Earlier this spring when my little backyard garden plot began to grow, I had a "mystery" plant come up.
Since I throw all of my kitchen scraps (minus fats n meats) into a compost pile, various seeds end up in my garden beds.  When this little plant came up I first thought it was a squash plant.  Then it started trailing so I just knew it was a cucumber vine.  The first bloom was humongous!!!!  Ok, so I don't think this is a cucumber vine.  Then when it started bearing a fruit, I was convinced that we were going to have fresh backyard cantaloupe.

Something told me it just was not looking like a cantaloupe, so then I was like "who knows"?  Then while watering my large vines (had two going by this time) it caught my eye.  The stem was HUGE.  Aha, it can only be a pumpkin.  And, it was.

So now I am the proud mommy of one Large, and 4 medium sized orange babies.  With it only being June I knew they were not born to be here for Fall/Boo! decorations.  What to do with these orange beauties?
I began wondering if maybe, just maybe, I could use them for pumpkin pie filling.

I googled how to make pumpkin puree from scratch and landed on the Pioneer Woman's blog.  Thank you Pioneer Woman.  You're post was perfect.  I ran outside, grabbed one of my babies, and got to work.
While I have been writing this blog my baby has been roasting in the oven.  Ding!!  Now time to go puree the pulp and stash my first batch of pumpkin puree in the deep freeze.  Happy Thanksgiving Ya'll!!!