints say, "Come! Dig here!" to the dog. I should clarify.

Then I got to do something I've wanted to do since the beginning of the season when I went off my nut and decided to track the garden's productivity.

I tallied the final numbers.

So, as my gift to you for hanging in for the whole season and this post full of my whiny bitchiness, here are the numbers for your gardeny gratification:

Sow cost: $91.34

Reap value: $1,221.68

Garden's net value: $1,130.34

Cost per pound: $0.33

Total pounds: 273.98

Poundage winner: Tomatoes @ 208.25 lbs

Poundage runner-up: Kentucky Green Beans @ 33.375 lbs

If you want to see how the other crops netted out, you can go look over at my dorky tracker. I look at it a lot and, if it were a real live thing, I'd probably spoon with it and call it naughty names. I love spreadsheets so much.

But what did I learn from all this? Well, I'll just go ahead and answer my own questions from long ago:

How much did it cost to grow?: See above. Not a lot.

How much did I save by growing it myself (rather than buying it at Whole Foods or similar kind of place)?: See above. A LOT.

Where did it all go?

Breakfasts, lunches and dinners and preserves.

Friends, neighbors, hair dressers, moms, coworkers and enthusiastic Pilates instructors.

In trades for lemons, limes, pomegranates, eggs, love.

Into the chesty.

Did we eat this stuff?

Beans, cucumbers, basil and tomatoes - YES. Though a lot of the tomatoes went to happy non-tomato growers.

Corn - sorta.

Should I grow it again?

Beans, cucumbers, basil and tomatoes - YES. Though we'll be going back to our two happy plants after this invasion.

Corn - NO. We couldn't eat it fast enough and it got starchy. Plus it takes up a ton of room, nukes the soil and costs a big fat nickel to buy at the farmstand when it's in season.

So, that's it for the summer garden. I feel that it was a resounding success and has satisfied my A/R desire for documented spreadsheeted evidence supporting my gardening obsessiveness. Also, now I know that I can skip the corn section in the seed catalogs and, instead, look for melon seeds so that we can, once and for all, determine whether it's worth it.

And because I practice the art of Shopping Then Forgetting and Adopting Then Forgetting, there will be a winter garden of sorts made up of the things I ordered and then forgot until they showed up at my door (fava beans, garlic) and things I adopted from winter garden growing friends and then forgot until I got an email that they were ready (leeks, purple kohlrabi, broccolini, lettuces, something else I can't remember).

So you know - I am not tracking a thing because, let's face it, I'll probably forget. Poor plants. They hardly stand a chance.

There's no orange in the matrix

Almost the Matrix Sweater

based on the Leaf Tshirt by Melissa LaBarre
Yarn: Rowan RYC Cashsoft DK in "Tape"
Needles: #5 24" circular needle, #5 10" circular needle, Tapestry needle
Raveled here

So, back when I asked you how y'all thought I should handle the sleeves on this thing, the majority vote was to leave them rolled.

So leave them rolled, I did.

Of course, because I'm ME and I'm apparently unable to determine how long sleeves should be even when I try on the sweater a million times before casting off (like, three times, but still, it seemed like a lot since it involved getting off the couch), I still think the sleeves are too short.

Because apparently I like my sleeves to drag the ground as I walk. Or I need them long enough to do this trick.

Either way, them sleeves remain rolled because, as it turns out, I cast-off in an unnaturally tight manner - a contradiction to my too-loose knitting style - and so, if I want, the sleeves will remain unrolled to the edge if I just straighten out the roll. And I need them to unroll as far as possible now that they're *just* a little too short.

Oh.

The problem with the length then becomes a question of how far I want the sleeves dangling off my shoulders.

Why, hello there shoulders...

Now, while I had fully anticipated always wearing this sweater over something - in the layering manner to which I've become accustomed - I sort of imagined it would still fit like this in the shoulder.

Except, apparently, when I went to try on the sweater to check for sleeve doneness (it's highly scientific, I assure you) I didn't properly adjust the shoulders and, as such, didn't do a proper measurement of sleeve doneness and ended up with too-short sleeves. I just feel like they should be longer. For my sleeve dragging lifestyle, I suppose.

The body length, however, is perfect. And having a rolled hem at the waist is also perfect because it can be allowed to roll skyward to enhance thy waist (or whatever it does that makes it look better this way when worn over a dress) or allowed to unroll almost completely over some jeans.

The important thing to note about the rolled hems and cuffs thing is that it more effectively achieves my desire for Matrix-like attire.

For some reason, clothes with raw edges and drab colors really attract me. Like, my sense of style has a doomsday fascination or something. Meanwhile, it appears my sense of style has an unhealthy attraction to orange at the same time, resulting in some unorthodox clothing pairings.

Orange silk and "Tape" cashmere knit go together, right?

I can't account for these inconsistencies, as my sense of style is something of a mouthy bitch and I don't question her motives often.

Getting too obscure? Yeah, well, I've written over 3,000 words for NaNoWriMo so far and it's only Day Two, so my focused energies have gone into the first two chapters of a story that has yet to make sense.

Yay!

At least now I have a finished object to keep me warm while I try to develop these obstinate characters.

In the event that you, too, need to wrap yourself in a self-knit while whining your way through 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo, or just want to pretend you're in the matrix, here are my pattern notes for your perusal. Also, they're in Ravelry, but I don't want to be all exclusionary (really not sure if this how you use this word) to those in Ravelry, so I'm putting them here, too.

To promote fairness in the world. And also to self-promote. Because you know how I like to do that.

Almost the Matrix Sweater

based on the Leaf Tshirt by Melissa LaBarre
Yarn: Rowan RYC Cashsoft DK in "Tape"
Needles: #5 24" circular needle, #5 10" circular needle, Tapestry needle
Raveled here

Using the Leaf Tshirt pattern by Melissa LaBarre, I made the following adjustments to achieve a snugger fit and long sleeves:

Measure the width of your narrowest point (for me, this was my waist - 28). Take that number of inches and multiply by your stitch gauge (5 stitches = 1 inch). This is the number you cast on (142).

Knit in the round for one round and follow the pattern for the Leaf Tshirt, except DO NOT knit the Leaf pattern, and instead, just leave it out and DO NOT replace those stitches with knit stitches.

This will result in a smaller distance between arm increases on one side - this side of the sweater becomes the back of the sweater.

Following the Leaf Tshirt pattern through to the point where you have your sleeve holes of adequate size, transfer the sleeve stitches to stitch holders or scrap yarn. DO NOT CAST OFF.

Resume knitting the body section in the round, leaving the sleeve stitches on their holders, until the body is as long as you want it to be. If you’re leaving a rolled hem, knit the body long enough to accommodate some rolling. If you’re knitting a cuffed hem, knit to exact length, cast off and knit your cuff.

Once you’ve finished knitting the body, pick up the stitches of one sleeve with 10” circular needles in the same size as the body (in my case, #5), place marker at beginning of round, and knit in the round until you reach an inch above elbow length.

At one inch from the elbow:

K1,K2tog,knit to within 2 stitches of marker, SSK
Knit 1 round
K1,K2tog,knit to within 2 stitches of marker, SSK

Resume knitting in the round until you’re an inch below the elbow and follow the pattern above.

Knit until sleeves reach desired length, cast-off.

Repeat for other sleeve.

Weave in ends. Try it on. Call it a day.

Craft: along 2009 : October

Hey Donk,

Its finally acting like fall here. Like, it's stopped being in the 80s and 90s (which probably sounds nice and cool to you) and instead it's in the 50s and 60s. I'll be honest, I was ready.

Not that the summer was a super hot one, but I think I was ready for a change - different clothes to wear, different shit to bitch about, different scenery on runs, different food to eat.

So, not surprisingly, I chose to hit up the creamy pumpkin pasta for my project this month because, to me, fall = pumpkin and hey, I happened to have made my own pumpkin puree which was taking up room in the chesty. And had I not skirted the sausage because of my too-lazy-to-go-to-the-storeness, it would have probably been really tasty. Sadly, my laziness won out and I had the pasta sans sausage which we all know is wrong. When there's an option to add sausage (or bacon or cheese or cream for that matter), one should always opt FOR it rather than for laziness, which never tastes as good.

Anyhoo, enough about my failed efforts - let's talk about someone's success - namely, laeroport's.

I mean, there's someone who knows her way around a recipe. It looks divine. Mostly because I'm sure there's sausage in there. What self-respecting Kansan (Bubba would be so proud) would opt out of sausage?



So! TEE DAH! You win, my friend. A fabulous surprise prize from yours truly. Just send the old addy to finnyknits AT gmail DOT com and I'll send it off in two shakes. Congrats!

And for November, well, I bet you're thinking I'll choose something holiday giftee since those fucking holidays are rolling back around again and don't we just all need to be acraftin' those gifts BUT NO - I refuse.

Who needs to do any holiday crafting when the perfect gift already exists at Amazon, anyway? (I jest people, obviously I'm *for* the crafting. Per the book's premise. Der.)

But still, I'm not going to take the path most traveled and dole out more predictability. We have too much of that in our lives already. I say Randomness Rules! and also, I have a lot of Tshirts and beets to dispatch.

What the fuck am I talking about?

Firstly, I vote for this sewing project where we recycle our sentimental Tshirts into something that we'll lovingly (and humorously wear).

Tshirt Memory Scarf

And secondly, I vote for this cooking project for any of us who:
A.) were brainy enough to plant beets
B.) have been storing up beets from their farmshare for months
C.) have an inexplicable number of beets lying around
D.) are willing to cook beets into something unexpected

Chocolate and Roasted Beet Pudding Cakes

Now, if you *must* make gifts, I'm sure the scarf (or any awesome creation from Tshirts) would make a lovely gift and I'm sure that these pudding cakes could be baked into sweet little ramekins for sharing with neighbors or coworkers.

BUT since I can already hear the whining, let's throw this one in there for good measure:

Zippy Wallet from Fabric Scraps

There. You happy now? Sheesh.

So, whether it's Tshirts, beets or fabric scraps that you decide on for the month (or all three - hey, you fuckers can be crazy!), I bid you all good luck. When I'll have a chance to do any of the above, I really don't know. Because from now until the tolling of the midnight hour on 11/30, I will be melting down my brain via NaNoWriMo.

It was nice knowing you.

xo
Finny

Not dressed as a vagina

So, despite all your fantastically creative suggestions on what I might be crafting for the dog as a costume, I didn't give in and somehow transform Jada's expertly (if I do say so myself) crafted Tootsie Roll costume into one of an anatomically correct vagina.

Maybe another year, Crazies.

For this year, however, Job 1 was rewearing the last and final (in the sense that I hadn't been able to rewear it yet) bridesmaid dress in my expansive collection.

As I've told you before, my Halloween Mission is always to use one of my bridesmaid dresses as part of a greater costume so that I can feel like I got my money's worth and so that I can be completely uncomfortable for another day of my life.

Well, that last one is sort of an accepted side-effect of wearing the dresses, but charming nonetheless. At least I don't have to wear the shoes. Because that would be unbearable.

FYI: Dye-to-match shoes are many things, including: ugly, tacky, uncomfortable and Evil To The Core. So you know.

And also, so you know, (because I like to keep you informed of all the minutiae in my life) my sister blessed us with flip-flops as footwear to accompany the orange dresses, so at least at that wedding my feet were comfortable as all get out. The rest of me, well, it suffered from the aggressive boning in the bust of this orange beast, but I endured.

Moving on.

Do you see this boning action? Wow. That sounds awful.

Because I've learned to love Bubba's assessment of our costume theme ("The candy that's left at Thanksgiving because it's crap.") better than my mine ("Classic Halloween Treats"), I'm sort of going with that for our debut at the work Halloween bonanza. I feel it's more amusing and will better explain away any untoward behavior Jada might exhibit while, say, squatting in her costume.

We'll see if she'll even go to the bathroom with this getup on, because she gets all wigged out when I put the raincoat on her and refuses to pee or look me in the eye, so I suspect that her bathroom-going parts will be on strike until I remove the offending costume.

Fun topic!

Sitting and squatting are different. She sits like a fiend. Costume or no.

So, yeah, that's about all I'm prepared to share with regard to Halloween, vaginas, bridesmaid dresses, handmaking dog costumes and just Shame in general.

And since NaNoWriMo starts tonight, you can begin expecting regularly scheduled meltdowns that will last throughout the month of November.

Oh the drama of squash.

Dear Donk,

Remember those randomly occurring pumpkins from my 2008 garden?

NO?? Pffffffft!

Just kidding, I barely do either. Going along with my theme of garden forgetfulness and all.

Well, even though it looked a lot like I let that volunteer plant go crazy and take half a raised bed and then its babies sat and decorated my sideboard for a few months and sat out on the front porch in an out-of-season-decor way holding on a loose brick before bringing them all in and roasting them and pureeing them and freezing them in our chesty for no good reason -- I did not.

Did you get all that?

Basically, all of that effort (of which there was precious little aside from the processing part at the end) didn't go for nothing because TEE DAH I made something with some of the puree and that something was this month's Craft: along challenge - creamy pumpkin pasta.

But before we get to the meaningful reason of why you'd come to read this post, let me bore you with the minutia of processing volunteer pumpkins and share with you a shockingly common discussion topic in our household.

That being: What the fuck are we doing with XYZ thing and why is it sitting out?

See, there are two big controversies at play in this particular instance. One - we don't have a lot of space in our pea sized house, and, Two - Bubba hates seasonal decor. Especially when it's out of its season.

And, in this particular instance, I had six smallish to mediumish pumpkins sitting out on our not-huge porch and it was the middle of February - long past the harvesty seasonal times that might call for pumpkiny decor.

I knew that my time to dispatch the pumpkins had come, but I let them hang out there on the porch anyway, because there was a loose brick fragment I needed to keep in place and balancing six pumpkins on it was the fix I was ready to provide at time.

(Later I would employ the magic of Gorilla Glue and then even later still (now) we'd be employing the magic of a Real Live Contractor - but that's a story for another day)

Anyway, one day Bubba strode into our house, fresh from a rainy trip to the hardware store, and declared that it was high time for the pumpkins to go. What with us being closer to the current year's Halloween than the previous year's and all.

I agreed and told him that I had been planning to roast them and puree them anyway so I should just do that right now, then. I did not register any raised eyebrows at my declaration, but I assume there were a few. Even if they happened when I wasn't looking. And even if I was one of the ones raising an eyebrow.

Basically, the theory of roasting pumpkins and processing them into puree had crossed my mind, but the whole thing seemed so labor intensive for an end product that I could easily just go get five minutes away at TJ's, that I'd sort of started coming to terms with composting the pumpkins when their numbers were up.

Suddenly, though, I was compelled to make good on this gardening venture and see it through to fruition, even though that fruition was only theoretical and beholden to no man.

Oh well, you know how I am about this whole "to fruition" thing.

So, with a rainy day ahead of me and, apparently, nothing better to do in the whole wide world than reduce a sinkful of pumpkins down to a freezer bag of puree, I got started.

Hello, fuckers.

Folks - let me tell you - despite the fact that I will use this puree and it does taste as fabulous as pumpkin puree can taste - this is a process I will forgo in the future in lieu of some fine canned pumpkin from TJ's because WOW this took forever and produced very little.

Which is why I haven't told you about it for now. Because I didn't want you getting the idea that my life was so small and pointless that I'd spend half a day making pumpkin puree because the process is obviously so labor intensive that only psychopaths would be interested.

I get self-conscious, what can I say.

However, if you're a psychopath and want to get puree from your pumpkins, you can follow this process. Or, if you just like to see how I tortured myself one rainy day this past February, you can read along and quietly snicker to yourself or start dialing the local loony bin.

Hey, sometimes we all do pointless shit.

Witness ye, Pointless Shit.

Let's start with the roasting. Cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil, heat your oven to 400 and top your pumpkins. After which, scoop the inner crap out (If you're an irretrievable psycho, you can rinse those seeds and make plans to toast them, but I didn't because that's too far even for me) and cut them into wedges or halves or whatever shapes make them all fit on one baking sheet because LORD KNOWS you're not going through this twice.

I don't take two trips from the car with groceries and I'm SURE AS HELL not taking two trips through the oven for pumpkin puree. No sir.

Let the pumpkin roast in the oven until a fork can easily pierce the skin and it feels soft inside. Warning: this takes forever.

Remove the pumpkins from the oven wearing two oven mitts and a back brace because WOW they're fucking heavy.

Let them cool on the stovetop for a million years or until you can manage to cradle the pieces in one potholder-covered hand while scooping out the flesh with a spoon in your other hand.

Admire how the remnant skin looks like something from an old Friday the 13th movie. Move on.

Place a strainer over a bowl and plop all your cooked pumpkin in the strainer. With the back of a big spoon (and then your hand because you feel like the spoon isn't doing it fast enough) press the pumpkin so that the liquid drains out into the bowl below.

Do this until you have a nice smooth consistency in the strainer. Then scoop it all out into a clean new bowl and have at it with the immersion blender to make it super smooth.

Once you're done with all that mess, amaze yourself by fitting six pumpkin's worth of puree and half a day's work into ONE gallon sized Ziploc bag. Pat the puree flat in the bag (after sealing it) and, using your finger, "break" the puree inside the bag into four individual squares. These perforations will let you thaw and use smaller amounts later because who in the whole wide world is going to need a gallon's worth of pumpkin puree at once?

No one, that's who.

I kinda didn't think this would work, but it totally does.

Warning: You'll feel like you're wasting your life.

Then throw this carefully compartmentalized pumpkin puree into the freezer and freeze it flat. Then, when Bubba buys you a chest freezer for your birthday, put it in there *knowing* full well you'll never use it but because you're a sentimentalist when it comes to your own wasted time and efforts, store it in there anyway and then try not to look at it when you go to the chesty to store all your tomatoes.

The guilt is ongoing.

Ten months later, surprise yourself by going freezer diving (totally dangerous, I was nearly killed by a frozen tomato avalanche) to retrieve the forgotten bag of pumpkin puree to make FINALLY TEE DAH the creamy pumpkin pasta of this month's Craft: along challenge.

Death-defying pumpkin

PHEW. That was a long time coming.

After retrieving the bag and marveling at your frontierswomanness easily break off a brick of pumpkin, slide it into an inferior zippie bag (I don't know why these little ones suck, but they do, the plastic is too thin) and let it float in the small part of the sink in warm water for about ten minutes, or until it's thawed. Since you pat it real flat in the bag, it thaws fast.

Put the rest back in the freezer, then.

Now, if you made it through all that and you still want to make this creamy pumpkin pasta, let me advise you not to skip the sausage.

I did and the results were a tad bland. I didn't have anything other than spicy sausage at home, so I skipped it altogether and I suspect that was a mistake and the spiciness would have been AOK if I'd been willing to go out on a limb, which I was not because I was using The Precious Pumpkin Puree of Yore and didn't want to befoul it with some not-explicitly-included-in-the-recipe ingredients.

In this case, excluding the sausage should be considered a not-explicitly-included-in-the-recipe ingredient - so do what you must to procure it.

Aside from aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall that though, the recipe was simple, quick and provided a good base onto which I could load a nice big pile of fresh broccoli from the farmshare.

And, lawdy, if I don't love me some broccoli freshly steamed in lemon juice and sprinkled with sea salt.

This is a new experimental view of cooking.

Whaddya think?

Notice the broccoli off to the side, there? After this photo, I just put it on top.

So, yeah, that's the story of how I finally used some of this puree to make something and then was too lazy to go to the store for sweet Italian sausage. Sometimes I can be such an asshole.

Good thing I had that awesome broccoli. And good thing I have another labor intensive pureeing project in my future because I guess I just didn't get enough of that the first time around.

Happy crafting, doll.

xo

Finny