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With a site titled "Dumb Blonde in the Kitchen" - how could I NOT share this?

Freezable Festive Cranberry-Orange Relish

A must-have in your freezer in order to serve at other times of the year, as fresh cranberries aren't available year round - so stock up!

12 oz. whole cranberries
1 seedless orange
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Rinse cranberries. Cut orange into 6-8 wedges, leaving the peel on. Run the cranberries and the orange wedges through a food processor together until nicely ground up. Dump cranberry-orange mixture into a large bowl and stir in the brown sugar and walnuts. Chill and serve. To freeze, scoop into a ziplock freezer bag (or use a vacuum sealer), remove as much air as possible, label and freeze. I've had this stuff last 6-8 months and it was still yummy. I'll bet it might even last longer.

How to prep and cook a large field pumpkin

You know - a large field pumpkin? The kind that your kids turn into Jack-O-Lanterns for Halloween? Yea, those field pumpkins. This one weighed in at over 20 pounds. 

I've always been a bit fearful of large food items. I mean, look at the size of this thing! Where do you start? Anybody can dispatch one of those little baby sugar pumpkin dealies - but it takes a real woman to hack up one of these monsters.

This year, I rose to the occasion.

I knew from many years of Jack-O-Lanterns that large pumpkins are essentially hollow, and that tiny little serrated safety knives carve out nice little shapes fairly easily. I didn't have one of those pumpkin carving thingies, so I first tried a serrated steak knife. OK - twirling my hair that was dumb. How on earth was I going to cut this thing up in order to cook it properly? Answer - any way I can. :)

This next photo shows my tools of necessity choice. Thank-you to all you foodies for recognizing my lovely Wusthof knives...but I digress. I did not take the top off first and scoop out any goo - rather I stabbed the thing with my serrated knife (the one in the middle) and sawed a big wedge out of it. It wasn't pretty, but I had a wedge out in no time. I didn't even have to be accurate, when I got close to the end I just wrestled and ripped the thing away. Then it was easy to take the same serrated knife and slice along the inside of the wedge to remove all the seeds and slimy pumpkin-ick.

My goal with this pumpkin was to make batches of puree to use in recipes. I decided it was better to remove the skin before putting it in the oven whereas you would perhaps bake a sugar pumpkin or a butternut squash with the skin on and then scoop out the flesh afterwards. Squash separates from its skin easily that way - pumpkin does not. I was either going to take the time to peel it first, or struggle with scooping out pumpkin with bits of hard, yucky skin attached later. How do you remove the skin of a pumpkin? Not with a peeler, I'll tell you that! Pumpkins don't have skin, they have freakin' armor! Cutting the wedge into 2-3 smaller pieces helped me to handle it while I whittled the skin away with a combination of my paring knife (the little one on the right) and my serrated knife. When I got most of the skin off, I could then take a peeler and whisk off the little remaining bits. I finally got to use my favorite chef's knife (the baby on the left) to slice the pumpkin into 1/2" - 3/4" slices.

Next step is layering all those slices in a baking dish - I chose a 9x13 glass dish. No need to grease the pan or add any water. Pumpkin has a fair amount of moisture that will cook out of it at it bakes, and it will not stick to the dish. Fill up the pan (what you see pictured is approximately 1/3 of that pumpkin), cover it tightly with foil, and bake at 325F for an hour and 1/2, or until the pumpkin is fork-tender.

After it cools, it's ready to puree! Cooked pumpkin is super easy to freeze this way - just a simple Zip-Loc freezer bag and 2-cup increments. Make sure all the air is pressed out and you label the bag. Freezer tip - press the bags flat and freeze them stacked on top of each other to save space and enable quick thawing later. Frozen pumpkin puree can be used in any recipe you'd normally have used canned pumpkin - except it will taste 1,000,000 times better and save you a heap of cash. Canned pumpkin is expensive!

So, this holiday season, why not try some homemade pumpkin soup, pumpkin risotto, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, or how about FRESH pumpkin pie? Comment, please, and let me know how you made out!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Nothing like a power outage to make you clean out your freezer!

Winter storm Alfred not only left its mark on CT - it left its mark on my freezer! Thank goodness I didn't have the thing stocked to the brim as I normally would this time of year. Since I packed my kids up and went to Cape Cod for the week during the power outage (leaving my husband alone in the cold and dark) I also packed two coolers full of my most expensive freezer items - roasts, steaks, ribs, etc. Happily, not a lot went to waste, and we ate really well that week. However - now I'm tasked with restocking not just my fridge, but my freezer as well.

Yesterday, I made a double batch of pancakes to celebrate our being together again as a family eating a hot meal in our own home. I had 8 pancakes leftover, so I wrapped them individually and froze them - and now Jonathan & Delci can have their pancakes any time they want by just popping them in the toaster.

Today I started with a few small convenience foods for Igor and for Glen. Igor loves baked oatmeal, so I made a batch for breakfast and froze 2 containers (Gladware soup/salad sized) for him to thaw and reheat another day. The recipe is here, and it's worth making just to keep smaller portions in the freezer for later convenience.

For Glen I made a lunch of chicken noodle soup that we had for dinner the other night, and also a lunch of spaghetti and meatballs that we had for dinner last night. I froze both of these in entree-sized Gladware containers. He eats well at work, and we save a boatload of cash when he does. Win-win!

See - not every freezer cooking session has to be a big to do. Start small and freeze smart. Every little bit helps, and in no time you'll be filling your freezer with foods that your family loves and will enthusiastically eat on a regular basis.