Unwanted Pumpkin

I have an unwanted pumpkin on my hands I simply don't know what to do with.

Well, strictly speaking, it's not a pumpkin, it's a potiron. Sorry - don't know the English for that.

I picked up two potirons from the Atwater market a few weeks ago. I purchased them because the lady said they had more meat inside than a pumpkin did. I knew I had to make four pies for Thanksgiving, and I wanted to be sure I had enough "squash-meat" to do it with.

(Aside: Yes, this year's pumpkin pies were made without pumpkin. Nobody noticed. Except that the unpleasant flavour of pumpkin was absent from the pies. I swear we could feed the hungry millions of the world on pumpkin, if we could only make the stuff palatable!)

Well, a single potiron gave me enough for four pies, and now I have this beautiful round hot-orange colored squash sitting on my counter. Glaring at me accusingly.

What's that - make more pies, you say? Yeah. In my tiny microwave, it takes three separate cookings to get through one of these things. Cut it up, put it in the only dish that fits my MICRO-wave, cook it for ten minutes, cool it for twenty, scrape the meat out into a bowl, cut up the next bits, cook them for ten minutes...

It's enough to make you buy the stuff in the can! Yes, I miss my big microwave.

But back to my current dilemma.

Carve it up, you say? Well, remember that bit about there being more meat in this thing? It's true. There isn't any actual space inside this thing once you take the seeds out! It wouldn't hold a tea candle!

Make a squash soup! Make a stew and use it! Make pumpkin bread with it! Make anything!

Yeah. How about just throwing it out?

Every fibre of my Scottish ancestry writhes in agony at that suggestion! Throwing out food is a sin, just about the one sin I haven't given in to yet! And the only one that makes me seriously uncomfortable any more! "Thou shalt not waste food" is more deeply ingrained in my soul than any of the others.

Maybe I can make some pies, and just not eat them and get fat, but instead take them to some mission or other.

Now that would satisfy my inner demons. Let's see if I can make myself do it.

Who would have thought a stupid pumpkin could cause such moral anguish?