Sweet as Pumpkin Pie

I love pumpkins. That being said, I had never cooked one until last Sunday. Two pie pumpkins were purchased and I baked them for two reasons: 1. To introduce pumpkin to Benjamin. 2. To bake something with fresh pumpkin in the next couple days.

So I slaved away Friday while Erik was out golfing and Ben was napping. When he came home he was curious as to what the mess was and I told him how excited I was that I had cooked my first pumpkin.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. I hadn't done anything with the pumpkin yet, but had it chilling in the refrigerator so I could puree some for Benjamin to try... or so I thought. We went to the kitchen at the same time that morning and all I could say was : "Oh No!" Erik was concerned and saying "oh no what??? what?!?" And I held up my bowl of pumpkin that had been sitting on the counter all night. Apparently when Erik got his regular glass of bedtime juice he forgot to replace the bowl of pumpkin he had taken out to reach the carton. So there went all my pumpkin into the trash, never to be tasted or baked into awesome pumpkin muffins!

Okay, fast forward more... to Sunday night. I went to the Carrie Underwood concert with some ladies and Erik took care of Ben. The concert was awesome, but thanks to the openers, the real concert didn't start until 9:00. I roll in to my house at 11:30 expecting Erik to be watching TV or reading, and ready to go to bed...but what do I find?

My sweet, sweet as pumpkin pie, husband was standing in the kitchen where his 35 lb pumpkin we bought a few days prior had exploded into several pieces. He felt so bad about leaving my pumpkin out that he took on the task of baking pumpkin... but obviously had no idea what he was doing or what he had gotten himself into!

The pumpkin tasted like pumpkin alright, but there was a ton of it! He had cut his prize "Daddy" pumpkin into eight (8!!!) huge pieces and was baking them 1-2 at a time. He had been cooking for well over 4 hours! I couldn't help but laugh. A lot.

Since I had to stay up and pump anyway, I took over kitchen duty and finally made it to bed about 1:00 a.m. I didn't get much sleep that night but I did get a lot of chuckles, a great memory, and a very big reminder of how very sweet my husband is!!

From pumpkins

Erik and Ben at Carmichael's Pumpkin Patch last weekend, picking out Ben's pumpkin